My goal is to read a novel a week in 2015. I’ve made it to 16.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

I determined not to know anything about the book going in. Even with that as the case, you can quickly tell that the ‘underground’ he speaks of is essentially the life of the mind, or psyche if you will. I hesitate to use the term psyche; and that is what makes it all the more interesting. I’ve studied a good bit of psychology myself, and realize that this Mid-19th Century predates anything like what we would call psychology.

Dostoyevsky takes us on a journey deep into the inner ruminations of a full-fledged basket-case. For the first time I can think of, I found myself gritting my teeth as I read the thoughts of the narrator. Some of his emotions were relatable (who hasn’t wanted to intentionally bump into someone who has made you mad), some weren’t. But the overarching idea that sterilized Scientific culture has stripped man of his full-orbed humanity rings true.

Parts of the book remind me of Fight Club (I’m not sure if Palahniuk drew anything from Underground). You have a man stripped of his dignity, working in a cubicle, craving for anything raw and guttural. Your psychologists and scientists will never be able to quantify raw angst. You will never be able to turn man into a machine moulded by natural cause; he will defy you; he will marvel you with his nervous breakdowns that defy quantification, that no troubleshooting tool or amount of chemicals can fully squelch.

He needs a good fistfight. He needs to visit a brothel. He needs a good drunken binge. He needs to pass out in his own vomit. He needs to tell off an authority figure. Put that on a chart.

He calls Behavioral Psychology, Wikipedia, and Fitness Apps well before they exist:

All human actions will, of course e classified according to these laws- mathematically, like a logarithm table, up to 108,000 – and entered in a special almanac. Or, still better, certain edifying volumes will be published, similar to our encyclopedic dictionaries, in which everything will be calculated and designated with such precision that there will not longer be any actions or adventures in the world (1.12).

This will lead to “halcyon days,” in which “everything will be extremely reasonable” (Ibid).

A pharmacist once gave me a lesson on Halcyon. Halcyon was a mythical bird. There are different versions of the story, but the central idea is that either the bird, or one of the gods, was able to calm the wind and waves of the sea in order for Halcyon to hatch her young. Hence, years after Underground, when scientists constituted the drug Triazolam, which was (and is) a nervous system-depressant that aided with sleep, marketers (or whomever) decided to name it Halcion. Halcyon days indeed. Such calmness; such tranquility; all in a little pill. The storms have ceased as though a god has waved his arm over your bed.

Dostoyevsky warned us: it wasn’t that calm and restful days awaited; rather days of sedation awaited. Tranquilizers lay ahead.

Still, the ‘underground’ cannot be silenced. The alpha anti-hero calls us to wake up before we all end up like him – shells, miserable, fighting to break out from the dull life of cubicle drudgery and attempted quantification. The book is a gloomy call for us to remember our humanity.