Fyodor Dostoevsky and Olaf Stapledon on True Security

Fyodor Dostoevsky stands at the intersection between literature and philosophy. His brilliant novels wrestle with classic existential themes like suffering, guilt, freedom, responsibility, the existence of God, and the struggle for meaning (see my Dostoevsky reading list here).

Another prominent theme throughout Dostoevksy’s work is the possibility of human community, which presents both an exasperating challenge and a gleaming promise.

In this passage from his 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, one of Dostoevsky’s characters discusses how, while our individual pursuit of wealth might give the illusion of safety, true security and happiness can only be found in the collective:

For all men in our age are separated into units, each seeks seclusion in his own hole, each withdraws from the others, hides himself, and hides what he has, and ends by pushing himself away from people and pushing people away from himself. He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence.

For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people’s help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man’s true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity.

But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves one from another. Such will be the spirit of the time, and they will be astonished that they sat in darkness for so long, and did not see the light...

Do you think Dostoevsky’s character is right?

While the individual accumulation of wealth offers an illusion of safety, does it simply create more instability and insecurity in the long run?

Do you think there will come a time where people do not suspect and fear one another, and come to enjoy the security of the collective?

Or will true human community only ever be possible in small units?

The 20th-century thinker Olaf Stapeldon, for instance, laments that:

Only in couples and in little circles of companions could they support true community, the communion of mutual insight and respect and love. But in their tribes and nations they conceived all too easily the sham community of the pack, baying in unison of fear and hate.

Stapledon wrote these words in his wonderful 1937 book Star Maker, a meditation on the possible forms of life spanning the entire cosmos.

In Stapledon’s view, the challenges of existence can be combated by the forming of genuine community. Too often, community is mistaken for ‘tribe’ or ‘people like me’.

Genuine community, by contrast, celebrates the diversity of existence, and is based only on mutual insight, respect, and love. We achieve this level of community in friendships and romantic relationships, but rarely beyond them.

Star Maker is Stapledon’s call for the recognition that all of us, no matter how different, share the same basic condition of existence: we are the cosmos made conscious.

If we can recognize this and move beyond the spiritual quagmire of extreme individualism and primitive tribal warfare — if society can move past the manufacture of fear, greed, and hate to instead reward and nurture mutual respect and love — then perhaps we could move towards a more unified place in the universe, and unlock its secrets together.

What do you make of such visions?

• Might Dostoevsky and Stapledon’s hopes materialize?
• Can true security only be achieved if we part with individualism and embrace community?
• Or will collective human action forever be disunified?

To inform your answers, you might enjoy the following related articles:

• ​James Baldwin: Suffering Can Become a Force for Good​
• ​The Stoics on What to Do When the World Feels Broken​
• ​Iris Murdoch: ‘Unselfing’ is Crucial for Living a Good Life​
• ​On Living Meaningfully in a Vast Universe: Robert Nozick​
• ​Fyodor Dostoevsky: ​​the Best 6 Books to Read

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