Leo Tolstoy: The Sorrows of Living With Contradictions
The difficult art of living coherently in an age full of contradictions…
It is your job to comport yourself humbly and to consistently hew to your moral ideals. Cling to what you know in your heart is best — Epictetus
In the classic masterpiece, War and Peace, the protagonist Pierre Bezukhov goes through a tough life.
No, he is not poor. No, he is not lonely. And no, he has never been near war.
But still, he has a tough life. How can that be?
In the opening scene of the novel, Pierre announces in a party (a lavish party) full of Russian aristocrats that he supports the French Revolution meaning that he is okay with the head-cutting of wealthy aristocrats. And that he supports the equal and just distribution of wealth in a society.
Now. Everyone at the party is baffled at Pierre’s opinions because a) most people at the party are members of the rich Russian aristocracy themselves, and b) as we see later in the novel, Pierre ends up inheriting the vast real estate and wealth of his dead father, Kirill Bezukhov who happens to be one of the richest men in Russia.
This makes Pierre somewhat of a hypocrite.
In fact, it makes him the dictionary definition of a champaign socialist, a term that is derogatorily used to describe a person whose luxurious and preppy lifestyle contradicts with their political convictions.
One can also say that generally, it’s a person whose “actions contradict with their beliefs.”
It’s very important to note that Pierre is not a hack. He genuinely believes in his political convictions, in his principles of revolution and equality. And that’s why this contradiction is a very real tension between the ideals he holds and the life he lives which causes him great misery throughout the book. Think that Pierre feels a disconnect every moment of the day, a kind of dissonance between what he believes and what he does to the point that it is painfully sorrowful for him.
You might be tempted to ask that if Pierre happens to be so big of a socialist then why did he not distribute his newly found wealth into Russian peasants and went on to live a life true to himself, so simple right?
That’s where it all gets interesting.
Pierre suffers from a phenomenon which the philosophers call, “the weakness of will.” It’s a simple concept which states that “you want to do A, but you end up doing B instead because it’s easier.”
We might have been a bit harsh on Pierre by calling him a hypocrite. The truth is Pierre is not really a hypocrite. Hypocrites are people who believe one thing but do another BUT they justify the thing that they do. Pierre, on the other hand, knows ‘what’s wrong’ with his life, he never tries to justify his way of life, he feels horrible for inheriting his father’s wealth, he feels horrible for being born where he is born, he is not a hypocrite but more of a coward. Someone who suffers from the weakness of will.
There are many ways to define what War and Peace is about, but more than anything, War and Peace is a story about the inner conflict of Pierre as he struggles to fight against his weakness of will and live a life based on his true ideals and values.
But Pierre is just a fictional character. War and Peace is more about Tolstoy than it is about Pierre because Tolstoy himself was born into Russian aristocracy. And he struggled his whole life trying to shun his upper-class upbringing. He was known for critiquing private property, Russian elite literati, and the shallowness of the wealthy circles he grew up in. It’s believed that Tolstoy was never fully able to abandon his wealth and privilege mostly because of his wife and children who never let him give away his estate to peasants.
Whether the character Pierre was crafted in Tolstoy’s own image is a different story. But one thing is for sure — no one understands the sorrows of living with contradictions better than Tolstoy.
Believe it or not, but we too are full of contradictions. More so than we like to admit. Ans it’s not always because we are hypocrites. Many a time, it is because we are like Pierre, we suffer from weakness of will, we know we are in the wrong place but we are too stuck or afraid or weak to stand up for ourselves.
Hypocrisy is easy. It is the weakness of will which is a true tragedy. Our inability to match our reality with our ideals. Our enduring longing to have a coherent existence.
There are Pierres all around us. In fact, I might be a Pierre in my own way. I want to be independent socially and financially, yet I often fail at it. I hold veganism to be as an upright principle, yet I struggle to follow it. Pierre is my that friend who ravishes Jane Austen’s principle of love yet chooses to marry according to her parent’s wishes because she is too afraid of embarking on her love’s journey. Pierre is my that buddy who believes in following his dreams, yet chooses to go in a safe career because he is too afraid of where the road of his dreams might lead.
To better understand the plight of living with contradictions, consider the following three examples.
Take the example of a soldier who strongly believes in the Christian ideal of non-violence but finds himself joining the military where he will be tasked with killing civilians with his own hands.
Take the example of a doctor who went into the medical profession because they wanted to help humanity, but now they have to work in a setting that puts profit before people.
Take the example of a journalist who went into the profession because of their respect for truth and desire to make a difference in the world but instead they have to write spicy scandalous celebrity stories to make a living.
We can only begin to imagine how miserable these people will be. The deep psychological truffle they go through, the cognitive dissonance they face inside is indeed very real and painful.
Cognitive dissonance is a phenomenon in psychology where people get upset if they are faced with conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. In the above examples, the cognitive dissonance is the contradictory state when a person’s reality doesn’t match their ideals.
And as the truths of the truths go, humans are naturally bad at contradictions. And they always try to resolve their contradictions in one way or the other because otherwise, they feel psychological discomfort.
In the above examples, there are two ways in which the contradictions of the people involved can be resolved.
In Pierre’s example, he can either convince himself that there is nothing wrong with owning wealth, that it’s perfectly okay to enjoy the joys of life that excessive wealth brings. In this situation, Pierre would have changed his ideals. Another way is that Pierre goes out and leaves his empire and begins to live a simple good and fulfilling life that he always wanted to live. In this situation, Pierre would have changed his reality not his ideals.
In the soldier example, the person can either convince himself that killing people aligns with the teachings of Christ, or that the people he is killing are bad and it’s ok to kill bad people. In this situation, he would have changed his ideals or would have justified his behaviour A.K.A would have become a hypocrite. Another way could be that the person leaves the military force because he could no longer justify what he does. In this situation, he would have changed his reality not his ideals.
In the doctor’s example, the person can either convince themselves that profit is important for a profession, or they can work in a setting that puts people before profit. In the first situation, the person would have changed their ideals, in the second, their reality. In the journalist example, the person can either convince themselves that spicy scandalous celebrity stories are good because it pays their bills, or they can work with a publication that lets them write the serious stories they want. Again, in the first example, they would have changed their ideals, in the second, they would have changed their reality.
Having changed either their ideals or their reality, these people can now proceed to belong in the realm of coherent individuals. The result of which will be a relief, a soothing relief, a long soothing sigh.
I am sure every one of us would agree that it is always easier to change your ideals than it to change your reality. In the book, Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, the psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson present a mindboggling phenomenon — the ability of people to self-justify almost anything. Even people who supposedly start out with a strong principle have a tendency to do a complete 180 flip because they don’t want to be in an uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance.
This self-justification could be as big as justifying war crimes to as small as convincing yourself that smoking cigarettes is not that bad for your health. Most people who need to resolve their contradiction would always choose to change their principles rather than change their actions or reality.
Considering how easy it is to default on one’s principles, it is no wonder that one of the most regarded and celebrated virtues in human history has been to follow one’s principles even if it’s difficult.
This is not just a virtue peddled by most world’s religions. Sure the sacrifice of Christ is worth remembering for a lot of people, but even in the secular world, Socrates’ death a thousand years ago is heralded by people who remember him as the philosopher who stood by his critical and questioning nature. These are the people known for defaulting on their reality rather than their principles.
And even generally, in the society of ordinary people, there is a certain unspoken respect for people who walk the walk, not just talk the talk. The famous Lebanese-American essayist, Nassim Nicholas Taleb talks in detail about the long lost importance of walking the talk in his mindgasmic book, Skin In The Game, in a world where cheap talk rules above determined actions.
It’s believed that Seneca looked down upon philosophers who did not practice their own philosophies. That was a thousand years ago.
This is an age-old problem that continues to this very day.
Take it from Epictetus, the slave turned Stoic who wrote in The Art of Living:
To live a life of virtue, you have to become consistent, even when it isn’t convenient, comfortable, or easy. It is incumbent that your thoughts, words, and deeds match up. This is a higher standard than that held by the mob. Most people want to be good and try somewhat to be good, but then a moral challenge presents itself and lassitude sets in. When your thoughts, words, and deeds form a seamless fabric, you streamline your efforts and thus eliminate worry and dread.
And then there are the timeless words of the modern prophet, Khalil Gibran that truly describe the sorrows of living a life of talk devoid of walk.
Believing is a fine thing, but placing those beliefs into execution is a test of strength. Many are those who talk like the roar of the sea, but their lives are shallow and stagnant, like the rotting marshes. Many are those who lift their heads above the mountain tops, but their spirits remain dormant in the obscurity of the caverns
All this talk about living according to one’s principles is not just some Grand Canyon virtue. As it turns out, living coherently is also important for living a happier, more meaningful life as shown by research in psychology.
Believe it or not but living with contradictions is actually bad for your mental health especially if that contradiction has a defining role in your life.
Imagine a homosexual person who is also homophobic. Bet you can’t even imagine the amount of mental toxicity that person lives with every day. There is a reason why “coming out” even if it is socially difficult or dangerous is known to give so many people deep personal relief.
And this takes us to our next point.
Coherency is crucial for living a happy fulfilling life
In the book, the Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt makes an interesting point. He argues that humans are like systems consisting of many parts. And just like a system, they need coherence to function properly. He writes:
Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living.
Arguing further that the question of coherence may very well be the question of the purpose of our life. He continues:
When these levels do not cohere, you are likely to be torn by internal contradictions and neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life. Like the moviegoer who later finds out what she missed in the first half hour, your life will suddenly make more sense , finding coherence across levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life.
Now, of course, this applies to many things. Suppose, you are an introvert who finds themselves with an extrovertish job. Or you live in a surrounding that does not make it possible for you to have your introvert alone time. This could take a serious toll on you especially if introversion is an important part of your personality. In this situation, matching your reality with your personality can be a huge relief.
Take the example of that individual who miserably worked in the corporate sector for many years but then decided to switch to academia because their personality was more in tune with working alone. And after making that switch, they now find themselves relatively fulfilled with their work and in turn with their life.
To be honest, Pierre’s example is not that different. If you think about it, Pierre had been living a life where he was not true to himself.
Throughout War and Peace, Pierre goes through different things to quench his existential dread that results from his inner conflict. At first, he becomes an escapist. Later, he becomes religious. He stops being an atheist and passionately devotes his life to social work. But nothing helps him.
Not really.
Until he goes to witness the Russian war where he observes suffering and death from a close angle.
At the end of the novel, after coming back from war, Pierre decides to leave his empire, his wealth, his wife, and his family. As Jonathan Haidt said earlier, “you might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment,” in this situation Pierre had to witness death to take such a radical step, to go from a big-mouth coward to actually living a life true to himself, to change his reality not his principles.
And once again, it’s not just Pierre. In the early 1890s, almost ten years after the publication of the novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy himself left his home on a silent October night walking out on his wife of forty-eight years. He also relinquished the copyright to a huge portion of his literary works that year thus sacrificing a grand fortune that had taken him his whole life to make.
He wrote in a chilly letter describing his decision:
“I am doing what old men of my age usually do: leaving worldly life to spend the last days of my life in solitude and quiet”
And the rest is history. It is very well known that he spent the later parts of his life in a small cottage, busying himself with helping his Russian working-class fellas and mastering the art of simple living. Years before, he had left smoking and drinking, and had embraced vegetarianism. This is to say that his metamorphosis was not radical, it occurred slowly step by step.
It was also around that time that he absorbed himself in the texts of Epictetus who might have influenced him to undertake such a road in life. The influence was so great that it’s believed that writers and journalists used to be shocked when they visited Tolstoy’s home expecting him to live like a successful world-class writer but instead finding him serving on the farm with the fellows of his commune. In fact, “Tolstoy’s farms” are a real thing, it’s a commune-style living setting with shared resources, these kind of farms have sprung all over the world, especially in India, where Gandhi inaugurated his own version of the communal farm having being inspired from Tolstoy himself.
It’s important to be aware of your contradictions.
The most important thing to note here is that Tolstoy was aware of his contradictions. He never tried to justify his old life or old ways. He openly accepted his state of contradiction, ‘lived and breathed’ in that state, and realized that such kind of state deserves our full and utter compassion because, after all, in the end, we can’t really escape the enduring contradictions of our lives, at least not fully.
But it is crucial to at least being aware of your contradictions. Being aware of one’s contradictions is the first step in the journey of one’s true fulfilment.
Even though Tolstoy’s last days were rift with poor health and lasting sickness, he did die as a fulfilled individual, someone who could claim to have fully realized his purpose in life.
There are many many things that the legacy of Tolstoy leaves behind. Many lessons that he imparted throughout the course of his life — his timeless professions about the importance of love, compassion and humbleness, his prophetic valour about the meaning of life, his unapologetic critique of war, violence, injustice, materialism and the emptiness of the modern society. But perhaps the most essential of all is his message of standing up for one’s principles, to live a life that is true to one’s self, to constantly reflect on one’s contradictions and strive to make corrections where necessary.
Now this might sound cliche, but that's the thing about cliches, sometimes they capture such profound truths about our existence that it warrants our special attention.
The father of Stoicism, Epictetus gave a lot of special attention to the question of principles which he thought played a mammoth’s role in finding the meaning of life. For him, the struggle of matching one’s reality to one’s ideals was the highest of all moral and spiritual struggles.
He writes in The Art of Living:
Take a Stand. Once you have deliberated and determined that a course of action is wise, never discredit your judgment. Stand squarely behind your decision. Chances are there may indeed be people who misunderstand your intentions and who may even condemn you. But if, according to your best judgment, you are acting rightly, you have nothing to fear. Take a stand. Don’t be cravenly noncommittal…
…Those who pursue the higher life of wisdom, who seek to live by spiritual principles, must be prepared to be laughed at and condemned. Many people who have progressively lowered their personal standards in an attempt to win social acceptance and life’s comforts bitterly resent those of philosophical bent who refuse to compromise their spiritual ideals and who seek to better themselves. Never live your life in reaction to these diminished souls. Be compassionate toward them, and at the same time hold to what you know is good.
