A famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (November 11, 1821–February 9, 1881) is best known as one of the most famous players in literary history, but he was also a shrewd businessman and self-publishing pioneer. Supported by his busy wife Anna, Dostoyevsky overcame a gambling addiction and became Russia's first self-published author. But it was a release Diary of a Writer (public library) – the same collection of his nonfiction and fiction that gave us Dostoyevsky's memorable memoir of how he found the meaning of life in a dream – made him a national icon.
In February of 1876, thinking about the single claim that the first volume of the magazine received, the 55-year-old Dostoyevsky ponders the paradox of pleasing people and writes in the very diary of its supposed success:
I am only interested in the question: is it good, or is it not good to please everyone?
From this, under the title “We are all good friends,” he enters into a beautiful discussion of our deep goodness, revealing a deep faith in the human spirit – which is even more impressive that Dostoyevsky himself endured – and the conviction that we are naturally good despite the evil that we sometimes dress up as a bad mistake by imitating those who imitate us unfairly.
A century before Isaac Asimov's memorable invitation to optimism by criticizing the human spirit, Dostoyevsky writes:
We are all good people – except the bad ones, of course. However, I will see in passing that among us, perhaps, there are no bad people at all – perhaps, only those who suffer. But we didn't grow up to be bad. Don't laugh at me, but think: we have reached a point where, due to the absence of bad people in our country (I repeat: despite the abundance of all kinds of bullies), for example, we were always ready to introduce various bad characters from among our literary characters, most of them borrowed from foreign sources. Not only did we appreciate them, but we slavishly sought to imitate them in real life; we used to copy them, and this time we were ready to get out of our skin.
Although much of Dostoyevsky's discussion of such inappropriate imitation is related to that specific point in Russian cultural history, embedded in it is a broad reminder that, to borrow Eleanor Roosevelt's memorable words, “if you accept someone else's standards and values…you surrender your integrity.” [and] be, according to the extent of your devotion, small as a man.” In a particularly poignant comment on today's troubled Russian climate, Dostoyevsky considers the allure of imitating these villains:
We loved and respected these bad guys … just because they looked like men strong the opposite hatred for us Russians, as is known, we are a people of weak hatred, and this feature of ours has always been particularly contemptible. The Russian people cannot hate for a long time and seriously, and not only men but even vices – the darkness of ignorance, despotism, obscurantism and all these other things that are backward. At the very beginning we are quick and eager to make peace… Please consider: why should we hate each other? For bad deeds? — But this is a smooth topic, very impressive and unfair – in words, both sides… Fighting is ordered, but love is love… We fight mainly and only because now is not the time of ideas, of media quarrels, but the time of work and practical decisions.
Noting that the Russian people must recover from “the end of two hundred years of lack of habit of doing work,” he expresses the sad global tendency of people to despise insecurity by criticizing:
The more inadequate a person feels, the more eager they are to fight.
And yet Dostoyevsky approaches this problem with deep compassion rather than harsh judgment:
What, may I ask you, is there anything wrong with it? – Only, that this affects – and nothing else. Look at the children: they fight directly at the age when they have not yet learned to express their thoughts – the same. However, this time there is nothing disappointing; rather, this simply proves to some extent our youth, and in a metaphorical sense, our virginity.
He sees how this tendency plays out in his work of art – something that is undoubtedly amplified today, where criticism is not only effective but also interested in making a profit by a commercial industrial company:
In literature, for lack of ideas, people shout at each other, using all the invectives at once; this is an impossible and absurd way seen only in ancient people; but, God knows, even in this there is something almost touching: indeed, that lack of knowledge, that inability to be friendly and even scold in the right way.
But beneath such defensive and critical insecurities, Dostoyevsky says, there is a deeper, more sincere longing for the good:
I am not joking at all; I do not laugh: among us there is a widespread optimism, honest and calm (this is so, no matter what anyone says to the contrary); longing for common work and common good, and this – before any ego; this is an unconscious longing, filled with faith that has no special distinction or distinction, and even if it is seen in a small and rare way, it comes as something invisible, despised by all people… And why should we look for “intense hatred”? — The integrity and honesty of our society is not only unquestionable, but it also appears in the human eye. Look closely and you will see that … first comes belief in a certain idea, in an ideal place, while earthly possessions follow.
It is our responsibility as humans, Dostoyevsky suggests, to look past the superficial insecurities that make people angry and look at the deepest desires, to hold up a mirror to each other's highest ideals rather than pointing the finger of self-righteousness at each other's lowest faults:
A true friend of mankind whose heart has ever trembled with pity for human suffering, he will understand and forgive all the impenetrable alluvial filth in which they have sunk, and he will be able to find diamonds in the dirt.
He pleads for such compassion to be given to the Russian people, but in his words will be found a lasting indictment of all oppressed groups and communities that have been harshly judged:
The judge [the people] not because of those evils which they often do, but because of those great and holy things which they long for in their very evil. Besides, people are not only made up of bullies; there are also true saints – and what saints! They themselves shine and light the way for us all!
More than a century before modern psychology revealed how mental exercises shape how we correct our wrongdoings, Dostoyevsky speaks of the dangers of such thinking:
In a way, I am blindly convinced that there is no such criminal or scoundrel among the Russian people who will not admit that he is wicked and abominable, and, among other things, it sometimes happens that a man acts as a villain and congratulates himself on it, raising his wickedness to the level of the system, and saying listen and the light of civilization is precisely reflected in that abomination; the unlucky one ends up believing this sincerely, blindly and faithfully.
With the ominous warning that he “speaks only of serious and sincere people,” Dostoyevsky repeats his appeal to the heart of his creed:
The judge [people] not for what they are, but for what they strive to be.
All of Diary of a Writer it is a chronicle of Dostoyevsky's great sensitivity to human experience and his abiding wisdom about literature and life. Fill it with Tolstoy and Gandhi's little-known books on why we hurt each other and Kierkegaard on why haters hate.
