Ciara's Wednesday Reaction

The narrator is not really "going through" an existential crisis right now; his entire life has been an existential crisis.  In these pages, he digs deeper into why he considers his intelligence as a disease.  When we hear someone call themselves intelligent these days, we assume the person is begin arrogant and self-praising; however, this is not how Dostoyevsky uses the word.  He sees his intelligence as a curse, a characteristic that has doomed him to need become anything in his life.  He even goes so far as to say that he would rather be deemed "lazy" than to be nothing at all.  When you think about it, at least if you are called a lazy person, you are given a defining characteristic that is acknowledged by society.  To be the narrator, however, means to be nothing; he can never make a decision that would define his as anything.  

The problem with the narrator is that he is too conscious, and I believe this is the lacking advantage among the rest of mankind that he is referring to.  If man truly did consider the conscience his greatest advantage, he would never make the rash decisions he does with the excuse that he is promoting justice.