I love The Brothers Karamazov so much. I don't think there has ever been a story told that made a better case for being a good person.

I think the most important lesson we have to learn in our modern world is that there aren't good or bad sides.

Most stories told follow the path of the hero's journey, in which the hero obtains some great power and learns to use it for good, generally by destroying some great villain.

In reality, there are no villains and there are no heros. There are only good and bad actions. And every person does bad actions everyday, out of ignorance, out of convenience, out of ego, out if ideological allegiance. There is also very little in the way of greatness in every day life.

And there is no other cure than to do what Alyosha does. Try to do good. Alyosha does not judge anyone, he has genuine compassion even for the worst of men. Alyosha has no great skill, is not endowed with any great intelligence and is sometimes socially awkward. He sometimes gets his affairs out of order and makes mistakes. He is not an island: he relies on the moral support of his mentor (the famous monk) for a good part of the book, and is devastated when he dies. And he never does anything which could not have been done by anyone else.

But he, at every point, chooses to do the good, as well as he can. At one point, during a time when one of his brothers was wanted for murder and his whole family drama is in full force, while going around town trying to do things to help, he sees a kid which is being bullied by other kids which are throwing stones at him. Alyosha shoos away the other kids, and inquires into this lone kid's drama. He then spends the rest of the day helping the kid, with his problems, instead of rushing to fix his own. It never even occurs to him not to act in this way.

And it not only helps the community for him to act in this way. But it also, as it were, helps his own "soul". While other characters go insane, or have manic episodes, Alyosha can bear the tragedies because of his own conduct.