Dostoevsky and False Dichotomies

The human mind is predisposed to simplify. This is necessary because reality is so complex that we are often unable to comprehend it completely. For example, the activities in one cell or the objects in our solar system, let alone our galaxy, are so numerous and varied that we must simplify them in our models if we are to have any understanding of them.  

The same is true in the discussion of increasingly complex political issues. Few, if any, have the time or ability to understand the implications of a thousand page piece of legislation. As a result each political party reduces every political action or idea to a handful of “talking points.” Partisans listen to “their” news sources that repeat these points ad infinitum; if a news source refers to the arguments of the other side it is only to portray them as strawmen and debunk them accordingly. This produces the appearance of debate, but in reality it is mere babble that lacks the purposeful thought and intellectual honesty of true debate. This oversimplification of complex ideas coupled with hyper-partisanship produces a myriad of problems, the most notable being that it forces us into false dichotomies that generally fall along party lines.

The problem with a false dichotomy is that it presents us with two choices, neither of which are good or true, and this artificial either/or prevents us from searching for and discovering true, or at least better, solutions.

This is why I love reading Dostoevsky.  Dostoevsky consistently looks at problems from a unique prospective and refuses to be forced into false dichotomies. Consider Dostoevsky’s critique of laissez faire capitalism in Crime and Punishment. “Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, ‘love thy neighbor’, what came of it? . . . It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbor and we both were left half naked. . . . Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbor’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance.” This is the type of critique one would expect to read from a Marxist and yet Dostoevsky vehemently rejected socialism in all its forms.

Dostoevsky’s critiques of both laissez faire capitalism and socialism are particularly relevant. Since the end of the Second World War many have been prone to divide the world into two camps: capitalist and communist, free and tyrannized. This has caused us to pigeonhole debate and reduce it to overly simplistic solutions, like either more government or more markets. What Dostoevsky recognized in his critique of both laissez faire capitalism and socialism is that both have a similar philosophical justification and both, therefore, have similar consequences. 

Dostoevsky believed that both laissez faire capitalism and socialism are grounded in a form of utilitarianism—both justify sin and evil on an individual level or small scale because it will bring about a greater good to the whole. For example, completely embracing laissez faire capitalism, as understood by Dostoevsky, allows or even leads an individual to disregard Christian virtues like charity and embrace the vice of greed in order to promote general economic growth. Likewise, socialism, in order to help the poor, allows for theft and violence against the affluent. Though we think of these systems as polar opposites, Dostoevsky believed they had the same grounding and justification.     

Given their common grounding, laissez faire capitalism and socialism have the same consequences. Both, for example, undermine faith. Granted the way they undermine faith is very different: communist regimes directly persecute it, while the modern capitalistic West mocks true faith and has created a society of diversion and entertainment that simply ignores it. The respective dystopias of Huxley and Orwell would not have surprised Dostoevsky: because they both jettison Christianity, the repression of communist regimes and the indulgence of capitalistic societies alike can create atheistic societies.

Likewise, both systems undermine family. The Soviets created a society where scarce housing and low wages prevented people from being able to have large families. We in the West are creating a society where expensive housing and education and stagnating wages are making it more difficult for people to have large families, while widespread divorce undermines a significant number of families that do form. Moreover, we have idealized career advancement and self-expression, which in turn leads many to disregard and avoid marriage altogether.

Solutions to our current predicaments are not be found in doubling down on the lesser of two evils, but rather in seeking to look past false dichotomies. Instead of getting bogged down in their relatively minor differences, we should seek to understand and overcome the greater and deeper errors they hold in common. We will never do this without resisting the tyranny of the temporary. Modern thought, as profound as it is at times, shares our assumptions and thereby exacerbates our errors. Old Books on the other hand view the world through different eyes and provide a perspective we lack and insight we need.