The Bet

Knowledge and misanthropy

There’s a brilliant story by Anton Chekhov called “The Bet” in which two gentlemen are debating whether one could tolerate solitary confinement for 5 years if he had nothing but food, water, and books. One of them takes up the challenge, bragging that he could even endure the confinement for 15 years if he truly had unlimited books, and the wager is set to a massive amount of money.

If you want to read the story for yourself to find out what happens, you can read it here. Spoiler alert if you proceed.

In the end, after nearly 15 years of solitary confinement in which the voluntary prisoner had read thousands of books, the prisoner leaves his cell just hours before he was scheduled to be released, thereby failing to meet the terms of the bet and forfeiting the money. In only 15 years, the man seems to have aged by 100, and before he walks free, he leaves a note for his jailer describing his experience.

With practically infinite access to knowledge, the man describes how the books he read during his confinement transported him to different worlds, how he felt as if he’d lived a thousand lives, and how the depth of feeling in his heart was as vast as the innumerable authors he’d collectively lived through.

And after all that, he came to the conclusion that he hated everything.

“With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world…

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe…

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty… I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.”

I don’t get what’s going on here…

I fail to see how we’ve “taken the wrong path” or “exchanged heaven for earth.”

I can definitely relate to the part where he says that all is vanity and how everything we’ll ever know and love will be gone one day. But that’s just your garden variety existential despair, so I think there’s more here than just the ordinary declaration that life is meaningless.

Maybe he’s making a point about how the things we talk about in books are distractions from inner peace, but I don’t think so. In the end, I’m not sure how to interpret the old misanthrope’s letter.

So what then should we make of this conclusion? Will knowledge inevitably lead to misery? Are we only placated by the gnawing evil of humanity by distracting ourselves? Will we invariably despise the world when confronted by our inner demons?

I don’t believe so. In fact, I’ve experienced just the reverse.

After I finished my recent challenge of listening to 100 audiobooks in a month, I emerged with a newfound sense of optimism and hope for myself and for humanity.

While it’s true that I wasn’t confined for 15 years, I confronted more than enough material to dispel any illusions of pure human kindness. I read of child soldiers during the Sierra Leonine civil war, the anguish of the Biafran genocide, the tens of billions of factory farmed animals we torture, the moral repugnance of the African slave trade, the rampant destruction of the climate by our own hands, the grievous level of inequality between rich and poor, the cruelty of gender-based discrimination, and so much more.

I can see how people who read about these experiences (let alone witness them firsthand) could lose faith in humanity. But I don’t think that’s the healthy response, even if it is the natural one.

After all, I also read of hope and perseverance in the time of suffering, fortitude and commitment to rebuilding communities, confidence that we can do right by our planet and its inhabitants, faith in the instruments of government, unbridled idealism despite our better judgment, and optimism in the face of adversity.

It’s easy to give in to despair and turn your back on humanity after reading about the atrocities we’re capable of. But we’re also creatures of extreme capacities, and we can work together to ameliorate the suffering that we inflict on others. The difficulty lies in accepting our darker tendencies while simultaneously recognizing the better angels of our nature.

Reading books about the horrors we have created can inoculate us from furthering that harm, while reading about the wonders we have achieved can fortify our resolve to make the world a brighter place.

I’m hoping the better angels win out, and that’s a bet worth taking.