An intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything

I would read this as a critique of the self existing at all.

elaborate, I want to get to the bottom of the muddy puddle that is your façade of a deep thought.

If you want to be a normal person then yes, it is, I would say, the biggest curse there is. The most succesful people in a common way are self confident, doubtless, impulsive. Just look at Trump and think why people vote for him.
But if you think so much about yourself and your actions, you should direct those thoughts towards true introspection and developing values for your own needs. The underground man allowed himself to be succumbed by the hypocritical values of his society. Hamlet was a boss who didn't let others dictate his way of living but tailored his own, even with the price of others thinking he is mad. He said:
"O god, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I had bad dreams"
Hamlet had switched places between reality and his inner world and when something crucial happened in his life he regarded it as we would regard a nightmare: something that doesn't allow us to sleep and thus live our days well. Because he found himself forced to act when he wouldn't have otherwise he lost his balance and all his doubts took surface. It's a shame we don't know anything about him before his tragedy but I am sure he could convince you to strive to beblike him.

This desu

This. It's like a /r9k/ faggot complaining why dumb normies are more successful.

I admire Hamlet, but for all his virtues his actions are by and large failures. He delays acting and misses the opportune moment and when he does act it's rash and ill judged. He himself admires Fortinbras as the consummate man of action and even bequeaths his kingdom to him at his last. As hamlet himself says,

"And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action"

I think supports the Underground man's assertion that at least on some level deep thought and decisive action are incompatible.

Although all things in moderation is a classic maxim, is it not a special case when applying it to thought? How are we to judge by thinking that we have thought enough? and is it not in a sense cowardice to shy away from the depths?

As time passes, hesitation becomes costlier and planning becomes less valuable.

He's right. The intelligent man never becomes, the intelligent man remains becoming.

It's true

I think you misunderstand Hamlet here. He delays in acting because of his epistemological nihilism which he only overcomes when he decides to act as if he were an actor in a play. He doesn't really care about results. He just wants to act in a sort of Nietzschean arbitrariness.

The problem of freedom.

I haven't read The Brothers Karamazov, but they say it's the culmination of this problem and the answer to it.

Who says this?
The karamazov brothers deals mostly with the problem of evil.
I don't see much connection between notes and tkb, desu.

>i'm so smart that's the reason i'm a lazy piece of shit
it might be true that it's harder for people who think more to do things but it's all about finding the balance. don't listen to autists.

>written in an ironic narrative

All these niggers not understanding Notes from Underground is about the impossibility having both the freedom to act and the ability to love.

Can you elaborate or tell where one can find an elaboration?
>which he only overcomes when he decides to act as if he were an actor in a play
Interesting idea, but what's the textual evidence? I don't recall him using that sort of analogy in the last two acts.
My interpretation of Hamlet is probably tainted a bit by my encountering him in my early teens and perhaps overly and incorrectly empathizing with him. And my more recent battles with religion and epistemological terror, as well as my continued inability to act, haven't done much but to familiarize that empathy.

Einstein became one of the greatest minds of history.

Is he a fool?

Appearing confident and being confident are not the same. If there's a man who's anxious right now, it's Donald Trump. Not making a political statement here, he's running for president and the elections are coming. I can assure you, he thinks about the things he said and did and probably doubts his actions as their consequences are unknown.

Everyone has doubts about himself. Even the succesful ones. They just know how to appear confident even when in doubt.

He was a man of action who had high self esteem. He married numerous times and bullied faggots liek yourself in his time. The underground man was alone from a young age and never fully understood how to love and ended up becoming cold and bitter. The entire book is just his personal justifications for the way he acts.

Critique of the idea of self isnt a rare idea. Nietzche and Stirner are two examples.

I read this as Dostoy saying that only a fool percieves himself as becoming anything because we are constantly creating and destroying ourselves with new information and new decisions. This isnt too crazy of an idea for any materialist considering there is no identifiable part of the brain where our self resides and it instead exists in various mental processes created by a brain that has a measure of plasticity throughout life.

Hope this doesnt sound like a facade to you, I realize my original post wasnt very good discussion

That fits really well if you totally ignore 99% of the novel.

How is the underground man materialist when he literally focuses all his energy on the metaphysical at the expense of material wealth?
If this was a critique of the self, the underground man would progress in some meaningful way relative to the men of action. You haven't read the book, have you?

I have, it's been a while tho. This is in the preface where we get his proto-psychological views on life, am I right? I read it as Dostoyevsky presenting genuine insights of his mixed with his fear of what could become of someone who embraced these ideas as a means of ignoring any social obligations or ambitions.

Favorite part of the novel is when the underground man obsesses for weeks (months?) over making himself bump into the man on the walk by the river, followed by the dinner party with his old classmates.

It's literally /r9k/, the book

I believe so, I feel like I have this problem, if you could call it a problem.
It's impossible to completely commit yourself to an ideology because you will eventually find some kind of a fault in it, where as a fool will be unable to and will fully adopt it unthinkingly.

Just finished reading Notes the other day
To me the underground man was meant to represent the contradictory side of human nature we can never get away from. We always contradict ourselves. In everything we do/say/feel. If you read into the underground man's mind he contradicts himsef many many times. Like calling himsef a hero for Liza after he delivered his scathing rant to Liza.

To answer your question i dont feel like its a curse. I am reminded of Alan Watts' opinions (paraphrased) on "self improvement": how do we know what the better versions of ourselves are? Sure we can exercise and read books and get great sleep and have lots of friends and all these other modern stereotypical self improvement goals, but it doesnt make you better or worse. It just changes you. But as others have noted, i find moderation useful. But i contradict myself too, this last weekend i binged on cocaine. It was a great weekend
The underground man says "better to do nothing!" Pah. We are forced to do something (Sartre: "we are condemned to be free").

I found myself loving and hating the uman. I liked his obliteration of utilitarianism/utopianism/socialism. But i hated his actions, in particular his hate for everyone he knew.

It's a narrow definition of intelligent.
More like the self-examining man.
When you pay attention to something, it changes. It reorders. This is especially true of the mind paying attention to itself. It's extremely difficult to become truly any certain thing with that constant self-reflection and examination that I'm sure a lot of us have.

It's why I'd say it's good to engage in meditation or menial tasks as a way of shutting off that running monologue from time to time.

>dude just turn off your brain and stop realizing how horrfic and mundane life is.

>I don't recall him using that sort of analogy in the last two acts.
There is the soliloquy that follows the introduction of the actors and the soliloquy that he makes as he watches the army march off to die for nothing.

>see ghost
>is something so bizarre it shatters all the tools he had used to understand the world
>all attempts made to understand the world fail
>never in the whole play does he ever actually learn if Claudius killed his father (he was not present at the confession)
>actors turn up
>he is amazed how these people can become so wild about things that never happened
>sees the army marching off to die over nothing
>realises how powerful the feelings of the soldiers must be even though they have no basis in reality
>he decides to reinvent himself as an actor so he can act without having to understand the world
>kills Claudius

This isn't some weird interpretation. This is literally the plot of the play.

>a materialist is concerned with material wealth

what a retard. Materialism is a purely sterile consideration. It doesn't suggest any form of action.

>>is something so bizarre it shatters all the tools he had used to understand the world
What if there was a book that did this, except the thing the character saw was themselves?

Jaden pls

This. A prepostmodern neckbeard.

When I made this picture I wasn't aware about how much I was going to have to post it.

You're clearly on the autism spectrum as well

No, I don't think thinking is an exception, it is just a more complex case than it seems. Meditation (or just not thinking) is one extreme, and deep disturbing irrational thoughts are the other. It's up to you how much of your life you want to spend in between, and how much nearing those extremes.

>materialism doesn't suggest you are materialistic
Holy... I want more.

>it is only the fool who becomes anything.
>Is this true? Is being self reflective and overtly conscious a curse?
>ennui
Non sequitur x2.

You are not intelligent. You are "self-reflective and overtly conscious". Has nothing to do with being intelligent or a fool. You have no control.

I don't know what that is referring to.

Isn't Notes about paralysis? One cannot have balance as this necessitates an inability to have excess, to have completely filled any area to its capacity. But without balance, one sinks.

>Understanding simple books makes someone autistic

Jaden Smith.

I was being serious though. There's even a chinese cartoon that did that.

What are you talking about?

No, you don't understand it. You think you do but this is a classic sign of autism.

A person's rational nature being undermined by encountering something supernatural, and being unable to understand the world because of it.

What does that have to do with me telling you he was referring to Jayden Smith when you didn't get the reference?

>an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously

this is what hipsters wish