Theories of existence - The Crystal Palace and the Ultimate Goal of Mankind

 

The Crystal Palace and the Ultimate Goal of Mankind

 

What we have determined, so far, is that as conscious human beings, we are ultimately vile creatures because we can never achieve this utopian-like perfection, or a fantastical dream of being the un-muddied hero. The reason we can never reach being the conqueror, the reason we are ultimately vile, is because we live in inherent suffering, and he enjoy this suffering; this suffering is caused by a debilitating human inertia, an occurrence that materializes alongside complete consciousness. We suffer because our deliberate wanting forces us to go against the insensible imprudence of rationality, to prove that we are in fact human beings with free will; this want is what consists apart from reason in human nature.

Yet again, we reach the same obstacle as before—that is, what makes suffering more profitable than reason? The underground man, in the subsequent section following his aggressive digression against the superfluities of pure reason, wholeheartedly answers this question. He explains that human beings are made in such a way that we must continuously build and build—he uses the example of a road. “Man is predominately a creating animal, doomed to strive consciously towards a goal and to occupy himself with the art of engineering—that is, to eternally and ceaselessly make a road for himself that at least goes somewhere or other.”[1] However, sardonically, we are deathly afraid of actually reaching this goal, for if we ever were to reach the end of our self-engineered road, we would have nothing left to do but be idle—and idleness, to the underground man, is “the mother of all vice”.[2] Therefore, instead of reaching our goal, we cowardly create chaos and destruction, since the goal is actually the process of achievement alone.[3] In this way, then, we can consider this final, fearsome goal as our formidable, impudent two times two equals four, because once we can truly ascertain this, all that is left is a vile inertia. Two times two is four will, in fact, be the end of our very existence. However, since we chose not to believe in two times two equals four, but instead to destroy whatever we are in the process of creating, we continuously establish a world of suffering, and again, this is obviously something we must enjoy as much as well-being—for well-being is not a complete life.

This suffering, which has been mentioned so many times previously, may finally make sense now: “Suffering—why, this is the sole cause of consciousness.”[4] In the end, both consciousness and two times two equals four will bring us to inertia. However, after two times two equals four, there is nothing left to do but immerse ourselves in meaningless and ceaseless contemplation; consciousness, on the other hand, will still allow us to suffer, and although it may be regressive, it is certainly more joyous than contemplation.

Now comes the underground man as politician. His final main argument discerns the ideals behind the utopian ‘crystal palace’, or a new government ruled through socialism in Russia. To the idealists, as he calls them, a crystal palace is forever indestructible; but it is also, he claims, an impossible palace ever to build. It is in fact something to be feared, because in a crystal palace one cannot “put out one’s tongue on the sly”.[5] What the underground man means is that a crystal edifice, or a ‘perfect’ socialistic world, would remove our free will, simply because it will attempt to remove from us the desire to ‘stick out one’s tongue’.

When it rains, the underground man explains, we search for a place to find refuge, sometimes like a chicken coop. However, he reminds us, just because this chicken coop protected us from the rain does not mean that we can mistake it for a palace, nor does it mean that we should remain under it for the rest of eternity. Socialism might have been simply a quick answer to the rather terrible problems late nineteenth-century Russia was facing, but it was certainly not anything more than that—a mere chicken coop, not to be confused with a palace. Furthermore, this palace is not only a fearsome edifice, but also one that exists solely as a desire; by the laws of nature, the narrator tells us, this crystal palace should not be. Since it contradicts free will, by dictating to us how we should be, the laws of nature—through human desire—do not, and will not, allow it to be. Eliminate my desires, the underground man challenges us, and I will follow you to your crystal palace; but until then, I will desire. So yes, we will build and engineer, and destroy what we have begun to create the moment before it is actualized, and we will do so because it is our will, and our desire to suffer… and this desire, this will, is the same that does not permit our fabled crystal palace to exist. Indeed, the goal for all of mankind is to ensure that we never do achieve a crystal palace, for it is exactly as our two times two equals four—once it is reached, our existence will become as futile as a man forty years underground.

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[1] p. 32

[2] p. 33

[3] Note the connection here between the ‘goal of mankind’ (chaos) and nihilism.

[4] p. 35

[5] p. 35