Dialectical Conversation in the Modern Era

E: What do you mean by "Crystal Ball" vis-a-vis Notes from the Underground?

A: Sorry, I meant Crystal Palace. I'll try to find the section, I believe it's in part one.

A: Found it! This is quite long, "Then--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!" That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature of man. And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one would think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one's own interests, and sometimes one POSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea). One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy--is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice. "

E: The passage is at the end of chapter VII. (Btw, there is an ebook PDF copy of Notes from the Underground on my website.)  http://evankozierachi.com/uploads/Notes_from_the_Underground.pdf

E: But I found the unnamed underground man to be surprisingly sympathetic, rather I found myself feeling a duality expressed by him and the novella. That feeling being a compassionate contempt for a society of numbers--quantification and abstraction to the point of imperceptibility and nihilism.

A: In what sense is he expressing a duality? I saw him as the epitome of nihilism, and representative of the problems of that mode of thinking. Namely, a life of feeling miserable. I believe he could have benefited from an understanding of the asceticism of the stoics or Buddhists. I also felt as if he remained too cowardly and self-loathing to take any action to improve his situation, instead resorting to feelings of helplessness. 

E: Nihilism is a duality, a self-contradiction. "A nihilist is a man who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world as it ought to be that it does not exist. According to this view, our existence (action, suffering, willing, feeling) has no meaning: the pathos of 'in vain' is the nihilists' pathos — at the same time, as pathos, an inconsistency on the part of the nihilists." -- Nietzsche

E: In other words: asceticism, that is, the "will to nothingness" is still a willing of some sort, because it is by this that the underground man clings to life.

A: I think I see what you're saying. The nihilist views existence as being nothingness, but "in willing" he is acting contrary to the notion of nothingness. He is acting as if there is meaning. Is this correct?

E: He is acting (or willing) in spite of meaning. Let me rephrase... Without enemies, such as his school-friends & women (& perhaps, society at large), the underground man would not have persisted. But his enemies held him fast, his enemies seduced him ever again to emerge from the underground and to persist in spite of them. He lives, but only in spite.

A: Hence, the contradiction

E: Yes, if life is meaningless, why live?

A: Yes, it's illogical. However, perhaps he doesn't believe life is meaningless, he only deludes himself into thinking it is meaningless. (switches to new topic)