Last night our community finally had two confirmed cases; two of our three buildings were locked down, and our own building was lucky enough not to be sealed. But when I went out I saw community workers busy moving shelving units downstairs, apparently preparing for the imminent lockdown of our building. I did not dare count on luck, so yesterday I had already made thorough preparations for being sealed in.This morning, when I came out to collect parcels, I saw the community’s little garden completely empty, not a soul in sight. I have lived here for over ten years, and this is the first time I have seen our little garden so silent in broad daylight; to be honest, it felt a bit unreal. Yesterday morning it was bustling, with children chasing and playing and old folks chatting, full of the breath of everyday life; today there was not even a shadow of a person.A few elderly people were still walking around the neighborhood; these elders dislike wearing masks and refuse to get vaccinated, and some even spit wherever they please. Even with confirmed cases in the community, they still walk their dogs or wander about without masks. Thanks to the information waged by various countries at the start of the pandemic, many people (especially the elderly) are deeply afraid of vaccines—many may have forgotten the relentless mockery each country’s media heaped on other countries’ vaccines back then, and unfortunately that mockery left many people distrustful of any country’s vaccines. When medical workers urge them to get vaccinated, they do not cooperate. I see no reflection on these problems from those irresponsible media figures; they are still bouncing about, busy misleading their audiences on other issues.Because they draw pensions and need not work to support a family, many elderly people—and some whose income is unaffected by lockdown—would like society to stay under control forever. Young people feel differently, of course: with elderly parents above and children below, being sealed at home and unable to work leaves many of them anxious. It is tearing society apart.Under the shocks of pandemic and war, social polarization is common across the globe. Several times, walking past, I have heard old folks downstairs chatting about current affairs; the content was absurd, utterly devoid of scientific common sense, yet they argued it with great conviction, leaving me shaking my head. One cannot really blame them, because this is the only information they have access to.Some friends ask why I have gone silent, refusing to speak on so many issues. It is not that I have gone silent; it is simply that many of the articles I write do not pass review, so now I can only write the ones that will. When information is filtered too heavily, insularity becomes inevitable. Some people’s understanding becomes distorted; they no longer believe in science and common sense, only in those bizarre, evidence-free things they have chosen to believe. By the time they really need to accept scientific common sense and act correctly, it will be too late to persuade them, because preconceived prejudices have already taken root in their minds.I silently follow many things and, from the details of daily life, try hard to understand deeply the reasons behind various social phenomena; for only by understanding them can I avoid all sorts of negative emotions. This imperfect world is full of flaws, and many tragedies are caused by those flaws—but that is the nature of the real world, and only by accepting it can we find some peace.For example, the fire-escape routes in Beijing’s residential buildings are mostly blocked by residents with all kinds of clutter, so that passage is barely possible; some people lock their bicycles and discarded furniture to the iron railings of the stairwell so that no one else can move them, utterly indifferent to everyone else’s survival. When a disaster like the Urumqi fire strikes, the residents have no escape route at all, and the slow-moving are simply burned or choked to death. This problem, amazingly, has never been solved; I imagine it is the same in other cities. I have been trying to get the relevant people to fix it and have tried to solve it directly myself, but to little effect. In the end I could only prepare rescue ropes and fire blankets for my family as a precaution, forced to look after my own.The wind rises at the tip of the duckweed; no disaster is sparked by anything other than problems that seemed small. If so many people did not fancy exotic delicacies, we would not be plagued by epidemics so often; if so many people did not crave the convenience of plastic bags, our environment would not be polluted as it is; if everyone did not love high-carbon living, the climate crisis would not be so severe; if selfish people did not occupy fire escapes, so many could not have failed to escape the fires; and if the majority were not accustomed to silence, evil forces would not dare be so unbridled.Today our little garden is hushed and our life has grown harder, but I have no complaints. I know I myself did too little to stop these things from happening, and that what I bear is, in a sense, deserved. The disasters of these years can only be described as the collective karma of all beings. It is precisely because too many clever people have grown used to sweeping only the snow before their own door, and some have even stifled their conscience and become accomplices to the tiger, that in the end no one can live well. Whom can we blame? So I do not complain; I only want to keep working so that fewer such tragedies occur in future, even though most of the time those efforts come to nothing.