Today everyone asserts his own personality
and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts
lead not to a full life but to suicide, because, instead of realizing
his personality, man only slips into total isolation. For in
our age man has been broken up into self-contained individuals
each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay
away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of
mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and people from him.
And, while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he
thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because
he is mad and cannot see that the more goods that he accumulates, the
deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason for this is that
he has become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off
from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul
not to rely on human help, not to believe in men and mankind, and only
to worry that the wealth and priveleges that he has accumulated may
get lost. Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the truth
that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by isolated efforts
but only by mankind as a whole.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, (p.366, Bantam).
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