In debates about whether or not to help out troubled homeowners, Fyodor Dostoevsky would probably be in favor. I am currently reading The Brothers Karamazov and am struck by how applicable it seems to the debate over foreclosures.
The mortgage crisis, of course, pushed the world economy into recession, and foreclosures on homes are still high. A New Year’s Eve report on National Public Television provided an outline of the debate that has ensued, which seems to boil down to fairness vs. social good. While the report acknowledged that it seems unfair to help people who haven’t been sufficiently cautious, it also pointed out that everyone would get something under such a program. After all, even those with good credit suffer when houses in the neighborhood are foreclosed.
But feelings of unfairness can rankle. In May 2009 CNBC’s Rick Santelli used the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to attack a government plan to refinance mortgages. “Are you listening, President Obama?” he shouted in a rant that some believe helped launch the Tea Party movement. Indeed, in special behavioral studies social scientists have shown that people, given an opportunity to split some sum they are given (say, $100), would often rather get nothing at all than $10 to the other person’s $90.
The Brothers Karamazov has a passage that provides what I find to be a restorative perspective. The holy elder Father Zosima is telling the story of his life from his deathbed. A turning point, he says, occurred when, as a young officer, he chooses not to fight a duel that he has provoked. Suddenly seeing the humanity in the other man, he receives his adversary’s shot (it grazes him) but chooses not to return it, even though this puts his soldier’s honor at risk. A philanthropist with a mysterious past seeks Zosima out and tells him that respecting the other man will ultimately usher in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Although Zosima has begun preaching such behavior, he is skeptical that it will have such an impact. Here’s their interchange:
“And when,” I cried out to him bitterly, “when will that come to pass? and will it ever come to pass. Is not it simply a dream of ours?”
“What then, you don’t believe it,” he said. “You preach it and don’t believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt; it will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all. Everyone will think his share too small and they will always envy, complain, and attack one another. You ask when it will come to pass; it will come to pass, but first we have to go through the period of isolation.”
“What do you mean by isolation?” I asked him.
“Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For everyone strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete isolation. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘how strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another. It will be the spirit of the time, and people will marvel that they have sat so long in darkness without seeing the light. And then the sign of the Son of Man will be seen in the heavens. . . . But, until then, we must keep the banner flying. Sometimes even if he has to do it alone, and his conduct seems to be crazy, a man must set an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love even if he seems crazy, so that the great idea may not die.”
Although The Brothers Karamazov was written in 1880, I can think of few more eloquent challenges to the libertarian spirit that prevails in parts of America today. People are so worried that others like them are getting special favors that they ignore how we are all in this mess together.
Unfortunately, I don’t see much evidence that we are nearing the end of the period of isolation. We recognize Dostoevsky’s description of the problem but probably share the young Zosima’s skepticism.
Dostoevsky at least tells us what we can do in the meantime, however: keep the banner flying by respecting the humanity of our fellow men and women, even though it may seem crazy. Instead of seeing people who are receiving foreclosure assistance as taking money from us, we can see them as kindred souls in a tough spot. In doing so, we may draw souls out of solitude and spur some act of brotherly love.
Isn’t such a goal far superior to our worries about unfairness, which just seem to catch us in our smallness? Dostoevsky’s big book provides us with a big vision.
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