Ganya’s Red Pill: Dostoevsky, The Idiot and Grind-Culture

The Idiot, 1869

Recently, I took an evening walk. Two young men - old teenagers or maybe early twenties - cycled past me, and I could just hear one of them say in English something like “you gotta love the grind, man”. Since English isn’t widely spoken in my country, this special quote stood out even more. This speaker was someone who had watched YouTube videos. I was about halfway into Dostoevsky’s The Idiot at the time and for some reason it felt like there was a connection to be made. It had been a while since I read a big book – I also indulge in too much screen time - and it felt nice to experience this click again with a work of literature that directly clacked in daily life. Now, I just finished the book and it has become time to explore the connection felt on that fateful evening. What would Dostoevsky have had to say about the ‘grindset’?

Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of 19th-century Russia’s great authors, known for his realistic portrayals of character psychologies and ability to illustrate some of the deeper questions of the human condition. It’s no stretch to call him both brilliant and wise. Now, Dostoevsky has recently resurfaced as a source of inspiration in the occasionally less brilliant or wise culture wars. So famous has Fyodor Dostoevsky become to be exposed to Jenna Ortega in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as a right old red flag in boys her age. So, there’s a link to be made between the Russian author and young men nowadays? Sure, but Dostoevsky wrote on so many themes that, with a little effort, you could link him to almost anything. I will go on a limb here and just assume that miss Ortega associates the dead Russian author to the boy on the playground with the strong opinions, extreme left or right, who’s convinced he’s popping those sweet cherry red pills like tic-tacs. Bringing this together with the earnest quote by the grinding cyclist and the click it sparked in yours truly, we can start to think of Dostoevsky as a prophet for 21st-century productivity culture, maybe? If there’s a link, is it actually solid? Real impact on modernist literature or existentialist philosophy has been proven, but do those who take Dostoevsky as an inspiration to become more productive also know how he would react to such projects? Well, no one truly knows. I don’t know. Yet, it is fun to think about and now that The Idiot is still fresh in my memory, I’ll give it a shot.

The Idiot is a long book with many characters, but three stand out: Prince Myshkin, Rogozhin and Nastasya Filipovna. Prince Myshkin is essentially a modern saint - kind, naive and utterly at the mercy of a predatory society that sees him as “an idiot”. Rogozhin, on the other hand, is Dostoevsky’s archetype of the ‘madman’ who is deeply tormented and (self-)destructive: the most famous examples of this same archetype are Dostoevsky’s Underground Man and Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment. Now, Nastasya Filipovna, while being a fully fledged independent character, in many  ways, stands in between the two men and functions as both their object and their leader. The book perfectly shows the struggle between light and darkness, and Nastasya Filipovna’s swaying in between the two. 

But this has all already been discussed before by people who know much more about Dostoevsky than I do (for a beautiful overview, see Stephen West’s recent series on Dostoevsky at PhilosophizeThis). So, I would like to just talk about a little personal take, related to the ‘grindset’ and one particular secondary character, named Ganya. Like Myshkin and Rogozhin, Ganya is one of Nastasya Filipovna’s gentleman callers, but just a much less remarkable one. Rather than being motivated by kindness or passion, he is motivated by money and the prestige he would get by marrying a beautiful socialite like Nastasya. While he is a full-fledged character, Dostoevsky does make Ganya out to be more comical and foolish than the others. Essentially, Ganya is the most horrible thing you could ever be - he is UNEXCEPTIONAL… There is actually a full chapter which the author dedicates to categorizing “ordinary people”: Ganya is a member of the “slightly brighter lot,” which is apparently a very unfortunate group to belong to, because it still leaves you “infected with the desire for originality” (p.486).

Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1876

If Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin are interesting characters, because they represent extremes of light and darkness, Ganya is unremarkable, because he is just so darn grey. He just doesn’t have it in him to be the 19th-century Russian Messia like Myshkin, or be batsh**-crazy like Rogozhin. So, what does Ganya go for? Upward mobility. He works hard for the rich Yepanchin family, fosters all kinds of connections, (horribly dominates his family) and unsuccessfully tries to marry Nastasya Filipovna. Sometimes he thrives; other times, he’s a nervous wreck - swinging so compulsively between these two extremes that there is not much time left for self-reflection. Ganya takes some occasional steps to climb the social ladder, but what success means in 19th-century Russia, according to Dostoevsky a sick time and place, does not seem to include anything like mental health, peace or happiness. Rather, Ganya prioritises the steps (the money, the titles, the success at dinner parties) over the process (basically being a happy person). Does that remind you of anything? Of any cultures that are popular on the internet and emphasise career success, that emphasise the ‘grindset’? Cultures whose members sometimes manage to reference Dostoevsky as a prophet?

I found a blog post recently that directly promotes the red pill movement by referencing Dostoevsky. He also had a course to sell at the end of the post which would make you rich, quick. The entrepreneur basically referenced Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground to show how you can escape the “matrix”, not exactly commenting on how its protagonist who, true, does have some good points, is essentially a sick, cruel, and unhappy man. Now, The Idiot presents a richer and more comprehensive view of society, giving us more clearly Dostoevsky’s take on blind ambition. Just like I can imagine the cyclist watching motivational self-help videos, we can see Ganya throughout the novel, trying to follow a road map, made by a flawed, supposedly meritocratic elite culture, which exists within a broader flawed society. 

Dostoevsky showcases all the flaws of Ganya, his sense of entitlement, his greed, but all the while remains compassionate, also emphasising his struggles and underlying wish to merely be happy. The author just shows us where things can go wrong. By making Prince Myshkin into a vivid realistic being, he displays what might have been - basically a nice, compassionate, naive, heaven on earth - and by providing us with Ganya, he shows us what is - a flawed society with bitter carrots, dangling from unimaginably long sticks.