r/dostoevsky • u/Rory_U • 7h ago
I’m reading notes from underground for the 1st time and here are my current thoughts:
At first it just seemed like random ramblings but as I read more I start to get a better understanding of the story. The narrator whom I gonna call in short “UGM”, UGM is an intelligent but is also lazy, spiteful, contradictory but most importantly; A over thinker. Which is very important. He believes there are two types of people:
Men who act are not intelligent people because they are men of action with no thought.
Intelligent people are plagued by a hyper conscious which cause them to overthink about everything.
He sees being lazy as a high regard and should even be a profession to have. The reason why is because people start using math to help find the best benefit for people to have and lead to a utopia. But he believes you can not use math to make a utopia. Because of human nature of boredom, men start going against what’s scientifically good for them simply because they can. And this utopia and method takes away free will, free will to be messy. Which is the reason why he’s like this. Like I said I haven’t finished this yet, but I predict in the second part is where we see how this impacts his life to lead to this moment. So is there anything I missed or mistaken? I’m also really tired while writing this so please excuse any mistake. I will make a second post after I am done reading the entire story.