Skip to main content

The Idiot and the Ideal Human Being


One of Dostoevsky’s compelling novels is The Idiot whose protagonist is Prince Myshkin who is perceived by people as an idiot. On the one hand, Myshkin is an ideal human being with his truthfulness, humility, meekness and altruism. On the other, he is incompatible with the real world of basic self-interest and animal passions.

Myshkin, like most saints, is admirable from a distance. But emulating his example will destroy our lives. Saintliness is good in church-alcoves. In the world of real human beings, it is inadvisable. People will hate you if you are so good. And they will drive you mad. Or they will destroy you, even kill you. In the beginning of the novel, Myshkin comes to Russia from a sanatorium in Switzerland where he was under treatment of sorts. At the end of the novel, he is driven back to the same sanatorium as a mentally broken person. His encounters with the complex human world wreck him mentally.

You can’t be too good and be human at the same time. Human beings admire goodness. But they won’t let it near them. Not too near, that is. That is why, we keep our gods and deities locked up in shrines and temples and churches, far away from us. We will visit them when we need to be reminded of such goodness. When the world has sucked out our goodness from Monday to Saturday, we will go to church on Sunday and replenish our hearts with whatever goodness we are capable of withdrawing from there.

Nowadays, the places of gods and saints are not able to transfer much goodness to the devotees, I think. Maybe, those places have been politicised too. I find a lot of hatred peddled from those places these days. Most people I meet now are too religious. Sickly so.

There’s a Christian song that I love. A hymn, I believe, it is. Some of the lines are like this:

       Do You remember, when You walked among men
            Well Jesus, You know if You're looking below
            It's worse now than then
            Pushing and shouting…

Christians all over the world, belonging to an infinite number of sects like Roman Catholics and Protestants and Restorationists and Emmanuel Emperor Church and so on, just celebrated Easter. All these Christians, about 2.5 billion in number, believe that Jesus came to make the world a better place. But, as the song cited above says, the world has become “worse now than then.” Evil has only increased in the human world year after year though many divine incarnations came and went with the sole objective of reducing the evil.

Jesus was killed at the age of 33 by his goodness. Dostoevsky created Prince Myshkin in the image of Jesus to a great extent. Myshkin is wrecked at the age of 26. Jesus and Myshkin are two ideal human beings. Neither could survive in the human world. One became a god and the other became an idiot. The ideal human being is an idiot in the practical world of ordinary human affairs. Except the very few lucky ones who become gods.

PS. This post is part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023

Previous Post: Hurt in the Heart

Coming up tomorrow: Jurassic World [Not about the movies but about present India]

 

Comments

  1. JaiApril 10, 2023 at 2:49 PM

    Well, an excellent description of today's world where goodness simply cannot survive in the ocean of evil that surrounds us. After all it is kalyug.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 10, 2023 at 4:15 PM

      I am certain that India will survive any Armageddon because Modiji is an incarnation of god. Indian incarnations are post-truth.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanApril 10, 2023 at 5:13 PM

    Hari OM
    Harsh... but close to being true. I do think there are many who maintain goodness even in the everyday, but it usually comes at a level of sacrifice in some way (if perceived from the selfish greedy p.o.v.) For the 'good' themselves, they ought not to see sacrifice. If they do - then they are actually egoists and really part of the world they puport to be against! Which is to say, it is ego-lessness which is almost impossible to keep when engaging with the world, even where acts of goodness exist. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 10, 2023 at 6:04 PM

      For the letter G, I wanted to write about Gulliver's misanthropy. It'd have been harsher.

      If the world has a few more enlightened people like you, Gulliver wouldn't hate humankind so much.

      Delete
  3. marietta pereiraApril 10, 2023 at 6:07 PM

    Good people have it rough. Near misfits. Well-written post around a unique idea. One Day At a Time happens to be a favourite of mine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 10, 2023 at 6:27 PM

      That's a lovely song. So meaningful and melodious. And the typical un-Christian questioning.

      Delete
  4. magiceyeApril 10, 2023 at 6:56 PM

    Extremism either way is not good.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ArtiApril 10, 2023 at 9:05 PM

    After reading your post, I read Yamini's comment. For me, the balance is restored:)

    ReplyDelete
  6. DeepikaApril 10, 2023 at 10:17 PM

    Loved your post. Found it the best among all i read so far. People are too religious and sickly so. Agree and so on point. The world doesn't recognise goodness.

    ReplyDelete
  7. deepti menonApril 10, 2023 at 11:09 PM

    This reminds me of the phrase "being too good for one's good!" I tend to agree with you... good people are often misfits in a naughty world!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2023 at 5:22 AM

      Innocence is dangerous for both the innocent and those around!

      Delete
  8. AnonymousApril 11, 2023 at 10:29 AM

    Truth is cruel. Your article is thought provoking.

    ReplyDelete
  9. जितेन्द्र माथुरApril 11, 2023 at 10:44 AM

    Prince Myshkin's story reminded me of a Hindi movie Yugpurush which was released in March 1998. In that movie also, a person released from asylum after 25 years and having a mind as clean as slate has to go back to the asylum only within just a few months because the world is not meant for truthful and clean-hearted people like him. You have truly asserted that the ideal human being is an idiot in the practical world of ordinary human affairs. Ideals appear nice in the books only. Majority of the people who call themselves as 'practical' and 'prudent' use them in words but keep an optimal distance from them in their deeds.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 11, 2023 at 3:01 PM

      Being practical means making compromises. The movie you mentioned must be exploring that theme. Too much goodness won't do anyone good.

      Delete
    2. जितेन्द्र माथुरApril 12, 2023 at 8:06 AM

      Not for the good person at least.

      Delete
    3. जितेन्द्र माथुरApril 12, 2023 at 8:11 AM

      And more than making compromises, being practical is meant to be a hypocrite (not being true to own words).

      Delete
  10. Harshita NandaApril 11, 2023 at 8:15 PM

    Harsh but true...good people are found fewer every year and not really in real life

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
26 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more

Uriel the gargoyle-maker

Uriel was a multifaceted personality. He could stab with words, sting like Mike Tyson, and distort reality charmingly with the precision of a gifted cartoonist. He was sedate now and passionate the next moment. He could don the mantle of a carpenter, a plumber, or a mechanic, as situation demanded. He ran a school in Shillong in those days when I was there. That’s how I landed in the magic circle of his friendship. He made me a gargoyle. Gradually. When the refined side of human civilisation shaped magnificent castles and cathedrals, the darker side of the same homo sapiens gave birth to gargoyles. These grotesque shapes were erected on those beautiful works of architecture as if to prove that there is no human genius without a dash of perversion. In many parts of India, some such repulsive shape is placed in a prominent place of great edifices with the intention of warding off evil or, more commonly, the evil eye. I was Uriel’s gargoyle for warding off the evil eye from his sc
12 comments
Read more

Victor the angel

When Victor visited us in Delhi Victor and I were undergraduate classmates at St Albert’s College, Kochi. I was a student for priesthood then and Victor was just another of the many ordinary lay students. We were majoring in mathematics with physics and statistics as our optionals. Today Victor is a theologian with a doctorate in biblical studies and is a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the Vatican. And I have given up religion for all practical purposes. Victor and I travelled in opposing directions after our graduation. But we have remained friends notwithstanding our religious differences. Victor had very friendly relationships with some of the teachers in college and it became very helpful for me towards the end of my three-year study there when I had quit the pursuit of priesthood. The final exams approached and I needed a convenient accommodation near college. An inexpensive and quiet place was what I wanted during the period of the university exams. “What a
10 comments
Read more