O Idiota Dostoievski -

He tells a woman she is beautiful when it is socially awkward to do so. He forgives an enemy before the enemy has apologized. He offers help to the man who just tried to ruin him.

And in Dostoevsky’s world (and perhaps in ours), sincerity is indistinguishable from insanity.

Dostoevsky calls it hell.

We are so afraid of looking foolish that we have become hollow. We have traded our souls for the armor of cynicism.

We are all trying very hard not to be idiots. o idiota dostoievski

The Underground Man vs. The Idiot: Why Dostoevsky’s Most Misunderstood Hero is the Only Sane One Left

Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin is the "idiot." He has epilepsy, he has spent the last four years in a Swiss sanitarium cut off from society, and he returns to the corrupt, hyper-competitive world of Russian aristocracy with zero practical knowledge of how to lie. He tells a woman she is beautiful when

Myshkin ultimately fails. His story ends in ruin. He returns to the sanitarium, his mind shattered by the cruelty he witnessed. It is a bleak ending. But it is also a challenge.

Because Myshkin’s compassion is a mirror. When you look at a truly good person, you don’t see their goodness; you see your own flaws. Myshkin doesn’t judge anyone—he pities them. And nothing enrages a guilty person more than unearned pity. And in Dostoevsky’s world (and perhaps in ours),