How reading Fyodor Dostoevsky can change your life
Before I start this I have to extend my gratitude to Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson is a Canadian psychology professor who put his lecture classes on his YouTube. When I was 19 years old, I went through a dark night of the soul realizing that if I wasn’t going to participate in any kind of “formal education” becoming an autodidact was my only chance at keeping up academically with others who did. Why did I want to “keep up” you might be asking? Even though my dream was to travel the world and become “my own self made man” with experience being my primary teacher, I still craved knowledge, still craved being able to “participate” in society even though I planned to live outside the conventional rules of conventional society… to put it more simply, I didn’t want to fall behind in any way. This led me to Jordan Peterson, his lecture series “Maps of meaning” is a deeply jarring set of lectures that brings together his understanding of cross cultural anthropological myths and interprets them using modern psychoanalytic theory to give you a deep dive into what gives humans meaning in their lives… basically. I don’t know if its possible for any 19 year old, or anyone for that matter, to watch these lectures and not deconstruct everything they think they believe, know and care about and then put it back together again… I not only watched these lectures, I devoured them, studying them more in-depth than anything I’d ever studied until that point, filling up journal after journal.
I have to start with Jordan Peterson because he is the sole and only reason I picked up my first Dostoevsky novel. Fyodor Dostoevsky and his books are referenced so many times in these lectures for their power, poignancy and critical depth. I wrote down every book mentioned in the lecture series by Jordan Peterson as well as every movie, tv show and talk, I made it of the upmost importance to study them all. To this day, studying Dostoevsky’s writing has been the most life altering, perspective broadening and humbling endeavor I’ve ever devoted time to.
Fyodor Dostoevsky is a Russian writer who lived between 1821-1881. He is primarily a novelist, a novelist who, many literary circles consider, produced some of the greatest novels ever written. This post will not be facts about the man or his life, if you want this, it will not be hard to find. This is my experience with his books and how his writing pierced through me and opened me up to seeing and experiencing the full spectrum of “being”
I want to begin with a thought that I had during my first novel by him, The Brothers Karamazov. For anyone who is inexperienced with reading books over a century old (like I was) you will undoubtedly quickly ask yourself as you begin reading “When did we lose this level of critical thinking?” This was my first thought that has only persisted as I watch the world unfold in front of me. Dostoevsky created characters that are so “real” they go beyond any arbitrary title we could give them, they become a reflection and focal point for something more real than any one person, they are amalgams of 1 million people of “that type” that type being any box you could place a human being. Stick with me, Dostoevsky then places these hyper real characters in often tense situations to expose every other hyper real character. By “exposing” these dramatically real and deeply complex characters to the reader, the reader is forced to reevaluate that particular part of their on psyche that is represented through the exposed character. Every character in a Dostoevsky novel is a facet of the wheel of human archetypes, every character is a version of you and I, as we read we are forced to relate and then be considerably and consistently humbled by the absurdity of taking any one facet too seriously.
These books are always going far, far beyond “good guys and bad guys” there are only focal points, reference points for expressions of the human condition and Dostoevsky’s ability to bring these out in their liveliest manner is tremendous, legendary and breathtaking… and is always done with humor, grace and nearly inconceivable wit.
These books will help you develop your ability to think critically, the way Dostoevsky saw the world, I believe, is frowned upon in the modern world. I’ve heard people often told not “think too deeply” about things, being persuaded into believing that “thinking too much” and deriving personal opinions and beliefs that stem from that thinking can lead to illusion, mania and isolation. While I see the point, and agree that with the ability to think critically, one must also cultivate counter balancing habits and skills to not succumb to the weight of one’s own “world”….
Just open up one of Dostoevsky’s novels, I promise everything you think is important will be talked about in greater depth than you’ve ever taken the time for, then idolized and embellished by a particular character who sees this as “the truth” or “the way” and right as you feel empowered and supported by the way this character has created a way to beautify your beliefs to a degree you never dreamed of, another character (aspect of consciousness) will come into the scene and obliterate this character, taking everything they belief as holy and stripping it down to its naked base, humiliating you for being so simple minded as to “just say yes” and kneel before any one set of ideas. This experience is as intense as any “ego death” one can imagine.
You might be thinking, as I had been at one point, “I don’t have time for novels, I’m a nonfiction person if anything at all” this is something I understand completely and carried the same sentiment for many years. If I was going to spend the time to read it needs to be worth it, I need to learn something, gain some tangible knowledge through it. And its easy to stand firmly behind this especially when you see a Dostoevsky title cover sitting atop a small trees worth of paper (he does have shorter works for those who need to dip their toes before diving head first) now I may not be the first, but please allow me the pleasure of being the last person to tell you that the right fiction can you teach you just as much or more than any nonfiction, and in the case of Dostoevsky, a whole lot more. But it requires more effort from you, yes from you. You will never be told what to think while reading as may be the case during nonfiction, you’re simply given an opportunity to think. You could very well read a novel by him and think “why would anyone want to read about Russian Aristocrats in drawing room after drawing room, pretentious and boring” because on the surface, this is a lot of what you’re being presented with. Although, I assure you, if you take the time to read line after line with your whole being, not just to finish the book, you will be greatly, and pleasantly, surprised at what you discover about yourself, your wife, your son, your boss, the people who believe “that”, the people who believe “this” and what changes in the way you choose to interact within your “inner” world and the all encompassing “outer” world.
The study and deep appreciation for the work of Dostoevsky has provided me with, above all else, Empathy. I can see the ways I think and understand why these thoughts may be soothing, why those thoughts may propel me to achieve greatness, how these ones allow me to love my neighbor and those allow me to hate the ones who I see deserve it. Being able to see these thoughts, where they come from, where they go, the reality they create and the realities they destroy, enables me to have empathy, not only for myself, to treat myself with love, understanding that maybe I’m just a child who’s created a cloak of ideas, a suit of “I” to hide from the chaos of uncertainty that is the human experience. Not only for myself but for every other living person, understanding that the dividing lines are drawn with the minds eye and not of divine origin. For a deeply critical man, Dostoevsky is ultimately pure and practical in his spiritual sense, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from his final novel “The Brothers Karamazov”
Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by, spiteful, with ugly words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, and all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labor. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Every one can love occasionally, even the wicked can.
Stay in Light, Stay in Love
Jay Bierschenk
Jay, you are a good writer – a natural. I read “The idiot” and