This is The End

         Personally, I found this book to be interesting enough to be worth the read and, like Luisa said, it would not have been worth it to read it on my own, seeing as I would not have been able to understand most of it, but because we read it as a class, I was able to understand much more about the book. Also, the fact that reading the book entailed a good grade in this class means that it was worth reading just for that, even though Dostoyevsky would argue that trying to get a good grade in this class is absolutely useless, as is almost anything according to Dostoyevsky. After reading this book and discussing the different themes in class, I have thought a little bit more deeply about a couple of things and questioned life a little bit, but only that, I have not been converted into a full time philosopher. I have made some jokes about the book, pondered a few ideas, but I quickly realize that what Dostoyevsky is trying to get at, the uselessness of the pursuit of a wall, is just an extended way of saying that the human pursuit in life is meaningless. I quickly ignored this as not having that nagging thought in the back of my head would allow me to progress and actually succeed in life, as opposed to the philosopher who only ends up asking one question: “do you want fries with that.”

           Now I might be getting a little cynical in the previous paragraph, but that is how I am. Being a man of logic and reason I often scoff in the idea of a philosopher who holds no benefit to society, other than to provide thought experiments, and possibly confuse some people more than actually help them. But that brings me to the next question: What will I remember most? Probably the notion of the wall and the general concept that humans are driving headlong towards an explanation, without any real expectation of what to do when we get there. This idea gives an interesting perspective on life and allows me to have another viewpoint whenever considering something, albeit a viewpoint that is very far from normal logic and will probably have very little effect in the decisions I make. Another thing that I will remember from this book is the concept comparing evolution to religion in that it is just another wall that has been accepted and that it WILL be refuted sometime in the future, yet this just tells me that I do not really care for what is actually right, as long as I have some explanation for the world around me. I do not see that evolution will be disproved by another theory in the near future, but when the moment comes, I hope I am alive so that I may see the social chaos that Dostoyevsky saw with the introduction of evolution. Overall I have enjoyed reading this book, but to be honest, I will not miss these discussions.