GRINDHOUSE POP

Dostoevsky’s underground man characterizes himself as suffering from the disease of reflectivity, or what he calls ‘hyperconsciousness,’ by virtue of which he differs from the normal man. The underground man writes: ‘I swear to you, gentlemen, that to be hyperconscious is a disease, a real positive disease…I am firmly convinced not only that a great deal of consciousness, but that any consciousness, is a disease. I insist on it.’ Here one finds critical rationality in the form of self-consciousness, which the underground man says leads to a negative, pernicious hyperconsciousness that precludes action and inhibits social intercourse. Like a disease, consciousness begins innocently and unsuspectingly as simple reflection, but then it expands into a global re-evaluation of one’s life and social interactions. After the onset of this ‘illness,’ one cannot return to the naive pre-reflective life of custom and habit. Reflection then comes to have a paralyzing effect on the individual, who can no longer immediately engage in and enjoy communal life. It incapacitates the underground man in his feeble attempts at human interaction. It renders him a pathetic and jaded intellectual, alienated from all ordinary human contact. Thus, even the unreflective lives of the underground man’s former schoolmates begin to look attractive insofar as they, uninfected by the disease of hyper consciousness, are able to engage in the social world spontaneously and attain a kind of immediate fraternity, regardless of that world’s superficiality or want of a rational basis.

— Jon Bartley Stewart on Notes from Underground by Dostoevsky (via nietzscheandcompany)

(via compactyourconscience)