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

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more