The More Developed the Society, the More Wearied the Human Heart

I was born in an ordinary, clan-based village in eastern Hubei. My childhood was happy. I and my childhood friends played hide-and-seek among the haystacks, caught fish and frogs in the fields, climbed trees to rob birds' nests, gathered wild fruits and vegetables, and stole the sugarcane and melons grown by the villagers. Though China was very poor then, people's food and clothing were secured, so although everyone worked hard physically, they did not carry the mental pressure people bear today.

Now I live in Beijing and deeply tire of going out to socialize, because every time I attend a dinner gathering with more than three people, all kinds of competition and showing off kick in; everyone wants others to think they are impressive. With all respect, from a psychological point of view, this anxious need to perform reflects nothing but the deep-seated inferiority and anxiety within everyone. At gatherings of more than three, I now mostly respond with silence; over time, no one invites me to dinners of more than three anymore, because I am the king of killing the mood.

I am not an autistic person. Face to face with any single individual, I can talk at length, wittily and with substance, but the moment I enter group conversation, I turn into a wilted eggplant. Returning to my hometown is no better than being in Beijing. Now, when I gather with relatives, friends, and classmates, unless it is one-on-one or one family meeting another, I keep absolute silence or slip away from the adults' conversation to play with the children. I have been a lifelong Pied Piper of children; they adore me, and I can play endless games with them. I can charm a whole flock of kids into never wanting to leave me within half an hour.

I feel that group conversation among adults is completely pointless. I know that some of the people reading my articles are my relatives and classmates; please forgive my frankness—the people whose conversation I find pointless include you lot too. Because after a few words your focus shifts to making money, buying houses and cars, and trading stocks; you are so monotonous and barren that you have no other topics to exchange.

This is one of the greatest drawbacks of so-called social development: people are forever fanatically chasing money and may never give up their love of wealth in their whole lives. I certainly will create wealth, but to waste my brief life on such a monotonous thing is, when I think about it, a terrifying prospect.

Not to mention the enormous sacrifices I would have to make in pursuit of wealth: inner unrest, damage to the body, tedious and exhausting work, all kinds of nauseating intrigues, day after day spent under pressure and anxiety. And the sole purpose of all this striving is to earn money I actually do not need nearly so much, holding on to it only in exchange for illusory pride and security. When you think it through, it is staggering, yet most people live this way every day and simply cannot stop.

Humans evolved into their present state in only a few thousand years. From ancient times to the present, human beings have changed little in the big picture: like our ancestors, we must eat, drink, void, and sleep, and we are born, age, sicken, and die. But in the details much has changed, and these changes have made us ever more complicated. There are ways of eating that must be delicious, drinks that must be refreshing, and toilets one must sit on comfortably. Even birth, aging, sickness, and death are no longer left to nature; instead we strive to alter the laws of nature. In the past, dying meant quietly breathing one's last; now many must be intubated and resuscitated in hospital, struggling through their final days under intolerable conditions. In the past, when one fell ill with a terminal disease, nobody knew it and felt no panic or despair. Now, when one falls ill with a terminal disease, a single diagnosis makes the patient's soul flee, and from then on they live in terror, each day feeling like a year.

We pay so much attention to details that we cannot see a three-dimensional, whole life. Modern people readily call this or that person an expert; if someone reads indiscriminately across genres like I do and constantly tries new things, they are apt to be ridiculed. Because by everyone's standard, such a person must be a failure. They believe one should focus on a single thing, become an expert in one field, and grind away at it, keeping one's field of vision narrow for a lifetime—only thus can one succeed.

I named my child Siyu. The meaning is simple: whenever he encounters troubles in the future, let him think of the vast, boundless universe, then look back at humanity, which is tiny beyond all comparison, and he will realize how ridiculous it is to be entangled in these absurd obsessions, anxieties, and worries.

Buddhism calls creatures like us "sentient beings." That term is far too poetic; sentient beings are the most absurd creatures on this earth, forever inexplicably torturing themselves into misery. The philosopher Schopenhauer said that humans merely have a little more consciousness than other creatures, but that little bit of consciousness has brought humans infinite suffering.

According to social psychologists, the more circles a person belongs to, the higher their life-exhaustion index. Human emotions are like an infectious disease, spreading and diffusing through crowds. In developed societies the division of labor grows ever finer; people living in such a society become ever more interdependent on others, their social circles ever wider, and the negative emotions caught from these circles ever more numerous. Such a society is actually not suited for the human body and mind to dwell in.

So in modern society, a person's happiness peaks once their wealth reaches the level of modest comfort; beyond that point, the sheer number of social obligations to maintain causes happiness to drop sharply. This complex research finding was summed up by the ancient Chinese in four characters: "small wealth brings contentment." In fact, there is another Chinese idiom, "being content in poverty and delighting in the Way," describing an even better state of life than "small wealth brings contentment"—because with fewer attachments, people who are content in poverty more easily find joy.

But how many people are satisfied with only "small wealth" that solves food and clothing? Much less the state of "being content in poverty" that merely solves survival. O, pitiful sentient beings of modern society—let us continue to struggle and flail about!