Jash Dholani

Dostoevsky🧵

A literary rockstar at 24. Almost executed by a firing squad at 28...

Exiled to Siberia. Returns to write some of the greatest books ever...

In his lesser-known letters and essays, we get a more intimate look at what he loved, hated, fiercely believed in

Dig in👇🏻 

1/ Dostoevsky believed life is only possible when you have a philosophical north star you swear by:

"Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea"

Dostoevsky: "In order to maintain itself and live, every society must necessarily respect someone &amp; something"

2/ In his essay against Environmental determinism, Dostoevsky writes:

"The doctrine of the environment reduces man to an absolute nonentity, exempts him totally from every personal moral duty and from all independence, reduces him to the lowest form of slavery imaginable..."

3/ In a letter, Dostoevsky revealed the mystery he wanted to solve:

“I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man."

4/ Dostoevsky needed only three things:

“I need nothing but books, the possibility of writing, and of being daily for a few hours alone. To be alone is a natural need, like eating and drinking."

Certain spiritual and intellectual problems DEMAND solitude

5/ BUT Dostoevsky also warned against introversion: 

"Lacking external experiences, those of the inward life will gain the upper hand. The nerves and the fancy then take up too much room. Every external happening seems colossal, and frightens us. We begin to fear life.”

6/ Dostoevsky lists important questions all societies must ask:

"Whom can we now consider our best people? Most important, where shall we find them? Who will take the responsibility for proclaiming them the best, and on what basis? Does someone need to take this responsibility?" 

7/ Do we possess talent or does talent possess us? 

Dostoevsky: “It's very rare to find a person capable of handling his gift. The talent almost always enslaves its possessor, taking him, as it were, by the scruff of the neck &amp; carrying him off far away from his proper path.” 

8/ Dostoevsky hated the "small-souled" people who preach "contentment with one's destiny” and "modest demands from life."

Dostoevsky: "Their contentment is that of cloistered self-castration."

All vital souls will instinctively reject such an "insipid" existence... 

9/ Dostoevsky on the measure of great art:

“Art is always true to reality in the highest degree…it cannot be unfaithful to contemporary reality. Otherwise it would not be art. It is the measure of true art that it is always contemporary, urgent and useful.”

10/ Art becomes abnormal when we become abnormal: “During his life man may deviate from normality, from the laws of nature; in this case art will deviate with him. But this serves to show art’s close and indissoluble link with man, its constant loyalty to man and his interests.” 

11/ For Dostoevsky beauty is synonymous with health and ascending life:

“Beauty is useful because man has a constant need for (his) highest ideal. If a people preserves an ideal of beauty and a need for it, it means that the need for health and normality is also there..." 

Read "Hit Reverse: New Ideas From Old Books" for more writing like this

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Thank you for reading fren! I appreciate your time

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SOURCE of modern man's weakness, stupidity, and general lack of vitality?

His leisure activities

Aldous Huxley predicted the degeneracy of modern amusements in a 103 year old essay: Pleasures (1920)

Huxley on why and how to radically rewire the way you spend your free time👇🏻

1/ Aldous Huxley writes that pleasures must not be an escape from effort

In fact, they must be unavailable *without* effort

Why? Because when preceded by effort, pleasure reinvigorates

But when preceded by nothing, pleasure retards your brain's reward systems

2/ Regression of "entertainment"

At royal weddings, theological debates were arranged as entertainment
 
Logicians debated God at Prince Palatine’s engagement

Huxley:  “There was a time when people indulged themselves with distractions requiring a certain intellectual effort”

3/ Huxley notes that in Elizabethan times, regular people “could be relied upon” to break into complex musical acts like madrigals or motets

People had to “exert their minds to an uncommon degree” to entertain themselves

This kept their minds SUPPLE

Normies today could never.. 

4/ Aldous Huxley hated mass manufactured distractions

On movies:

“Countless audiences passively soak in the tepid bath of nonsense. No mental effort is demanded of them, no participation; they need only sit and keep their eyes open.”

But mental effort is NECESSARY

5/ Huxley writes that in the past, entertainment was a consequence of ACTIVE collaboration between friends, family, and neighbors

Today, these very people sit in darkness in movie theatres

And silently watch something that STRANGERS made halfway across the world...

6/ In The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond writes about African kids who make model airplanes from sticks and stones by looking at a newspaper picture

Kids in rich societies buy airplane sets from the mall

Kids’ entertainment becomes passive in advanced societies...

7/ Huxley on how tech makes us LESS creative: "Before machinery men who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them with machinery" 

"Artistic culture" dies in such an environment...

8/ In Huxley's Brave New World, the "savage" says the following to the technocrat who wants humanity happy and comfortable:

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin."

These are conditions for GROWTH 

9/ Notice the "fort" in comfort

The Latin root of comfort means to *fortify* - to make stronger

The original sense of comfort was rest that READIES you for war. NOT lounging without aim. Aldous Huxley writes that we must return to the original meaning of the word...

Thank you for your time fren! I appreciate it

Make Leisure Great Again

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