When I was almost 30 years old, I realized that I had never been taught to respect myself.
Committing suicide and embracing suffering through books, television, and life, the constant repetition over the course of decades has marked me with an indelible ideological steel seal.
Entertainment is a plaything, and it is shameful.
Happiness is not serious and shameful.
It is shameful to have a need that is not strong.
If there is something that cannot be done, it must be not to work hard, and it is shameful not to work hard
I have lived under this kind of thinking for nearly thirty years, and it is undeniable that it has also brought a lot of skills and material gains.
But when I realized these habits of mine, I felt nauseous, weak, and wanted to cry, and I found that most of the people around me were like this, working hard, but there was great anxiety, and it was difficult to withdraw.
Man becomes a tool to an end, not an end in itself.
Because the social culture and values are particularly single, everyone follows almost the same path in life, whether it is their own thoughts, forced by their parents, or forced by society, etc. From the moment everyone learned to walk, they all ran desperately along the same track, for fear of losing at the starting line and falling behind.
Everyone's happiness is better than the comparison with others, the goal of life and the standard of success is to see who can walk in front of this runway, the person in front is the winner in life, and the person behind is the loser.
When I watched the heroism of foreigners on the Internet, there were always some comments that made people laugh and cry: "There is a reason why foreign populations are sparse." Take the United States, for example, this vast land is vast and abundant, and all kinds of resources are staggeringly rich. Not to mention self-sufficiency in oil, natural gas, grain, etc., there is still room for export. Its arable land is several times larger than that of China; There are several times as many places to live in China. Moreover, immigration policies are staggeringly relaxed, and illegal immigrants are mostly turned a blind eye. The United States has used almost all the methods you can imagine to increase its population, recruiting talented people externally, and having huge room for development internally. Don't forget, the United States and China are about the same size, with more than 9 million square kilometers of land.
But if you look at the population, China has 1.4 billion and the United States has 3600 million, why is the population so small in the United States in such a suitable place for human survival? Moreover, it has been more than 200 years since the founding of the United States, even if the population was small at the beginning, why not give birth in hundreds of years? Not only the United States, but also Europe, which is also the most cultivable cultural circle, has a lot of arable area, but it has always been vast and sparsely populated. Compared with China, China's population of more than 500 million in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China doubled in a few decades, and this is still under the suppression of family planning.
Because of the two paths of tiredness and death, Europeans and Americans, that is, the ** religious cultural circle, chose the road of death, and East Asians, that is, the Confucian cultural circle, chose to be tired.
Even the leading position of European and American countries in scientific and technological innovation is closely related to this concept. We often only see the brilliance of success, but ignore the bitterness behind the countless failures. Behind every successful innovation lies the tragic stories of countless families that have gone bankrupt due to failure and even ended up on the streets. Europeans and Americans are convinced that this is the natural law of natural selection. They uphold one"Come under my door and fend for yourself"attitude, survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest. Those who can successfully survive are your creation; And those who unfortunately fall can only be said to be your own fate. Here, everything depends on the individual's ability and effort.
From a decreasing point of view, there are only two ways for a system to decline: to expand outwards or to shrink inward. Just like a balloon, if you want to make it smaller, you either blow outward to make the balloon bigger, and then cut off the excess; Either the gas inside the balloon will be expelled directly. The Europeans and Americans adopted the first strategy in the era of maritime colonization, which was to achieve the goal of regression through expansion. Now, Europe and the United States, although their populations are small, are able to stay relaxed thanks to their second strategy: natural decline through contraction. This is the reason why the population of Europe and the United States is small, but there is no need to overwork.
Everything else is a trivial matter, on the surface, the Europeans went out to colonize and dig the first pot of gold, but China chose to close the sea at the same time, causing a disconnection with the world, in fact, it is not the essential reason at all. If you've ever been in a fishermen's area, you know that going to sea is a long-term and risky thing, and often you don't hear from you for a few months. Not to mention the round-the-world voyage that didn't even have a route back then. There are countless people who have died on the way to explore new routes. The Europeans were built on human lives around the world.
This matter is unreliable in the eyes of the Chinese, the risk is too great, the luck is good for a few lifetimes, glory and wealth, bad luck not to mention the next life, this life will be explained. As a Chinese, what would you choose? It is to continue to endure the pressure of the landlords and officials, accumulate a little bit of assets every year, and expect to save a few acres of thin land after a few lifetimes, and from then on the class will leap to the level of yeoman farmers (this is a path that can be expected with great certainty). Or do you choose to go to sea and bear 70% of the death price, to fight to get rich overnight, and seek wealth and danger?
The same logic is still the same, why don't domestic Internet companies strive to innovate like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google? Like Google's deepmind, it has burned Google's money for more than ten years. Domestic Tencent is also making no less money, why not invest in R&D? Why risk it because I can make money lying down? Unless I can't survive anymore. So why don't Americans think so? Because that's what other people's culture is. They don't care how much money they make, and the adventurous spirit is engraved in their genes for generations.
Eastern civilization and Western civilization, now look at the two must die one, if the Eastern civilization wins, that is, the Europeans and Americans rely on piling human lives and resources to explore the road by the Chinese picked the fruit, just like the code farmers for the company to get up early and work overtime to make things by the boss to make money, such as many projects now are discovered by the Americans first and then commercialized in the hands of the Chinese, such as drones, stealth machines, smartphones are the first ideas proposed by the Americans, and Japan's semiconductor cars were also this model. If Western civilization wins, it will be that the East Asian civilization circle will become an experimental field for innovation by Europeans and Americans, similar to India now becoming a guinea pig for the experimental drugs of European and American pharmaceutical companies, and all Indian elites have been absorbed by Europe and the United States.
Some people say that Japan and South Korea are not tired, and there is no China roll, and this is an issue that cannot be debated to produce results.
I find that most people's lives are pathetic. Growing up, I was instilled with the idea that there must be some kind of correct way of life. And it's not all about being directly indoctrinated and yelled at in your ears, what do you have to live. In many cases, it is you who take the initiative to construct it after you have developed the habit of thinking. Exposed to the outside world, the information from the outside world allows you to piece together a certain life paradigm and life template by yourself little by little. The Weibo, Moments, and Douyin that you brush every day, what you hear your friends talk about, and what you have heard in the past. are all forming the paradigm of life in your mind.
This is a baseline, an average, a mold. Once it deviates from this mold, it is defective, it is garbage, and it is waste. In psychology, this can be called "should be the self".
The gap between the actual self and the supposed self is painful.
Our whole lives seem to be about trying desperately to live a certain life paradigm, then maintain it for a while, and then die.
You should not be biased, you should study well, you should go to a good university, you should study a major that makes money, you should find a stable job, you should have a reliable partner, you should have sincere love, you should have the words and deeds of an adult, you should be down-to-earth and steady like an adult, you should be optimistic and social.
You should work hard to buy a house, you should have children, and you should go to a good school.
You should exercise, you should go out more, you should drink and watch football with your brothers and friends, and you should be optimistic, cheerful, and strong, masculine. It should be like a man, you can both suit and leather shoes, and you can be basketball rock fashion and funny.
Like a man, like a woman, like an adult, like a qualified person. There are too many "right" ways to live.
Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, told us the answer a long time ago: rats live in the toilet, no matter how hard they try, they can't eat enough and are frightened. And the rats in the granary can eat their stomachs calmly.
This illustrates the role of the platform, the role of resources. In a place with more overall resources, you can live well without working too hard, and in a place with few resources, it is difficult to live well no matter how hard you work and roll again.
To have a stable job, to have love, to have a social network, to have a mature character, to have a healthy spare time, to be decent, to struggle, to be sunny, to see the future. We have been living under the judgment of the imaginary other, actively or passively constructing a paradigm of life template that should be achieved.
And the heart is actually empty.
The author of "Those Things in the Ming Dynasty" wrote such a sentence at the end of the book: There is only one success, and you can live life in your own way.
But in real life, there are really few people who really agree with this sentence and practice it. The vast majority of East Asians are crammed into the same track, and the purpose of this track is one: to be better than the people around them.
I believe that many people have been educated by their parents like this: you look at how many scores others score, and then look at you; You don't want to eat, you don't want to wear, you want to compare; Others can take the first test, why can't you ......
Although we have been saying that man can only be an end and not a means, in fact, it is very common for us to regard man as a means, that is, a "tool", as can be seen from a few words that can be seen from time to time.
When everything is silent, when all voices are gone.
You may find that all relationships have been removed, and all the things that want to live for others should be. What exactly do you want. Is there anything you alone that you don't need to prove to anyone and can't help but want to do?
What do you like to eat? What do you like to do?
The most terrible thing is that once this kind of spiritual internal friction is formed, it is difficult to get rid of it, and the long-term suffering education directly fuels the utilitarian thinking, and whether or not to do a thing depends on whether there is "benefit" in this thing, and all of the above finally evolves into a paradoxical phenomenon. All kinds of efforts made in the pursuit of happiness and happiness make people unable to be happy.
All tiredness is because our hearts are empty. Was stuffed into too much should.
And there's not much left: I want to.
Epilogue: In a person's life, there are very few people who really care about you, don't expect others to care about you very seriously, even if you appreciate you very much, they often ignore you for various reasons, this is the weakness of human nature.
50% of the time is asking for others, and the other 50% is about rebelling against other people's demands. Is it possible to leave 1% for freedom?
2024.2.24. Encourage everyone.