Last Friday, I felt deeply unsettled—restless and troubled. I went home early, but my frustration had nowhere to go.
The usual distractions offered only temporary relief, ultimately hollow. Better to read something—something difficult.
I recalled a Reddit thread where someone asked for book recommendations, and I had replied with The Brothers Karamazov. Someone commented underneath suggesting * The Idiot*.
Though Dostoevsky is my favorite writer, I’ve actually only read a few of his works. So that was it—time for The Idiot.
I spent two full days reading through all 500,000 characters of The Idiot.
My mind raced with thoughts throughout, and the impact lingered even more powerfully afterward. Though there are a thousand things I want to say, I can only articulate two or three. I’m writing this down now while the feeling is still fresh in my memory.
When I read about the Prince’s kindness toward the orphaned girl Marie, I was moved to tears by the Christ-like love he embodied. Perhaps it’s age—I’ve come to better understand what’s truly rare and precious in this world.
The world is full of toxic masculinity that refuses to shed tears, full of survival philosophies that never show weakness, full of hot tempers that demand tenfold revenge for every slight. What’s scarce is a gentle, forgiving heart. And even within this scarcity, fleeting moments of compassion are relatively common—what’s truly rare is a consistent, principled commitment to benevolence and forgiveness.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky teaches us: love concrete people, not abstract humanity.
But loving concrete people is so difficult. It always brings misunderstanding, rejection, hurt, and pain. There are thick walls between human beings, and everyone carries their own excessive pride.
How strong must one’s inner world be to dissolve all resentment and love people the way Christ did?
And what good does all that effort even do?
In the novel, the Prince—despite his perfect character—ends up a complete idiot anyway, unable to save anyone.
There’s no benefit. No worldly advantage whatsoever.
It’s purely a matter of beauty. Moral beauty.
Let me use a small example I saw on Reddit: someone asked how to respond when a woman says “I have a boyfriend.”
The situation may be trivial, but it reflects a universal phenomenon about interpersonal rejection. Especially when you had no such intentions to begin with—then there’s the added sting of being misunderstood.
Do you beat her up like those Tangshan thugs? Or do you snap back with sarcasm, making her realize “I’m not interested in you,” putting her in her place?
After scrolling through the replies, I found the best response was still: “Of course, should’ve known”—and then stepping back.
Tit for tat, sharp confrontation—naturally that would feel satisfying. But when you truly understand the source of someone else’s predicament and pain, anger might not be your first reaction. Because that defensive response has been trained into her by who knows how many terrible experiences.
This is what makes the Prince extraordinary. When others see the heroine Nastasya, they’re simply stunned by her devastating beauty. But what he sees is the spiritual torment she bears.
When you’re young, how could you possibly grasp the profundity of Christ’s spirit? Someone strikes your left cheek, and you offer the right one too—it seems utterly absurd.
Yet it’s Christ’s spirit that has prevailed through to our age. Perhaps, deep in the human heart, there’s a longing for this kind of unconditional, selfless love.
I’ve spent a long time studying moral philosophy, questioning the standards of good and evil, interrogating the meaning of human existence. So far, only Kant’s moral theory has convinced me. And what lurks in the shadows cast by Kant’s moral system is the spirit of Christ.
Where do human moral sentiments come from? What’s the benefit of being a noble person?
If knowing how to read the room, being flexible and expedient, climbing the social ladder, pursuing power, and indulging in pleasure—if this is the proper way of the world, then why can’t I muster even a shred of respect for such people?
Some people in high positions hold grudges to an extreme degree (I’m talking about Fa Zheng)—someone insults them once and they hand down an eighteen-year sentence. They can mobilize all the world’s resources to heal their childhood wounds, impose their will at any cost, make their word into law.
Shouldn’t such a person represent the ultimate expression of this “proper path”? But is there anything worthy of respect in that? Is there any beauty?
You can’t explain the nobility and wretchedness of character from a utilitarian standpoint.
The beauty of morality lies precisely in going against the current.
Why is Christ’s spirit precious?
Our society is flooded with moral judgments blind to others’ struggles. Most of these are selfish and hypocritical—lacking any universal significance, they’re essentially a form of privileged arrogance, people passing comfortable judgment from positions of advantage.
What about those who fall outside these countless circles, large and small? Do they forfeit their right to be human? If saying they’ve “lost their qualification as human beings” is too extreme—only applicable to the most extreme cases—then feeling morally bound and inferior is probably the normal condition of ordinary people.
What makes Christ-like love precious is that it offers a safety net for those who suffer. Ordinary people’s love is conditional, because their circles of moral judgment have boundaries—some so narrow they barely encompass themselves.
But Christ-like love is unconditional, capable of embracing more people (I originally wanted to write “all people,” but then I thought: can it embrace the devil? That’s a question. So I changed it to a comparative—just a bit more than ordinary people is good enough).
Even if you’re alone in the world with no one to rely on, there’s still someone who loves you unconditionally, expecting nothing in return.
You might say, “I’m not that wretched yet.” Then you probably don’t understand existential loneliness. Those who aren’t lonely rarely possess religiosity.
I’ve never thought much of my university’s motto: “Virtue sustains all things.”
When you hear “virtue sustains all things,” can you picture a concrete example? Is it like Liu Bei or Song Jiang? Fake benevolence and phony righteousness. Mouths full of morality and virtue, hearts full of calculated self-interest.
But Prince Myshkin in The Idiot suddenly brought this phrase to life for me, giving me a living example.
What “sustaining all things” really means is bearing others’ suffering. Put more simply: because you’ve been drenched by rain, you want to hold an umbrella for others. It’s the same idea. Drawing on our own rich experience of suffering, we offer spiritual support to other lost souls—so that at least they’re not alone on the path of pain.
Selfless love isn’t without its rewards.
We become richer, feel fulfilled, grow less lonely.
By helping others, we help ourselves.
By caring for others, we ourselves are cared for.
Redemption.