One of my favorite character studies is a brief section in Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead. The man truly understood people.
He was a man with a terrible strength of will and a proud awareness of his strength . . . [He] . . . was not really quite an ordinary mortal. . . . I can say unequivocally that never in my life have I met a man of stronger, more adamantine character. . . . This was truly a case of total victory over the flesh. It was evident that this man had a boundless self-mastery, that he had nothing but contempt for any kind of torture and punishment, and that he was not afraid of anything under the sun. All that could be seen in him was an infinite energy, a thirst for activity, for revenge, and for the attainment of the goal he had set himself. I was also struck by his strange arrogance. He looked at everything in an incredibly haughty manner. . . . I do not think that there was any being in the world that could have influenced him by its authority alone.
I need to reread that book. I remember being profoundly moved by it but I can't quite put it to words well. He captured the heart of the impoverished and especially the criminal.
Reminds me of Dickens' portrayal of Sydney Carton in Tale of Two Cities. Dickens' ability to peer into the soul of Carton moved me in ways no longer work has before.
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Do you see yourself in that character? Or to put it another way does that describe an ideal for you? It seems to fit well with the tech world's idealization of the executive.
>The phalanstery, of course, is all ready, but unfortunately human nature is not ready for the phalanstery. Human nature wants life. It has not completed the living process. It is too soon for it to be relegated to the graveyard.
>Then, as far as I can remember, I go on to argue in my article that all - shall we say? - law-givers and arbiters of mankind, beginning from ancient times and continuing with the Lycurguses, Solons, Mahomets, Napoleons, and so on, were without exception criminals because of the very fact that they had transgressed the ancient laws handed down by their ancestors and venerated by the people. Nor, of course, did they stop short of bloodshed, if bloodshed - sometimes of innocent people fighting gallantly in defence of the ancient law- were of any assistance to them.
>... but the distinguishing features of both categories are well marked: the first category, that is to say, the masses, comprises all the people who, generally speaking, are by nature conservative, respectable, and docile, and love to be docile. In my opinion it is their duty to be docile, for that is their vocation in life, and there is nothing at all humiliating i it for the. The men belonging to the second category all transgress the law and are all destroyers, or are inclined to be destroyers, according to their different capacities. The crimes of these people are, of course, relative and various; mostly, however, they demand, in proclamations of one kind or another, the destruction of the present in the name of a better future.
>The first category is always the master of the present; the second category the master of the future The first preserves the world and increases its numbers; the second moves the world and leads it to its goal. Both have an absolutely equal right to exist. In short, with me all have all the same right and - vive la guerre éternelle - till the New Jerusalem, of course.
>For notwithstanding their inborn disposition to docility, quite a lot of them, owing to some whim of nature which has not been denied even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, "destroyers", and do their utmost to proclaim the "new world" themselves, and that in all sincerity. At the same time they very often not only do not notice the really new people, but also treat them with scorn as old-fashioned people whose ideas are beneath contempt. But I don't think there is any real danger here, and it really shouldn't worry you at all, for they never get very far. It's a law of nature.
>The only thing that does seem to be pretty clear is that the order of the appearance of these different categories and sub-divisions must be very precisely and definitely determined by some law of nature. That law is, of course, unknown at present. But I believe that it exists and that one day it may become known. The great mass of people - the masses - exists merely for the sake of bringing into the world by some supreme effort, by some mysterious process we know nothing about, by means of some sort of crossing of races and stocks, one man out of a thousand perhaps possess a greater degree of independence, Oe in a hundred thousand will possess still greater independence. A man of genius will be one in many millions, and a great genius, the crowning glory of mankind, only appears after many thousands of millions of people on earth have been born and died.
"As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes … this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy … what’s most frightening is that it’s so terribly clear, and there’s such joy. If it were to last longer than five seconds—the soul could not endure it and would vanish."
This is quite true, I have epilepsy myself, I can feel what he feels, the seconds when brain is purely clear about the world around, incredible. I love all his books, and his biography.
He had 102 seizures during 1860-1881, that's about one seizure every 2-3 months, this is the frequency I have seizure too, it's all grand mal seizure. It have been big problem from early centuries, and now, it's still a big problem in modern society.
I want to help those people with epilepsy someday with some kinds of technology somehow, I know they are all leading a hard life in this world, inclulding myself.
He was a man with a terrible strength of will and a proud awareness of his strength . . . [He] . . . was not really quite an ordinary mortal. . . . I can say unequivocally that never in my life have I met a man of stronger, more adamantine character. . . . This was truly a case of total victory over the flesh. It was evident that this man had a boundless self-mastery, that he had nothing but contempt for any kind of torture and punishment, and that he was not afraid of anything under the sun. All that could be seen in him was an infinite energy, a thirst for activity, for revenge, and for the attainment of the goal he had set himself. I was also struck by his strange arrogance. He looked at everything in an incredibly haughty manner. . . . I do not think that there was any being in the world that could have influenced him by its authority alone.