Darwin and Dostoyevsky

The paragraph about the forty years of age makes much more sense now. Though I had related it to the season and the circle of life, I see that it was not related to that circle of life but rather the evolutionary circle of life. After a certain age, in Dostoyevsky's time about 40 years, your body is no longer able to function in the same way it once did. Without these functions you are not able to contribute to society as much as others or as much as you once did. You are essentially rendered incapacitated and worthless. All you are really doing is eating up tax dollars that could be going into educating the youth, the people that are actually worth something in this world. You are a fool to live anymore than forty because you cannot really do anything useful. You take up space, but since we are humans we believe that that is the reasonable thing to do because x,y, and z has taught us it is what you do. 

I thought it was really interesting how Dostoyevsky's work strongly reflects Darwin's theory of evolution in this section of the novel. It is nice to see how the different things that you learn about in school are related and/or influenced by one another.

 The sentence that Dostoyevsky writes about s being the most enjoyable things for ourselves to talk about is extremely accurate. We essentially "pay attention" to what other people say but care only about what we say. Nevertheless, I do not see anything wrong with this type of mentality. Though to day we would call it narcissistic and selfish, both terms with a negative connotation, I think it is just the way of life. If you do not care about yourself first and foremost you are going to lose and you will die. To care about yourself is to care about your survival. If everyone cares about themselves and solely themselves through nature only the fittest will survive. 

- Talia Akerman