Listening to the Internet (Week 7)

This semester I will be posting my thoughts every week on some media I've consumed. This is a semester-long project for my SFL 358 class: Media and Family Development. 

Listening to the Internet 

I just finished reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for my Russian Literature class. No spoilers, but there are some gruesome scenes and some disturbing psychology portrayed in the novel. At the beginning I really struggled to read it. I've read some dark things, but this one made me nauseous. My teacher made the comment in class that anyone who thinks Crime and Punishment is dark hasn't read it, and that made me feel kind of bad about myself because I definitely thought it was dark. 

I finished the novel today, and I really enjoyed the last part of it. I still can't deny that parts of it gave me bad feelings, but it was riveting in a lot of ways as well. The most overwhelming feeling I had at the end of the novel, however, was that I really hadn't understood a bit of it (compounded by my teacher's comment haha). 

The major points of the novel felt so lost on me that I immediately felt like I needed to turn to the internet. Surely someone there could educate me. I never got around to it, but later that day I thought how ridiculous it was that I WANTED someone else to tell me how and what to think. And beyond that, if I did use all of the sources on the internet I wouldn't know who the authors were, their motivations, credentials, or anything about them. 

I feel like I am always looking for an "expert's opinion" or someone who knows more than I do, has seen more, done more, etc. But I feel like that mindset is really static and kind of draws a hard line  (and a completely untrue one) about my abilities. Yeah, if I had more time I could definitely have come up with some valid opinions about Crime and Punishment and defended them pretty well. I think I need to have more trust in my abilities and capabilities, because the internet definitely does not always know best. I feel like one of Satan's counterfeits is that we are not good enough, educated enough, or smart enough to make our own choices or have our own opinions. So much information out there is so detrimental to human progress, relationships, and the Plan of Happiness that he wants us basing our actions on what is out there. But if we take the time to mindfully consider the things that trouble us we absolutely are capable of making the right choices and taking the right stances.