I have finished reading The Insulted and the Humiliated. Shall soon write The Educated and the Unemployed.
The problem with me is not that people don’t understand me or misunderstand me. The problem is that those who lack the faculty to understand me also give it a try. Are you by any chance familiar with the game where little unskilled kids try to gun the balloons? 5 shots for ten bucks. I feel exactly like those balloons at times. The kids are not trained, the gun is corroded, the balloons are helpless- yet it thrills them!!!
One prominent feature of the society we reside in is the fact that if it loves you, it loves blindly. If it hates you, no amount of penance or sycophancy can atone for it. And, by the way, these two (love and hatred) are the best conditions for survival. As long as you are loved or hated, you are kept in the loop, because you matter! Worse is when the society forgets you and leaves you to rot like Kafka’s vermins.
Raskolnikhov was neither less daring nor less intelligent than Napoleon. His only error was his attempt to follow Napoleon. If he had understood that he was himself and not a failed attempt at being Napoleon, probably he would not have lost his illusions.
Society has its own sets of rules, its own parameters for normalcy, its own theory of morality and immorality, and its own version of truth. Of course, these are constantly shifting values. Objectivity is fatal. So norms for objective reality have to change from one generation to the next.
The world has had its fair share of Raskolnikhovs, Bazarovs, Vautrins and Karamazovs. All ruled by their own passions, whether nihilistic or hedonistic, and all anti-social. None of them were understood in their own time because they were not a product of their times but of their thinking and circumstances. Society failed them because they did not conform to its limited understanding of right and wrong. And what have we learned centuries down the line? I object to being a part of such society.
It is easy to say that they are all characters and not real people. But it is necessary to remember that they were a result of someone/the author’s thinking. They projected the author’s impression of society.
Just try to dismiss society. Try to have your own way. And there is a host of explanations coming your way from all the illuminated corners around you. You are stubborn, proud, snobbish, recalcitrant and suffering from a disorder. Ultimately, a social outcaste for whom no amount of harsh judgment or criticism is enough. You will be left only when society has a new plaything to amuse itself with. I object to being a part of such society.
Instead of following the instincts that come to it naturally, it follows the instincts it should have. Everybody wants to be Machiavelli’s princes. But few can perfect the art. Those few rule and set the rules. The rest are just amateurs. They end up following. Following is a basic human tendency of such people. Following not what is ethical or unethical, but following what is powerful. Independent thinking cannot survive in this quagmire. I object to being a part of such society.
I don’t see myself as one among many. I might be that alright. But I have my own set of conventions, beliefs, thinking, views and judgment, yes judgment, which may not be in sync with this mindless maddening multitude. And I owe no apologies for being myself. And do I dare? I am not a recluse by choice but because no choice is left to me after I object to being a part of such society.
The problem with me is that I understand what Balzac must have felt as he wrote the following lines:
“I don’t see what can hurt me now that I have given up society, in which my vanity could have suffered pinpricks every moment of the day.”
Objection obviously overruled!
