1. The Ideal World
When I was a child, my worldview was:
Heaven and earth have a right way. People are good or evil, and the good are rewarded, the evil punished. The net of heaven has wide meshes, but nothing slips through.
This is the ideal civilized world that everyone hopes for. The ideals of the Legalists, the doctrines of religion — all of them advocate this spirit.
2. The Distorted World
When I grew a little older, I found:
Heaven and earth have a right way, and people are good or evil — but good people may not live long, and bad people may live very comfortably, and there is nothing you can do about it.
This is reality. Society is not perfect; it does not reward or punish people by good and evil. The weaving of power, interest, and private desire erodes the reliability of public authority.
3. The Chaotic World
Later, when I heard “pitiable people must have hateful sides; hateful people must have pitiable sides,” I began to feel vaguely: heaven and earth may have a right way, but people mostly act from constraint. The good are not wholly good, the evil not wholly evil; good and evil are hard to judge. What truly overturned this view was a change of angle: good might be evil — like the old man who lost his horse; who knows whether it is fortune or misfortune? Honestly, the world became a tangled place at this point, because there was no standard left. To me the world was no longer black and white; many gray zones had appeared. If things could be ambiguous in this territory, then they could be defined at will. The change in worldview directly collapsed my values. I could not help asking:
If heaven and earth have no right way, and good and evil have no standard — if the good are not necessarily rewarded and the evil not necessarily punished — how can people honor the good, spurn the evil, respect the worthy, and despise the unworthy?
4. The Cold World
Honestly, it may be discouraging to say, but it has to be said: there is no such thing as the right way of heaven and earth. Heaven and earth are not kind; they treat all things as straw dogs. What does that mean? Heaven and earth have no preferences. They will not spare you from lightning because you are a good person standing on a rooftop holding an iron rod; nor will they have a bad person hit by a car the moment he goes shopping. If there is a way of heaven, this is it: it does not exist for a Yao, nor perish for a Jie. Heaven and earth have no likes or dislikes, no partiality, no leaning, no concept of value. If my values had broken into pieces the moment I learned that good and evil cannot be told apart, now they were ground to dust. Because this world teaches you that your existence is merely existence, with no meaning — let alone any meaning of life to pursue. There is no true meaning of life, because meaning is assigned by people themselves; asking what the meaning of life is, is itself a false question.
5. Our World
Is that the end of it? This world teaches me that I merely exist — live, then die. Does life have a purpose, then? We know people are driven by two things: survival and reproduction — appetite for food and sex is nature. Beyond these two, I believe:
Life has only one purpose, and it points at oneself: a better experience of life. Life means spending a lifetime exploring its content and its extension.
Live, and live with quality. As for what counts as a better experience, opinions differ. Steve Jobs, out of his own passion, led the world into the mobile internet era and created beautiful products; society rewarded him with fame and wealth — that was a successful life. Xu Xiake of the Ming dynasty spent his life walking through famous mountains and great rivers, purely out of personal love, with neither fame nor profit in his time — that was also a successful life. So in this world, after securing food and warmth, the most important thing is to find what you love. Whether you embrace the complexity of society or give your heart to mountains and waters is decided by that love. What you love can be a great cause, vast as the galaxy; it can also be an extremely personal thing — it doesn’t matter if it is small as dust. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t give up.
As for kindness — that is a choice.
Written at home in Xinghua; an old draft.