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Friedrich Nietzsche (Oct 15, 1844 - Aug 25, 1900), one of the most important philosophers in western thought, is known for his critics towards Christianity, morality and values in the Western world. His is an artistic, ruthless and a fascinating intellectual of the west. Known as a destroyer of Christianity, he not only called himself an Anti-Christ, but he also wrote a book called The Anti-Christ.

This 19th Century German philosopher is perhaps the most widely misinterpreted philosopher of our time and is considered as the "intellectual terrorist". His thoughts towards Christianity, Nihilism, existentialism, Übermensch, is really fascinating.
On the Death of God:
In one of his books, The Gay Science, he wrote of the most controversial and fascinating thing by declaring the death of God. He writes:
God is dead. God has been dead; and we have killed him.
After the declaring the death of God, he wrote a book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, to fulfill the void left by the Christianity. What is more interesting about this is that he wrote this book to replace The Bible in western world. There is a very eloquent passage in his work that Bertrand Russell talks about in A History of Western Philosophy which goes:
What is it that we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves—until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example.
On Quest to Morality:
He does not stop here. In his book Beyond Good & Evil, he answers some of the most important question about human existence. In his book, he questions the basis of good and evil. His quest towards judgement on morality and human values is depicted in this book. He argues there are two kinds of morality:  1. Herd Morality and 2. Master's Morality. He contends that Herd Morality is the mentality of weak, feeble, enslaved and inferior person, which is caused by the faith towards religion. Not a new thing to describe morality by a person who is anti-religious. Furthermore, his ruthless thought does not end here. He says this Herd Morality inhibits the development of geniuses and creativity. He believes that Master Morality is the mentality of superior men, who makes judgement based on the strength not on the faith. he further argues, this master morality will lead to the highest type of human being. he writes:
Good and evil is anti-natural. Mankind can be judged only by its highest example; the average human being has no value, whatever.
In On The Genealogy of Morality, he talks about the "conscience" and its origin and why human beings are the only creature who has the conscience. He argues that human beings have a natural desire to oppress other people and take advantage of them. He further asserts that human attains pleasure by causing other people pain. This is the natural state of all living creature. But because of the classification of morality based on Good and Evil, human beings are forced to be good or not to do harm to other people. He further writes one of the most disturbing words in western world by saying that when humans are frustrated that they can't cause pain to other people, they decide to start imposing pain to themselves and this pain is called "conscience".

These words are hard to swallow, but what if he is right?
On Übermensch & De-constructing the Values:
Nietzsche's philosophy contemplates the meaning of values and their significance to human existence. In his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he talks about the Übermensch. Übermensch, according to him is a superhuman that creates his own meaning and values without reference to outside influence. He does this by de-constructing the values and inventing his own meanings. According to him, there are only few people who reached to this level, and they are Julius Caeser, Napolean Bonapart, Buddha and Goethe. In his book, The Will to Power, he writes:
That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; 'why?' finds no answer.
He further goes on by suggesting to embrace the difficulty of self-discovery. In one of his essays, Schopenhauer as Educator, he argued that if someone wishes to be somebody in this life, to maximize their potential, they need to take difficult path, which often leads to isolation. He writes:
He who has the why to live for can bear almost any how
On Amor Fati:
During suggesting a way to live, Nietzsche talks about loving the life we are living. Amor Fati, the love of the fate is Nietzsche most fascinating idea, and he believes it offers the great solace when we most need it. To love your fate means to love everything that happens to us: the good, the bad, and the ugly has contributed to who we are and what we are doing at this very moment. Inspired by this ancient philosophy of "Amor Fati", Nietzsche in his book The Gay Science, he writes:
I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all, and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
In his Autobiography "Ecce Homo", he writes:
My formula for greatness in a human being is Amor Fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it
On Nihilism:
“Nihilism is…not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one shoulder to the plough; one destroys.” - Nietzsche
The idea of meaningless world goes when Nietzsche writes "Everything lacks meaning." He also declares that the suffering has no meaning. The world is moral chaos. The idea that suffering has meaning just makes suffering infinitely worse. Nietzsche after his loss of faith, wrote to his sister, “if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”  In "The Will to Power" he writes:
Every belief, every considering something true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world
For Nietzsche, there is no objective order or structure in the world except what we give it. His declaration of the death of the God is also one of his nihilistic approaches to describe the world. According to his, the Übermensch is the one who passes the Nihilism and gets on the other side. He emphasizes that nihilism is merely a means to an end, and not an end in itself.

Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed the essence of the mortal crisis of our time. Like it or not, he forces us to question the very foundation of element of the culture we live in. He forces us to ask ourselves uncomfortable questions like Socrates did back in 4th Century BC. Nietzsche's demand to question our own convictions and to make self-criticism makes him the New-Socrates.

"Greatness is a perception that virtue is enough"

Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was Soren Kierkegaard from 19th century who argued that we have two options to live our life: One the life of reason and Two, the life of faith. We cannot live the both. We must choose between the life of pleasures and the ethical life.

Roman Philosopher, Seneca has much more to say when it comes to living the life. 1900 years before Kierkegaard, Seneca, in his treatise On the Shortness of Life argues most of us waste our time and in return demand more time. Everybody is aware that time is valuable but nobody senses it and gives it actual value. He writes:
"It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it."
To the ancient Roman philosophers, living a philosophical life is the way to live a very wide life. To them, living wide is completely different than living long.  But what is more interesting to know is how to live a philosophical life? To most philosophers, philosophy is about preparing to die. Seneca doesn't have different opinion to this ideology. In fact, he adds and strengthens this by saying:
"No one will bring back the years; no one will restore you to yourself. Life will follow the path it began to take, and will neither reverse nor check its course. It will cause no commotion to remind you of its swiftness, but glide on quietly. It will not lengthen itself for a king’s command or a people’s favor. As it started out on its first day, so it will run on, nowhere pausing or turning aside. What will be the outcome? You have been preoccupied while life hastens on. Meanwhile death will arrive, and you have no choice in making yourself available for that"
Perhaps, the good way to live the life is just to be present. Existentialist, Kierkegaard said presence is infinitely more rewarding than productivity. All of our modern ideas about being productive and living life to be productive is just a blur way to live? To this Seneca says, we are living like we live forever. He hits back with hard reality by arguing:
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.”
Marcus Aurelius talks about the vices of procrastination. "You could be good today" Marcus writes, "but instead you choose tomorrow." This way of putting things off is the complete waste of life according to Seneca as well. He says:
"Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately."
Seneca suggests philosophy offers spiritual parenting to live a meaningful and "wide" life and it is essential to cultivate the inner wholeness. He writes:
"We are in the habit of saying that it was not in our power to choose the parents who were allotted to us, that they were given to us by chance. But we can choose whose children we would like to be. There are households of the noblest intellects: choose the one into which you wish to be adopted, and you will inherit not only their name but their property too. Nor will this property need to be guarded meanly or grudgingly: the more it is shared out, the greater it will become. These will offer you a path to immortality and raise you to a point from which no one is cast down. This is the only way to prolong mortality — even to convert it to immortality."
Coming back to Kierkegaard's two options, I think Seneca would go with the former. Because he believed in reasoning. He believed in virtue. He talks about morality. And I think there is no better way to live than living a philosophical life. This wise man writes the wisest words ever written. He writes:
"Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who … organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day… Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about."
To all the Optimist, Pessimist, Nihilist, Cynics, Skeptics, Seneca offers different viewpoint of living the life and its worth listening to him.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, born in 106 BC, was one of the leading political figures of the era of Julius Caesar, Pompey, Marc Antony and Octavian. Cicero’s human ideal was the “first man of the republic, “the peacemaker,” and the “keeper and guardian” in times of crisis. This ideal man would have a command of Greek philosophical theory and be experienced in Roman politics and oratory. His philosophical ideal was a combination of theoretical skepticism and practical Stoicism.

Lived more than 2000 years ago, there are lots of wisdom to be absorbed from this wise ideal man. Enlightenment thinkers including John Locke, David Hume, Montesquieu and Thomas Jefferson all borrowed thoughts and turns of phrase from Cicero. The first century critic Quintilian said that Cicero was “the name, not of a man, but of eloquence itself.”

Here are some wisdoms from him:

1. Death is an achievement:

Yes, all the philosophers believe death is a distant sound of thunder in a picnic. As being a big believer of practical stoicism, Cicero also believed death is not only unavoidable but as an achievement. He also said, "To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.” And he is true if you stop and think and retrospect about it. He said -"Therefore, when the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed; and, just as apples when they are green are with difficulty plucked from the tree, but when ripe and mellow fall of themselves, so, with the young, death comes as a result of force, while with the old it is the result of ripeness. To me, indeed, the thought of this “ripeness” for death is so pleasant, that the nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in his home port after a long voyage.

2. Live in accordance with your nature

This idea of living in accordance with nature comes from the founder of Stoicism, Zeno. Natural law is the ultimate source of guidance; it is in accordance with nature that no one should act in a way that preys on the ignorance of another. No greater obscenity in life can be found then when wickedness cloaks itself with the pretense of intelligence. Cicero relates the nature with his ideology towards politics. According to him, the state exists to uphold laws which are in harmony with the universal principles of nature. If a state does not uphold right reason in agreement with nature, it is not a state.

3. The six mistakes of man

Cicero once said: "Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century;

Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”

What I find interesting and heartbreaking is that these mistakes are still prevailing. Even though he warned these most common mistakes that human make about 2000 years ago, we still make this and fall for it every single day.

Quotes from Cicero:

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within....for the traitor appears not to be a traitor...he rots the soul of a nation...he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within....for the traitor appears not to be a traitor...he rots the soul of a nation...he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

In times of war, the law falls silent.

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

True wisdom requires the capacity to delight in being proven wrong

-Aristotle

And it is being "wrong" is "not-wrong"

It's hard to accept it as we all try to avoid being wrong.  Epicurus once said, "He gains most who is defeated, since he learns the most." And he can't be more true.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher in the 20th century, was wrong when he published his book the Tractatus. And he admitted it in his Philosophical Investigations. Jean-Paul Sartre was wrong  about the way of examining existentialism and the idea of absolute freedom. So was Socrates, Aristotle and Plato on morality.

Marcus Aurelius, the great stoic philosopher used to be pleased rather than being offended if someone showed him he was wrong. In Meditations, Marcus wrote:

“Be prepared to change your mind if someone is at hand to put you right and guide you away from some ill-grounded opinion.”

Antoninus, the mentor to Marcus and the wisest man he knew always welcomed criticism and was not angry when somebody showed him wrong. In Meditations, Marcus wrote:

"Remember that to change your mind and follow somebody who puts you on the right course is none the less a free action; for it is your own action, carried out in accordance with your own impulse and judgement, and, indeed, your own reason."

And here we are, two millennia after Marcus Aurelius, who become angry, raged, and feared when somebody proved us wrong. Trying to avoid wrong has become our habit, which in turn become our nature.

Being wrong does no wrong; it’s a opportunity to change and change is nature’s will and we all are delighted by change.

Milan Kundera, in his book  The Unbearable Lightness of Being said, "The stupidity of people comes from having the answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”

"Not-knowing" is a skill that enables us to question everything and is the inception of great discovery. Socrates, the wisest man ever lived believed that "the disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning enables the scholar/student to examine ideas and be able to determine the validity of those ideas". The Socratic approach of questioning every behaviors (including ourselves) is the first step towards wisdom and discovery. What we find from Socrates era is just the dialogues between him and his students and disciples and his approach is always to question everything.

A friend of Socrates, once asked the Oracle at Delphi, "Is anyone wiser than Socrates?" The Oracle answered “No one.” But as far as Socrates was concerned, he was the most ignorant man in the land.

There is a passage in Plato’s Apology, where Socrates says that after discussing with someone he started thinking that:

"....I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know....."

Plato in his Republic said:

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

Epictetus once said, "It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” He can't be more true. Once we act or behave as we know everything, we start to block everything and every knowledge and experience that we could absorb. If we look at history of greatest discovery from airplanes to spacecrafts, from internet to artificial intelligence, everything started with the art of "not-knowing".

Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic and Roman Emperor wrote: “Learn to ask all sets of actions, "why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.”

Work is not only damaged by laziness. It is also damaged by exhaustion.

A tired person can keep moving for a while, but movement alone is not always progress. Fatigue reduces clarity. It shortens patience. It makes small problems feel heavier than they are. After a certain point, continuing without recovery is no longer discipline. It is mismanagement.

This is why rest should not always be treated as a break from the work. Sometimes it is part of the work.

Rest is not avoidance when it prepares you to return better. It becomes avoidance only when it turns into escape. But real recovery is different. It restores attention, steadies emotion, and gives effort a chance to become sustainable again.

The long game does not belong only to the person who can push. It also belongs to the person who knows when to reset without losing direction.

There are seasons when endurance means carrying more. There are other seasons when endurance means not breaking yourself for the sake of looking strong. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own...”

- Epictetus, Discourses

The ancient Romans has given us many wisdoms to thrive in 21st Century and among them differentiating the things we can control from the things we can't is one of the most important.

Epictetus, in Enchiridion , wrote: "Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinions, choices, desires, aversions, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control  our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, and are not our own."

I find this dichotomy of control really practical and applicable every single day in our lives. The circumstance of life is that it is very unpredictable but the one and the only way to hack and remain unharmed by any unpredictability is by breaking down things into controllable and incontrollable.

I have applied this practice many times. When I encounter any difficult circumstances or when I am overwhelmed by the circumstances, I ask myself a question, "Is this in my control?" and if the answer is "NO", then there is nothing to worry about because I can't do nothing about it and if the answer is "YES", I tend to make the choice that controls the situation; I tend to change my will and action.  (Honestly, most of the time the answer is "NO")

Unable to differentiate between these two is the source of all the anxieties, depressions and sufferings.

The only matter of concern to live a happy life is know the things that we can control. We can't control the weather, other people's opinion, our job title, death and we can't control the society around us. There is only one thing and one thing only that we are control of and that is: ourselves. Our will. Our intention.

According to Stoic Philosophy, we are control only of our own soul. So there is no point of worrying about what tomorrow will bring because tomorrow is not in our control. Likewise, there is no point of worrying about death because dying is not in our control too.  "The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have", Marcus Aurelius said. If we start separating these things, everything start becoming simpler. Once we stop letting external things controlling us, we become free.

At the end, we all end up adapting to what Viktor Frankl said in his masterpiece, "Man's Search For Meaning", "When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

We all have a choice to live two lives: One is the life of the Reason and other the life of Faith, according to Soren Kierkegaard. Philosophies has always been the way of living whether we acknowledge it or not. Every human being before being a “Human” comes up with the struggle of embracing the philosophies. In some cases, an individual chooses his/her own philosophy or the way to live a life and in most cases, somebody else does the job. (Society in most cases.)

I have been intrigued by how philosophy has shaped the world from ancient world to Early Modern to Late Modern and then to Contemporary. I think it is the only way that truly defines the meaning of human existence. If you aspire to unlock these meanings, I encourage to grab some philosophical books and give it a try. I assure you will be a different person.

Here are some of the philosophical lessons I learned from reading the philosophies. I can't of course include all the lessons here as it would be a big book. But I will try my best to include the most important ones.

1. An unexamined life is not worth living

Socrates, one of the wisest men of ancient world, in one of his dialogues said, “An examined life is not worth living.” He can’t be truer. Self-analysis is the basic of understanding ourselves and the meaning of our existence. It is the way to become wise. Wisdom, according to him comes by constantly interrogating our actions and most deeply held beliefs.

Questioning every action and held beliefs is a way to achieve wisdom and human freedom and there is no substitute to that.

1. Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward

This is also the main reason I have been reading the ancient philosophies and histories. We, no matter how wise we are, don’t understand things at proper time; we can only understand things in hindsight. We often tell if only I knew then what I knew now to many things that’s happening now. The things that are happening now has some meaning (or it might not) and we only understand it later sometime in the future. The truth is we can only comprehend what’s going on only after we have done it , and we have done a retrospect about it. I think that’s what Hegel meant when he said, “The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk.”

1. There is no such thing as happiness, but only pain and boredom

This might sound misleading, and you might say if there is no happiness, what do we pursue to? I had a same feeling when I read and came to know about the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who is considered as the messenger of Misery and a Nihilistic person. According to him what we generally consider as happiness is actually and essentially only ever negative and absolutely never positive. He says, “Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.” What he meant by this is that when we are bored, we do things to find purpose or meanings, but we never attain it. But if we attain it fortunately, we crave for more which leads to pain. We keep hanging around between pain and boredom. To him, pain and boredom are the two enemies of human happiness.

1. Boredom is root of all evil

We all have heard that money is the root of all evils. But according to Soren Kierkegaard, it’s the boredom. In his masterpiece “Either/Or”, on “Either” side, he says life is one distraction after another and the real misery or the real evil of these men is boredom. We all are the result of boredom. Human beings are born because of boredom. And this results to distractions and being a inauthentic and a hollow life. It’s like living a life as T.S. Elliot said in his poem “Burnt Norton.” He said something like this: “… We are distracted from distraction by distraction.” And this is the life of an inauthentic man.

1. Life is full of voids and nothingness

The ideology of nothingness goes to one of the most famous philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, who said that there is no objective order or structure in world except for what we give it. Those who are familiar with Nihilism will obviously understand what it means to be living in the world of nothingness. A true nihilist is the one who belief that nothing in the world has real existence and life has no meaning. Nietzsche once said, “Every belief, every considering something-true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.”

The goal of Nihilism is not to develop a pessimism or cynicism but to be aware and not fall in the false hope. The notion that the world is without meaning or purpose (Existential Nihilism) enables us to live life in our own terms not ruled by any religions or faith.

1. Remember that you are going to die

The word “memento mori” has been with us for more than 2000 years which means to remind yourself that you will die. All most all the philosophies talk about the death. Stoicism specifically is a huge admirer of this action. Marcus Aurelius once said, “Soon you will have forgotten all things and soon all things will have forgotten you.” What he meant was soon we will forget all the things happening to us because we will be dead and soon all those people who have done good or bad to us will also die and they will forget us. So, what is the point of being sad, or mean to the people?

The image of human condition is that we all are faced with an immediate death or postponed death. Marcus said, “Death smiles at us all, but all a man can do is smile back.” “Think of yourself as dead” He said, “You have lived your life. Now take what is left and live it properly.” Before going to bed, always remind yourself that today was your last day to live. You might not wake up alive tomorrow. And if you did then consider that as a bonus life. Everything onwards will change and you will live the life of courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance.

1. Ask yourself “Who you truly are?”

I bet we all define ourselves by our passion, our experience, our devotions, our visions and our goals. But is that a “true you”? When you pull away all the new flavors, all the new tastes, all the new experiences, all the places you might go to, all the things you might do and achieve. When you take away all these diversions and distractions, what are you? What are you up to? Are you happy? If you are, why don’t you just stay in a room. And you are not, why do you deceive yourself by constantly giving new flavors and tastes and experiences. One of the great minds of 17th century, Blaise Pascal, in his book, Pensées wrote you go after all these new flavors and new tastes and experiences because your life is full of nothing, and you do your best not to let yourself know that.  He added, “We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”

20th Century German Philosopher, Martin Heidegger in his book "Being and Time" argues that "Being" is not the being we know about. To him, we all are lying to ourselves. We delude ourselves. we get used to with the little things that really don't matter to us and ignore our true existence. We are thrown to the world and we are not of our own making (Facticity). We appropriate to the world to our own purpose which he called Existentiality. We fall in the trap of living the inauthentic life of "They". (society and other people in most cases) which he called Fallenness.

1. “Wu wei” – Actionless action

It is the Chinese philosophy which means non-action. I came up with this from the book “Tao Te Ching” written by Laozi. This is a book I have read many times and find new meaning in my every read. This idea of doing nothing might sound something like an intellectual terrorism but it’s not. When you stop and introspect about all the things happening in your life the idea of non-action makes a lot of sense. Basically, it means doing nothing and going with the flow. Laozi once said, “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” And it’s powerful.

Don’t get me wrong here. It does not mean acting nothing, but it means "effortless action” or “actionless action”.

These are some of the lessons I learned from the philosophical books. Yes, you are true you can’t just stand with one philosophy. Philosophy is like a move in a chess game. There is no single best philosophy to adore just like there is no single best move in chess. You use a philosophy based on the move of next person and the situation of the game. But remind yourself the words of Alexander Hamilton, “If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.” And incase you don't understand the philosophy you should let it stay as it is and keep quite, just like Ludwig Wittgenstein as he said in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

The world we see is not the world we want to see but it's the way we are shaped to see. From Ancient world to Modern and then to Contemporary, philosophies has been the guiding principles for the life. However, from Socrates to Machiavelli and to Nietzsche, each of their philosophies contradicts each others.

Platonism defines about the ethics and morality as Plato in Republic implied “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” Stoicism talks about the endurance and acceptance of the fate and living in accordance with the nature as Marcus Aurelius says, "Objective judgement, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance, now at this very moment -  all of the external events. That's all we need." There are lots of such "-isms" like the Nihilism highlighted by Friedrich Nietzsche, the Cynicism, the Dualism, the Idealism, the Empiricism, the Rationalism. But which "ism" should we practice and what makes the most sense in the current world.

To see the world as truly as it's, we need to really understand who we truly are as a Human Being ( with Capital B) as implied by Martin Heidegger in his book Being and Time. The widely popular philosophies does not come to the common point creating a distortions in the ideologies.

This article will provide some sort of solutions when it comes to embodying the ideologies in the present world or the contemporary world. Ever since the Pre-Platonic period, the guiding principles has always been beneficial not only for Politics and Science but also for living the life as an individual. All the philosophers that came out after that tried to think and re-think and postulated their opinions about morality, living, being and virtue and vice.

Although, there are many philosophies that contradicts each other and that leads to vice and destructions, there are some important ideologies that might be valuable to embrace to and that teaches us to be true moral Human Being. In my opinion, Stoicism sits on the top of everything as it teaches the way to live a virtuous life. Know more about Stoicism Here.

Next comes the Nihilism which superficially means the ideology of nothing. It tells us that life has no meaning. And since people keep on trying to find meaning in their life, they struggle with all those human problems like anxiety, depression, apathy, and sufferings. A true Nihilist believes in nothing, have no purpose or no hope but perhaps an impulse to destroy everything. It might sound like pessimism, but it's not.

Friedrich Nietzsche said:

Every belief, every considering something- true is necessarily false because there is simply no true world.

This ideology of nothing gives us the answer of everything. It solves the current problems of human suffering. When we believe in nothing, we are attached to nothing and since "attachment" is the source of human suffering, the human suffering ends.

These two philosophies solves most of the human problems but I could be mistaken since the readers might be looking for or struggling with something that is more precise and substantial.

For most of our lives, we are fighting something. Fighting circumstances. Fighting perception. Fighting the past. Fighting expectations. Fighting ourselves. We call it ambition, control, improvement, defense. But beneath it, there is tension.

The world does not exhaust us as much as our resistance to it. Events happen once. The mind argues repeatedly. We replay conversations. We rewrite outcomes. We demand different timelines. And in doing so, we carry what is already finished.

There is a moment: quiet, almost invisible when fighting becomes unnecessary. Not because everything is solved, but because nothing needs to be forced. You stop proving. You stop defending. You stop demanding that reality adjust to preference.

Letting go is not surrender to weakness. It is surrender to truth. What has happened has happened. What is uncertain will remain uncertain. What is outside your control does not require your struggle. When you stop fighting what is, energy returns. And in that return, there is stillness.

Inner freedom is not dramatic. It is calm. It is the absence of argument with existence. When resistance ends, nothing magical happens. The world stays the same. But you are no longer at war with it.

And that is enough.