The scariest thing about the bug-man is seeing him in yourself.

You can be a bug man, a great sinner, or you can repent. There's a lot of joy and optimism in Dostoevsky's work that can only be understood through Christianity. So bug men are probably the result of bad childhood conditions, but where do you go from there?

I think Westerners often only read Russian novels through crappy translations, don't finish them, and don't understand Orthodoxy (or pre-Revolutionary Russia) or the Orthodox mindset, so they only see suffering where there is redemption (the deeper the grief, the closer is God). I've been watching a lot of "Peanuts" shorts and they make jokes about the incomprehensible nature of Tolstoy, or Snoopy's (Dogtoevsky) writing being criticized as trite because of his lack of suffering, etc., which I think was mid-century America's difficulty with Russian lit (why do we need to suffer to live? Can't we live our lives in peace?).

His writer's diary could have easily been written today (he was considered a right-wing reactionary back then, too)-- but then, maybe 150 years is not a long time at all.

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I was educated in one of the top high schools in my country, a big contributor to universities all over the UK. Many in this school came from families much more affluent than mine.
Without even realising it I had my first red pill at around 13 or 14, when I realised that those who seemed pre-determined to go on to study law, politics or medicine were in fact some of the sourest and least authentic people in that school. Genuinely elitist and nasty to the bone. True bug-men and women sometimes more so.
Finally, an appropriate philosophical work to show that I was not going insane, thank you for sharing, Roosh.
I think I will stop what I am doing and begin hoarding all works by Dostoevsky and other revered Russian authors!

*edit: my point may be unclear here. What I am hinting at is that it is no wonder we are facing widespread moral bankruptcy in the aforementioned sectors, these positions attract those who are only out for themselves.

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Great article Roosh. I though recognize too much of myself in the bug man.

they are permitted microdoses of pleasure that prevent them from considering the spiritual life because the tasty engineered food, pornography, and two minutes of daily online outrage satisfies them just enough, but when they die, how will God judge them?

For the last 10 years I have felt spiritually empty in this sense. My routine of work, hookup sex, porn, high-rise city apartment, travel. My only reprieve where the few days a year I spent in a monastery. To the outside world I faked a happy existence while barely kept standing.

Covid society broke me mentally and physically. I got in a burn out, dental problems, stress.

My anger is taking a hold of me, which gets me angry again, because my judgment tells me I should be calm, I'm disgusted by the system, feeling I'm living in a hell of a police state, the country I live in is full of speed bumps, trajectory control, cars with automatic photo systems fining cars parked in the wrong spot, vax mandates, being locked up, not allowed to fly or cross border because of the flu. I can't see the beauty anymore. The screens are filled with perversions and self congratulatory politicians. It's an absurd situation.

Covid is also laying bare my lack of courage. To step outside the bug man existence, on the one hand I hate it, on the other hand I'm fearful to leave it. I feel I can never go back to my old existence, but I also don't know how to pursue.

The bug man is trapped in his own head. On one hand he is viciously critical of everyone who doesn’t rise to his level of fantastical perfection, but on the other he is desperate for just one morsel of positive attention

I know this feeling. Maybe the last year I'm a bit less of it, but I recognize this behaviour in my work.

Prayer, God, Church is becoming a larger part of my life, but I have to get used to it, the bug man is still in me judging this newly developing side. The Bugman in me wants to believe he knows everything, he is god, but if I look from a little distance the sadness comes over me.

How did I waste 10 years of life? And then right after, I don't want to think about it now, tomorrow I'll think about it. Time passing by in bug man existence.

if only for my “elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.” They would abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed, while I should crush him.

Feeling small and crushed, crafting an intellectual worldly identity, making others belief it, desiring to overpower to feel anything.

It's a tree on bad soil giving rotten fruit.

Me picking up the bible the last year, going to church is destroying any illusion of grandiosity I have. To be honest I find it hard. I'm looking at myself and thinking, man what did I do, what ruins I created along the road. Sickening.

Not a lot is left.

I tried to read Dostojevki in the past but found it too confronting, and I wanted comfort. I now know why.

Have a great day men.

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I was educated in one of the top high schools in my country, a big contributor to universities all over the UK. Many in this school came from families much more affluent than mine.
Without even realising it I had my first red pill at around 13 or 14, when I realised that those who seemed pre-determined to go on to study law, politics or medicine were in fact some of the sourest and least authentic people in that school. Genuinely elitist and nasty to the bone. True bug-men and women sometimes more so.

“Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it.”​

― Frank Herbert

And in my opinion also attracts the already corrupt. The One Ring of Power.

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My own feelings are that this era is just beginning to see a verse from the Book of Acts coming to fruition: “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”

That much will wholly contradict everything the bugmen are about.

As the technocratic ZOG applies ever more pressure and grows ever more hypocritical and anti-human, I foresee people resisting by forming uprisings based primarily on either race or traditional religion. “Race” will be the more common, as it requires less temperance and pleas for divine guidance on behalf of the participants—however, it will also yield a lot less happiness in the long term.

A theocratic 3rd-positionism like Cordreanu’s “Iron Guard” (or “Legionnaires”) would be more ideal. It was hardly without its connection to the Romanian people or their lands; even so, it’s emphasis was thoroughly Christian—as well as anti-usury and anti-secret society.

The strong religious nature of the Iron Guard died with Cordreanu in 1938. After that it increasingly became an extension of the German Nazi regime, itself secular in deportment. Following the war’s close Romania had lingering 3rd positionists in power, including Legionnaires, yet these had no choice to but to cede to the Soviet-backed communists in 1948.

It seemed everything went from the spiritual to the secular in the 20th century. Yet in our present era this pattern has arguably started reversing, and will continue reversing as the time draws nearer to Christ’s return.

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Me picking up the bible the last year, going to church is destroying any illusion of grandiosity I have. To be honest I find it hard. I'm looking at myself and thinking, man what did I do, what ruins I created along the road. Sickening.

I know that feeling my friend. I am often tormented by sins of the past, particularly from my young partying days. But I want to offer you a word of encouragement as you have turned to the Lord, at these evil times of persecution many are just doubling down on their delusions. No man comes to the Father unless the Father draws him. All the best brother

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I was educated in one of the top high schools in my country, a big contributor to universities all over the UK. Many in this school came from families much more affluent than mine.
Without even realising it I had my first red pill at around 13 or 14, when I realised that those who seemed pre-determined to go on to study law, politics or medicine were in fact some of the sourest and least authentic people in that school. Genuinely elitist and nasty to the bone. True bug-men and women sometimes more so.
Finally, an appropriate philosophical work to show that I was not going insane, thank you for sharing, Roosh.
I think I will stop what I am doing and begin hoarding all works by Dostoevsky and other revered Russian authors!

*edit: my point may be unclear here. What I am hinting at is that it is no wonder we are facing widespread moral bankruptcy in the aforementioned sectors, these positions attract those who are only out for themselves.

I've noticed some similar things going to one of the USA's higher ranked business schools (Not ivy league, but a bracket below). Interestingly the types of careers you wouldn't think would attract pure sociopaths often didn't. In particular the marketing recruitment, which is where your senior management at most consumer brands comes from, was typically dominated by absolutely sociopathic "career women" types. The interesting redpill was that it was typically not the smartest people who did very well in these roles. It was social climbers who were utterly incapable of having any original thought. Most of your people who were well polished and competent went into logistics roles with a few going to Wall Street.

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Great article Roosh. I though recognize too much of myself in the bug man.

For the last 10 years I have felt spiritually empty in this sense. My routine of work, hookup sex, porn, high-rise city apartment, travel. My only reprieve where the few days a year I spent in a monastery. To the outside world I faked a happy existence while barely kept standing.

Covid society broke me mentally and physically. I got in a burn out, dental problems, stress.

My anger is taking a hold of me, which gets me angry again, because my judgment tells me I should be calm, I'm disgusted by the system, feeling I'm living in a hell of a police state, the country I live in is full of speed bumps, trajectory control, cars with automatic photo systems fining cars parked in the wrong spot, vax mandates, being locked up, not allowed to fly or cross border because of the flu. I can't see the beauty anymore. The screens are filled with perversions and self congratulatory politicians. It's an absurd situation.

Covid is also laying bare my lack of courage. To step outside the bug man existence, on the one hand I hate it, on the other hand I'm fearful to leave it. I feel I can never go back to my old existence, but I also don't know how to pursue.

I know this feeling. Maybe the last year I'm a bit less of it, but I recognize this behaviour in my work.

Prayer, God, Church is becoming a larger part of my life, but I have to get used to it, the bug man is still in me judging this newly developing side. The Bugman in me wants to believe he knows everything, he is god, but if I look from a little distance the sadness comes over me.

How did I waste 10 years of life? And then right after, I don't want to think about it now, tomorrow I'll think about it. Time passing by in bug man existence.

Feeling small and crushed, crafting an intellectual worldly identity, making others belief it, desiring to overpower to feel anything.

It's a tree on bad soil giving rotten fruit.

Me picking up the bible the last year, going to church is destroying any illusion of grandiosity I have. To be honest I find it hard. I'm looking at myself and thinking, man what did I do, what ruins I created along the road. Sickening.

Not a lot is left.

I tried to read Dostojevki in the past but found it too confronting, and I wanted comfort. I now know why.

Have a great day men.

Your honesty in introspection is admirable. Keep seeking.

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You're right about the general theme of bugmen, but, the Underground man is not a bugman. To be clear, a bugman is one who goes along with the status quo, not thinking too deeply, seeing no problems, but may feel discontent with the utter meaninglessness of his life.

The Underground man repeatedly rejects the categorization of bugman.

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature.

I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why I could not even become an insect. I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going illness.

To have a conscience that's constantly bothering you hinders you in a sick society. The bugman doesn't think about the structure underlying society, he only thinks of how he can climb the social hierarchy, he doesn't ask whether or not it's good to do so, nor the cost. The Underground man wants to excel in society (which is absurd in itself, knowing what he knows), but the values society have are so outrageous to him, and society moves so fast that, he doesn't have time to process all the information to think through how to act, for he wants to think about the consequences of his actions before he treads that path.

And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel. But enough.... Ech, I have talked a lot of nonsense, but what have I explained? How is enjoyment in this to be explained? But I will explain it. I will get to the bottom of it! That is why I have taken up my pen....

At the time, it was a shot at Darwin and the evolution crowd, as evolution was used to justify treating people horribly. "We can brutalize you because it's in our natural interest to do so, everyone must follow their interests, and the laws of nature determine the strongest survive, therefore we're justified in what we're doing"

I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not understand a certain refinement of enjoyment. Though in certain circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact. When they prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.
"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a case of twice two makes four! Nature does not ask your permission, she has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all her conclusions. A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so on."

Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.

As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice two makes four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.

That last paragraph is especially signifigant for today if you can't see how this applies to the "Trust the Science" crowd, read it repeatedly until it sinks it. To put it in the modern context "If the science leads to repulsive conclusions, why care what the "science" says?".

They were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell dinner which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of theirs called Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was going away to a distant province. This Zverkov had been all the time at school with me too. I had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms. In the lower forms he had simply been a pretty, playful boy whom everybody liked. I had hated him, however, even in the lower forms, just because he was a pretty and playful boy. He was always bad at his lessons and got worse and worse as he went on; however, he left with a good certificate, as he had powerful interests. During his last year at school he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all of us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us. He was vulgar in the extreme, but at the same time he was a good-natured fellow, even in his swaggering. In spite of superficial, fantastic and sham notions of honour and dignity, all but very few of us positively grovelled before Zverkov, and the more so the more he swaggered. And it was not from any interested motive that they grovelled, but simply because he had been favoured by the gifts of nature. Moreover, it was, as it were, an accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard to tact and the social graces. This last fact particularly infuriated me. I hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid, though he was bold in his language; I hated his handsome, but stupid face (for which I would, however, have gladly exchanged my intelligent one), and the free-and-easy military manners in fashion in the "'forties." I hated the way in which he used to talk of his future conquests of women (he did not venture to begin his attack upon women until he had the epaulettes of an officer, and was looking forward to them with impatience), and boasted of the duels he would constantly be fighting. I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly fastened upon Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was his DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded rascals. Our servile rabble applauded, but I attacked him, not from compassion for the girls and their fathers, but simply because they were applauding such an insect. I got the better of him on that occasion, but though Zverkov was stupid he was lively and impudent, and so laughed it off, and in such a way that my victory was not really complete; the laugh was on his side. He got the better of me on several occasions afterwards, but without malice, jestingly, casually. I remained angrily and contemptuously silent and would not answer him. When we left school he made advances to me; I did not rebuff them, for I was flattered, but we soon parted and quite naturally. Afterwards I heard of his barrack-room success as a lieutenant, and of the fast life he was leading. Then there came other rumours--of his successes in the service. By then he had taken to cutting me in the street, and I suspected that he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a personage as insignificant as me.

Zherkov is rewarded by society for he doesn't need to think, just conform. He's good looking, easy going, with money, and uses his connections to his advantage, he's doing well to climb the social ladder, and has sees no issues about using his power to force others to do his will. He's oblivious to the moral aspect of things. He's the equivalent of a mask wearing, platitude spouting, upper management type.

The Underground man on the other hand, is a very bitter, proud, and vain coward, he knows what he should do, but his sheer pettiness makes him the worst kind of creature imaginable. As this book is an attack on Western Rationalism, It shows how absolutely hideous the intellect can be without the corresponding virtues.

The novel ends on a positive reminder

Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my "Notes" here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered.

What makes the Underground man who he is, is his total lack of thankfulness for what he has, and that he chooses to ignore the more rewarding satisfying path in life, and more than that, he knows that if he got what he was asking for, without the struggles and work involved, it would make it even worse for him, for he would become an even weaker of a person because of it, for people who once had power/fame/comfort, who can't stand to lose it, become like the character Gollum in LOTR if it happens.

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