We Will Choose Misery Over a Happiness We Didn't Choose

“Suffering is the origin of consciousness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.” - Nikolai Gogol

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy

“The superfluous man is a strange being, gifted with intelligence and sensitivity, yet paralyzed by his own awareness.” - Ivan Turgenev

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

I am reading one of my favourite authors, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Consider Dostoevsky's Underground Man, an unforgettable figure from his novella Notes from Underground. He is clever, painfully self-aware, and utterly wretched, and he wants it that way. The protagonist destroys every opportunity for happiness that comes near him. He poisons potential friendships. He engineers his own humiliation. He marinates in his suffering like it's a holy sacrament. He is isolated, dissatisfied, and resentful. Dostoevsky tries to show how any man can psychologically suffer from what we now call an inferiority complex due to traumatic life changes, and in this case, socioeconomic struggles.

This is Dostoevsky at his most penetrating of the human psyche, demolishing every neat theory about human nature that assumes we are rational actors pursuing our own advantage. The Underground Man would rather drown in misery of his own making and live in a paralysis of overthinking than float contentedly in a perfect world someone else designed for him. His strange, twisted logic shows us something we recognize but rarely admit: a heightened awareness of ones self and our strange hunger for self-sabotage.

Think of the hours you've spent scrolling through news media and social media catastrophes, feeding your anxiety like a fire. Think of how we mock "wellness yoga culture" while reaching for the late-night binge, the toxic relationship, those small acts of self-destruction that feel like freedom because we chose them. A very typical Russian superfluous man, an educated man with a heightened consciousness as a disease. To Dostoevsky, through this character, a spontaneous man is a foolish or stupid man that lives blissfully in his surroundings. As Marcel Proust learned from Dostoevsky's writings, suffering is natural to human creativity and the Underground Man teaches us this uncomfortable truth: we would rather suffer as free people than flourish as slaves. We will march ourselves into hell, heads held high, as long as we chose the road, rather than let anyone pull and drag us into their version of paradise. As we notice so many individuals in society similar to The Underground Man as irrational even though he is intelligent and educated.