Is there any way to fix him?
I like this take
Shave and a hair-cut, two cents!
SSRIs unironically
>>25354660What about atheists who aren't narcissists?
>>25354944If he has depression, maybe. But SSRIs can't naturally change calcified behaviors nor internalized opinions. I see a level of fear of failure in Underground Man that I understand quite deeply, and I don't think biological mental illness alone is purely responsible. He has some self-esteem issue that he cannot overcome and extremely rigid thinking that you might expect from OCD or autism. It's a particular type of incel-adjacent perspective that a lot of introspective men probably can relate to, where inaction seems preferable to action and social self-assertion is frightening unless it's self-destructive. >>25354660Dosto might've considered religion as the solution, but this character exists in almost every time period of literature with a variety of sources. Oblomov, No Longer Human, Confederacy of Dunces (though lampooned). The Underground Man is clearly intelligent and able to use logic (even if twisted) to deny the philosophies of his time; I'm doubtful he wouldn't be able to do the same with religious doctrine.
No, he is a cortisol + low serotonin addict.If he was normal he would go innawoods to fish with a cute girl.
>>25355858It's not that he's too intelligent for religion to work on him, that's not the problem. It's that he needs an "other" with power over him to absorb the blame for his condition regardless. Without an audience or a creator, the spite has nowhere to land and stops meaning anything.Strip out "God" from the formula, and the underlying structure (acting as if observed, as if some entity authored your misery) doesn't go anywhere. It just finds a new name. "Society," "the system," whatever. The content changes, but the posture of needing something else to hold the blame doesn't.
>>25355926Well put.
>>25355311No such thing
>>25355926>Without an audience or a creator, the spite has nowhere to land and stops meaning anything.ya, that's why there's that long passage about the tooth ache that is particularly unbearable because there's no one to blame for it.
>>25354625Dostoevsky? Well it's too late for euthanasia, sadly.
>>25354625Would HRT have saved her?
