The sun has gone down, and there is a cool breeze blowing on my body, taking away the heat of the day. As the cool breeze blows, the whole world seems to come alive all of a sudden. The cicadas on the trees stopped chirping, and dragonflies flew in the dusk. Several bats emerged from nowhere and flew around.
Wang Xiaolie raised his head and looked at the world, suddenly feeling strange. He ordered the soldiers to get the wine and food, put them under the ginkgo tree, and drank quietly by himself. In this night, drinking and thinking.
When we are children and learn a little knowledge from school, adults, and nature, we feel that we suddenly know what the world is like. After learning some ideas from books and learned people, I feel that I now know how people should live and how the world should be governed.
As people grow up, some people will understand how ridiculous and naive children's ideas are. Some people always maintain the innocence of children and think the world is so simple. The world is simple, and people are also simple. Living happily is natural.
And when they reached the age of eight, they sat under the tree at the entrance of the village and quietly watched the sun rise and set. In their eyes, this world seems so strange that they can look at it until they die. If someone asks them what the world is like, they will say that the world is actually very simple. The so-called complexity is just the complexity of human beings.
Is the world simple or complex? In fact, it doesn’t matter whether the world is simple or complex, the world is what it is. Can people change the world? Of course. People themselves are part of the world. If they change themselves, they change the world. Is human change important or not to the world? It should be said that it is probably unimportant.
After drinking a glass of wine, Wang Xiaolie sighed. Recently, I always like to sigh, because Wang Xiaolie discovered that even after traveling through thousands of years, there is actually no way to change the world all at once. Is there any way? Of course there is. However, it is very difficult to recognize this method and actually implement it. It is even said that it is not simpler than not knowing such a method.
Compared to this world, this world, sometimes human beings are really like children. You feel that you already know a lot. The laws of this world are very simple, and the world is also very simple in your eyes. If you think about it carefully like an adult, you will realize how little you know. Only when you truly mature and can extend your knowledge and search for the end of knowledge will you discover the insignificance of human beings and the infinity of the world.
Someone often told a joke in my previous life. On a number line, if you pick a point, the probability of getting a rational number is zero, and the probability of getting an irrational number is one. In mathematical terms, you will never get a rational number, you will always get an irrational number. This is not a quibble, this is the conclusion of mathematics. But for human common sense, this conclusion is a bit too incredible.
Things in this world are often like this. It is actually impossible to write an irrational number in a form that humans can understand. No matter how it is taken on the number line, it will always be close to this number that cannot be confirmed with common sense.
A lot of knowledge is like this. If you beat a foot, you will get half of it in a day, and it will be inexhaustible for eternity. This sentence in Zhuangzi contains philosophy, and sometimes later generations give it a high evaluation. But if you don’t consider the philosophy, just say what this sentence says. Will it last forever? Will not. Because the hammer is composed of matter, and matter is composed of atoms, or smaller units, there are always numbers of the smallest units, and there will always be a time when they are exhausted. This is related to whether the world is continuous or quantized. Zhuangzi's words obviously believe that the world is continuous, but the world is quantized. How to take half of the day? To get half, you need to know the exact two ends. Even if matter is quantized, it is actually impossible to accurately determine the two ends. If the two ends cannot be accurately determined, the midpoint cannot be correct, so it can only be half of the day. Even if the two ends are determined, can the real middle be found? It's actually impossible. The reason is similar to what I said before that it is never possible to get rational numbers on the number line.
Most of the knowledge we can know, whether it is about nature, people, or society, is like this. It seems reasonable, but in fact it doesn't make sense if it really diverges and extends. So does knowledge make sense? There are still some. This is the degree.
To some extent, and under certain conditions, this is true. If it exceeds the limit, or the conditions are not met, this principle is incorrect. This sentence may seem like nonsense, but in fact, the vast majority of people do not realize this and cannot understand it.
Degree is our observation of the world, a description based on our observation. This is objective and relevant to people. It is in line with people’s understanding and the reality of the world. For example, this is red, that is white, this is hard, that is soft. Degrees have no clear boundaries. Once boundaries are set, they are no longer degrees. The boundaries cannot actually be determined.
In the process of understanding the natural world, this may not be so important. To a certain extent, human beings’ research on the natural world does not care so much about whether it is absolutely correct, but rather about being relatively correct. But it is very important to have a clear understanding of human beings and society.
In my previous life, I had to learn a lot of political, economic, geographical, and historical knowledge when I went to school. Especially in China, it is sometimes called dragon slaying by some people. Is this knowledge correct? yes. But it must be noted that this correctness is limited and conditional, rather than a truly universal truth. If you want to use the knowledge you have learned, you must clearly understand where the degree is in the previous life and where the degree is in this world. If not clear, these correct principles can sometimes become life-threatening poison.
It is often said that the economic base determines the superstructure. From the perspective of history and from the perspective of human civilization as a whole, this is correct. But specific to a certain point, in a certain real society, this sentence is almost always incorrect. If the superstructure consciously adapts itself to the economic base and continuously reforms as the economic base changes, the country will be stable, develop, and society will prosper. If we do not reform ourselves, as the economic base changes, the superstructure will become increasingly unstable.
This is the underlying logic of reform. Rather than carrying out reforms because we are lagging behind now, we need to learn from advanced countries and learn from other people's experiences. Although the country says that reform is underway, many people still don’t understand why.
In the eyes of many people, it is correct that the economic base determines the superstructure. So what kind of economic base there is, there will be what kind of superstructure. They think this is self-evident, and whoever does not admit it has problems with his knowledge and vision. But I don’t know that the correctness of this sentence is not based on the fact that the real world is like this. In the real world, whether ancient or modern, this statement is not consistent with the facts.
We say that the world advances in waves and spirals. In the political, economic, and social fields, this is indeed the case. However, when moving forward in a wave-like manner, there is also whether the difference between the wave peaks and the wave troughs is large, and whether the frequency is high or low. The same goes for upward spirals. The core reason why this sentence is correct is actually progress and rise, which shows that human society does not stand still, but moves forward. But the impact on human beings is mostly inspiring at low peaks. Where there are low peaks, there are highs.
Why is this so? The theory of contradiction is an explanation, but it is not complete. Another explanation is that the rules we find are correct and have their own scope and degree. And with development, reality will sooner or later exceed the previous degree. This is dynamic, not static. It’s not about being stable for ten years, with nothing changing, and then nothing changes after ten years.
To a certain extent, it is similar to the fact that we know that there must be rational numbers on the number line, but when we actually take them, we must get irrational numbers. Most of the truths we know, no matter how correct, actually do not exist in reality. If you follow the rules rigidly, you will only make mistakes. Teachers have criticized bookism, which is similar to this.
Only by understanding its spirit, drawing on its experience, and combining it with practice can we find a real way out. The principles learned in previous lives guide our world as it should be, not as it will be.
Logically speaking, this world is so simple. After hearing these principles, no matter who they are, they can talk eloquently, and they can also laugh at the people doing things from time to time. This is wrong, and that is wrong. It is necessary to combine the theory with the reality of the world. The world is very complicated. Logically it should be like this, but it happens to be like that. This was obviously the right thing to do, but it backfired.
Wang Xiaolie thought that he had dug a river in this world, and he should be able to rush down and create a big river. As a result, the river hit the embankment and had no way out. This is when you really test yourself. With this small river, can we break open the dam in front and create a big river rushing down?
