Irrational government, human nature and Freedom Convoy 2022

Man is Not a Piano Key – Dostoevsky on Human Nature and Why We Act Irrationally

“Dostoevsky, the only psychologist from whom I’ve anything to learn.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
In 1864, one of the most brilliant writers of all time, Fyodor Dostoevsky, published his novel Notes from Underground. It is considered to be the first existentialist novel.
And it is no wonder why Nietzsche, the first and greatest psychologist among philosophers considered Dostoevsky to be such a great psychologist.
Dostoevsky’s understanding of human nature and how well he managed to describe it in his works is arguably unmatched in the history of world literature.
In Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky gives us a look into thoughts of a bitter, resentful, and isolated narrator who remains unnamed, so he is often referred by readers and critics as the Underground Man.
“Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed, one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful!”

“In short, one may say anything about the history of the world–anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can’t say is that it’s rational. The very word sticks in one’s throat. And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself–as though that were so necessary– that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object–that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated–chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know?”
https://overthinkersjourney.com/man-is-not-a-piano-key-dostoevsky-on-human-nature-and-why-we-act-irrationally/?fbclid=IwAR3Qzu3xxStYKmAKsktKR17te8fvmVW-UR6Scai41_lCkjE2h4i6QrUFvzA
Even as Canadians risk all at their own expense to protest our government's attack on our Charter rights our friends and family abroad haven't even asked what the protest is about, whether it is peaceful, how the people involved protest actually behave, especially since the trucks are parked in front of the Norwegian Embassy. I'm gobsmacked that the biggest peaceful protest of its kind in the world, one we are so intimately familiar with, hasn't evoked one single question from the folks in Scandinavia. It's not merely distance which separates us, it's the enormous gulf between how we perceive the world and how they do. With this exception though, I'm intensely curious what makes them tick while they utterly disregard anything outside of their own frame of reference.