A timely observation from Dostoevsky for a generation that is increasingly characterized by wild self-promotion, voyeurism and (to use a word that we should never have allowed to become archaic) vainglory:
“I cannot resist sitting down to write the history of the first steps in my career, though I might very well abstain from doing so…I know one thing for certain: I shall never again sit down to write my autobiography even if I live to be a hundred.
One must be too disgustingly in love with self to be able without shame to write about oneself.”
(Fyodor Dostoevsky, the opening lines of A Raw Youth [or The Adolescent])
I am reminded of Mark Twain’s humorous yet tragic remark that human beings are the only animals that are able to blush, because they are the only ones that have a profound need to do so. A certain kind of shame in life is evidence of virtue and moral common sense. Yes, some shame over self is to be rejected and overcome. But not all.
“‘Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed–they did not even know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who are fallen; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,’ says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 6:15; cf. 8:12)
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