How do so many people miss the point of this? You don't

>he puts this much effort into a second-rate author

>>7608603

Thank you fellow sinner for the reading list and things to think about. Agree that the Underground Man is widely misunderstood.

>>7608609
God bless, may love and mercy follow you everywhere.

>>7608612
This isn't a polytheistic board

>>7608612
And also with you.

>>7608624
How do you get polytheism from what OP has posted?

>>7608603
>People seem to think the Underground Man is some sort of caricature of /r9k/ types, when in fact he isn't because he's the one who is making his life into the caricature...that is, he is willfully and consciously pathetic
There's no contradiction here, m8. /r9k/ types are wilfully and consciously pathetic. For the most part, they know perfectly well that their attitudes and behaviour are poisonous to themselves and the people around them yet they continue to think and behave in the manner they do. If they weren't doing it wilfully and consciously, they wouldn't be on /r9k/ in the first place.

>>7608629
Mm, if people on /r9k/ walked around with fedoras and trench coats on and tried to act "cinematic" specifically because they knew it was cringe worthy, and then got involved in cinematic situations with women and botched them up *intentionally* to assert their identity of being /r9k/, then there might be a comparison.

>>7608629
I think the difference is that r9k types aren't aware of how conscious it is. The attitude comes with an implicit assumption that everything bad in their life was impressed upon them by life, whereas the Underground Man flits between apathetic acknowledgement and willful affirmation of his state.

>>7608650
No, why should it be so over the top? People in real life don't do such melodramatic things, in fiction it's exaggerated for comic or dramatic effect. Instead, they engage in misogynistic and racist conversations, making tasteless jokes and conversing with other bitter, angry people. On some level they know this will only reinforce their negative behaviours.

>>7608653
The Underground Man is a loser precisely because he doesn't have to be. If he had to be, being a loser would cease to appeal to him. He's a loser precisely because he could easily be a "normie", but rejects being one out just for the pleasure of being able to choose not to be, the pleasure of freedom being what he esteems above all else. He says he's a loser to spite normal people, but we see that is just part of him assuming the role of a loser, as he admits that normal people don't actually care if he's a loser.

>>7608650

They might not do that to the extent of trenchcoats etc., but /r9k/ types willingly disassociate and reject themselves from the social mainstream. They create the robot/normie dichotomy and take pride in the suffering and social isolation that their identity entails. The rebellion from what will make them "happy", or at least, what mainstream society tells us what will make us happy, is conscious. They're cognizant of their predicament.

However, an above poster made a good point in how robots like to externalize the causes of their suffering, which is unlike the Underground Man.

>>7608629
Came here to say this. Many r9k types engage in disgusting and pathetic behaviour after realizing they will never make it in any respectable way.

>>7608662
I don't believe the distinction you're making is particularly meaningful. It still seems valid to draw comparisons between him and /r9k/, even if they're not identical, because it would be impossible for them to be.

>>7608661
No, there are people who wear trench coats and fedoras and try to act "cinematic" in real life.

>>7608664
/r9k/ Fox and the Sour Grapes. The Underground Man is the Fox who can reach the grapes but intentionally doesn't and says they're sour out of the impulse to choose to be the the Fox and the Sour Grapes, precisely because there is no rational reason to be, which makes it a choice of pure freedom instead of being beholden to anything.

>>7608669
There's a pretty big distinction between someone who wears a MLP t-shirt for the reasons someone normally might, and someone who wears one specifically to be a loser, because being a loser is the last thing anyone would and therefore consciously choosing it is a powerful validation of personal agency.

>>7608603
desu i read it not long ago but already forgot what's it's about, not that memorable even though i enjoyed it considerably

>>7608667
SPPOOKSSS.

>>7608661
you are so sheltered it hurts
people are way more fucked up in real life than in fiction. why? because fiction is written by normies who don't understand the real mindset of so called r9k or autists.

>>7608690
He goes over concepts like ressentiment and the last man like no other philosopher has since, I'd say it's pretty memorable.

It's disgraceful that anime-watching and video game-playing autists who piss into jars and blame everything in life on evil feminists liken themselves to the underground man.

Robot mass slaughter when?

What are the top three books you'd suggest one read to gain a comfortable familiarity with Orthodoxy?

>>7608708
The Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Way, the Way of the Pilgrim. They're all linked on the pastebin in the OP

There are other great books for getting into Orthodoxy, but they require slow reading and serious contemplation, you can't just read them as primers. The Way of the Pilgrim is a bit like that too, but it's also very good as a quick read to get a feel, and it's something you can come back to for the rest of your life later.

>>7608717
Great, thanks - I will look into them.

What sort of Orthodoxy do you practice? Care to give more detail on your story, so to say?

>>7608698
i admit i didn't get that out of it. i interpreted it in a more sartrean view, where those concepts were to me not much more than the various variations of being-for-others. a re-read might be nice sometime.

>>7608677
>implying there are external grapes to be had
Happiness comes from within, that is not beyond /r9k/'s reach.

>>7608695
You're an idiot.

>>7608721
Greek Orthodox.

I was flirting this girl once at a commercial truck terminal, smoking cigarettes with her, and she had to go take some safety test or something, and then for some reason I kept feeling the urge to look into the Orthodox Church, and I couldn't figure out why, but I went and used the computers there and started looking in the Orthodox Church and seeing how little she changed and it got stuck in my head like a bug for all the rest of my loads. I didn't actually get to attend Divine Liturgy until home time though, but when I did, there was no turning back. I started attending classes they had, and after a while I told the priest I wanted to convert

>>7608603
Are you implying that the Underground Man was a kind of monk that did this to himself as a form of penance? That wouldn't add up. If anything, his motive is Luciferian because he desires a radical freedom.

This is par for the course. It is not surprising that Protestantism and Orthodoxy produce existentialists who feel a sense of dread about submitting themselves to reason and authority, and who want a religion of a radically free will where they can choose for themselves. It's because the Protestants and Orthodox and marred with a deep sense of rebellion, ever since they threw off the papacy.

>>7608738
Why did you select Greek Orthodox? What are the major differences between the major Orthodox churches, Serbian, Greek, Russian, etc? I've met a few Russian Orthodox folks, and they seemed interesting enough.

I read your FAQ dealing with abortion and gay marriage which I see your reasoning for, but I don't 100% agree with, overall very nice, though.

>>7608725
Sartre's existentialism is very different, it's about affirming your freedom through loyalty to your values. Dostoevsky's is more about the values themselves affirming your agency. Being a Christian, freewill was a very important theme to him, but being a Christian meant he also did not think he or anyone else who subscribed to his philosopher lived authentically.

>>7608729
By grapes I mean the basic things people generally need to be happy, like friends and a lover.

>>7608747
>Are you implying that the Underground Man was a kind of monk that did this to himself as a form of penance?
Uh, no. Where did I imply that?

>It's because the Protestants and Orthodox and marred with a deep sense of rebellion, ever since they threw off the papacy.
The Papacy, of course, isn't rebellious, they humbled themselves before the Third Temptation.

>>7608751
I selected Greek Orthodox just because they're the closest in my area. All Eastern and Oriental Churches are equally valid.

>>7608761
>The Papacy, of course, isn't rebellious, they humbled themselves before the Third Temptation.

That's rich considering the Orthodox have been notorious throughout history for being servile to the secular power.

>>7608764
Fair enough, are there any differences though, beyond the liturgical language?

>>7608766
Christians are supposed to be, Romans 13

You seem to be conflating that with the Third Temptation.

>>7608768
Sure. Ethiopian Orthodox, for instance, have 81 books in the Bible, whereas most Orthodox only have 73. There are significant artistic differences in the styles of the icons between Eastern Orthodox, Western Rite Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox (but all of them are pre-modernist styles, as in flat). The musical style of the hymns will tend to be different, although there are a lot of common hymns.

All kind of stuff like that.

>>7608755
>By grapes I mean the basic things people generally need to be happy, like friends and a lover.
>Happiness comes from within
Robots are sold on this cultural myth that we need certain external things to be happy, so it seems you are too. Do monks have many friends, do they have lovers? Do nuns? Does the pope? Are they unhappy?
By engaging in discussion on r9k amongst people who presuppose that they're unhappy because they don't have friends or lovers, they bury themselves deeper in the myth that they're unhappy for the same reasons. People are happy without those things when they don't believe they need those things to be happy. Purpose and routine would serve them better than all the friends and lovers in the world.

>>7608781
No, but they have God.

>>7608779
>Sure. Ethiopian Orthodox, for instance, have 81 books in the Bible, whereas most Orthodox only have 73. There are significant artistic differences in the styles of the icons between Eastern Orthodox, Western Rite Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox and Ethiopian Orthodox (but all of them are pre-modernist styles, as in flat). The musical style of the hymns will tend to be different, although there are a lot of common hymns.

This fascinates me. Are there any cheat sheets or charts that quickly outline the differences?

Thanks for your thread, by the way.

>>7608786
From a non-theist perspective, God comes from within, too. God gives purpose.

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>>7608788
Not that I know of. Besides, even within a national Church there are differences from parish to parish. Some bishops, for instance, give their dioceses the dispensations on Thanksgiving (the Nativity Fast runes from the middle of November until Christmas Eve), Others are more strict (mine said that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks, not about eating). Each diocese or ever parish can even have their own saints that no other diocese has. Some odd ones might use different art styles, like certain Romanian parishes use Latin Rite or other styles of Western iconography, pic related

>>7608791
God gives purpose to not having a lover or even friends in certain contexts, yes. Having a hobby generally doesn't do that.

>>7608816
I didn't say a hobby generally, I said a purpose.

>>7608603
Why do you think he chased after Liza after he saw that she left the money?

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>this whole thread
Absolutely heretic

>>7608816
I was baptised orthodox. I live in an orthodox country, next to an orthodox church. I hate orthodoxism. It's a scam and a set of superstitions rather than a religion. The idea of an American (which I assume OP is) converting to orthodoxism baffles me. Perhaps the religion is different there, perhaps the priests and their mentality is less mundane and mercantile on the one hand and less deeply irrational and parochial on the other. Perhaps churchgoers (believers, if you will) are different too.

Here where I live the state sponsors the church. It pays a salary for priests, deacons, bishops etc. just as if they were public workers. What's truly enraging is that the only category of public workers --the only kind of income for that matter -- which is not taxed is -- that's right -- the clergy (Roman Catholics and Muslims which comprise about 10% of the population (atheists are in the <1% range) also benefit from this). Other than the wages the state pays for the building of new churches, repairs and restoration of the old and other such expenses of the Church. To be sure, the are churches that date from the middle ages and as such their restoration and upkeep is a cultural duty of the state, as the local communities are often too impoverished for that. As a result, new churches, sometimes of monumental proportion, keep popping up. Think the "monumental" is an exaggeration? Just look up "Catedrala Mântuirii Neamului".

Apart from their fixed income provided by the taxpayers (funny how "provided" has the same lexical root as "providence"), the clergy do not perform any of the basic services that it is their sacred duty to perform, unless payed. Baptisms, weddings, funerals, "acatiste" (the priest writes your or your loved ones' names on a slip of paper and mentions it during prayer for the salvation of your soul...yes, the kind of shit that you'd expect to have ended along with the middle ages), confessions, one is expected to pay for all this stuff. This money is obviously not taxed and the rates for the different services are not displayed anywhere since they do not exist officially, but are propagated to the interested parties by means of hearsay (there will be a kind little old lady in the church or around to whisper the up to date prices to potential customers -- or rather price ranges since the church, in its unbounded Christian compassion, allows for flexible fees based on the churchgoers' financial prowess ).

I could go on but then again, the subject matter is not one of my favourites. If any anon has questions I'll try to come back to this thread every now and then until it dies.

Call me a fedora core atheist if you will, and it's true that I am an atheist, but I would have felt even more outraged and deeply saddened, were I a believer. I respect your faith OP, I do not doubt it is genuine. I wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

...Yeah but I already knew that.

It's like Rimbaud when he set out to purposefully lose control in his life for the sake of poetry, hoping that he'd stumble across ''new found land'' and therfore some form of progress. Apart from Underground Man isn't a poet, he and the way he lives life IS the art.
I've met people like this before in various ''artististic'' circles. Musicians, poets, writers... they are intelligent, handsome, confident and capable yet they willfully choose to cast all of these things aside and let go. There is no feeling quite like the feeling of falling. Underground Man's life is the embodiment of falling. It actually has a strangely liberating quality. Falling because some part of his psyche likes it. He's a masochist like most intelligent or great men are because he understands that for personal mental growth, suffering is not only important...It is required.

''It is this transformation that sets individuals above the herd, beyond the late man, and paves the way for the overman.''

“Actually, every major growth is accompanied by a tremendous crumbling and passing away: suffering, the symptoms of decline belong in times of tremendous advances…”

The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – do you not know that only this discipline has created all enhancements of man so far? That tension of the soul in unhappiness which cultivates its strength, its shudders face to face with great ruin, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, preserving, interpreting, and exploiting suffering, and whatever has been granted to it of profundity, secret, mask, spirit, cunning, greatness – was it not granted to it through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?”

>>7609004
To add to this... basically what this guy said >>7608662

He isn't a loser because he's a loser... if you're with me. He's a loser because he actively chooses to be a loser. He's self aware like skynet babyyyyyyy

To quote the repulsive bellend that is Beck:
>''Soy un perdedor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?''

this book is short as fuck but it actually took me longer to read than crime and punishment lmao i probably shouldve started with the greeks...

>>7608972
>tfw I already knew you were Romanian before you even mentioned the Cathedral.

Try to understand the Romania's issues with the Church are just that--Romanian. The Orthodox Church is not like in Romania anywhere except Romania. I know a guy who used to be a priest in Romania (he stole a lot of money from the offerings during his tenure), and from what I gather, the problems in Romania are due to parents pressuring their kids to get into the clergy when they're not really interested in it, and the problem starts right there, they don't want to do it but are forced, and cheating in rampant in seminary the students sneak out and the environment is just not conducive at all.

>>7608603
Hang on, if /r9k/ aren't
>willfully and consciously pathetic
what the hell is all that 'beta' stuff about? Those guys seem to revel in deliberately fucking their lives up. Hard to call the Underground Man a 'caricature' of them though, since they seem to plumb far lower depths (if only because the internet is now a thing).

>>7610704
They suffer, but they do not wish to. The Underground Man wishes to have his toothache. If /r9k/ could have a normal life with a loving and devoted wife and a career, they would choose it in a heartbeat. They are the Fox and the sour grapes. The Underground Man chooses to be the fox and the sour grapes, because he wishes to have the agency to reject the grapes. Not because he doesn't like the grapes, but because he likes having agency much more.

>>7608864
Because he loved her.

>>7610773
I'm not sure that (the most depraved, hopeless posters of) /r9k/ would take the wife and career, honestly

>>7610789
Well, put it this way, I don't think any of them have charisma that could be appealing to women, but willfully choose to act dysfunctional.

>>7610629
It's a lot denser than Crime and Punishment, as least for the first ten chapters which are purely philosophy. C&P has sections of pure philosophy, such as Raskolnikov's conversation with Porfiry about the Ubermensch, but generally it's interwoven more with the story exploring the philosophical ideas, as opposed to just exposition.

Youre reading too much into it.
Hes a cuck.
Plain and simple.

>>7610803
Did the Underground Man actually have the capability to go to the dinner party and get along with everyone. There are definitely many instances where he consciously chooses to fuck himself up but in that section he seems to be acting on pure autism.

>>7610773
Why do you think he loved her?

>>7611101

He may not have been able to get along with everyone, but he definitely had the ability not to force himself into the situation in the first place.

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Attention, Orthobros.

Can you recommend me a book that deals with the topic of how Orthodoxy views Jesus Christ? What are the defining features of his personality, and so on? His depictions in icons are very different from Western depictions; much more stern looking, for example.

Also if you could briefly summarize those views I would appreciate it.

>>7610654
Is it that different, that much worse, here in Romania than in the rest of the eastern orthodox space? I don't know, friend, I don't know. I deeply hope you are right. Or at least that things are different where you live.

>>7611859
I've heard similar complaints from Russians, but I'm neither Orthodox nor Russian, so I'm not exactly qualified to comment.

>>7610654

a serbian here, and gotta side with the romanian guy. he described the serbian situation too.

im not even a fedora tier non religious person, i really respect religions, but here in serbia it just has way too much undeserved influence. and it inspires a lot of far-right groups.
also you have no idea how shitty it is when you have all these bishops "blessing" taking kosovo back. cause warmongering is totally cool.

i share bafflement with the romanianbro about anyone converting to the orthodox church. i'm really confused to what people see so alluring in it. if they read it to be like, more open or more interesting or whatever, those ethos are far gone and not practiced anywhere anymore. at least serbian orthodox church is as backwards as it gets.
i mean, after every pride parade in belgrade they throw around "holy water" over the city to "clean" or "bless" it or whatever. that kinda stuff i can see appealing to the likes of /pol/ but not anyone else really.
also it yet hasn't updated to gregorian calendar. serbian orthodox church still goes by the objectively less accurate calendar for no reason.

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>>7608603

>>7608662
But don't you see? He is neurotic, and mentally ill. He is not just doing it to prove a point

>>7613758
He is.

>>7609014
But here's the thing, though he is conscious of it, he still isn't actually in control.

After constantly failing to fit into regular society due to his personal flaws, he has performed a set of mental gymnastics to provide a logical explanation for his failure and thereby give himself the sense that he is in control, protecting his ego. This is what most enfeebled people do; the human brain is very good at justifying its current station. The only difference between the underground man and regular people is that he is very intelligent and as such his post-hoc justifications are much more complex and developed. This still, however, doesn't discount the fact that they're largely bullshit, as we can see in his interactions with his acquaintances and that prostitute.

Like Raskolnikov, the character is based around the divide between the conscious aspects of thought and the others, like circumstance and emotion.

>>7613807
No, he is mentally sick. He can't fight off the resentment thats in him.

>>7612242
I'm a bit baffled, actually, that you don't see the whole point of the Orthodox Church is to preserve the same ethos without tampering with it. So if by backward you mean its ethos hasn't changed with the times, well it's not supposed to.

>>7614006
This entire reading of the Underground Man is a product of Garnett translating the word for wicked as "spiteful" (and virtually every translator since following suit). See the introduction to the P&V translation.

>>7614303

Another anon here. Pevear's and Volokhonsky's rationalization for rendering злoй as 'wicked' in Notes is overly simplistic and wrong for its use there.

>>7614366
It's quite right. Dostoevsky's exploration of free will comes from his Christianity, and its implications are therefore more theological.

>>7608662
>If he had to be, being a loser would cease to appeal to him.
>but rejects being one out just for the pleasure of being able to choose not to be

I'd like to know what in the book gave you this idea. In more occasion than not his actions show a trapped man rather than a free one, of course a trapped man without the desire of escaping but certainly not a man who exercise is nastiness to feel or demonstrate his freedom :The part where he invites himself to the dinner and immediately regrets it.
His paradoxical behaviors are ones of a resentful man with high self esteem, who derive joy from it but who can't be anything else

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>>7614366
>злoй

I prefer more literal translations

>>7614517
His critique of What Is To Be Done?

The Underground Man is not exceptional, but ordinary. People generally, in harmony with his thesis, are all pathetic, act irrationally, live in a kind of projected dream world: for the Underground Man it is the "literary life" but for a black kid in south side Chicago it's the "thug life." People read and hate the Underground Man because they all recognize themselves in him. What is extraordinary about the story is not that it has an extraordinary character, but that it portrays an ordinary character HONESTLY, which novels never do. Novels, being part of the "literary" illusion, play back people as they are literarily "supposed" to be, not as they are. This is part of what leads to the delusion that people are principled creatures that have rationally understandable wants, "character traits," and so on. The Underground Man's life is testament to the correctness of his anti-Chernyshevsky thesis precisely because he is the NORM, albeit in his own way. Zverkhov and his entourage, and Lisa, are all as pathetic as him in their own ways.

>>7614650

>Lisa is as pathetic as the narrator

This is a wildly different interpretation than I have ever heard or got from the text. Can you elaborate?

>>7614739
Liza's pride in her note from her suitor and the belief that she will some day leave the prostitute's trade, or that the Underground Man is interested in sweeping her off her feet, mirror the Underground Man's obsession with the life "in books." If we heard the narration honestly from her point of view, it would be as full of shame, contradiction, embarrassment, and paralysis as the narration we actually get. Her visiting one of her clients in the hopes of financial security would be as difficult to stomach as the Underground Man's attending Zverkhov's dinner party in an attempt to show him up. It doesn't make sense, it's irrational and in a way pathetic, and she would be turning herself in knots trying to justify it to the reader.

>>7614771
She's visiting him because she loves him, if she cared about financial security she would have left as soon as she saw he was living in poverty.

>>7614904
How is that relevant?

>>7613897
Thank you. I don't have the hubris to say you're correct, insightful, and we should date... But I feel it in my bones nonetheless.

For those of you struggling to make sense of the man through the lens of philosophy, consider the lens of psychology from which he seems intended to be viewed.

The underground man definitely doesn't have freedom of agency. His lifestyle isn't a conscious choice, and his philosophy is a direct result of cognitive dissonance due to his lack of control.

His inability to separate his sense of self from his thoughts and emotions in the moment, thus freeing himself from both his emotions and autism is his central problem. He feels he is not in control, but his pride won't allow him the self-awareness to see it. And so his technicolor emotional reactions to his own polar but thoughts hold him as both prisoner and guard, forever in flux between the literary romantic and furious belittled mouse raging inside him.

>>7615077
You seem to be missing the central point of the story, which is a critique of the idea that you can rationally plan human happiness on a mathematical table. The point is that even if you established a Last Man utopia, someone like the Underground Man might come along and bring it all down specifically because of something like this

>It happens that I myself was once a witness of a similar case. Near our village there is a very deep and steep-sided ravine, not very wide, but some seventy feet or more in depth. It is quite frightening to look down to the gloomy bottom of it. A sort of footbridge has been built over it. A peasant in my parish, a family man and very respectable, suddenly, for no reason, was taken with an irresistible desire to throw himself from this little bridge into that deep ravine. He fought against the idea and resisted the impulse for a whole week. In the end, he could hold himself back no longer. He got up early, rushed off, and jumped into the abyss. They soon heard his groans and with great difficulty pulled him out of the pit with his legs broken. When he was asked the reason for his fall, he answered that although he was now feeling a great deal of pain, yet he was calm in spirit, that he had carried out the irresistible desire which had worried him so for a whole week, and that he had been ready to risk his life to gratify his wish.

>>7615096
Implying it isn't a criticism against such a critique.

>>7615096
You're drinking the Underground Man's Kool-aid. It's plain from the narrative how his actions, inertia, and lifestyle are largely dictated by paradoxes of intellectual vanity and feelings of inferiority. But he's intelligent, so he weaves this narrative of him choosing his degraded lifestyle so he can say "See? I'm not an automaton merely avoiding pain and chasing pleasure! I'm the one true free man because I CHOOSE to behave like a jackass and humiliate myself!"

Truth is, he's as much a slave to his resentments and hang-ups as Zverkov is to military promotion and flirting with provincial girls. So he really is /r9k/ and Zverkov is Chad Thundercock.

>>7615096
That's a concept brushed over briefly in a contradictory tangent. I wouldn't consider it the central point of the story, rather a flimsy yet clever ego defense mechanism that can't be disproved. As it can't be disproved, I can't really make a decisive point against it being the purpose of the novel, but I feel you are robbing yourself reading it from that angle.

Take, for example, the strained tug of war as he muses over the values and vices of cognitive inertia. If he were willfully trying to be miserable, why did he try and exalt the underground with all the might of a well-trained brain caught in an infinite regression for decades, only to fail, begrudgingly admit underground was, indeed, horrible, and curse it?

If he was really in control, why would he feel like a mouse retreating back to his hole, admittedly pretending to be smug when laughed at by those capable of action?

>>7615096
hey constantine, something not really related to the thread, but that im curious about- do you believe, in a "factual" sense that there was a man named Jesus who performed miracles and who was the "Son of God" (whatever that may mean)? how does one come to sincerely hold such a belief? i hope that doesnt come off as condescending, because it is not intended that way.

also, if you dont mind please take a look at this post
>>7611770

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>>7615130
>>7615146
It's meant as a critique of Chernyshevsky (a rabid materialist, atheist communist), even the title is a direct response to his challenge: "Yes, I will always do what I want. I will never sacrifice anything, not even a whim, for the sake of something I do not desire. What I want, with all my heart, is to make people happy. In this lies my happiness. Mine! Can you hear that, you, in your underground hole?"

>>7615169
Yes. Such believe is a product of God's grace. If you want facilitate acceptance of God's grace, fasting, plenty of prayer (read The Way of the Pilgrim), expressing love, and *humility* are very important. If you do these things, you will find belief, I promise you. Your spiritual faculties will be sharpened and you will be able to see God as clearly as you see anything else.

I will explain to you why Orthodox icons look the way they did: the eyes are large to show vision.and being spiritually awake The nose is long to show attentiveness, with small nostrils to show discernment. The mouth is small to indicate lack of gluttony or verbosity, and doesn't smile in order to accentuate its smallness.

>>7615270
>This validates your reading in spite of the
>narrative.

/lit/ is full of shallow readers who only care about 'alphas', 'betas', being preached to about how they should live or behave and tripe like that. Trying to string parallels with some imageboard is enough to invalidate what they have to say, because it's watering it down to something they better understand.

>>7613750
Hold shit that's beautiful

>>7614771
>>7614904
>>7614923

I think it's extremely relevant. Lisa is weak, but I don't think Dostoyevsky thought of her as 'pathetic' in the same way as the Underground Man.

They are both in a position of extreme weakness, but whereas the Underground Man chooses to further isolate himself, Lisa tries to embrace him in all of his awful brokenness (and hers).

Given Dostoyevsky's Christianity, I can't see how this is anything but central to the point. They are both broken, but one is inward looking and spiteful, the other is outward looking and merciful. Both are haunted by their own actions that they can't escape, but one has chosen hate and the other has chosen love.

>>7608603

You're really reading to much into this. It's just a simple story about some anti-social loser. No need to turn this into a deep philosophical thing. When the underground man tries to be philosophical it's supposed to be a bunch of nonsense you aren't supposed to take seriouslly.

>>7608972
Having to pay for sacraments is serious, serious corruption.

>>7612242
>>7608972
The problem with the Orthodox churches is that they broke off from Rome. This sabotaged them. Once you break off from Rome you need to find another head-of-church to unify your Church on a practical level. What we have found is that for the Orthodox churches, and for many Protestant churches, the new head of the church ends up being the ruler of the country, or an emperor. The Orthodox and Protestant churches end up being subjects of the secular power, which is a deep corruption. They also tend to become very ethnic, e.g. the Anglican church is for the English, so a lot of the Orthodox churches are essentially based on ethnic ties. It is what the early Christians avoided, namely, becoming subject to Caesar. The Orthodox and Protestants have both abandoned the Pope and ended up with Caesar over them. Whereas we Catholics have always been aloof from the temporal power - it was the Emperor or King that had to go to the Church for his blessing, not the Church that had to go to the Emperor or King for its blessing.
The Orthodox call themselves the Orthodox as though they were all united in one and the same religion, whereas the truth is that they are not truly united, and are really broken up into "autocephalous" national churches that can often disagree with one and other substantially.

>>7616449
Uh, no
>>7615270

>>7616528
The Catholic Church fell for the Third Temptation, and then accuse the Orthodox Church of adhering to Romans 13.

Secular leaders have never ordered or altered our dogma. Whereas you literally added the filioque just to appease Henry II of Germany, because he have the Church governmental power.

>>7616449
Except that's wrong, the book *is* Dostoevsky's response to Western ideas that were becoming fashionable in Russia at the time. There is purpose to the character's construction as an "anti-social loser" and it matters not how you personally view the character and his ramblings.

The truth is some of you are lazy and self-centered readers, which is why it's easy to come out with simplistic interpretations like "proto-/r9k/". Don't know why you distinguish yourselves from /r9k/ when you both make everything small.

>>7617236
Great retort. This is how I feel a majority of people view any art and it is a degenerative practice. They read or view a film and immediately interpret characters in an egotistic manner.

It is evident in people talking about Brothers Karamazov and saying, "this book changed my life because I saw myself as _____ when I should be more like ______."

>>7617236
The character is supposed to be the exact opposite of socialists living in a commune. But Dostoevsky gives the socialists the benefit of the doubt and assumes the communes succeed and are perfect and so on: the Underground Man says "what if I don't WANT to be happy, and spit on your happiness because I get more satisfaction out of that act of individuality than I do out of all your lovely material comforts! what if I relish misery?" The Underground Man, by making himself into such a loser, is also a parody of the ridiculously happy and social people of Chernyshevsky's communes. Rather than make some sort of mundane approach to a man who is more joyous rejecting nightmarish communism, Dostoevsky approaches the thing much more creatively and turns it into an existentialist affirmation, the "unaccounted for" factor.

>>7617790
Eh, it's impossible for me to read Dostoevsky without identifying with all the characters. I think that's called empathy or something.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. People need to stop being like >>7617964 this anon.

>>7618000
Are you being sarcastic, or why is that bad?? lmao

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>>7618000
trips confirm

>>7618009
On a base level empathy for the characters is ok, but you need to develop an understanding of the work beyond emotional attachment.

>>7618022
nigga you dont even know me

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>>7618022
Dubs continuing the BTFOING

>>7608603
Your threads on nietzsche and orthodoxy were retarded, so I wanted to dismiss this post, but I'll admit that this was actually pretty good insight.

I never thought of him as just another Don Quixote, though. I always thought of him as just as a really good expression of how chaotic the will can be. Which I think still stands. But I'm glad I saw this thread, I could never connect the first part and the second part.

>>7618134
>>7615270
>>7617856