On the 26th of February, 2023 something weird happened. I messed with some drug addict kids and things escalated into an ugly street fight pretty quickly. It ended up making me so anxious that I ended up writing an entire book in 19 days. It took pretty less time than an average book takes because I used Chat GPT.
Chat GPT was a fairly new tool back then. I used it for proofreading and structuring of the sentences and this saved a lot of time. I can still see minor mistakes in the book. However, I decided not to correct it as I wanted it to have traces of human imperfections. You can find traces of anxiety in this book yet I won’t edit. I want to let it be the epitome of imperfection because that was the phase of life when I was suffering from imposter syndrome. Still, I am confident that my book is worth a read. You can get it on Amazon.
Nonetheless, let’s go through the summary of the book, chapter-wise:
Lesson 1: Evolution of Human Emotion
This chapter deals with the history of emotions and how we humans end up developing complex emotions. A lot of complex emotions have evolved recently. The emotional state such as perplexion and the feelings one gets by involving in digital romance is pretty new.
Lesson 2: Decoding Human Ego
In this chapter, I tried to explain why Adam was superior to Satan by explaining the idea of Ubermensch. This lesson is written through the lenses of Freud and Nietzsche. This chapter deals with the Freudian concept of Id, ego, and superego, the Jungian concept of Ego death, and similar topics.
Lesson 3: Freedom Paradox
Freedom is an illusion and I have tried explaining this idea by narrating about the way the debt trap works. I have also introduced the concept of hedonism to state that one gets trapped in modern slavery by chasing pleasure in life.
Lesson 4: Metamorphosis of the Psyche
The entire chapter is inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of metamorphosis. I tried to explain the concept by giving a real-life example of Phoolan Devi, an Indian Bandit who rebelled to such an extent that she ended up killing everyone who raped her. I have tried to explain how she was in a lion stage of metamorphosis when she started taking revenge.
Lesson 5: The Dark Hallways in the Mind
This chapter deals with the concept of Shadow as stated by famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. I have tried explaining how we have a lot of dark traits chained inside our subconscious mind, waiting for the right trigger to get unchained.
Lesson 6: Wrong turns in mind
This chapter deals with the concept of coherence between intentions and actions. I have tried to explain that how this coherence helps us in forging a healthy sense of self. I have also explained why some people end up getting into the darker alley of their minds.
Lesson 7: The Monster Inside Us
This chapter deals with the darker aspects of life. I have tried to explain the relationship between collective identity and superego. The superego is the chain that keeps the monster in check. Sometimes this chain breaks and the person turns into Nietzsche’s lion.
Lesson 8: The Idea of Right and Wrong
This chapter deals with our cognitive biases and the subjectivity of right and wrong. I have tried explaining how what is deemed to be right now, could be wrong in future by the society. I have given some examples to support my point.
Lesson 9: The individual and collective identity
This chapter deals with the roles that we end up playing in this world. I have tried to explain it by the idea of archetypes such as anima, animus, persona, and shadow. I have tried to explain how we are shaped by our circumstances.
Lesson 10: Equality Hoax
This lesson deals with the shallowness of equality and how the fake sense of equality is dangerous for us. I have given the example of nepotism and the old age case system in India to demonstrate this hoax. I have tried explaining how some ethnic groups are prevented from being equal. Psychology originates from the urge to dominate that is inherited in our genes.
Lesson 11: Order and Chaos
This chapter deals with the concept of the death of order and the birth of chaos. In this chapter, I have tried to explain how order and chaos happen at individual and collective levels.
Lesson 12: Busting of belief systems
This chapter deals with the disturbance in the superego that is caused when a belief system is challenged. I have given a real-life example that I encountered in my life. I know a religious woman, who ended up doubting her religion.
Lesson 13: Into the episode of existential crisis
An existential crisis is a phase when one fails to understand why he/she is living. When a person gets into an existential crisis, it becomes a challenge to stay sane. Here, the person is expected to find a better and deeper meaning in life.
Lesson 14: The purposelessness of life’s purpose
This lesson deals with the shallowness of the purpose we have in our life. At times, all our purposes can become purposeless, and there carving out new purposes becomes a task. After some time, even this new purpose becomes purposeless and this continues. I have tried explaining this phenomenon in this chapter.
Lesson 15: The Quest for Pleasure
This chapter touches an important question: Why not to seek pleasure all the time when one has to die! The chapter is backed up by the case study of a girl who got addicted to cocaine. This chapter also states why we are addicted to our comfort zone.
Lesson 16: The world beyond material perception
This chapter deals with an important question: What do we experience? The world or its image inside our head! This chapter deals with the concept of transcendental idealism by Immanuel Kant.
Lesson 17: Into an episode of nihilism
This chapter explains the idea of staying meaningless in life and discarding social norms. This chapter is backed up by a story of a guy who went into the habit of drugs.
Lesson 18: Into an Episode of Absurdism
Well, this is my own story.
Lesson 19: The Crux of Life
This chapter is about the idea of not taking life seriously as it is fragile.
Lesson 20: The art of not taking life seriously
This chapter is very short and it tells why our existence is very fragile. In this chapter, I have tried to justify the existence of the absurdist state. Absurdism is an extreme state of existence.