Existential questions have the power to freeze up the strongest individual, shake the heart of the most perverse, and intimidate the most intrepid souls who think they know themselves inside out. The most fearsome question of all, “Who am I?” is a question many avoid because the answer may end up spooking you. Knowing oneself is not easy, it is a rough road to take and the scenery is not pretty, but those who arrive to the final destination will find inner peace.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche mulled this question throughout his whole life and he believed that the inner conflict and difficulties one faces in life enables people to embark on this journey of self-knowledge. In his essay, “Schopenhauer as Educator,” Nietzsche exposes the difficulties, virtues, and advantages of self-knowledge and the dangers of monotony that people fall prey to.
We can be banal and vile; we can try to join forces for causes we believe in, and we can pretend to be indifferent of the world that surrounds us, but one thing we cannot deny is the inner and outer struggles and fear we all live through. These attitudes we embrace on a daily basis serve as a smokescreen and a defense, so we don’t have to face the dark, sinuous road ahead. If you are brave, then you’ll be capable of walking through this path and overcoming each stage, insecurity, and question life may throw your way.
Here’s some advice that Nietzsche gives us so we can embark on this journey of self-discovery.
“Any human being who does not wish to be part of the masses need only stop making things easy for himself. Let him follow his conscience, which calls out to him: “Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you.”
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
“Main thought! The individual himself is a fallacy. Everything which happens in us is in itself something else which we do not know. ‘The individual’ is merely a sum of conscious feelings and judgments and misconceptions, a belief, a piece of the true life system or many pieces thought together and spun together, a ‘unity’, that doesn’t hold together. We are buds on a single tree—what do we know about what can become of us from the interests of the tree! But we have a consciousness as though we would and should be everything, a phantasy of ‘I’ and all ‘not I.’ Stop feeling oneself as this phantastic ego! Learn gradually to discard the supposed individual! Discover the fallacies of the ego! Recognize egoism as fallacy! The opposite is not to be understood as altruism! This would be love of other supposed individuals! No! Get beyond ‘myself’ and ‘yourself’! Experience cosmically!”
“. . . It seems to me that a human being with the very best of intentions can do immeasurable harm, if he is immodest enough to wish to profit those whose spirit and will are concealed from him. . . .”
“Pity is the practice of nihilism. To repeat: this depressive and contagious instinct crosses those instincts which aim at the preservation of life and at the enhancement of its value. It multiplies misery and conserves all that is miserable, and is thus a prime instrument of the advancement of decadence: pity persuades men to nothingness!”
“The decrease in instincts which are hostile and arouse mistrust—and that is all our ‘progress’ amounts to—represents but one of the consequences attending the general decrease in vitality: it requires a hundred times more trouble and caution to make so conditional and late an existence prevail. Hence each helps the other; hence everyone is to a certain extent sick, and everyone is a nurse for the sick. And that is called ‘virtue.’ Among men who still knew life differently—fuller, more squandering, more overflowing—it would have been called by another name: ‘cowardice’ perhaps, ‘wretchedness,’ ‘old ladies’ morality.’”
“Self-interest is worth as much as the person who has it: it can be worth a great deal, and it can be unworthy and contemptible. Every individual may be scrutinized to see whether he represents the ascending or the descending line of life. Having made that decision, one has a canon for the worth of his self-interest. If he represents the ascending line, then his worth is indeed extraordinary―and for the sake of life as a whole, which takes a step farther through him, the care for his preservation and for the creation of the best conditions for him may even be extreme.”
“The means by which Julius Caesar defended himself against sickliness and headaches: tremendous marches, the most frugal way of life, uninterrupted sojourn in the open air, continuous exertion—these are, in general, the universal rules of preservation and protection against the extreme vulnerability of that subtle machine, working under the highest pressure, which we call genius.”
