The Dis-Mantled
September 2, 2024 Leave a comment
A certain meticulous copyist, a bibulous tailor, a prominent personage, and a coat-stealing ghost walk into a short story by “Russia’s most baffling comic writer” Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). Satirical and sobering, The Overcoat depicts the smallness of human concerns and the smallness of human hearts in the life of a ‘nobody’ dealing with exposure, humiliation, and public injustices. The Overcoat covers the dehumanizing problems of the “little man.”
The “little man” is a theme employed in 19th century Russian literature: “Due to his low social and career position, the “little man” had a difficult fate, which consisted only of difficulties and obstacles. “Little Man,” modest and meek in nature, was forced to endure humiliation. No one ever noticed such people who were completely defenseless against circumstances, no one helped them, which is why the life of a “little man” ended very tragically.”
The main character in The Overcoat is an unremarkable figure – a low-ranking government clerk. He is portrayed as a raw stripped-down version of humanity. He is a ghost of a man in the sense that his place in society is little or completely invisible.
Clerk Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin lives a meager existence. He wears a patched-up overcoat that, with much wear, has also becomes meager. It doesn’t keep out the cold of the St. Petersburg winter.
Gogol’s clerk is also a “little man” in that his vital interests are extremely narrow, his world small. His self-contentment is derived from his copying work. There is something almost petty about his solitary life dedicated to repetitive work.
Unmarried and not gregarious, he doesn’t copy others who wanted more in life. Unlike many of his coworkers, he indulges in no diversion of any kind, not even the taste of his soup at night, to focus on copying. He goes to bed, after copying papers for pure enjoyment, “smiling at the thought of the next day and wondering what God would send him to copy.”
Of Akaky, Gogol writes:
“. . . in a certain department there was a certain official—not a very high one, it must be allowed—short of stature, somewhat pock-marked, red-haired, and short-sighted, with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion of the kind known as sanguine. . . he was what is called a perpetual titular councilor, over which, as is well known, some writers make merry, and crack their jokes, obeying the praiseworthy custom of attacking those who cannot bite back.”
We learn that Akaky was given his father’s name, making him a copy of his father, a government official. When baby Akaky was christened, it was said that “he wept and made a grimace, as though he foresaw that he was to be a titular councilor.”
(A titular councilor was ranked at 9 out of l4 grades in the hierarchy of government positions.)
Akaky is seen as unchanging fixture and not human:
“When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one could remember. However much the directors and chiefs of all kinds were changed, he was always to be seen in the same place, the same attitude, the same occupation; so that it was afterwards affirmed that he had been born in undress uniform with a bald head. No respect was shown him in the department. . . His superiors treated him in coolly despotic fashion.”
Akaky’s job was to copy official documents by hand and he is diligent in doing so. He worked, “as his companions, the wits, put it, like a horse in a mill.” Akaky doesn’t hate his uninteresting job:
“It is not enough to say that Akaky labored with zeal: no, he labored with love. In his copying, he found a varied and agreeable employment. Enjoyment was written on his face: some letters were even favorites with him; and when he encountered these, he smiled, winked, and worked with his lips, till it seemed as though each letter might be read in his face, as his pen traced it. If his pay had been in proportion to his zeal, he would, perhaps, to his great surprise, have been made even a councilor of state.”
When given an opportunity to advance and do more – change titles and edit pronouns – Akaky tries the new work, gets flustered and says “No, give me rather something to copy.” He does not want to deviate from his first love – the repetitive work of copying. (He seems to spend a lot of time in his head. He does have an imagination as we find out later.)
“Outside this copying, it appeared that nothing existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty- meal color. Never once in his life did he give heed to what was going on every day in the street. . . Akaky Akakievitch saw in all things the clean, even strokes of his written lines . . . “
And though Akaky kept to himself and minded his own business, he is nonetheless made sport of by those around him. He is a running joke in the office. His overcoat – “they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape.”
But Akaky silently endures ridicule from co-workers, asserting himself only when they go too far. (He reminds of the quirky oft-rejected collator, Milton Waddams, in the movie Office Space.)
“The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akaky Akakievitch answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter.”
Then one time, Akaky does protest the harassment: “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”
These words affect a new hire who had participated in the constant teasing:
“In these moving words, other words resounded —” I am thy brother.” And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honorable and noble.
Akaky is chaffed, not only by his fellow workers, but also by St. Petersburg’s Northern cold. His overcoat is threadbare and unable to fend off the icy wind. He goes to see his tailor, Petrovich, the imbiber, for another patch job. Living on a meager salary, Akaky goes to Petrovich with a budget amount in mind.
Seeing the state of the coat – “the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces” – the tailor balks at any more repair. Akaky is told that the coat is beyond salvation and he needs a new one. Hearing this, Akaky is beside himself. He doesn’t have the money on hand to pay for a new overcoat. After an unsuccessful back and forth with the tailor in hopes of another patch job, Akaky sets out on a singular life-mission to buy a new coat.
Pinching his salary of only four hundred rubles, he begins living an ascetic lifestyle for the space of one year. He curtails his living expenses and doesn’t eat at night. Less food, more imagination, and a labor of love for Akaky:
“He even got used to being hungry in the evening, but he made up for it by treating himself, so to say, in spirit, by bearing ever in mind the idea of his future cloak. From that time forth his existence seemed to become, in some way, fuller, as if he were married, or as if some other man lived in him, as if, in fact, he were not alone, and some pleasant friend had consented to travel along life’s path with him, the friend being no other than the cloak, with thick wadding and a strong lining incapable of wearing out. He became more lively, and even his character grew firmer, like that of a man who has made up his mind, and set himself a goal.”
The desired overcoat becomes a substitute for the bond of normal human love. Is it also a symbol of dignity that needs repair? A chance at survival?
Akaky is finally able to get the money together to buy the material needed for the coat. He is overjoyed with it. He wears the overcoat to work and coworkers notice it. Gaining new status among them, he is invited to a party that night to celebrate the new coat and a birthday.
Leaving the poor side of town, Akaky crosses St. Petersburg square to reach the party. He muses about the people living on the other side of town. For one night he becomes a socialite, joining in the food and fun. Around midnight, he picks up his coat from the floor, brushes it off, and heads home.
On his way he is assaulted by two thugs who steal the garment. The Square’s watchman is no help. His landlady tells him he must go straight to the district chief of police. She has some connection with him.
Akaky goes to the district chief of police and finds that he is never makes himself available. When Akaky finally asserts himself and gets in to see him, the chief of police, instead of listening to the stollen overcoat matter, begins to question Akaky about his late-night behavior – as if Akaky was to blame for the stolen coat. He leaves the office not knowing what will happen.
A co-worker, “moved by pity, resolved to help Akaky Akakievitch.” He tells Akaky that the best thing for him to do is to go see a certain prominent personage who would expedite the matter.
“The reader must know that the prominent personage had but recently become a prominent personage, having up to that time been only an insignificant person.”
To increase his image, the prominent personage copied the protocol of what he saw being done by those in positions above him. For “In Holy Russia all is thus contaminated with the love of imitation; every man imitates and copies his superior.”
And so it was that “The manners and customs of the prominent personage were grand and imposing, but rather exaggerated. The main foundation of his system was strictness. “Strictness, strictness, and always strictness!”
Akaky arrives at the office of the prominent personage and has to wait. The prominent personage is in no hurry. When Akaky finally appears before him in his worn undress uniform, he gets a curt greeting: “What do you want?” Fearful and confused, Akaky explains that his new overcoat was stolen and that he came to him as an intermediary with the police.
The prominent personage then upbraids Akaky for not strictly following protocol. Akaky did not go through the layers of bureaucracy leading up to the prominent personage.
“But, your excellency,” said Akaky Akakievitch, trying to collect his small handful of wits, and conscious at the same time that he was perspiring terribly, “I, your excellency, presumed to trouble you because secretaries—are an untrustworthy race.”
This response is taken as another breach of etiquette and the prominent personage goes ballistic:
“What, what, what!” . . . “Do you know to whom you speak? Do you realize who stands before you? Do you realize it? do you realize it? I ask you!” Then he stamped his foot and raised his voice to such a pitch that it would have frightened even a different man from Akaky Akakievitch.”
Akaky is stunned and becomes weak. He has to be held up and carried out by porters. The prominent personage is quite pleased with himself “that his word could even deprive a man of his senses.”
Coatless Akaky staggers home slack-jawed in St. Petersburg snow and cold, the wind blowing from everywhere. He catches a cold that becomes a severe fever and dies. Enter the ghost. And justice?
I’ll not say more so you can read what develops. My purpose here is to introduce the story.
I see the overcoat as symbolic of different viewpoints:
For Gogol, the old threadbare overcoat represents bar-bone humanity. How much can be removed from a person’s life before the person is gone? For Akaky, it meant just getting by with another patch job.
The idea of the future coat, as imagined by Akaky, represented no longer being cut off from life. The new threads are a life-line. When he finally gets the new overcoat, it represents a goal achieved, a baseline of survival in the cold, and acceptance in society where appearances matter.
For thugs, the new overcoat represented an object of illicit desire – “But, of course, the cloak is mine!” For the victim, Akaky, the dis-mantling meant a life changed forever.
For bureaucratic overlords, the stolen overcoat represented a nuisance. They could make better use of their time. They amuse their selves with their selves.
And for the ghost, the dis-mantling of the prominent personage represented justice for the dis-mantled “little man:
“Ah, here you are at last! I have you, that—by the collar! I need your cloak; you took no trouble about mine, but reprimanded me; so now give up your own.”
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Though you might not be a fan of Russian literature, Gogol’s last short story The Overcoat is considered one of the best in Russian literature and worth a read. And you are likely someone who can relate to those who are made fun off, insulted, considered unworthy, acknowledged only in negative terms, ignored by society, shown disrespect by bureaucrats, and robbed of dignity and life by those who boost themselves up by pushing others down
Both realistic and supernatural, The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol is an appeal for compassion for the barely visible “little man” and the dis-mantled.
The Overcoat, short story by Nikolay Gogol, published in Russian as “Shinel” in 1842. The Overcoat is perhaps the best-known and most influential short fiction in all of Russian literature. Gogol’s Dead Souls and “The Overcoat” are considered the foundation of 19th-century Russian realism.
The Overcoat | Russian Literature, Satire, Comedy | Britannica
From the Father of the Golden Age of Russian Literature, Nicolai Gogol’s The Overcoat is one of the greatest short stories of all time. This satire on Russia’s 19th century bureaucracy is amusing, pointed and has influenced many renowned Russian writers.
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol | Goodreads
Gogol was also capable of piercing insight into the human condition, satirizing the banality of everyday life while not losing sight of the pathos of those who struggle to rise above it.
“Absolute nonsense”–Gogol’s tales | The New Criterion
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Another unnoticed fixture?
A 60-year-old Arizona Wells Fargo employee scanned into her office on a Friday on what appeared to be an ordinary workday. Then, four days later, she was found dead in her cubicle.
~~~~~
Cindy Wity 
Fear and Loathing in Ward No 6
July 9, 2023 Leave a comment
“In the hospital yard there stands a small lodge surrounded by a perfect forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. Its roof is rusty, the chimney is tumbling down, the steps at the front-door are rotting away and overgrown with grass, and there are only traces left of the stucco. The front of the lodge faces the hospital; at the back it looks out into the open country, from which it is separated by the grey hospital fence with nails on it. These nails, with their points upwards, and the fence, and the lodge itself, have that peculiar, desolate, God-forsaken look which is only found in our hospital and prison buildings.”
Ward No. 6., a story by Anton Chekov, opens with this description of an outpost hospital 150 miles from a train station. This provincial hospital with a lunatic asylum annex, worlds apart from “sane” society, is the setting for the reader to examine the disturbing dehumanization taking place in Russia and, perhaps, everywhere else.
Chekhov wrote the story with reformist concerns after he visited a far east penal colony of the Russian Empire – Sakhalin Island.[1] Chekhov’s aim was to survey the prisoners and publicize their conditions. His compiled notes became the book Sakhalin Island.
Chekov, as guide, invites us onto the premises of the provincial hospital and into its mental ward. He would have us understand suffering in the presence of it and not in the abstract. So, he has us listen in on conversations between Dr. Andrei Yefimich Ragin, who is in charge of the hospital and asylum, and inmate Ivan Dmitrich Gromov.
With a phrase similar to Dante’s opening of the Divine Comedy – “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” – Chekhov forewarns us about our entry into Ward No. 6: “If you are not afraid of being stung by nettles, let us go along the narrow path.”
As we follow our tour guide, he shows us the hospital’s neglected and unsanitary conditions and then introduces us to the brutish Nikita, who I consider one of the “nettles”.
“The porter, Nikita, an old soldier wearing rusty good-conduct stripes, is always lying on the litter with a pipe between his teeth. He has a grim, surly, battered-looking face, overhanging eyebrows which give him the expression of a sheep-dog of the steppes, and a red nose; he is short and looks thin and scraggy, but he is of imposing deportment and his fists are vigorous. He belongs to the class of simple-hearted, practical, and dull-witted people, prompt in carrying out orders, who like discipline better than anything in the world, and so are convinced that it is their duty to beat people. He showers blows on the face, on the chest, on the back, on whatever comes first, and is convinced that there would be no order in the place if he did not.”
After walking past the cluttered pitiful state of the entry-way conditions and the fearful porter, we enter the annex.
Here, the “walls are painted dirty blue, the ceiling is as sooty as in a hut without out a chimney . . .The wooden floor is gray and full of splinters. There is a stench of sour cabbage, smoldering wicks, bugs, and ammonia, and for the first minute this stench gives you the impression of having walked into a menagerie.
“The beds in the room are bolted to the floor. Sitting and lying on them are men in blue hospital dressing gowns, wearing nightcaps in the old style. These are the lunatics.
There are five of them in all.”
Chekhov describes the inmates and then begins to focus on the two protagonists, inmate Ivan Dmitrich Gromov and doctor Andrei Yefimich Ragin. We learn about both from their dialog. As we listen in, we soon begin to wonder who the patient is and who is the doctor.
Early in life Ivan Dmitrich Gromov was severely flogged by his father. His mental state became more unstable with personal misfortunes. Later in life he sees convicts being led away by armed guards. This was not an uncommon sight for Gromov to witness. But this time he reacts with pity and unease and transference. He begins to conceptualize that like the convicts, it is also his lot in life to be clamped in chains and punished for some crime. This inordinate thinking, a persecution complex that becomes a paralyzing fear of some random moment someone will come down on him for something, lands Gromov in Ward No. 6. He tells Dr. Ragin that he has “persecution mania.”
Though he’s an inmate because he’s out of touch with reality, Gromov is very much in touch with the mental anguish caused by his fixation and the physical pain delivered by the blows of Nikita. Ward No. 6 reinforces Gromov’s cycle of fear and pity.
Dr. Andrei Yefimich Ragin, on the other hand, is not in touch with the human condition. Passive and cynical, he is unable to bring reforms to the hospital.
In conversations with Gromov, Ragin justifies his indifference to others’ plight by suggesting that everything is subject to chance. For instance, he posits that there is no difference between wearing a doctor’s smock and an inmate’s smock.
To further justify his coolness to the human condition he references Ecclesiastes – “it is all futile, senseless” – and quotes Marcus Aurelius: “Pain is just the idea of pain: make an effort of will to change that idea, reject it, cease to complain, and the pain will disappear.” The inner self should dictate one’s experience according to Ragin.[2]
The doctor’s inner self has him ignoring the unsanitary and detrimental conditions of Ward No. 6 and the plight of his patients. Dr. Ragin “knows such surroundings are torture to feverish, consumptive, and impressionable patients, but what can be done?” His stoic outlook of mind over matter is, in practice, one of heartless neglect toward others.
He increases suffering, instead of relieving it, by remaining aloof and disconnected from it. He has intellectualized reality to justify his inaction and seeks further intellectualization to relieve him of his post’s boredom and purposelessness.
Adding to the doctor’s disinterest is what our guide tells us: “probably in no other place is life so monotonous as in this annex.” As one day is no different than another in this outpost hospital, Dr. Ragin becomes disenchanted with his doctor routine.
When he first came to the hospital, Dr. Ragin “worked very diligently. He saw patients every morning till dinnertime, performed operations, and even practiced obstetrics. . .. But in the course of time the work unmistakably wearied him by its monotony and obvious uselessness.”
The doctor extrapolates from his daily routine and reasons “why interfere with people dying if death is the normal and prescribed end for everyone?” and “If the aim of medicine is to utilize drugs to alleviate suffering, the question necessarily arises: why alleviate it?” With similar thoughts, he reasons away the need for himself to be involved in the lives of suffering people. Why should anyone be spared pain when “their lives have nothing of importance in them and would be entirely empty, like the life of an amoeba, were it not for suffering?
“Oppressed by such reflections, Andrey Yefimich let things go and gave up going to the hospital every day.”
To avoid the messy, tedious, and nonsensical reality around him, Dr. Ragin leaves work early and goes home to his books and beer. He withdraws from the physical world to seek mental stimulation. As he reads he is wowed by recent medical discoveries and yet makes not one application to his own hospital. He blames society for the mess he has to deal with.
Evenings consist of conversations with his postmaster friend Mikhail, the only one in town who doesn’t bore the doctor. (Is Ragin more Epicurean in practice than Stoic?)
This routine changes when one day Dr. Ragin follows an inmate, the Jew Moiseika, returning to the annex from his daily wandering in the town. The doctor notices that Moiseika is walking around with bare feet in the winter. Inside, he tells Nikita to give Moiseika some boots for the cold weather. Dr. Ragin, we learn, is not unaware of what’s around him.
From his bed Gromov hears the doctor’s voice, jumps up and reacts with loud vitriol at his presence. The doctor goes in to see who is making the fuss about him. After Gromov calms down, the two begin a dialog that Dr. Ragin finds pleasurable: “What an agreeable young man!” The doctor, breaking with routine, visits Gromov again the next day.
The doctor encounters Gromov lying in bed holding his head in terrible pain. Gromov is suffering with a splitting headache. He reasoned over and over again since the day before that Dr. Ragin was a “spy or doctor who has been charged to test me – it’s all the same -.” Gromov’s persecution mania was triggered.
Dr. Ragin responds, reasoning that if true and Gromov is arrested and sent to prison then he is no worse off being right where he is. This response frees Gromov up a bit and the two have a bit of relaxed conversation. Gromov wishes to be in a better place – outside in “the country somewhere” and “to have a decent doctor to cure one’s headache.”
“It’s so long since I have lived like a human being. It’s vile here. Insufferably vile!”
The doctor responds, not with an antidote for Ivan’s headache, not with a ride in the country, but with a philosophical take on how to think about things – with simple equivalency.
“There’s no difference between a warm and comfortable study and this ward” and “Peace and contentment do not lie outside a man, but within him.”
Gromov questions this. The doctor continues.
“The ordinary man expects the good and the bad from external things – from an open carriage and a study – but a thinking man derives them from within himself.”
Gromov rejects the doctor’s philosophical reasoning. The doctor responds, telling Gromov that “One must strive for the comprehension of life, and therein lies true happiness.”
Gromov understands nothing of what the doctor has been saying and inferring: Comprehension? External, internal? Life is just a mental exercise, a thought experiment, detached from the tragic dimension of human existence? Gromov gets up, looks angrily at the doctor and speaks:
“I only know that God has created me of warm blood and nerves, yes, indeed! If organic tissue is capable of life it must react to every irritant. And I do react! I respond to pain with tears and outcries, to baseness with indignation, to filth with loathing. To my mind, that is precisely what is called life. . . . How is it that you don’t know that?”
Gromov continues, commenting perceptively about the Stoics. He then asks why Dr. Ragin why he preaches Stoicism. “Are you a sage? A philosopher?” The doctor responds “No …. but everyone ought to preach it because it is reasonable.”
Gromov, the inmate, then wants to know how the doctor considers himself to be “competent to judge comprehension and contempt for suffering”.
“Have you ever suffered? Have you any idea of what suffering is? Allow me to ask you, were you ever thrashed as a child?”
“No, responds the doctor, “my parents had an aversion to corporal punishment?”
Gromov tells the doctor that his own father, “a harsh, hemorrhoidal government clerk with along nose and a yellow neck” flogged him cruelly. Sizing the doctor up, Gromov then proceeds with his analysis of the doctor, excoriating his competency to understand anything about Gromov’s life or life itself.
“No one has laid a finger on you all your life, no one has terrorized you nor beaten you; you are as strong as an ox. . .. You are by nature a lazy, flaccid man, and so you have tried to arrange your life in such a way that nothing should disturb you or force you to budge.”
I’ll stop here and leave you with Gromov’s cri de coeur and Dr. Ragin’s inability to come to terms with suffering. Even when the doctor does act to relieve suffering, he thinks that he will be paid back for his trouble. He lends his postmaster friend money after his friend suffers gambling loses. But the doctor is never repaid and soon becomes destitute. It appears from all that happens to the doctor as the story unfolds, that the doctor’s friends and associates also hold to “It’s all the same” thinking.
This story is rich with insight and worth a read. And though one may not be interested in reading a story in a Russian setting, consider that cultures change but human nature doesn’t change much from place to place or age to age.
“It’s all the same!”, first spoken by Gromov when he encounters Dr. Ragin (“a spy or a doctor”) is oft repeated and inferred by Dr. Ragin as he explains his philosophy to Gromov. You’ll have to read the story to see how the doctor’s “It’s all the same” philosophy works out. He holds on to it to the end of the story.
““Ward Six” is affective and effective largely because Chekhov makes proper, judicious, and artistic use of the very faculty that is impaired in his two heroes, Gromov and Ragin, the faculty for contemplating similarities. Their respective disorders, which are two extremes of the same continuum, prevent them from experiencing fear and pity in a healthy, moderate, cathartic fashion.”[3]
As you read Ward No. 6, ask yourself these questions:
Is “society” at fault and therefore responsible for the ills and disorder of society or are individuals responsible?
If one assigns “society” as the cause for “systemic” failures, is the individual therefore absolved of any personal responsibility?
Is detachment from reality a sign of mental illness?
Do you spend your time in the laboratory of thought and have never played baseball or wrestled with another human being?
Does lying to oneself promote mental health?
Is it healthy to be being disconnected from physical reality via drugs or the TV and the internet – supposed mental stimulants that will lessen our boredom?
“It’s all the same!”: Is that a motto for your life? How has that worked out for you?
If we say chance or fate determines things, do we give up believing we can make a difference?
Do false equivalencies, such as occur in Ward No. 6 and that also operate in our culture, lead to mental illness?
A momentary transposition of one’s reality into another through imagination is healthy. Day dreaming is healthy. But what about the permeant transpositions into unreality that is occurring around us today?
Have you ever asked God to heal your imagination?
(As mentioned before, Chekhov is my favorite writer. His stories (and plays) show rather than tell. Chekhov doesn’t moralize or preach. As with Ward No. 6, he lets readers see and hear for themselves and make their own judgements. I appreciate this way of writing. For one thing, I am not a fan of preaching. I had my fill growing up. I attended churches where preaching, and not the Eucharist, is the pinnacle of the service. I’ve moved on to an Anglican church.)
[1] Chekhov spent three months at Sakhalin Island interviewing thousands of convicts and settlers under the ruse of taking a census. For more details of his trip see Anton Chekhov and the Sakhalin Penal Colony – Hektoen International (hekint.org).
[2] When Chekhov wrote Ward No. 6, he was reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. A couple of quotes from that journal apply to Dr. Ragin’s disposition: “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”; “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
[3] Liza Knapp, “The Suffering of Others: Fear and Pity in “Ward Six,” in Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, ed. Cathy Popkin (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2014), 629
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Audio: Ward No. 6 : Anton Chekhov : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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“We need everyone who suffers to be a victim because only thus can we maintain our pretense to universal understanding and experience the warm glow of our own compassion, so akin to the warmth that a strong, stiff drink imparts in the cold.”
“Psychology is not a key to self-understanding, but a cultural barrier to such understanding as we can achieve…” from the Preface of Admirable Evasions, How Psychology Undermines Morality by Theodore Dalrymple, 2015.
Theodore Dalyrymple is a pen name used by retired prison psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Daniels.
Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality by Theodore Dalrymple | Goodreads
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Dr. Ragin – “superfluous man”
“The name ‘superfluous man’ refers to an important and recurrent character type in 19th c. Russian literature. It denotes an idealistic but inactive hero who is aware of and sensitive to moral and social problems but who does not take action; in part because of personal weakness and lassitude, in part because of social and political restraints to freedom of action.”
A short note on the term ‘superfluous man’ and its examples – Literary Ocean
– “usually an aristocrat, intelligent, well-educated, and informed by idealism and goodwill but incapable, for reasons as complex as Hamlet’s, of engaging in effective action. Although he is aware of the stupidity and injustice surrounding him, he remains a bystander.”
Superfluous man | literature | Britannica
*****
“This episode of Health Care News focuses on the recent repeal of the Certificate of Need and financial credentialing in the healthcare industry . . . and how it will enhance competition in the healthcare market, ultimately leading to reduced prices.”
Killing “Certificate of Need” Laws (Guest: Marcello Hochman, M.D.) – The Heartland Institute
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World Economic Forum’s Ward No. 6:
The World Economic Forum has declared that by 2030 fashion will become completely obsolete and all humans will be vegan, whether they like it or not.
12ft | WEF Says Fashion Will Be Abolished by 2030: “Humans Will All Wear a Uniform”
Informed Dissent:
God help us . . .
The World Health Organization and its partner organization, the Bill Gates-controlled GAVI, announced Wednesday that they will be flooding Africa with 18 million doses of malaria vaccines.
WHO & Gates Inc announce plans to flood Africa with ultra dangerous malaria “vaccines” (dossier.today)
“More pandemics are coming” – bioweapons expert Dr Francis Boyle (biznews.com)
Ozempic, Hormone Mimicking Drugs & Their Side Effects (rumble.com)
Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Study is Removed Within 24 Hours – The Daily Sceptic
U.N. To Seize Global ‘Emergency’ Powers With Biden’s Support (thefederalist.com)
‘What Is the Sin Committed by Christians?’: The Persecution of Christians, May 2023 :: Gatestone Institute
“. . . multiple federal laws were broken to change the recording metrics for COVID-19-deaths. There is also evidence of multiple acts of what appears to be willful misconduct by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies throughout the COVID-19 crisis.”
Call to Action>>>>
Sign The Petition To Investigate The CDC! (standforhealthfreedom.com)
The Biden Crime family:
‘Missing’ Biden corruption case witness Dr. Gal Luft details allegations against president’s family – YouTube
New video suggests Jill Biden knows exactly what is going on in her family… – Revolver News
Electronic message from Hunter Biden demanded payment from Chinese businessman: ‘I am sitting here with my father’ – NaturalNews.com
Climate Alarmism vs. Climate Reality:
Greenpeace Founder: Anti-Carbon Dioxide Agenda Is a Hoax – Slay News
2015 Annual GWPF Lecture – Patrick Moore – Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide? – YouTube
Baseball-Sized Hail Smashing Into Panels At 150 MPH Destroys Scottsbluff Solar Farm | Your Wyoming News Source (cowboystatedaily.com)
Obamas complained about being black and oppressed from luxury yacht in Greek islands – Disclose.tv
Coming to America – as a result of open borders:
A group of young musicians who hail from homeschooling backgrounds have crossed states and blended musical styles to form a unique band with a mission: to keep the classics alive.
Listen To Our New Single! (ffm.to)
L-O-V-E – YouTube
Man Caught Drinking Bud Light Insists He’s Not Gay – YouTube
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Filed under Health Care, mental health, Russian Literature, social commentary Tagged with Anton Chekhov, healthcare, mental health, suffering, Ward No. 6