After ReadingMy first encounter with Russian literature was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I powered through it in a fog, frantically copying down long passages and dialogues, still not quite getting it.
The story follows a Russian university student who murders a pawnbroker landlady and her innocent sister, all because of his “louse theory”—the idea that extraordinary people can sacrifice a few insignificant “lice” to achieve their grand ideals. Even after killing two people and being sent to Siberia, the protagonist feels no remorse. To him, a couple of deaths mean nothing in service of his vision.
Only when Sonya loves him does he find redemption. Her heart contains an infinite wellspring of life that awakens something in him. She helps him abandon his theories and abstractions and become a real, flesh-and-blood human being. Through eight years of hard labor, he begins to atone.
It wasn’t until I heard the legal scholar Luo Xiang say, “Love concrete people, not abstract humanity,” that Dostoevsky’s message finally clicked.
The Problem with Abstractions
We love abstract concepts more than we love actual things. But here’s the cruel irony: the more someone loves abstract ideals, the harder it becomes for them to show real care for the people right in front of them.
Abstract people are perfect. They exist in the realm of pure ideas. But real people? Real people are flawed. Messy. Disappointing. So the more we fixate on humanity in the abstract, the more intolerable we find actual humans—including the ones we see every day.
Plenty of philosophers and writers have validated this impulse toward isolation. Schopenhauer said solitude is both proof and result of excellence. La Bruyère wrote that all our misfortunes come from not being alone enough. Petrarch longed for solitude to escape “foolish people” who blocked his path to enlightenment.
These thinkers tell us isolation is the ideal state, that withdrawing from society leads to truth. And sure, there’s wisdom there. But for most of us living in the real world—getting beat up by life one day and having to show up again the next—we can’t afford to retreat into hermit mode. We need to “do worldly things with an otherworldly heart,” as the saying goes.
What Dostoevsky told us 156 years ago might be more useful: True love is always love for specific people, not humanity in general.
This explains modern loneliness perfectly. Your social media follower count keeps growing. You can chat with someone thousands of miles away. But you have nothing to say to the person sitting next to you.
Why?
Maybe nobody around you has read Dostoevsky, so there’s no common ground. At work, relationships are poisoned by competition, rankings, jealousy—conversations stay superficial and performative. And those rare friends you could share wine with while watching snow fall? They’re either impossibly rare or living far away.
So what do we do? Is Schopenhauer right that life offers only two choices: solitude or vulgarity?
Time and Attention
Real connection requires time. Real emotion attaches to specific people. We need both abstraction and specificity in our lives.
If we only have theories and abstract concepts, we risk falling into the same trap as the protagonist in Crime and Punishment—viewing ordinary people as lice, setting ourselves up as the measure of all things, casually dismissing or destroying what doesn’t fit our vision.
But here’s the key insight: abstractions should apply to ourselves, not to others. When we see the beauty of humanity in the abstract, we should work to make ourselves more beautiful—not demand that everyone around us measure up. If we’re not even meeting that standard ourselves, what right do we have to judge?
Think about parents glued to their phones, binge-watching shows and scrolling TikTok, who then wonder why their kids won’t read. Or a husband who dumps his work stress on his wife but expects her to be his soft place to land. If you’re not living up to the ideal, why demand it from others?
Abstractions give us a template for self-improvement, not a weapon to wield against other people or an excuse to run away from life.
Here’s the thing: we can’t see beyond our own level. What we can’t recognize in ourselves, we can’t see in others either. Our own intellectual and emotional capacity strictly limits how well we understand people.
If we’re narrow-minded and self-absorbed, even the noblest person will seem flawed to us. We’ll only see their weaknesses and shortcomings. Often when we think someone is terrible or stupid, we’re really just revealing our own limitations. When we think our boss is an idiot, maybe we’re the ones missing the bigger picture—and maybe our boss doesn’t bother explaining because the information is sensitive or they’ve decided we wouldn’t understand anyway.
Idealism Meets Reality
Ideals are concepts that float around in the realm of pure thought. Any idealist trying to make those ideals real cannot ignore the value of actual individual people.
Abstract concepts are nowhere near as precious as specific, living, breathing humans. We need a dash of idealism mixed with a heavy dose of pragmatism to find joy in ordinary life—to appreciate sunshine, feel fulfilled by work, and experience real love.
Let idealism work on yourself, not on others. First, because you can’t force others to change. Second, because your own limitations shape what you’re capable of seeing in the world. As the Buddhist saying goes: “At first, mountains are mountains and waters are waters. Then mountains are not mountains and waters are not waters. Finally, mountains are again mountains and waters are again waters.”
Great books keep revealing new layers. Next time I read Crime and Punishment, I’ll probably understand it differently.
As one reader put it: Discovering Dostoevsky is like discovering love or discovering the ocean—a day worth marking in your life.
