Beyond Human  (Paperback, Pratyush Pandey)

Some of the very smartest people I know are also the most pessimistic people I know. Those given to self-reflection - among whom I include myself - often gravitate towards cynicism. We often justify it - sometimes even pretending to revel in it. "That's the price you pay for being smart". "I wish I could be stupid enough to be happy." "Intelligence and pessimism are correlated." (You could also find a correlation between the rate of growth of your nails and the rate at which the sea level is rising). I told myself some of these things to feel better - but I didn't really feel much better. Cynicism can also breed mediocrity - a lot of potential goes to waste because many smart people just don't care, and don't want to try harder. In just the same way, mediocrity can breed cynicism. If you can't seem to achieve anything, you might cope and simply give up - a case of sour grapes. This isn't an easy battle to overcome by any means. And victory isn't permanent - it's so easy to slip back into your old ways if you're not careful, and if you stop living consciously. And we all slip sometimes. Success doesn't mean not slipping at all. It's more about quickly you get back on your feet, and how you learn to avoid such slips in the future. That's why consciousness and introspection are your key weapons in this journey. This book is about some of the ideas I've garnered over the years from a whole range of sources as well as others I've thought about myself. A lot of these are drawn from Stoicism, Existentialism, Psychology and Economics, and above all, Friedrich Nietzsche's writings. But you don't need to be familiar with these before you read because there's no dense theory or philosophizing here. What I've done is put all these thoughts in one place, simplify them so that you can relate them to your life, and in some cases, build on them. It's up to you what you do with these ideas and whether you want to make use of them