The Hero of the Everyday Underground: Dostoevsky and Our Century

From Dostoevsky's "underground" to today's virtual spaces is a distance of almost two centuries, and yet, the fear of vulnerability, the desire for self-defense, and the need for control continue to shape the relationships of modern man.

Perhaps one of the strangest things about our time is how much we have learned not to care. “Don’t get too attached,” “Don’t text them first,” “Don’t show too much interest,” “Don’t respond right away,” “Don’t let the other person know how much you like them,” “Keep some distance,” “Protect yourself,” and “Don’t give anyone the chance to hurt you” are just a few of the overused phrases that, in principle, may sound like advice for self-respect.

Sometimes they are like that. But what happens when we find ourselves caught between self-defense and fear of others and start not letting anyone get close to us? And all of this is not as new a phenomenon as we might think.

In 1864, the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky published his work “Notes from Underground,” which, although it belongs to a completely different period and social world, is surprisingly close to the way modern man thinks about himself and his relationships with others. There, the Hero of the Underground is a man who thinks deeply, analyzes every action, doubts his own and others’ motives, and above all, has a thick connection with vulnerability.

Not only is he lonely, but he is also aware of his loneliness, and this is the essential observation. He knows that he wants to be close to people, but at the same time he wants to be protected from them. He wants to be loved, but when love comes to him, he doesn't know what to do with it. He wants not to be offended, but it is precisely the fear of being offended that drives him to behave in ways that isolate him even more.

In his relationship with Liza, this duality reaches a painful climax. When she truly approaches him, he is confronted not with the abstract idea of ​​closeness, but with a real woman who can see him, accept him, and consequently hurt him. He has two choices: either surrender to her will or defend himself. And he chooses defense, even though it makes him more miserable.

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The Underground of the 21st Century

This choice is where the connection to our time begins to become interesting. We don't need to live in a dark room from the 19th century to create an "underground." We can even build one on our mobile phone.

We can have dozens of people on Instagram, hundreds of contacts, endless conversations, and countless opportunities to get to know someone, and at the same time be emotionally isolated. Paradoxically, the tools that are supposed to bring us closer can actually teach us to keep our distance.

We can write a message and then delete it, we can deliberately delay a response, we can leave a person in “seen”, we can see when someone is online and interpret their silence however we want. We can analyze a dot, an emoji, a “haha”, the time of the response and the number of days that have passed. We have developed an entire grammar of emotional insecurity. We even call it a “game”. Of course! Because it is easier for us than to admit that we are afraid.

Contemporary relationship culture often teaches us to maintain control, not to give more than we get, not to invest emotionally before we are sure, not to appear desperate in front of someone, and to always find a reason to walk away from arguments. In some cases, this is healthy. Boundaries are necessary. Self-respect is very necessary. However, there is an invisible line where boundaries turn into walls, and even walls can look very elegant.

We call it “standard.” Also “indifference,” “I don’t want drama,” and “I know my worth.” Sometimes it can be simply fear. Fear of rejection, of emotional dependency, of losing control, and especially fear of “ghosting”; fear of persecution, of the possibility that someone sees us as weak.

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Dostoevsky here becomes annoying again, because he does not allow us to be satisfied with simple explanations. The Underground Man cannot be called a “bad man”. He is wounded, but his wounds do not make him innocent. He is aware of his behavior, but his awareness is not enough to avoid the consequences. This is perhaps one of the most unpleasant lessons of the book. That the ability to understand oneself is not the same as the ability to change oneself. That we can know why we behave in a certain way and still continue to behave that way.

The wounds that speak for us

A wound can become a defense mechanism. This mechanism may have helped us for a while, but it remains inside us even when there is no longer a risk of being hurt. With this, a new person who enters our lives can pay the price for something they never did. “Hurt people hurt people,” they say as if it were a reason and nothing more, and this is one of the most silent forms of emotional injustice. To treat someone based on what someone else has done to us. And it is not always easy to distinguish.

When someone approaches us, do we pull away because it really doesn't do us any good, or are we scared by the fact that we are expressing our approval? When we say "I'm not interested," is it true or is it just how we want to convince ourselves? When we choose not to write first, do we not want to write or do we not want to be the one who is rejected?

Of course, there are no clear answers, and that is the point. Dostoevsky himself places man in this ambiguous territory. In the first part of "The Underground," he pits reason against human will. "Two times two make four" becomes almost the leader of a world where everything should be predictable and reasonable. People are not like that, because sometimes they choose against their own interests, just to try to appear free.

“Two times two makes four” has taken on other forms in our century. “Don’t get attached,” “don’t expose yourself,” and “don’t lose control” have become formulas that imprison people as much as they liberate them. Isolation is not just an “underground,” it is also the psychological carpet we sit on when we begin a relationship with the world. With analysis, fear, and self-defense, we feel safer, because there no one can touch us completely. But they can’t reach us completely either.

“Notes from the Underground” does not simply teach us not to be like the Underground Man, because that would be too easy. It is a warning to recognize his mechanisms within ourselves. We may not be cruel like him, we may not humiliate the people who approach us, and we may not live in isolation, and yet we may have the milder forms of the same fear. We may leave before the other person leaves, we may act colder than the other, we may think more and show less. We may pretend we don't care, when in fact no one notices.

This is perhaps why the book still troubles us more than a century and a half later. Dostoevsky did not foresee Instagram, “dating apps” or the modern culture of relationships, but he understood something older than technology: the more a person wants to get closer, the more he is afraid. This fear may never disappear. However, coming out of the underground does not mean getting rid of fear, but perhaps not letting fear make the final decision.