Russell, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy:- On Tolerance, Dignity, and Goodness

        The role of psychology and ethics also serves a vital interrelationship in societies in transition. Today the rapid dissemination of data compels disparate cultures to recognize different faiths, customs, and lifestyles. More than ever, technological change induces man to define himself socially and determine the moral standards for his treatment of others. In the past courageous individuals extolled virtue as a sustaining principle during periods of social upheaval. In his book Why Men Fight, Bertrand Russell, for instance, calls for a greater understanding and sympathy for the actions of one's enemies. Russell reasons that all men possess the innate propensity for aggression, the energy of which must be redirected into productive channels. Otherwise, man's natural proclivity for power will overshadow his desire for mercy and tolerance. In a way, Russell argues that a person's ethical conduct must transcend the vested interest of the individual and the state in order to ensure the survival of all races. In his novel The Devils, Dostoyevsky expresses this same concern when he indicts the growing liberalism espoused by the Russian elite, and voices that their intellectual preoccupation with progress could culminate in the loss of innocent lives. He urges his countrymen to avoid the subterfuge of those using ideology to conceal their own vested interests, and clearly suggests that faith in God and the dignity of man must rank foremost among the tenets of any social or political philosophy. Only through sharing the qualities of love and mercy can a person or a nation begin the transformation process which leads from loss to redemption. Speaking though Stepan Verkhovensky, Dostoyevsky says, "You see, that's just like our Russia. These devils who go out of the sick man and enter the swine, those are all the sores, all the poisonous exhalations, all the impurities, all the big and little devils, that have accumulated in our great and beloved invalid, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries" (647-648). Writing in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy expresses a similar idea in the closing remarks of Anna's brother-in-law Levin: "And just as astronomers' conclusions would be idle and uncertain were they not based on observations of the visible sky in relation to one meridian and one horizon, so would my conclusions be idle and uncertain were they not founded on that understanding of goodness which was and will be the same always and for everyone, and which has been revealed to me by Christianity and can always be verified in my soul" (Tolstoy 734).One must continually struggle to do what is right, despite the odds or the consequences. As Mikhail Bakunin says, "By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward." As  Chekhov says, "Everything on earth is beautiful, everything --except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity." Albert Camus expressed a similar idea when he said, "A man without ehtics is a wild beast loosed upon this world."