Episode #13: Is Redemption Even Possible? Escaping the Underground with Dostoevsky (Part Two)

In Part Two of our Dostoevsky series we move from diagnosing the underground to exploring the way out. Dostoevsky shows us that the true hero is not the exceptional man but the good man, and goodness is only remarkable in its ability to love while knowing the depths of the underground. 

We explore how Father Zosima counsels the brokenhearted with hope that refuses to collapse into platitudes, and how his radical teaching—“I am responsible not only for myself, but for everyone else, and I, more than anyone else”—reshapes the way we think about responsibility in an age of chaos. Alongside Zosima we follow Alyosha, who brings mercy into the mess by walking with children, grieving mothers, and fractured families, sowing seeds of restoration instead of judgment. 

Along the way we contrast Dostoevsky’s vision with the flat caricatures of modern culture, from television antiheroes to the Joker, and ask why sin for Dostoevsky is not just disobedience but a conscious revolt against meaning itself. 

This episode traces how grief, responsibility, and mercy form Dostoevsky’s vision of redemption—and why that vision is more urgent than ever for our own underground age.

Dostoevsky's concept of "the underground" offers profound insights into human nature, revealing how people deliberately choose destructive behaviors even when they know it will hurt themselves and others.

• Dostoevsky portrays the dual nature of humanity - we are neither completely fallen nor saved, but move in and out of "the underground" throughout our lives
• The underground represents not just sin but a "rebellion against meaning itself," explaining phenomena like school shootings and destructive chaos
• Modern solutions like education, technology, economic reform, and political revolution fail to address the underground because they only target external conditions
• Father Zosima in "The Brothers Karamazov" demonstrates spiritual direction that acknowledges complexity rather than offering formulaic answers
• Dostoevsky's path out of the underground isn't about bypassing darkness but confronting it first, understanding its hold on us, and finding authentic pathways toward redemption
• The radical ethic "I am responsible not only for myself, but for everyone else" shifts focus from blaming external factors to examining our own contributions to societal problems

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Dostoevsky saw something in human nature that most modern thinkers miss – what he called "the underground." Far more than just sin or moral failure, the undergroun

Chapters

• 0:00 The Underground and Human Nature
• 9:24 Succession vs. Dostoevsky's Characters
• 17:53 Baptism of Fire: Berdyaev on Dostoevsky
• 29:37 Confronting the Dark Side First
• 38:39 Alyosha as the Exemplary Hero
• 47:13 Father Zosima's Spiritual Direction
• 54:24 Escaping the Underground

Transcript

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 0:01

they give me these formulaic answers for everything in the modern world that all derive from Kantian imperative. And the Kantian imperative doesn't take into account the dual nature of man. He's not fallen, he's not saved. There's a dual nature. He moves in and out of the underground and he's tempted by the underground. And I named it and I said this is not a perpetual state of man, this is an aspect of human nature that the modern world is bringing up for examination. And where all these school shooters come from, that's the underground. It's like the world telling you, fix the underground, get people out of the underground, and we don't listen to it.

Travis Mullen: 0:57

Welcome to the Subversive Orthodoxy Podcast. I'm your host, travis Mullen, and I'm excited to have you with us. This is a podcast about philosophy and meaning. It is about how we as humans withstand the challenges of our cultures. It is about the general Judeo-Christian revelation of God in the world and how the bloodiest century ever recorded couldn't kill that revelation. It's also about how that revelation, tossed aside as archaic, outdated and obsolete, may be the very life-giving power we need to resist this distracted techno state we're living in full of anxiety, depression and teenage suicide.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 1:38

It's great entertainment, thrilling entertainment.

Travis Mullen: 1:54

It's the Inside Story pack with I'm not that far in, but I've got a. I've got a pretty good dose of each character and I found the father to be a lot like.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 2:09

Or there's a show called succession yes, of course, that great, great movie.

Travis Mullen: 2:13

That's very ghost of skin would you think, yeah, but what's what's interesting? It's so underground because I mean almost makes I'm later. I'm going to ask you where's the redemptive? You know, stuff come through about the underground or in spite of the underground, but but like that movie, my, I've told a few friends this, that movie or that show, and another show called All the Light you Cannot See.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 2:37

Uh huh.

Travis Mullen: 2:38

Have you seen that one?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 2:39

No, I haven't seen that one.

Travis Mullen: 2:40

It's about a blind French girl using Braille to read classic novels through code for the US to bomb parts of Paris against the Nazis.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 2:51

And it's super powerful. That's very Dostoevsky and he could get behind that kind of novel.

Travis Mullen: 3:00

Well, what was unique about these two shows juxtaposed to each other? Because I watched them back to back you know, somewhat back to back. My thought from Succession was you know, we couldn't stop watching it for one thing, but secondly, why can't we stop watching it? Every one of these characters is morally bankrupt. There's no hero.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 3:21

Right.

Travis Mullen: 3:22

It is zero. Like you start to sympathize with a couple of them and then they turn and then, but nobody is good, like there is no good person in it. They are all out for themselves. They're literally morally bankrupt. It is. It is kind of like can you write a show Like, can you write a story like this? I mean, is that even mean, is that even, is that even believable? And then then you go to all the light. You cannot see it's exact opposite. Yes, all these good, beautiful people. You know nazis being the caricature of evil in the situation. Yeah, and then.

Travis Mullen: 4:00

But even one of the nazis is good yes and he's he and he's functioning in a deceitful way against his own army in a good way with the people he's not wanting to kill. So it's a really I don't know.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 4:16

I don't know what I'm saying, but I just noticed skides and brothers care miles off, which is his masterpiece, which comes as close as he ever came to defining the underground and then defining the way out of the underground in a believable way, at least for some of the characters some of the time, and with that it becomes a transcendent work of art. And so if you want to do that, you could combine those two movies would be a dostoevsky and create. You know, you have the dark characters who are running the world and then you have the, the characters of light who are trying to redeem it right out of the mouths of the underground, and that becomes the story of the Brothers Karamazov. In being fair to all the different points of view and still having Alyosha come out as an exemplary Christian figure, some critics argue well, no, the Alyosha doesn't come out as an exemplary Christian figure. The hero of the novel is the atheist and the story is really about the impossibility of a honest intellectual to believe in God. I think that's a gross misreading. It certainly violates Dostoevsky's own goals for the work, but you know if you're an atheist critic and you're reading Dostoevsky's own goals for the work. But you know if you're an atheist critic and you're reading Dostoevsky and Dostoevsky's being true, being fair to all sides of the argument, you get to pick who you follow, right, it's a polyphonic novel, so you identify with the guy who's most like, you Pick your hero and pick your hero, kind of thing.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 6:27

Whereas if you know dostoevsky's life, you know the other books, you know the things he struggled with and the story he's been trying to tell his whole life. And then you know about aliosha, and if we have a show where we talk about the brothers Karamazov, there's so many allusions to Alyosha that relate to Dostoevsky's own search for meaning in his own life that you can't miss that. This is the story he wants to tell of how somebody could navigate the underground without falling victim to its tricks and its evils. Yeah, now I wanted to read you a couple of quotes here from Berdanev, because we did Berdanev on one of our episodes and not that you have that, you have had to have watched that.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 7:28

I heard that episode. But once you sort of hear what Berdenev says about Dostoevsky, you might want to go back after you read Dostoevsky or we talk about Dostoevsky to see where Berdenev was coming from but he wrote a very interesting book on Dostoevsky, uh, to see where burdenia was coming from. But he wrote a very interesting book on dostavsky, and oh, he wrote a whole book on him yeah and uh uh, and he was.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 7:53

He was betrayed by the Russian Revolution. Burdenia was a supporter of the Russian Revolution and then when the Bolsheviks took over and Stalin took over, they arrested him for treason and he was exiled to the philosopher's ship in the middle of the ocean and later exiled to Paris and lived in Paris and wrote about Christian existentialism until the Nazis took over Paris. And then he was driven out of Paris and found his way back to the Ukraine. And there's a couple of quotes here where he's talking about Dostoevsky and he says that he's talking about Russia and how Russia could have had this revolution against the Tsar that turned into an authoritarian state that created a prison camp system. History. Russia has made absolutely no positive contribution to world history. Her only purpose is to serve as a negative example, except for the possible contribution of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy.

Travis Mullen: 9:31

Berdiv said that.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 9:33

Yes, and this is what he says about Dostoevsky In the final paragraph of the book on Dostoevsky. He says so great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the russian people in the world, and he will bear witness for his countrymen at the last judgment of nations for all their crimes. Whoa, now that was. You know you could see that he was probably, uh, you know, very emotional at that point, because he's probably riding in the 20s, you know, at the height that, in 30s, at the height that said well, no, maybe even later, maybe in the 40s um, he's extremely angry at russia extremely angry.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 10:42

Um and uh, you know, and dosevsky and tolstoy were not read by the communists. I mean they were. They were tolerated as kind of like precursors to the great communist novels, which were all propaganda tracks, until you got to uh, solzhenitsyn and the, or the viscid writers like Pasternak. But this is another quote from, from that sort of explains what we've been talking about. He says Dostoevsky's novels are not properly speaking novels at all. They are parts of a tragedy, the inner tragedy of human destiny, the unique human spirit revealing itself in its various aspects and at different steps in its journey, and the reader is carried along into the hurricane. Dostoevsky was, more than anything else, an anthropologist, an experimentalist in human nature, who formulated a new science of man and applied it to a method of investigation hitherto unknown. His artistic science, the modern novel, his scientific art, studied that nature in its endless convolutions and limitless extent, uncovering its lowest and its most hidden layers. He subjected man to a spiritual experiment, putting him into unusual situations and then taking away all the external stops, one after another, till his whole social framework had gone. Dostoevsky pursued his study according to the methods of Dionysian art. And when he has made his way into the deep places of human nature. He took his whirlwind with him.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 12:51

His work is an anthropology in motion, in which things are seen as such an atmosphere of flame and ecstasy that they have meaning only for those who are themselves involved in the spiritual tempest. A careful reading of Dostoevsky is an event in one's life from which the soul never fully recovers. It receives its baptism of fire. Baptism of fire. The person who has lived for a time in Dostoevsky's world has seen it, as it were, has seen, as it were, the unpublic forms of being, for he is above all a great revolutionary of the spirit, opposing himself to every kind of cliche, lie, stagnation, fraud and hardening of the human soul. So that's, you know kind of abstract language, to put it, and I think we're precisely persuading, uh, we're praising dostoevsky for his ability to take it, that out of abstract language and put it into the concrete I have a couple quotes of other people talking about him yeah so kierkegaard?

Travis Mullen: 14:21

he never wrote extensively about him, it says, but his themes resonate closely especially. I noticed, obviously paradox with him and a lot of these guys, birdie, birdie, ev and uh, chesterton too, with paradox, but kierkegaard loved his exploration of despair and inwardness and then, yeah, that was it. I don't actually have a quote from him, but then Nietzsche said the quote that you said. Dostoevsky is the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn. He respected his deep analysis of human psychology, especially the darker sides of desire and morality.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 14:59

Yeah.

Travis Mullen: 15:00

Though Nietzsche rejected, obviously, Christianity, he saw Dostoevsky as a keen observer of the will and suffering. And then Chesterton had a unique take Dostoevsky is a man who knew everything except how to be a good man. And it says Chesterton appreciated Dostoevsky's spiritual intensity and insight into evil and suffering, but noted his tragic wrestling with faith and redemption. Chesterton viewed Dostoevsky as a profound but tortured Christian thinker who dramatized the battle between good and evil within the soul. Tortured is right.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 15:36

Yeah, and I don't know. You know Chesterton puts his finger on this, but Dostoevsky thought that there was a reason why the dark side came up first, as a response to runaway rationality of the enlightenment and scientism. He said it, you know, I I don't think there's a specific place that he puts it, but it's sort of it's sort of like that that there was a kind of rebellion that came up. That was the dark side first. It was sort of like you know, you can have your crystal cathedrals and your engineering masterpieces and they will serve as targeting markers for Nazi planes in another 20 years, markers for Nazi planes in another 20 years. You could split the atom and in another 40 years they'll be using that atom to destroy 120,000 people in cities in Japan. So it was sort of like Dostoevsky thought that this dark side has to be dealt with first, that you can't just you know, spiritually bypass and jump into goodness. And how does he know this? Well, I think probably it has to do with his experience right of being betrayed and being sent to a camp and of having to survive and having to admire the dark side of man as much as the positive side. But then, seeing that it was his task to try to create the image of the transcendent, and it is a kind of an anthropology. It isn't a theology create the image of the transcendent, and it is a kind of an anthropology. It isn't a theology, it is a kind of spiritual anthropology of how do you bring the good into the world of the bad. And that becomes the story in the Brothers Karamazov and what happens to Alyosha and what he learns from Father Zosima. And what happens to Father Zosima in terms of his learning, you know, beginning his life as an underground figure and then finding God and joining the monastery, and how far he got on his journey, becomes positive. You know it's, it's. And so when in his last years it looked like he wasn't, it looked like he wasn't.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 18:37

Bratislava was supposed to be part one of a two volume book and part one was was supposed to be the origins of Aliosha and part two was going to be his current reality, and so it was going to take place in the present Russia, not like a retrospective, and he never got around to writing it, but he was able to give some speeches and talk about where he was taking it and it was all sort of in the hopes of making aliosha a exemplary, heroic figure in a new way, that the hero is not going to be the exceptional man, the hero is going to be the good man.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 19:23

And the good man is not special, is not special. The good man is only special in the sense that he knows enough of the underground to love the people that are victimized by it and to love them back into health. Yeah, so he becomes a kind of healing force, even though the stories he tells are filled with trauma and disingenuousness and greed and all of the all of those things and unbridled passions and all of these things that become the mark of a great dostoevsky story. But they, but he also has all the people in between, and that's one of the things you don't get it like in succession, right, you don't. You don't get a spectrum a spectrum and you don't.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 20:21

I mean, there was one guy, the, the, the guy who was married to the daughter, who had some moments of normality, I guess you'd say a less of a person who was living out his traumatic self-doubts and hatred, but not enough to really fight back or give you know, show how you might respond to this in a way that could help heal rather than just survive. But that might be. You know, if they do a season two, that would might be a great. It probably wouldn't be as popular because we find the underground more like a taxi driver. You know that whole movie is just a journey into the underground. Yeah, and the same with a lot of scorsese's movies. And now that he's, you know the one, the one, uh, filmmaker who, who tried to reconcile his christianity with his modernism was fellini. And uh, if you, if you look at eight and5 through a Christian lens, you see a Dostoevskian attempt at bringing the underground, coming out of the underground into the light. In what are you talking about? There's a Fellini's movie, eight and a Half.

Travis Mullen: 22:18

Oh, I don't know that.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 22:20

It's about an advertising executive who has to deal with manipulating people to buy these consumer goods in post-war Italy and he's having a spiritual crisis and he's trying to reconcile his Catholicism with his job. And he's making a movie in which he reconciles faith with commerce and succeeds from his own point of view, and it's one of Fellini's best movies. It's called eight and a half because it's, uh, the eight and a half year of his work as a director and it symbolizes for him his halfway mark and his turn to more uh, uh, explicitly positive uh stories and things. But he doesn't keep up with that that. So eight and a half, it was really kind of the apex, uh, for Fellini, for my money, but uh, that's just my opinion yeah, um, I want to transition to a few pieces here that I've got and I'm going to obviously ask you for your commentary.

Travis Mullen: 23:51

Okay, one is well, actually I'll just put this one to you as a question. Yeah, does underground like according to Dostoevsky, does his underground concept relate to you know how? Is it saying something different than the Bible? Or is it just proving the Bible in the sense of our hearts are deceitful we are. There is no one who does good. So the Bible has a pessimistic view of human fallen, human fallen humanity, of human fallen, human fallen humanity. And for the, for the audience that is, the main emphasis of most evangelical christians, and maybe catholics too, is the fallen nature of man, which oftentimes eclipses the original goodness of like. Man was created very good, so there's an original goodness that gets completely thrown out the window. This is in a theological sense, but it totally relates to what dos jfc is doing here. So there's original goodness. And then there's the heavy emphasis on the fallen nature, which verses in the bible that you know, mike, drop, verses like all have sinned, not no one who does. No one does good, not even one. Jesus saying why do you call me good? There is no one good but God. So it's very the Bible is pretty clear that there's a fallen nature to humanity.

Travis Mullen: 25:22

My wife and I were listening to a parenting book the other day and this lady said the whole premise of her book is that everyone is good and we are all good. Our children are good inside. The book's called Good Inside, yeah, and I said we can probably learn something from this book, but I definitely do disagree with the premise. And she said the whole book depends on that premise. But yeah, it's the exact opposite of the Bible and Dostoevsky. Obviously. Yeah, it's the exact opposite of the Bible and Dostoevsky, obviously. But my question to you, professor, is you know we have drug cartels, political corruption, sex trafficking, child abuse, murder, even child pornography about as evil as you can possibly get. What is Dostoevsky saying you know different, or is he proving it out in more complexity? Or how would you? How would you frame that?

Travis Mullen: 26:13

Well with the underground.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 26:15

Yeah, that's a great question and we don't have volume two of the Brothers Karamazov where Aliosha will be able to put his faith into practice, his faith into practice. But one of the things, one of the clues we have in part one is that at a certain point he gives up on his brothers as being beyond him in terms of him being able to get them out of the underground. Is because zossima as a, as a spiritual director and in one way of reading the brothers karamazov, it's that it's a manual and spiritual direction, and there's plenty of scenes where where zossima is counseling families and counseling people with tragic events in their lives and traumatized, and his response to them in every case is whatever you do and you're going to have to make your own decision but whatever you do, do don't go underground zossima says that explicitly in different ways to different okay but.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 27:38

But basically it translates to don't go underground, and what going underground means is don't nurse a resentment.

Travis Mullen: 27:51

Wait, are you saying he actually uses that terminology in the book?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 27:54

Yeah.

Travis Mullen: 27:55

Okay, so notes from the underground.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 27:58

He doesn't.

Travis Mullen: 27:59

Ideas like the idea of underground gets imported into Brothers K.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:03

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Travis Mullen: 28:04

I didn't know that I'm not there yet, I guess.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:11

For example, there's a woman who comes to Father Zosima very early in the book like oh, I might have read this one where she's lost her third child. Who's who's done?

Travis Mullen: 28:20

her husband didn't care and stuff like that. He's like oh, get over it, he's in heaven yeah, and woman. Get over it.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:26

He's in heaven and she can't get over it. He's in heaven and she can't get over it.

Travis Mullen: 28:31

Yeah. She goes to her pastor and says that was the last part I listened to.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:36

Yeah, I can't get over the death of the child.

Travis Mullen: 28:42

And she said she could get over the first one she lost and the second one.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:46

Yeah.

Travis Mullen: 28:46

But this third one she can't.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 28:48

Right, second one, yeah, but this third one she can't right. And so father's Zosima says well, the, the guy who told you you know that that you, that he's in heaven is, is right, you know. And then he was. He was trying to get you to see that there, that that there's an order, there's goodness in the universe, you know, but you're not feeling it. And because he doesn't know something I know because Zosima is the only monk who allows women to come to the gates of the monastery to receive spiritual direction. None of the other monks will talk to women to receive spiritual direction. None of the other monks will talk to women. So he says well, because they don't talk to women, they don't understand this that every child that dies has a different degree of mourning. They want from their parents, and some want you to mourn for a week, some a day, some years. And it sounds to me like this little child for a week, some a day, some years. And it sounds to me like this little child wants you to mourn a long time. And you can do that. And that doesn't mean you've lost your faith. In fact, you have faith. That's what allows you to carry the grief, and so you carry that grief as long as you have to, and one day he'll give you a sign. Now what did he do? He gave that woman hope and he gave her a way of carrying her grief and he gave her expectations someday I'll receive a divine sign from my baby. So he was basically giving her a way to not go underground, right, not to lose her faith, not blame herself, not blame God for the death of her child. And so she says oh, thank you so much, thank you so much, you know, I can live with that, right? Yeah, he didn't say you know, I'll raise your child from the dead or something you know, or you'll have a baby that looks just the psychological realities that she was struggling with.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 31:38

And then immediately because Dostoevsky loves to work in parallels then immediately the rich woman with little faith comes in and talks to Father Zosima, and she has a different problem. Her problem isn't that she's had three babies that have died. Her problem is that she can't conceive of eternal life and knows that it's one of the doctrines of the faith. And so this has really bothered her, because she would like to believe in eternal life, because without eternal life, all her money and all her parties seem meaningless, all her money and all her parties seem meaningless. But if she could know that the party goes on forever and the road never dies, it never ends was that Willie Nelson song? Then she could enjoy her wealth and her money and her parties.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 32:52

And so, zazima, you know well what does he say to that does he say oh yeah, you're going to live forever and you'll have parties forever. Go home and enjoy your next party. You know which is kind of what she wants to hear party. You know which is kind of what she wants to hear. But he, he wants to sort of sober her up but at the same time not drive her underground. So he says to her you know you're asking me to explain to you the doctrine of eternal life, and eternal life is not an idea.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 33:30

You believe that. It's not an idea that you accept and therefore believe. It's more of a concept that's given to you as a grace by God and you can't just believe it by wanting to believe it. You come to it as a grace. Now, how do you come to it as a grace? Well, you live an eternal life in this life and I happen to know a woman who's just lost her baby, and she could really do with a nice dinner. And she and her poor family, you know, they haven't had much food ever since the baby died and you could invite her to one of those parties.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 34:26

And the wealthy woman says I knew you would have nothing to tell me. You frogged. I came here wanting to know, can you give me this bullshit? And then gets in her little cart and drives away. Wow, now, who's the underground? Who's above ground? What's hope? What's despair? You carry your despair into the confessional with you. You carry it or you carry your faith in with your despair with the other woman. I mean, this is the human condition and Dostoevsky's giving you these incredible, you know, 3d goggles by which to view it. You know, the wealthy woman isn't bad because she's rich. The wealthy woman is underground because she's rich and it really isn't her fault. But she, even when we give her a hand up, she doesn't take it. And how do you deal with that? Even the most saintly spiritual director couldn't pull her out.

Travis Mullen: 35:54

Yeah, that was what he was trying to do was like Jesus and the rich young ruler.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 36:00

Yes.

Travis Mullen: 36:02

He's putting salvation right in front of him and he can't see it and that lady couldn't see it. The salvation meaning like the grace and the mystery of like stepping out of the underground yes, and so is man a sinner or is man innately good?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 36:21

well, he's both. Uh, that's uh either. Or theology that makes you feel secure in an ambiguous spiritual reality. That should not make you feel unambiguous. You should be able to say, for example, the kids, for example, like you know, my daughter is a nursery school teacher and you know it is a rule, it is a an axiom, that there's nothing wrong with those babies. They are God's gift and you treat them with the love and respect that you know they possess in their eternal souls, right. But that doesn't mean, when they become teenagers, that they're not going to want to have lunch with their father and their mother, that they're going to want to hang with the good-looking kid with the fancy haircut, and it doesn't mean that they are innately evil now. It means that the underground is making its way into the junior high, is making its way into the junior high, and the spiritual directors have to give the kids tools so they do not go underground. And the way you do that is you don't punish them for wanting to go to the party, right? You sort of say I know why you want to go to the party. When I was your age, I wanted to go to the party, right? You sort of say I know why you want to go to the party. When I was your age, I wanted to go to the party too, but we have rules about going to these parties.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 38:20

There's a scene in the Brothers Karamazov where he's dealing with teenagers, with teenagers, and there's one teenager that tried to fed a dog a piece of meat with a needle in it to try to kill him, and all the other teenagers want to beat up this little boy that did this. And Alyosha is trying to bring reconciliation, but he's pretty taken aback by the, by the evil of this kid. But he doesn't want him to go underground and identify with that. So he goes. He asked the kid to take him to his home and he goes over to and finds out that the kid comes from this family with a poverty stricken family, with a father who's an alcoholic, who beats the kid, but not because he's he's like a twisted guy, but because he's just, you know, has no control. So he goes back to his girlfriend and asks you know, do you have any advice on what to do with this kid?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 39:39

And so now, see, now we're getting into what would be the plot of a of a secession episode that tried to say how do you heal the underground? I mean, how do you get these guys out of the underground Right? And it's not going to be a one step thing and it's not going to be easy, and we don't really know how to do it ourselves. We don't even know how to do it in our own desire. I know that when I'm working really hard and really good, I know I could go another hour, but damn it, I'm going to have a cup of coffee first, and I know it's a capitulation to my side that says treat yourself, you deserve it. You've been working hard, whereas if I just stayed on the job, I'd have it done in 20 minutes. And so now Aliosha is okay. Well, what do I? How do I deal with this?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 40:33

Right, so he runs into one of the other kids who's who's in the this gang that are torturing the boy, you know? And? And throwing things at him, you know, for, for having tried to kill the dog. And he talks to the boy who's the leader and he says you him, you know, for having tried to kill the dog. And he talks to the boy who's the leader and he says you know, do you know this boy that you guys are throwing things at? And he says, yeah, he goes to our school.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 41:00

He says, do you know where he lives? And he takes the boy over to the house and shows him how the boy lives in poverty and his dad's a drunk and his mother has like 15 kids that she's trying to raise and doesn't have any time for the boy. And he shows the kid this house and then the kid says, oh gee, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't realize this. I'll talk to the guys and we'll back off on him for a while. And so that's the beginning of how these little seeds of goodness, you know, begin to infiltrate an underground situation. But if you had just taken that boy out of his family and given him to a foster home, that that wouldn't have been as organic a reconciliation to his community as aliosha discovers just by getting his hands dirty, right, yeah, and suffering the whole thing out. That's a good word. And so that's like a scene in a Dostoevsky novel.

Travis Mullen: 42:20

Yeah.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 42:20

And you go. My God, I'm learning about what life is. Why didn't anybody tell me this? They give me these formulaic answers for everything in the modern world that all derive from Kantian imperative, and the Kantian imperative doesn't take into account the dual nature of man. He's not fallen, he's not saved. There's a dual nature. He moves in and out of the underground and he's tempted by the underground. And I named it and I said this is not a perpetual state of man, this is an aspect of human nature that the modern world is bringing up for examination. And where, where all these school shooters come from, that's the underground. It's like the world telling you, fix the underground, get people out of the underground, and we don't listen to it.

Travis Mullen: 43:18

Yeah.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 43:21

And so that's his message. And so you know you, you read Dostoevsky and you know you'll be surprised when you know, just talking about it, today, you start reading that just the background history of the families of the Karol Mazov's family. You know where he goes through, the like all novels of the 18th century. Did they give you the family history? Yeah Well, in a Dostoevsky family history, it's the history of trauma.

Travis Mullen: 43:54

It's a trauma tree which is, which is reality too, which is reality.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 43:59

And then this is where this came from. And you and you're thinking this dostoevsky, what a dark bastard. You know why does he have to tell us every dark thing that happened to every family member in the Karamazov's family tree? Because they were a little too hands-offish when it came to dealing with the dark side, as well as the light side of human existence.

Travis Mullen: 44:40

Kind of like a problem with Disney and a problem with Hallmark. Yes, and probably 80% of pop culture.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 44:53

Yes, and then when you want to have the evil, it's. It's a caricature, it's just one guy who's just absolutely evil. Yeah, that this new. I think it's pixar movie or I don't know what it is. The bad guys too. I hear it's an animated movie about these cartoon. The cartoon bad guys get restorative justice.

Travis Mullen: 45:17

That's a funny concept.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 45:19

Yeah, and they're brought back into harmony with their world. I can just imagine it being a very funny movie, because, you know, restorative justice is something that Dostoevsky is into, but not necessarily in a programmatic way, and I'm sure that this movie probably plays with that. You know what restorative justice would really look like for a cartoon bear or something.

Travis Mullen: 45:50

You know what would that and the results would be pretty funny but I think the, I think the, the underground kind of exposes, like you know, as we still see, it's completely active, the underground. It's maybe more, maybe always been just as active or maybe more active than ever, um, as like a chaos agent in our, in our world, because now you hear about so many more things happening because of social media and phones recording things and and such. It may have always been the same level all along, but we're more aware of it now because of all of that. And I think in the traditional christian view, you know, the way out of the underground.

Travis Mullen: 46:36

To me as an evangelical pastor, all these years was like people just need to hear about jesus, they just need to repent and receive grace and they'll be transformed. It was almost, almost that formulaic, yeah, but to modern people that are not necessarily evangelical or Christian in any sense, they've tried with their ways, which has been like education being the number one probably through all the years, where people think education is the answer. Yeah, technology, in some ways, now we see it more as a problem. Um, economic reform, you know people think, oh, if people weren't poor, um, if people weren't in bad situations, they wouldn't. You know, all this bad stuff wouldn't happen. And then, obviously, political revolution. People think, oh, it's because of these policies, so it's all. It's all blaming something on external.

Travis Mullen: 47:28

Yes, and it seems like Dostoevsky's saying you know there's no formula for this. That's all sounds really naive. Even if you fix external conditions, what we have here is a problem that's very irrational and proud and self-destructive in the human heart.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 47:47

Right, and so you. The first step and and that's why you know conversion, or you know, giving yourself over to Jesus, is a great first step because it it reverses the field on the underground right. It's like I'm not going to follow my will over my reason, or even my will over my faith.

Travis Mullen: 48:10

I'm going to give myself over to a larger power, not my own agenda, my own chaos rule, chaos rule, which it does affirm the idea of AA, where people who have lived chaos A word that I hear in this underground concept lived chaos.

Travis Mullen: 48:29

Well, a word that I hear in in in this underground concept is chaos. So the chaos of your own will, impulsive, will like doing what you want in the moment, and it may not even make sense to even yourself or your conscience. And we've all done that, you know, you've had, we've all had a time where we did something. We're like I don't know why I did that, I don't know why I?

Travis Mullen: 48:50

did that or I don't know why I said that, and you know, teenagers and children do that especially, but we do even as adults, and I know there's times where I did something that really hurt someone and I'm like I literally don't know why I did that. I'm really sorry and where I was going with that is that one of the movies it referenced. Like, when I looked up what movies represent Dostoevsky's concept of underground, the Joker comes to the top too, along with Taxi Driver oh yeah. So Joker, the movie from 2019 with Joaquin Phoenix, oh yeah. And it's a guy who's like very emotionally disturbed and socially awkward and starts to find, you know, find vision and being chaotic.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 49:42

Yeah.

Travis Mullen: 49:42

Um and same as the other Joker movie, and the dark night rises, rises um that joker he.

Travis Mullen: 49:50

He says his motive is is chaos yeah which you know, I was telling my son the other day. We were talking about villains in in all the movies, all the all the comic movies, and we both agreed that joker was the best and I said you know what I say? You know what I think about joker is that, um, most villains have, like something they're trying to get, like gold or money or um control or power. And to the joker in that movie, it was none of that, it was just chaos, and I think that's very real. To like a shooter, a mass shooter or a it's like that impulsive curiousness where it's like what would happen if I do this? Well, I'm going to do that. And they start building this, this plan, in the underground of their, of their heart and mind, and literally on the dark web of the internet.

Travis Mullen: 50:39

And what it, what it tells me about? Like the human heart has this propensity to total chaos. That isn't right and isn't rational. And that's like what? What dosius? He's actually like affirming that. He's almost like proving the bible more true than we ever thought, because we thought sin meant like disobedience to god's law, but he's saying he's saying it's like rebellion against meaning itself yeah very well put, which that's pretty gnarly.

Travis Mullen: 51:13

Um, and then another contrast evil. In the bible evil is like deviation from good, but it sounds like in dosieski saying, evil can be conscious revolt against good for the sake of asserting self-will. So it can be like actively revolting against good, not just deviating right and that's, and that's what one of aliotia's brothers does, and then one of the other contrasts was like in the biblical view, all have sinned and need grace.

Travis Mullen: 51:46

But in dociowski's underground, humans often sin deliberately, irrationally and pridefully, even knowing it will hurt them or others. Right, so it's almost like a. It's almost like sin in color and the and the bible's giving you the basic framework and then dosiowski's filling it in with color.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 52:07

Yes, yes, boy, that's well put. One of the things that Father Zosima, who's you know, dealing with the underground and the ubiquitous nature of the underground, I mean it's everywhere to some degree, everywhere to some degree. I mean it's, you know, not every family has a criminal or you know a willful person rebelling, but there's always conflict and there's always willfulness, and imperfection and dysfunction and dysfunction and and this is part of the human condition it shouldn't be anything that scares you.

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 52:51

And Alyosha and Zosima is the one who said you know, I mean, he began his life as an underground figure and then, when he saw through it, saw himself through the eyes of the people that were suffering under his willfulness. That's when he had his conversion. And so one of the things that he says and this is a way of thinking of it, if you're a philosopher out there that the Kantian imperative, you know that I should act in a way that if it were a universal law, you know it would be good to all people. Right to treat others as you would like others to treat you. I mean evil in 3D or evil in technicolor I guess that's what Nazism is or the cult movements of history that have destroyed people. Zosima says his rule of thumb is I am responsible for not only myself, but for everyone else, and I more than anyone else.

Travis Mullen: 54:20

Can you say it again?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 54:22

I am responsible not only for my behavior but for the behavior of everyone else. And what does he mean? Well, what did I contribute to the fact that we live in a technological society where children are are made vulnerable to visions of darkness that they are not psychologically prepared to defend themselves against? Or what didn't I do that made that possible? Right, yeah, so for Zosima, the kind of like Christ figure in the novel, christ figure in the in the novel, it's sort of like that's a question to ask yourself when, when you're confronted with a problem like you know, okay, my, my kid wants to go to the party and I don't trust the kids that are at that party. Oh well, what did I do to contribute to this? Right, I did. I. Did I like talk about how I love my parties I went to when I was a kid, you know, am I, am I in some way contributing to this?

Prof. Larry Inchuasti: 55:45

And, and that becomes part of the spiritual discernment there's that scene in Gandhi where the woman comes to Gandhi and says you know, my son won't stop eating sugar. And could you tell him not to eat sugar because it's destroying his teeth? And Gandhi says, yeah, but you have to give me two weeks. And so two weeks go by and he tells the kid you shouldn't eat sugar. And the mom says well, why did you make me wait two weeks for you to tell him that? And he says, well, because I was eating sugar and I had to fast for two weeks in order to cleanse myself. To say that with some authority, that's awesome and that's what Jesus in the Bible, you know right, he spoke with authority. He didn't speak like the scribes and the Philistines, or Pharisees. Pharisees who memorized the aphorisms, but then you know the Philistines who, the Pharisees, the Pharisees who memorized the aphorisms, but then you know where are they carrying the disease with them? Or the? You know the human stain, and we're all carrying the human stain.

Travis Mullen: 57:09

Thank you for listening to Subversive Orthodoxy. If today's conversation stirred something in you, whether you're a skeptic, a believer or somewhere in the middle of deconstruction, know this this isn't about reclaiming an old religious philosophy. It's about realizing that there are ancient constants that challenge the very things in culture that are dehumanizing us. As we speak, we're going to continue exploring what it means to live a life of deep meaning in this world that often feels fragmented and nihilistic, and this prophetic imagination doesn't seem to come to us from the expected places. It's not confined to pulpits or seminaries. The prophetic voice is breaking through in novels, poetry, charity work, art and the unexpected corners of culture. We hope you'll continue to join us in this ongoing conversation. Until then, thank you for listening.

Travis Mullen: 57:58

If you found this meaningful. Please leave a five-star review, subscribe and share with anyone who might resonate with this conversation. Adios. This has been the Subversive Orthodoxy Podcast with Travis Mullen and Professor Nchasti. Adios.