Fyo D 2

I have heard your cries, yesterday's post was not enough.

Here are some more paragraphs taken from The Brothers Karamazov.
This also is from Father Zosima, only now he is preaching on his deathbed. He starts by asking, 'what is a monk?' and I'm going to jump in part way, to the part that piqued my interest. Zosima is speaking.

In this that I think of the monk untrue and presumptuous? Look at the worldly, at those who set themselves above the people of God--have they not distorted the image of God and His truth? They have science, but science contains nothing that does not come through the sense. The spiritual world, the nobler side of man's being, has been rejected altogether, banned as it were triumphantly, perhaps even with hatred. The world has proclaimed freedom, now more loudly than ever; but what do we find in that freedom of theirs? Nothing but enslavement and suicide! The world says: "You have needs--satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrin of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder; for while the poor have been handed all these rights, they have not been given the means to enjoy them. Some claim that the world is gradually becoming united, that it will grow into a brotherly community as distances shrink and ideas are transmited through the air. Alas you must not believe that men can be united in this way. To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man's requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions. People are more and more moved by envy now, by the desire to satisfy their material greed, and by vanity. giving dinners, riding in private carriages, occupying high social positions, and having myriads of servants--these are considered so important by some that they devote their whole lives to acquiring them and sacrifice for their sake their love of their fellow men, and sometimes even kill themselves if they cannot obtain what they believe they must have. It is the same with those who are not rich. And, as to the poor, who cannot satisfy their needs at all, they just drown their envy of others in alcohol. But the way they are being aroused now, it will soon be blood rather than liquor on which they will get drunk. Now let me ask you: Do you really think that such men are free? One "champion of freedom" told me himself that when he was arrested and deprived of tobacco, the privation was so painful to him that he was on the verge of betraying his "cause," just to get something to smoke. And this was a man who said: "I am fighting for mankind!" What can such a man do, though--what is he good for, unless he acts on some sudden impulse? He will never be able to endure pain for the sake of his "cause." So it is not surprising that, instead of freedom, they lapse into slavery, that, instead of promoting unity and brotherhood, they encourage division and isolation, as my mysterious guest and teacher explained to me in my youth. That is why the idea of service to mankind and brotherly love has been dying out in the world; indeed, now it is often sneered at, for what can a man do who has become the slave of the innumerable nees and habits he has invented for himself? He lives in his separate little world and does not care about the great world outside. The result of all this is that, today, when more mateiral goods have been accumulated than ever, there is less joy.

As in the last post, some of the views in the passage sound rather sweeping and extreme to someone like myself, who realizes one can't make statements about all of mankind and safely say that this is the way people are now. On the other hand, it does offer an interesting point of view regarding freedom, the way it is understood today, and I think many of the points made, such as the misconception of what freedom means, the accumulation of wealth and power, which drives people to be actually less free more isolated, and inevitably more desperate.

I find in this passage just one more example of the way in which Dostoevsky's ideas and concepts are truly timeless. This concept applies to mankind in any age.