Data and Dostoevsky

Data is being collected in every possible way today to understand the patterns ,to do predictions , to forecast , to sell products to the customer by unicasting it to a person rather than broadcasting to masses.Corporates have their sociologists , psychologists , anthropologists , data scientists , data engineers , to understand the data and to do their predictions and forecasts.

Somewhere it is believed that Man's behaviour is predictable.That there is a pattern in Man's behaviour.That always two plus two is four.Corporates do believe that man can reduced to mere number.With sophisticated algorithms, it is believed that he could be just a simple arithmetic table.

But Dostoevksy believes otherwise.In all his Major Novels , Demons/Devils , The Adolescent ,Karamazov Brothers, Crime and Punishment , The Idiot ,Notes from the Underground , The Gambler or in Double we could see a recurring theme.That Existence precedes essence.Man is a rebel.Man is completely an unpredictable creature.Man could do something just for the sake of overcoming boredom.

Whatever might be the ideology, it has its own Shadows.As Carl Jung says the Shadow of the Man is there in the institutions/Ideology/Organizations he creates.It is big surprise , that Dostoevsky was not a German or a French but was a Russian.All his predictions about Man came true in Russia just in few decades after he died.We could see the destructions caused by Stalin to convert Russia from a peasant country to a Nuclear Power.In what way it benefitted the farmer in Russia.Man can destruct and with Ideology he can destruct even more.

Dostoevsky believed that there is no such thing called civilized man.Man is always a Man.Today's man is no different from the man of yesterday.After the end of second world war most of intellectuals around the world were disillusioned about this fact.Dostoevsky believed that the only hope for a Russian is tie himself to Russian Orthodox Church.He didn't believe that science and Technology and Socialism would benefit man.Rather he was much convinced that it would only take away the Spirit of the Man and make him spiritually dead.He worried that this person is even more dangerous than a Catholic.

If there is one thing that Dostoevsky believed it is the free will of a Man.Man is free to do anything.I'm not sure how structuralists look at Dostoevsky.He was very much against determinism.He felt that there is a disorder in Man.So to put him in any predictable model would only fail.Marx predicted that Capitalism would result in Communist Society.We believe that Mankind is progressing as a civilization.But what is the progress that we have made in all these years.What is the goal of this progress.We don't know.

By creating more Intelligent Machines and thereby reducing much of the assembly line jobs the corporate would then have more products lying in warehouse with no one to buy, as more would be then jobless.

I only wonder how Dostoevsky would have reacted to today's Technological advancements and the boredom it creates in Man.Intelligent Man are more bored today than normal Man.So these Intelligent man to overcome their boredom makes even more intelligent machines.

Dostoevsky was a genius.He was aware of Current affairs, History, Psychology which was in a very nascent stage then,Natural Sciences, Mathematics , Philosophy, Christianity, Literature.His writings are as if it is written for today's society.In a way, he has written about Man's free will than anyone else.Albert Camus's Fall is only an extension of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground.The Christ in Jeyamohan's Novel is only Dostoevsky's Christ.

The only hope i have for the future ,is that it might not be the way the corporates believe with all their data.It might be entirely different.That is the only hope for happiness.Otherwise if we're so sure that two plus two would be four then this world would become a big bore.Dostoevsky allows us to believe that it won't be.He believed in Man!