Human Condition

This is an excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov. Which as of 300 pages in has overtaken the top spot in my all time favorite books. It comes from the chapter Notes on the Life of a Deceased Priest.

...the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age--it has not
fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives
to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest
possible fulness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in
attaining fulness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation
he ends by arriving at complete solitude. 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 priveleges that he has won for himself...

also

"Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to every one,
brotherhood will not come to pass."

and

"...in truth we are each responsible to all for all, it's only that men don't
know this. If they knew it the world would be a paradise at once."

one more quote from my favorite movie that seems to fall in line with the thoughts above:

"every man lookin' for salvation by himself... each like a coal drawn from the
fire."

dt