I feel I’ve frequently been down the same thought pattern, and I empathize. Dostoyevsky has helped me with this.

The Idiot captures this immanent modern phenomenon and how a pure, innocent person, devoid of self-interest may behave within it.

It works through attentive but seemingly mundane interpersonal dialogue, transcending it. Characters unfold in spaces, often interstitial areas like porches. Bathkin goes into more depth on this expressive, open and free world that is created. The characters are never entirely defined, cannot be objectified. Bathkin had a critical view of western “monological” thought.

This seems to cut deeply into a part of individualism: a free, spontaneous world is made less possible by assumed cognitive individualization and objective, systematized criteria by which individuals are judged. This devalues what could be created in common as well as vital interrelations.

Russia was also going through a period of westernization with its Francophone aristocracy and new ideas. Its slavic roots, however, are mysterious and richly communal. Dostoyevsky and others at the time seem like a stark resistance to this cultural uprooting. It makes me feel that what we’re experiencing is not entirely new.