Out of Our Heads - Alva Noë

Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness

In this slim book, philosophy meets neuroscience and it is argued that the mind does not reside in the brain, but rather in the interactions between brain, body and world.
It was interesting.
And the cover art's pretty awesome.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 2: 5-end)

For all of you who were impatiently waiting for this, here is what passes for the rising action immediately before the climax in this classic existential mess of a novel.

5
So after the other guys ditch his drunk rude self, Frodoy decides to follow them because he's sure they've gone to a particular brothel. On the way, he talks to himself and - EURGH I GIVE UP. Read the Sparknotes if you don't want to read the book yourself or if you want to make sense of it.

Essentially, Frodoy meets Liza, a prostitute; after the act, the talks to her about how she should get out of sex work as soon as she can (he even rants at her for 5 full pages!), and is generally all-around annoying. And rude. And a total twat, a cruel man even, and an unpleasant character on all counts. To quote the back of my library's copy of the book:

The underground man had always felt like an outsider. He doesn't want to be like other people, working in the 'ant-hill' of society. So he decides to withdraw from the world, scrawling a series of darkly sarcastic notes about the torments he is suffering. Angry and alienated, his only comfort is the humiliation of others. 

Is he going mad?

Or is it the world around him that's insane?

He's definitely mad. And his torments, may I add, are mostly self-inflicted.
If you want to read a book written in the first person from the perspective of a character you will not feel empathy for, and that you will detest before the last of the 151 pages are done, read this book. Or don't.

Blogging Notes from Underground (Part 2: 4)

On the bright side of things; at least for this part of his novel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was nice enough to number the chapters. This makes for an all-around easier labeling process. Especially when one is reluctantly summarizing it for some blog somewhere.
4

So Frodoy goes to the restaurant, where he gets told that the reservation was for 6, and not for 5 as he was told; he was 26 minutes early. So he just sat there, wretched, and was even thankful when the rest of the guys finally arrived.

Awkward, rude social interaction ensues.

The dialogue was pretty well-written, if a bit on the verbose side - but the entire book is verbose, so it fits wonderfully and even pops out. Then, for a while, the narrator stops paying attention to his dinner companions to mope around, be unhappy and wallow in his self-pity. He also gets quite drunk

Really, he has no social skills, and he's terribly rude. Frodoy's a 24-year-old man, acting like a spoiled brat a third of his age; he's annoying. Also, crazy.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 2: 2&3)

Reading a book where the main character (and narrator) remains unnamed is ANNOYING. So I took the author's first name (Fyodor) and re-arranged its letters so that the main character could finally have a name. That's it.


2
Our narrator, Frodoy, started to feel some remorse for his debauchery (which he apparently indulged in often), but he pushed it away, got used to feel guilty. He's great at getting used to stuff.
He would daydream endlessly - he lost himself in his dreams for three months, and was content. They were pretty grandiose dreams. Eventually they incited him to socialize with people, but he was really awkward with everyone.
Then we're treated to a bit of exposition about how a bloke called Simonov was one of Frodoy's peers in school, and one of the rare people he could stand. Also, Frodoy wasn't 100% sure if Simonov despised him or not.

3
So Frodoy went to Simonov's place and - lo and behold! - two other guys he knew from school were there, and they all ignored him. This depressed our narrator a bit, and he sat down to listen to their conversation.
They were planning a farewell dinner for Zverkov, another guy that went to their school, and that Frodoy hated and was jealous of. In his defense, Zverk sounded like a jerk once we learned about his behaviour in school.
Now, we finally learn about the other guys in the room: there's Ferfichkin, Frodoy's enemy from childhood; and Trudolyubov (I'll call him "Trudy"), a guy who only talked about army and promotions and was indifferent to Frodoy.
So the group have the supper all planned out, and Frodoy decides to invite himself. The other guys don't want him to, everyone knows he and Zverk were never friends, but Frodoy insists and pig-heads his way into inviting himself. Now, he knew he didn't give a damn about Zverk, and he didn't even have enough money for it, but because it was so inappropriate he knew he'd go.
That night, he suffered nightmares about his time in school. He had never fit in, had been isolated, and had always seen his peers as his inferiors. He was actually pretty smart; at the top of his class, he read books far more advanced than anyone else's. But he was also a cruel guy, and had driven his only friend to tears and "nervous convulsions"; he had just used him to get his submission.
The next morning, he was sure that his life would take a radical turn. He was really nervous about the dinner, that evening - he could already imagine Zverk's condescension, Trudy's contempt, Ferfich's sniggers. But still, he was determined to go, and at five sharp he left for the dinner, ignoring his servant whose wages were due but that he could not afford to pay and still go to the dinner.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 2: 1)

Now that Part One is over, on to Part Two: a plot appears!
Narrator uses Misanthropy: it's not very effective...
Enemy plot uses Exposition!

Part 2: A Story of the Falling Sleet
1
The narrator - I'll call him "Frodoy" from now on, ok? Anyways, Frodoy was a real antisocial loner when he was 24 years old; and he was also very egocentric. He thought he was the only person paranoid about what other people thought of him, and if that word had existed in the 1840s, he would have called his coworkers "sheeple" (eurgh, that word is terrible. I'll never use it ever again, I promise!).
He was listless, restless, and inclined to what he called "debauchery", even though he never tells the reader what he specifically means by that. In any case, at one point he wanted to take part in a brawl, but didn't not because he was afraid of pain, but because he was afraid that nobody would understand why he wanted to fight, and that they'd laugh at him. He was afraid of humiliation.
So he started stalking this officer, who he would have fought with but hadn't, and Frodoy was really obsessed with him for several years. He even wrote a satire, a caricature of this policeman, and sent it to get published, but it never was. Then, he wrote the officer a letter asking him to either apologize to him for something that didn't happen 2 years before, or to agree to a duel with the narrator - but Frodoy never sent this letter.
Now, Frodoy often saw the officer when he'd take a walk on the Nevsky Prospect; they would both get out of the way of more "important" people when they'd walk there, but the narrator usually moved out of the officer's way. Frodoy saw this as an act of subservience, a symbol of the officer's victory, and hated himself for it. So he had an idea: what if he didn't step aside? He obsessed about it, went often to the Nevsky Prospect to visualize it and psych himself up. He also planned it: he would be well-dressed to make a better impression on by-standers, and even borrowed money to get his outfit (this was a source of anxiety and insomnia).
Frodoy chickened out a few times, decided to give up on his quest and went for a walk on the Nevsky Prospect for the last time. Lo and behold: the officer was there! And Frody stood his ground: their shoulders collided! He had done it!

And yes, this counts as a plot point for this novel.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 1: 8-11)

To clarify for the people who are mildly interested about such things, I am reading a version of the book with this blue cover on the left. Which looks good and interesting, but not as much as this awesome-looking red cover on the right. In my opinion, the cover art is as much a part of the reading experience as the prose itself, and I just don't understand the people who don't like the new red covers (other Penguin classics have also been re-covered) - as someone who fits the "young consumer" demographic, I do find that they look very intriguing and "maybe I could buy it?"-worthy.
Enough rant, on to existentialism!

8
First, the narrator interrupts himself (rudely) in his own writing. Then, he goes no the talk about how reason is good for the intellect, while volition ("making up your mind") will include both a person's reason and their speculations.
Then, the word "rubbishy" is used!
A person's capacity for living goes beyond their reason, which is only their conscious mind; a person's will also includes their unconscious mind. The narrator then defines "man" as "a creature that has two legs and no sense of gratitude".
Finally, since people HATE the idea of being predictable according to known "laws of nature", they will also willfully do irrational, harmful things, just to convince themselves that they cannot be predicted.

9
Narrator: "I'm joking, and terrible at it!" Can't say I disagree.
Man loves to build, and roads are a particular favorite, and mankind's propensity to destruction and chaos stems from the fear of ever attaining the end of their road, of finishing what they've begun. The process is, to man, more important that the final product; this is parallel to our attitude about life and death.
What is good for man? Not just what is normal and positive; suffering is as important as prosperity. Smashing things can be pleasant. "Consciousness is infinitely greater than [...] two and two make four."

10
Some talk about the "Palace of Crystal", an idealization that is eternally perfect and inviolable. The narrator rejects it for these very reasons. He then states that to live is to want - for food when you're hungry, for example.
After skipping over a bit about desire, we get to the point where the narrator expresses his certainty that "underground people" like him, able to keep silent for 40 years, should be kept in check lest they be loosed upon the world, whence they will talk and talk and talk. What does he mean by "underground people"? People who bury themselves under their facade of respectability and clam, people who, instead of expressing themselves, opt for a more "normal" act?

11
Conscious inertia is the best! And even though he is envious of them, the narrator would never want to be a normal man. He then states that he doesn't believe a word that he's written down so far (I've just read 42 pages of lies?!), and he wants to say something, but lacks the resolution to express it. The narrator then asks himself why he writes as though he had an audience, since he has no desire to get his manuscript published.
He muses on the fact that everyone lies to themselves, and that the more respectable a man is, the more things about himself he is afraid of becoming aware of - for that reason, truthful autobiographies are an impossibility.
To conclude this part, the narrator says he writes because there's something about written words that make the concepts they express more awe-inspiring than remembered words alone. Also, writing could be good therapy for him. Plus, he's dreadfully bored and it's something to do.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 1: 4-7)

This is a pretty crappy analysis, but I don't want to think about this novel further than the first (or maybe sometimes the second) degree.

Part 1. The Underground (continued)
4
The groans (and the complaints?) that people do when they have a toothache is an expression of their pleasure, or else they wouldn't bother groaning about it. It's an expression of the pointlessness of a pain that nobody has inflicted on them, and of the realization that they are at the mercy of their teeth. They know the groans are useless and only serve to irritate everybody else solely for the groaner's pleasure.
(This reminds me of the people that ask for me to either (1) fornicate with their lives or (2) shove a red-hot poker up their life's arse, depending on which meaning of "fuck" you're working with)

5
So now the narrator talks about how, out of boredom, he would indulge in his fancy for the dramatic and work himself up into offense/remorse/rage, just because he was bored of the tedium of his life.
So people of action usually attack secondary causes when they take their revenge; they attack a symptom, and not its cause. Meanwhile, thinkers such as the narrator want to affect the true root of their problems, but every cause has itself a cause, and that one another, ad infinitum; since the primary cause can't be found, the thinking man can only seek revenge out of resentment, and not justice. And so, in all justice, affronts should be let go - to be, like a toothache, a pain without tangible cause.

6
Essentially, people who are defined by one of their negative traits have the boon of being identifiable.

7
Even if being virtuous is in one's self-interest, it can't be enough to guarantee that they WILL be virtuous; after all, there are countless people acting AGAINST their own best interests to follow their convictions. Also, self-interest is almost impossible to define, much less measure and give weight and compare in a rational manner.
Logically, civilization should make people milder, less bloodthirsty, and less addicted to warfare; but in reality, the civilized world is bloodier than ever. "Before, he saw justice in bloodshed and massacred, if he had to, with a quiet conscience; now, although we consider bloodshed an abomination, we engage in it more than ever."
To conclude, the idea that human behavior can someday be perfectly predicted through a complete understanding of the "laws of nature" is deemed to be bullshit, since the narrator predicts that out of the boredom of knowing all the problems that are predicted to happen, human ingenuity will get productive and start popping out new complications to life. How nice.

Blogging Notes From Underground (Part 1: 1-3)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Whose name I keep reading (thanks selective dyslexia!) into "Dostoyvesky".
Anyways, so far I have just started to read Notes From Underground, and MAN am I confused. I've even started taking notes as I read, which is pretty crazy when you consider that I'm only reading it "for fun". Oh well, I want to sort-of understand what's going on; and I'm sure I'm not alone in this confusion, so here is the spoiler-riffic (if such a thing can be said about an existentialist book) and what-the-heck-is-going-on first post in this miniseries of confusion.

Part 1. The Underground.
1
So the narrator is a 40-year-old sick man, who refuses treatment for whatever his condition is out of pigheadedness. So far so good: he talks about what he used to do with his life. He was a civil servant, and was rude to people on purpose, for no reason really, and he did this indifferently, without a real passion for anger.
He doesn't like the idea of anyone living over forty years old.
Also, he lives in St Petersburg, even though it is bad for his health and he can only live shabbily there (thanks to the 6000 rubles he inherited, which prompted him to leave the civil service. Bear in mind, this was during the late 19th century; but 6000 rubles does NOT sound like a lot of money. At all.). He feels that leaving the city won't make a difference in any way.

2
To think too much is a disease, and men of action are not men of intellectual activity. Men of education, meanwhile, have four times their level of consciousness, and to think too much is a disease (ok, we got it): the more the narrator was aware of what was right, the more he did the opposite. This he was ashamed of, but he'd take pleasure from his own "degradation" and his knowledge of the fact that even if he could, he would not want to change. Consolation is knowing how much of a scoundrel you are, and you can find pleasure in despair.
The narrator always thought of himself as cleverer than everyone else, and has felt quite ashamed of it. He's also against the whole "forgive and forget" attitude, because you can't forgive the laws of nature (they don't care), and you can't forget an affront.

3
This begins with bemusement about people who manage to stand up for themselves, for their rights. There are two kinds of people in the world: men of action, who do things and go straight for their goals and STOP when there's a "wall"; and men of thought, who think about stuff, don't do anything and see "walls" as challenges. Perhaps everyone ought to be stupid, and be doers instead of thinkers?
Doers, when slighted, will immediately and passionately seek revenge; thinkers, in the same situation, will be filled with fury but won't do anything, and their outrage at this affront will stay with them and fester. Doers consider their revenge to be justice, while thinkers can see that there is no justice in their seeking revenge. Perhaps the pleasure derived from shame begins with a desire for revenge that comes from the festering resentment of the thinking man who never takes action to ease his desire for revenge?
There is no point in arguing against facts of nature, such as "that you are descended from an ape" (DarWIN!), and "twice two is mathematics; twice two is four".