Discussion Post Two

Today we spent less time focusing on a specific part or paragraph of the novel, and focused more on the general themes that we see throughout it. We discussed ideas that we had also touched upon in the beginning of the year, ideas such as selfishness and whether not altruism exists, but the idea that stuck with me the most was Dostoevsky’s argument that we’re hurting ourselves by keeping the weak alive. This made me think back to my other classes where to talk about the allocation of resources between sociodemographic and economic classes, and how so much of our country’s resources are being funneled to the elderly through programs such as social security. Obviously because I am young, this makes me a little mad, that the money and support is not being given to us considering that we’re the ones who have something to contribute, and the elderly really don’t. But I guess we have to honor them for what they contributed.