An Imaginary Talk With Ivan Karamazov

Ivan walked with me on the rooftop of an old residential building, whose peeling walls were strewn with children’s drawings and advertisements. Beneath us there were a dark and dense mass of trees and shadows of distant buildings, and above us the sky was glimmered with stars, just like that of the day when Starets Zosima passed away and Alyosha fell to kiss and weep for the ground with his christian love.

“The world today is no different from that hundreds of years ago,” I told Ivan, “wars and plagues, violence and injustice —— they are always there. What we all think is unreasonable and ridiculous is always happening.
I used to count on Alyosha to give me the answer. When I speak to him he always looks at me with his silent, sincere eyes. People treat him as an angel —— because he really is an angel! More than that, he is a prophet, an emissary of God! He has a lot in common with Him, they must have very similar personalities. Alyosha sees me through and knows what I really am.”
“Everyone loves him.” Ivan smiles.
“I love him too!” I said, blushing, “ but I don’t think he will understand me in this matter. He has religious faith, but I have not. How can we possibly communicate? His heart is filled with love, but I’m mean, I won’t easily love or forgive other people. You agree with me, don’t you?”
Ivan was silent for a while. “ I have some new understandings now. The stronger one’s heart is, the more love and sins it embraces. There is some undescribable and incomprehensible power and loftiness in love……but I still cannot love my neighbor unconditionally. No, to give nondiscriminatory love to every human being is impossible for an earthly man, because his heart is not as powerful as that of Christ! I don’t think everyone deserves this love. Only God has the right to say he loves every man, every being in this world, because he created them himself, and he has every reason to love his own creatures, be it good or evil. But as mortals, as humans, whereby shall we love those we hate? Whereby shall we return good for evil? Unless we think we are as great as God! To love someone sinful is unfair to kindly people. I don’t accept this love unless all the prices have been paid.”
“I totally agree!” I said excitedly, “ and there are other things I want to tell you, those ideas and thoughts haunting me at night, the confusion and bewilderment rolling in my heart.
We seem to have been put on a track by force since we were born, and we have been occupied by bits and pieces in life that we do not have time to think what our purpose is —— the purpose of life and labor. It is not until we are dying that we have the ability to tell what we really want, what is significant and what is trivial. Ah, not only as individuals, but as a whole! Mankind as a whole is marching ahead recklessly. We cannot foresee the consequences, and even if we do we cannot stop or change our direction. But where are we heading? Why we have become like this? Why the unbearable suffering in this world has not been alleviated? Why moral standards of mankind have not been improved even to the slightest degree? Why the farce on earth is still and will always be a farce? Why there is no answer to questions we exclaimed thousands of years ago? Are we closer to truth, Ivan? Are we closer to good and beauty? We have learned and regretted for a thousand times, but then we repeat the past again. We seem to be intelligent, but we are absolutely stupid. No, humans are not intelligent at all. Does the ability to make tools, speak and think make them intelligent? No, on the opposite, these useless endowments make us irredeemably stupid. They solve no problem but on the other hand make us arrogant and presumptuous. Think about how much pain they have caused us —— they are not a blessing but a curse!
Curse upon us, Ivan! Sometimes I feel the world is coming to an end. When I see the thick clouds in the sky —— purple, ominous, uncanny clouds —— came down like mountains, I feel they are fires from the hell, and the doomsday is to befall man.
But I’m expecting the doomsday and the final judgement. Will there be a final judgement, Ivan? I don’t believe in God, so do all the citizens in this country. But I hope there is God —— I’m willing to give up all my intelligence, knowledge and the ability to reason, in exchange for a religion and a pious heart, even if it’s blind and irrational! How envious am I of those religious fanatics, even if it’s heresy or idolatry. Compared with them I am so helpless, all around me is a bottomless abyss, and I am faced alone with the vastness and emptiness of the universe!”
I continued vehemently, “What’s the use of religions? They are consolations, they sustain us with hopes and relieves that there is justice and truth when we are faced all alone with death, to make us rest in peace. But does justice really exist? Does truth really exist? Have those sufferers suffered for nothing? I’m concerned about these! I’m unwilling to cheat myself in the name of religion! I want to believe in God, but all I see is good unrewarded and evil unpunished. There is no punishment for sinners, no relief for sufferers, no redemption for the lost, and no compensation for the wronged.
Science, Ivan, what does science give us? We are terrified, being thrown into such an orderless world, and science is deemed a light to disperse our fear. But what is behind science? Disappointment, vapidity and nothingness! There is no goddess or palace on the moon, but only deserted sandpits. Only us, Ivan, the burden is all on us —— there is no god to save us. Murdering God is horrible, but becoming God is yet more terrific! Too heavy, Ivan, the cross is too heavy.
What is the use of consciousness and thoughts? I envy those carefree animals, no matter they are cats downstairs or pigs in the farmhouse. Pascal said thoughts make man great, but this is sheer self-consolation! To me, thoughts make man suffer!
When I was a child I believed good will triumph over evil, I believed in authority and kindness of the majority. But the fact is, there is no such thing as an always just and righteous judge on behalf of truth! You cannot trust man. There is no judge, Ivan! Nor is there a final judgement. What is waiting for humans? An eternity of suffering! Eternity, we have searched for a lifetime the truth of eternity, and now I’m telling you that only the suffering of mankind is eternal!
How strange is mankind. Being makes him suffer, but he shudders at the thought of not to be. Either is a road to ruin. Why God created man? Isn’t it like playing toys? He created then abandoned us! If He will not save us, who will? Alas, man is incurable.
I have given up on both God and science, eternity and the final judgement. I am painful and hopeless —— every night I lie on my bed thinking about how to find refuge, peace and salvation. Now I have finished.”
I confided all these incoherent thoughts in Ivan and waited for his reply.
After a long pause, Ivan said in a serious tone, “ It is not God abandoned you, but you abandoned God, and you have to pay for it. However, you don’t really need God. The only person you can rely on is yourself, and this is the appalling truth of the world. The cross is on your back, it’s too heavy, but you cannot put it down. Take it as a duty to carry it. This is the price of being. Mankind long for an easy life, but things don’t work this way. You are right, being is as heavy as a torture, and this is the tragedy for all of us.
I don’t think humans are born to be sinful, or, they are sinful, but at the same time they are suffering, and what they have suffered has made up for their sins. Christians believe that the sin of mankind is their arrogance. They deem themselves wise, challenge the authority of God, and try to reach what they can never reach. If this is true, then since the day humans were condemned they have been suffering, they suffer from the tension between their acknowledgement of their limits and their unsatiable desire to be limitless.
Humans created God out of their conscience, their intuition of absolute power, truth, goodness and beauty. On the one hand they understand they have limits and there are higher dimensions than this geometric world, on the other hand by this kind of understanding they create an infinite and transcendental God. Through conscience and intuition you may not distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, but you know how to make yourself stop feeling guilty. God no longer judges us, but your conscience is still judging you. It is just because you know justice and goodness exist (otherwise how can you form a conception of them?) and that they represent the heavenly world and the ideas of God that you should stick to these ultimate ideas even if God is no longer here. Even if everyone else is sinful and the world is full of ugliness, falsity and cruelty, you should not go astray as long as your conscience tells you this is wrong and a little sparkle inside you is pointing to the right way. But the reason lies not in God. It’s not because of the existence of God that humans should do good instead of evil, but because of the existence of conscience. It is better to fear the condemnation of conscience than the judgement of God.
I have long realized that there is not a direction towards which our race is heading. To truth, goodness and beauty? To a shared community? Well, the productivity is improving, our ability to change the nature is improving, but that along does not make any sense. No, talking about the ‘direction’ or ‘goal’ of mankind as a whole is meaningless. No such thing exists, nor can we discuss about it if it does not exist. One can only consider one’s own life and purpose.
In the matter of individual life and purpose I have something to say. If your trouble is that you don’t know the purpose of life, I have to say that seeking a purpose of life is itself a torment. Life itself is the ultimate purpose. You should live for life’s own sake. It took me a long time to realize, as counterintuitive as it might be, that happiness should not be seen as the ultimate purpose. To some it may be, but to others it may not. Anyway, taking anything other than life as the purpose is the source of suffering. The goal and the process to reach the goal is the same thing.
If you take life as a means to reach an end, you will become a slave of this end. This is because, when you achieve it, immediately you should find another aim or your life will become empty. But if you fail to reach the aim, your life will seem to be a worthless failure. Either way makes you suffer, and this kind of suffering is not a doomed suffering, but a chain you put on yourself.
But mankind cannot give up the desire to find a purpose. The only solution is to treat life as your purpose. When you are painful, feel the pain and let it be. So shall you do when you are happy. This is what “being” is like. Put your purpose into every minute you experience, so on your deathbed you will not regret that your life has lived in vain.
And also, you mentioned science. I don’t think you know much about science. Science and God are not rivals, on the contrary, science proves the existence of God. If there is no God, what kind of force has made all the rules governing the universe? Who ordered the earth to orbit the sun, who designed the shapes, sounds and colors of all the substances, and who put consciousness into our minds? Science makes the world more mysterious, and the more we explore, the more confused and fascinated we become. We want to find the answer which we can never find, and I don’t know whether this is a blessing or a tragedy. Well, I’m intent to say it’s a blessing, because otherwise we will be seized by emptiness.
Gosh! It’s one o’clock.” Ivan suddenly stopped his harangue and turned to me, “you should go home.” Hesitated for a second or two he added, “ I’m always reading and thinking, but the more I read and think, the more puzzled I get. Well, I fully understand this is the fate of being a mortal.” He sighed.
“Dilemma.” I said, “as you’ve told me, just enjoy the process.”
We happened to be at the door. Ivan opened it, and we went downstairs.

• the end –