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Today’s Agenda
The Burden of Conscience
Good morning and Happy Tuesday!
Today we’re going to be talking about the burden of conscience, using Crime and Punishment as a point of reference. Burning that off, we’re going to do a thought exercise called the Conscience Check. Wrapping up, we’ll look at a quote from Part 3 Chapter 5 of Crime and Punishment.
Have a seat, Thought Breakfast is served!
Today’s Breakfast
You Can Justify Anything
The mind is incredibly good at building arguments. We have an explanation for any decision, mistake, or even harmful action we commit. Logic can make almost anything sound reasonable.
Even when something might be intellectually justifiable, there can still be internal resistance. Conscience shows itself to us here as discomfort, restlessness, guilt, and anxiety. That is because the deeper self does not always agree with the “rational” side of the mind.
In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov believes he can intellectualize his way beyond morality. He builds himself a theory to justify his actions. After the action, however, his mind fractures, his body reacts, and his peace completely disappears. Dostoyevsky shows how guilt operates beneath logic and cannot be reasoned away.
When actions betray inner truth, the self starts to crumble. One part is constantly defending itself while the other is condemning itself. One can only imagine the psychosomatic (mind-body) reaction to serious bouts of internal, moral confusion (what we call a “guilty conscience”). Inner conflict is essentially the result of misalignment between action and conscience.
Burn Those Thought Calories
The Conscience Check
Ask yourself:
What am I trying to rationalize that I already feel is wrong?
Where is my mind making excuses for something my conscience resists?
What would it look like to face that honestly?
Book Nook
“If he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment—as well as the prison.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment Part III Chapter V
Fyodor Dostoevsky is showing that punishment is not only something imposed from the outside. In Crime and Punishment, the deeper consequence of wrongdoing is internal. Conscience creates a kind of suffering that cannot be escaped through logic or avoidance. Even if no one else knows, something within you does. That inner awareness becomes its own form of judgment, one that follows you until it is faced.
Munch on that for today. Have a great day, and come back tomorrow for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!
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That’s it for today.
Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.
Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast
