r/Philosophy_India

I’ve consumed a lot of content over the years — philosophy, spirituality, psychology, YouTube, books, podcasts, conversations, Reddit, etc.
I’ve come across many ideas that sounded profound and made complete sense in the moment. But surprisingly, very few have actually stayed with me. Most eventually faded away, even if I initially thought, “This is absolutely true.”
There are two ideas, however, that I’ve carried with me for years.
Both came from Premjeet Sirohi of Universal Life Management (ULM).
The first is the idea that whatever we do in life, ultimately we’re seeking happiness.
The second is that human relationships involve an exchange of things that each person values. It doesn’t necessarily mean material things — it could be love, companionship, security, affection, support, knowledge, etc. If there is nothing of value being exchanged between two people anymore, the relationship eventually becomes difficult to sustain.
I don’t necessarily claim that these are universal truths. But I’ve found these two perspectives surprisingly useful because whenever I examine my own life or observe people around me, I keep coming back to them.
What interests me more is why these ideas stayed with me when so many other supposedly profound ideas didn’t.
So I’d like to ask:
What is one philosophical idea, perspective or principle that you’ve encountered that has genuinely stayed with you for years?
Not necessarily something you agree with intellectually — something that actually changed the way you see life or people.
And what made it stick for you?

I think that The Ajivikas were right in their philosophical position.

Modern day science might agree with their hard deterministic stance.

As far as we know up until now, the brain is not truly independent in its approach to make choices and it takes the decision before we even get consciously aware of that decision.

Whatever we do, it's all dependent on multiple factors, majority of which are not in our control, like our upbringing, our family, our genetics, our environment, our education, our place of birth, our culture, our exposure to the said environments and ideas etc.

We can't say that free will exists because humans are not truly free in their ability to make a choice.

Every choice is bound by a long chain of actions going far back and everything we do or think can be traced back to this chain.

Ajivikas used to say that there is no free will and everything is determined by fate or Niyati, just like a ball of string will only unfold and open up as much as the length of the string allows it.

Their fatalistic position might be even seen in a negative light, even in their times.

For example, when even The Buddha used to get angry at the mention of Makkhali Gosala, who was the major teacher of this philosophy of Ajivikas.

And it might be seen negatively even in this age.

But from whatever we know until now, their position might have been the correct one.

So all in all, I think that the Ajivikas were right to call human lives and the world as fatalistic or hard deterministic.