The Brothers Karamazov: On terrible individualism

📍Chiang Mai, Thailand (Issue 204)

I visit 7-Eleven three times a day. What a place!

'Everywhere now human intellect is, ironically, beginning to ignore the fact that a person's genuine security lies not in his individual, solitary efforts, but in the common solidarity of the people. This terrible individualism absolutely must end, and men will understand at once that they have separated themselves from one another unnaturally.'

— Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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I have spent the majority the last eighteen months alone, and whilst I've been travelling from place to place meeting new friends, I've been moving about by myself.

This has been the most prolonged period I will ever spend solo, unless I retreat to that Tesson-esq cabin beside Lake Baikal. This isolation, this living as an individual, has been a luxury. A rare thing. I have not once, or at least scarcely, been lonely. In reality, I have not often been alone, given the hospitality from people I don't know, and certainly not for weeks at a time. Travelling solo is very frequently time spent with strangers. Even so, I have surely become more isolated in attempting to 'experience life to the fullest' (to use Dostoyevsky's phrase) all by myself.

So, it’s time to reflect, would I like to spend the remainder of my life alone?

Categorically... no!

My retreat 'into my own burrow' has not been without its costs; I've missed my best friends getting married and having beautiful babies. My family is older (no offence), although my 91-year-old grandmother looks somewhat younger. And although I am undoubtedly more independent, I recognise what a pleasure it is to be interdependent! To be surrounded by the madness of a crowd of friends. To be integrated again! To not live like an isolated polar bear, padding from iceberg to iceberg, hermit-like, cut off from society.

I am, therefore, already (half-consciously) re-integrating myself back into my 'life' — that is, living among others! — and I’m beginning to think about what comes after I reach Japan; where to go? who with? how might I live? what shall I work on? Many open questions!

I have recognised, as Dostoyevsky did 150 years before, that neither our resilience nor individual strength comes from our independence but rather from our relationships with others. What is life if it isn't for relationships? For LOVE? There is a beautiful quote in Into The Wild, where McCandless writes from his beat-up bus, isolated and alone, that "Happiness is only real when shared." He is not entirely correct; happiness is real when enjoyed alone, but only for a short while. Then you want to talk about it and you want to post on Facebook. Sustained happiness is only possible in the company of others, those you can look in the eyes of and giggle with! Somebody to hug.

Indeed, I didn't recognise it for far too long. And it's those connected moments with friends, which are sometimes mundane but always priceless, that we carry with us when we go on our adventures alone. They are memories that warm us up when we feel all out in the wilderness, solitary and quite chilly. When Dostoyevsky wrote The Brothers Karamazov in 1879–80 (serialised), people were, by his standards, already isolated. It was the very beginning of the Age of the Individual. Today this Age is flourishing.

How much further we had to fall!

And how lonely can we still become?

In Nepal, in the twee villages we cycled through (around Kathmandu valley), there was a blazing sense of community: On one day, we pulled over at a roadside cafe for lunch, and a group of five weathered old men made space for us on the hard wooden benches. They each wore the traditional mountain cap with unique patterns. In the UK, men of that age might be trapped inside, sunk deep into their comfy on their sofa, kettle boiling, alone, slowly being lobotomised by BBC News. But in this Nepali village, they were out socialising; no screen to watch and no smartphone in sight. Presumably, they were exercising their minds with long, rambling conversations about god-knows-what (The Brothers Karamazov, I hope). Family was in the village, not far away. I feel the same community feeling in Thailand (I am now in Chiang Mai), and although I'm told it's changing, the kids still play outside.

We are left with the irony that if Dostoyevsky were writing today, despite all the apparent technological change, he'd write the same paragraphs as he did in 1879! As they say, nothing is new under the sun:

'Because in our age all men have split up into units, each retreating into his own burrow, each one separating himself from others; he hides, conceals what he possesses, and ends up alienating himself from people and alienating others. He accumulates wealth in isolation and thinks: I'm so strong now and so secure; but the fool doesn't realise that the more he acquires, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence.'

— Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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I loved The Brothers Karamazov and highly recommend it. I picked up the Michael R. Katz translation in a book shop in Bangkok, which is easy to read. This month (December ‘24) Hector Hughes and I are reading Dante's Divine Comedy. Do join us! Here's a quote to whet your appetite:

"O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?"