The Joy of Fish

Copyright © 2022 by Wang Dongyue

Second Edition
All Rights Reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part

by any means without the express written consent of the author, except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Translated by Bridgemind
www.Bridge-Minds.com

ISBN: 978-1-955779-20-3 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-955779-24-1 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

 About the Author
WANG DONGYUE IS AN INDEPENDENT philosopher in China.
He was a medical postgraduate with a master’s degree,
but he did not work in the medical field for long. Instead,
he thoroughly devoted himself in philosophy for more than 25
years, and finally came out with a three-volume monograph of
philosophy. Later he worked as a guest professor of
philosophy in a few universities in northwest China.
This book is a collection of 30 philosophical essays,
compiled to give a brief idea of the author’s systematic
view of philosophy, which could be a way to avoid the obscure
language of philosophy.
A Unified Theory of Evolution,
His other works include
The Decline of Humankind, and A Collection of Cultural
Lectures.
The author’s systematic philosophy has a deep insight
regarding the evolution of the universe, the logic of mind,
as well as human society, which is quite different from
common knowledge or common sense. His philosophical ideology
could be briefly defined in one sentence: the principle of
evolution in weakening compensation.
 Preface
THIS BOOK IS AN EXTRAVAGANT reading.
It is extravagant because it is entirely different from
the currently popular fast-food culture. It can neither bring
you temporary pleasure, nor provide you practical benefits;
instead, it will cost you some brain energy, and may also
cause you some deep sorrow. Therefore, this book is only for
the mental nobles to enjoy. The so-called mental nobles refer
to such a class of people that their desire for culture is
not limited to a low level for fun or need, but is interested
in the high-level questions that transcend the actual life or
dominate the actual survival. Such as the case that a rich-
man refuses to work for coarse food, but he is more
interested in the beautiful jewelry like diamond and jade.
However, if people live only to seek food like animals
never pursue additional luxury, then, the questions and
unexpected concerns I raised in this book would not exist.
All problems come up precisely because of the greed of human
nature that never knows enough, that is, because of our
impulses to continue pursuing. Strictly speaking, this is not
to entirely blame human greed, because there seems to exist
some mystical force from inside and outside, forcing us to do
so. Since everyone has to live a luxurious life of human
beings, then spending a little time to learn about the origin
and destination of such a human nature, seems not an
extravagant cultural orientation.
In order not to excessively tire the reader, this book
collects a few light essays. Though these essays can be seen
as casual chats, they involve a deep thought system.
Therefore, I suggest that the reader browses them according
to the content list, lest plummeted into the maze not knowing
the way out. Of course, it won’t give all the answers to
one’s questions. But if it can raise some suspicions, it
might later lead to the splendid sunset; if it brings one a
spiritual rain, then take the opportunity to wash away the
dust that stays on the "truth."
Perhaps after the rain, heaven and earth are clearer.

Author, 03-16-2002
 1. Useless Philosophy
W hat is "philosophy?" It seems not possible to explain in
a few words. I heard a lot of people talking about
philosophy, but I never understood it. I consulted the
dictionary, and it says: the word philosophy came from the
combination of the Greek phileo (love) and sophia (wisdom),
historians of philosophy generally believed that Pythagoras
was the first to use this concept. I still could not
understand it, so I thought I was a fool who could not
understand philosophy. Later on, I gradually realized that
those who taught philosophy in China did not know much
philosophy themselves, then how could they make their
students understand? Therefore, I think it is necessary to
change a way of lecturing philosophy.
Generally, the farther away one is from something, the
less possible he becomes a slave of it. But, if one doesn’t
understand a certain knowledge and becomes the master of it,
which should be rarely seen. However, the relationship
between Chinese and philosophy seems to be just a case of
such. It is said that since China opened its door to the
world, Westerners in China found too many people could talk
about philosophy, and they were surprised because even in the
West where philosophy was produced, people still see
philosophy as a profound knowledge, rarely any people talk
about it. The more related main reason is that philosophy is
something useless, so there is scarcely any chance to mention
it. But in China, philosophy is mentioned about everywhere
like vegetable, often involves it with politics, which makes
one doubtful whether the "philosophy" in China is philosophy
or not.
 Philosophy in the old days was called metaphysics.
Usually, people live in the visual and material world, so it
hinders nothing to live without understanding what philosophy
is. Generally, if something one can easily talk about in
daily life, it must not be philosophy. In case one claims
that thing is his philosophy, then his shallowness is
certainly uncurable. Because we could roughly analogize
philosophy for the human mind as the operating system for a
computer—without an operating system, all application
software cannot run in the computer—many people can use
computers, but few can get out of the operating system to
look at it. If you are not a professional programmer, but you
dare to toss the operation system, then how will your
computer function need to check carefully.
If this is the case, why we say that philosophy is
useless? The uselessness of philosophy is in that it actually
hides deeper than the operating system, or rather, it is more
distant and virtually indistinct from the application level
of the mind or consciousness. It, therefore, laid a deep and
solid foundation in the bottom of the mind, which is similar
to the relation of basic science and applicable science, the
more the distance between them, the more the basic science
seems useless, even though the useless basic science
eventually exerts a greater role and guidance to the
applicable science. For example, Einstein's theory of
relativity created a new era of science since the 20th
century, but even he didn't believe it at first that his
approach could serve as the foundation for the application of
quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. He also openly opposed
quantum mechanics. Even after the famous British scientist,
Eddington observed the proof of Einstein’s theory through
the bending of space-time gravitational field, he still said
that there are only two and a half people in the world who
could really understand the theory, and himself only counted
the half of them. What is more, so far nobody has achieved
anything useful in everyday life by applying Einstein's
theory of relativity. On the contrary, if any basic theory
can be actually used now, then you have to be careful with
it, because its myopia may cause the application system set
on top of it to be rough, superficial, and future-limited,
like buildings constructed on not solidly tamped foundation,
such structures may suddenly collapse, which is something
really need to be mindful.
A comparison between Eastern and Western history of
thought can best illustrate this kind of problem.
Around the 6th century BC, rational thinking germinates
separately all over the world, which seems to be triggered by
the mechanism of natural evolution. However, their respective
starting points and depths were quite different from the very
beginning, which led to different types of civilization
eventually showing different differentiation of internal
energy and development prospects. Those ancient Greek
philosophers seem to lack a sense of reality, as what they
concerned were the problems far from the practical level.
Even in the most primitive natural philosophy, they only
asked "the origin of being" or "the driving force of beings."
Such questions go "behind things" or "the depth of thinking,"
which immediately led to Pythagorean interpretation of the
world with abstraction of "number" (Mathematics), and
Euclidean derivation of the world with "shapes" of logic
(geometry), therefore, philosophy and science laid the first
kink in deep rationality. The actuality was that Pythagorean
loud rationalism inspired Plato who was the first to clearly
realize that the commonly called "outside world" is in fact
only a "mentalized world." Later Euclidean work "Geometry,"
using elements like points, lines, and surfaces that do not
exist in reality to illustrate the objects, is to a great
extent to provide proof for Plato's "theory of Idea"—proving
that only Idea and logic are eternal and orderly. After the
Renaissance, represented by Descartes, Western philosophers
and scientists (Descartes himself is a mathematician,
physicist, and physiologist in a scientist) continue to
advance along this thought of logic together, they simply
push aside the "ontology" that lack of mental proof, and
concentrate on exploring the inherent laws of cognitive
activities, thereafter philosophy strides in the new era of
"epistemology." It holds that since the subject can only
catch objects with its transcendental perceptual attributes,
then what qualifications do we have to talk about objects
outside the mental world before we have clarified the
characteristics and regulations of perception or the mind?
Therefore, Descartes can only prove "I think therefore I am;"
but Bekele would like to see the "limit of perception;" Hume
then found the "invalid of inductive thinking;" after that
Kant felt compelled to inquire how the "pure reason" causes
the growth of knowledge...... So, this is a considerable
thought engineering that has extended over a thousand years,
thereby forging a fairly strict method of logical thinking.
As a result, Copernicus opposed the perfect "geocentric" by
proposing his rational "heliocentric" at a time without much
evidence of astronomical observation. Galileo derived the
"law of free fall" only in his logical calculation of
declining plane test, not at all he needed to climb up the
Leaning Tower of Pisa to drop two balls of different sizes.
Newton even directly named his unusually strict logical
system of mechanics as the "mathematical principle of natural
philosophy." Einstein made it clearer, he not only admitted
that his first science teacher was Maher whom Lenin scolded
as an idealist philosopher, but he even criticized the
inappropriate attack Maher made on the speculative logic of
metaphysics.
Interestingly, China completed the Pythagorean
mathematical theorem at a very early time, and later the
accuracy of "Zu PI" (i.e. circumference ratio) was even
higher than that of the Westerner’s calculation. Another
example, Zhang Heng of the Eastern Han Dynasty in ancient
China, made a "geocentric" model (Water Leakage rotating
armillary sphere) much earlier than what Ptolemy did, but
that was only a seemingly beautiful physical model, by no
means a logical model with intrinsic compactness and
ductility. However, these thinkers of artisan-style had all
hurriedly risen themselves to the pragmatic level in the
middle of their research. For example, Zu Chongzhi was
particularly keen on making water mill and self-propelled
ships; and Zhang Heng was also keen on inventing earthquake
seismograph and anemoscope of wind direction. But none of
them was ever willing to devote whole life without
considering fame or profit to go along the strict logical
path on investigating the relationship between the origin of
the world and the mind. Perhaps that was the reason Hagel
made a sharp comment: "there’s no philosophy in the East."
However, strictly speaking, Hagel's comment was not correct,
because all various schools of thought and authors of the
pre-Qin era in China were all philosophers. It is precisely
their thoughts and ideas that laid the cultural foundation of
an operating system for China society, that is to say, they
had all played the role of philosophers in paving the way for
mental logic. But because they were too realistic, paying too
much emphasis on social anxiety and humanistic care, so that
their thoughts were the urgent need of the time, their
logical ideas were the sublime words with deep meaning.
In contrast, when Confucius was busily lobbying
different kingdoms in his days, Aristotle was eager to quit
the job of teaching Macedonian Royal emperor. While Mozi
racked his brain hard on how to solve the constant wars
through "peaceful means," Socrates did not think his
courageously participating in battle defending Athens City
would affect his philosophy. When Gongsun Long leisurely
argued "a white horse is no longer a house in abstraction,"
Euclidean worked hard to compile his thirteen volumes
geometry. Laozi was an exception, he seems to have the
ambition to inquire how the universe came into being, but his
thought was too deep, too ethereal, or rather, he was too
idle, and if he were not invited enthusiastically by the
commissioner of Hangu Pass, he would probably leave not a
word for the future generations. Moreover, if reading his
Daodejing carefully, one will find him as worldly as other
thinkers, and his speculative argument was not forceful at
all. Within the five thousand words, most talk about how to
behave as ordinary or how to govern as a monarch. The book so
practical that it is sufficient for the later emperor of Han
Dynasty to use as state policy, or adequate for the later
ordinaries to revere into a religion called Taoism, but in
any case, it cannot be "emptied" into logical thinking and
"be quiet" into scientific experiments.
Sure enough, pragmatic philosophy soon brought practical
effect to the society: politically, China as an ancient
social system is the most stable society. After various
numerous Z-turns of social unrest in over two thousand years,
nobody could completely dismantle its monarchy rule of
inextricable link and its autocratic architecture that had
permeated deep into people’s minds. Its social structure has
been so stable that even Marx, who was single-minded in the
dialectical thought, helplessly called this oriental monster
"a society of stagnation." Economically, as early as in the
medieval ages of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming dynasties,
especially the "prosperity of Kangxi and Qianlong period" of
Qing dynasty, China's GDP value counted one-thirds of the
global total output, far higher than the current U.S.
economic status in the world (about 21%). But it was
impossible to generate a unique style of economy form of the
modern commodity from just the high economic value.
Technically, China’s four great inventions are all practical
things, needing the least of logical thought: the compass was
discovered by chance based on the natural tendency of
magnetic poles of the earth; the gunpowder was found
accidentally by alchemists who randomized sundries materials;
paper-making and movable type printing were the products of
folk-productive practice. That is to say, China’s four great
inventions were all pragmatic things, and there was never a
fool delved into the useless distant "heliocentric theory" or
a "free fall." In the end, no matter how we act as the dancer
of Rhodes Island and praised our beautiful dance, we were
weak in logical philosophy, so it would be difficult for us
to leap far forward even if we struggle hard.
The Opium War in 1840 marks the limit of the development
of mental entity constructed with shallow philosophy; the May
4th Movement in 1919 marked that we had to give up the
heritage of traditional culture and thought that is lack of
thick substratum—the branch of an ancient civilization
abruptly broke. But its scourge should be traced back to the
pre-Qin ages or even before that. Just think of it, the
dialectical theory of Yin and Yang originated from Yellow
Emperor and Emperor Wen of Zhou dynasty starts to explain all
the mysteries between man and woman, an intuitive philosophy
so close to the human body, how can one expect it to have the
long-term mental effect and logical results?
Philosophy is a field of labor in deep theory; only
nations good at laboring in deep theory are hopeful in
finding the direction in practical daily life. Bear in mind
that humankind is the derivative beings whose "physical
existence" is dominated by their "intelligent virtual being."
Therefore, the rise and fall of philosophy seem to be always
closely related to the rise and fall of civilization. The
rise and fall of Western philosophy coincide with the ups and
downs of Western history; the same is true to China. Due to
the lack of a relaxed atmosphere to explore multi-
directionally and the logical skill of deep excavation since
ancient times, China was not an extensive philosophical
system, which ultimately renders the tension of its
civilization somewhat weak.
I don't mean to say that Chinese traditional culture has
been good-for-nothing; on the contrary, I hold that Western
thoughts now really need to intake fresh air. The key is that
we have to judge clearly where the linking point is. If we
still follow the old conventions and bad habits and want to
achieve easy and quick succeed without doing those concrete
foundational work, or take advantage of the superficial
reform activities with a flighty and impetuous attitude,
then, even if we could make some progress, for the time
being, it won’t endure for long. After the Opium War, the
social Darwinism advocated by Huxley and Spencer was the
first Western thought introduced into China, (I should say
that Yan Fu, who translatedEvolution and Ethics and other
Essays under the title “Natural Evolution” , deliberately
warped the two men’s idea to such an extent so as to wake up
our decrepit and muddle-headed nation to face the danger of
peril). Having a brief look will realize that it was just a
makeshift of misappropriation. Around the May 4th Movement, a
letter from Hu Shi triggered the new culture movement to
abandon the old stereotype and to accept new things. But what
he eventually introduced to China was Dewey's pragmatism
philosophy. Further, we picked up Feuerbach’s so-called
"materialism" as a treasure, and we vowed to criticize all
thinking theories that were dubbed "idealism." But we failed
to learn that since Descartes, most materialists already
became outsiders of philosophy because they could not even
understand what those master thinkers were inquiring. It is
chilly to mention that we were so ignorant to such an extent
that we believe all masters of idealism so meticulous in
their brain work were simply blind men, as they just could
not see things out there. It seems we need to extend both our
vision and our mental distance. If the national salvation
movement in the past hundred years did not allow us to extend
our vision, scholars and students of today should have the
mind to savor the profound theories of philosophy.
Throughout the history of human thought, those who had
real achievements in philosophy were almost all the
naturalists or natural scientists of the time, conversely,
those who made significant contributions in natural sciences
were usually quite familiar with the right philosophy, which
is the pattern of two legs supporting a trunk, a lame one
cannot go long distance. Therefore, we should not think that
so long as we grasp mathematics, physics, and chemistry, we
could necessarily get the direction of science in the future;
nor should we believe that only by pursuing the fashionable
trend of thought can we jump to the forefront of the times.
The fact is that even Western students are not reading
through all the works of Plato or Kant, their minds were
influenced by the essential spirit and atmosphere of Western
philosophy; likewise, even Chinese students are not reading
through works of Confucius or Laozi, in their profound minds
also have the preach and flavor of Eastern thought. So, if we
really want to learn from Westerners, please start from the
most profound and most decisive place. Remember, within
today's knowledge there still exist the differences between
thick and thin, far and near, and still exist the differences
between the operating system and application software. The
marathon race will eventually show the long and short
endurance of its participants, so it really depends on how
the current culture reconstruction of China makes a choice.
In the end, let me borrow Russell's description to make
a brief introduction of philosophy itself: human beings have
gone through the three stages of thought: theology,
philosophy, and science. Philosophy becomes the logical
carrier of intermediary transition between theology and
science. The common point between theology and philosophy is
that the two tend to pursue the ultimate cause of the world
and show their ultimate concern for humankind. The difference
between them is that the ideological method used by theology
is "faith," and the ideological tool used by philosophy is
"reason." It is not difficult to infer that the common point
between philosophy and science is that both as academic
subjects are investigating problems rationally, but the
difference between the issues they investigate is also
apparent, as science tends to investigate concrete problems,
while philosophy keeps its concern on ultimate questions. If
the research on practical problems cannot derive an overall
cognition on humanity’s circumstance, or, if the human
thought process tends to be increasingly differentiated,
meticulous and narrow, that is, tends to be more urgent,
pragmatic and frivolous, then switching to the position of
philosophy to overlook the overall state and ultimate
relationship of the world and humanity. Isn’t it an
attractive tremendous vision or very high and far enormous
range?
2. Intentionally or Unintentionally
T he reason why human beings appear outstanding among all
things in the world is due to their unusual cognitive
capability and behavioral ability, which is called "doing
things intentionally." Therefore, "doing things
intentionally" and "extraordinary ability" are usually the
words of general compliment. But as early as 2500 years ago,
Laozi said it another way: "doing things unintentionally and
nothing is left undone," meaning that one cannot do all
things intentionally until one is doing things
unintentionally. It sounds like someone is telling fantastic
tales, then Laozi especially added: "He who is not laughed at
by others is not in Dao (the way of Nature)," meaning that
one’s way of life being ridiculed by others shows that he is
Dao.
somewhat close to " "
There are many comments made by later generations on
Laozi’s theory of doing things unintentionally, but none of
them hit the point. The achievement made by emperor Wenjing
in early western Han dynasty was really due to the state
policy of "doing nothing to interfere in society," but it
still could not be counted as the profound interpretation of
the concept of "doing things unintentionally," even though it
was indeed the intention Laozi promoted in "doing nothing
intentionally."
In actuality, it is not your choice to do something or
doing nothing at all, for it firstly depends on the existing
state of being. There should be no one dare to lie in bed all
day in order to live out. Even if he is a millionaire, he
still has a problem whether or not he can lie in bed for
long. It is probably the best punishment for one not to do
anything at all, therefore, "imprisonment," that is, not to
allow a prisoner to do anything, is a prevailing punishment
all times in all countries. On the other hand, a cluster of
moss or stone cannot move at all, even if one wants it to
move, and it won’t even produce an "intention to do
something" at all.
The point is that if we compare humans and other things
systematically, and use "doing things intentionally" or
"doing things unintentionally" as a measurement, we can
immediately see a series of strange phenomena. All the higher
species of "doing things intentionally" such as mammals or
vertebrates are unexceptionally extinct rapidly; while the
poor lower "clumsy" species such as invertebrates or
primitive unicellular organisms are very much longer in life.
And the more primitive, the lower species, though their
activity or capability of "doing things intentionally" is
worse, their survival strength undoubtedly is more robust;
what is more, those inorganic things of totally having no
vitality, that is, possessing no activity or capability of
"doing things," such as granite or calcium phosphate, they
can exist eternally.
Moreover, further investigating, we find that the more
original form the substance is, the larger space their mass
distribution occupies in the universe, and the longer
duration their sustaining is, that is, the higher their
stability of being. Conversely, the later derived form of
things the smaller space their mass distribution takes in the
universe, and the shorter duration their sustaining is, that
is, the lower of their stability of being. Take the solar
system as an example: the particle phase of atomic hydrogen
and helium in the front end of the periodic table make the
main part of the sun, which accounted for 99.86% of the solar
system, while the other nine planets in molecular formation
and interstellar material accounted for only 0.14% of the
total solar system. When life matter appears it only forms a
thin layer covering the surface of the Earth, and the degree
of existence reduces immensely. As far as duration is
concerned, the sun has been in existence for 5 billion years
and is expected to have another 5 billion years to be. The
Earth has existed for 4 billion 600 million years, but it
will be swallowed up by the sun when the sun becomes a red
giant. The most primitive single-celled organisms emerged 3
billion 800 million years ago, and they are still the most
widely distributed in mass and most powerful species in
sustainability on the Earth. In comparison, multicellular
animals and plants didn't flourish until the Cambrian era of
570 million years ago. However, more than 99% of them were
extinct long ago, and the more advanced species they were,
the faster they went extinct. This kind of case is numerous
to enumerate, and due to the limited space, we won’t go more
in detail. To facilitate the discourse, we can sum up this
law in one sentence: the potency or degree of the substance
of the universe tends to decline in evolving forward.
Because of this, such advanced qualities like
"capability" or "doing things intentionally" seem not so
good, as they cannot prolong and stabilize organisms’
sustaining, instead, they are the negative index of the
degree of existence or survival of any species or substance.
That is to say, the more capacity an organism possesses, the
less it lives stably. Or to be more accurate to formulate it:
the less stable elements an organism possesses, the more
"capacity" or "doing things intentionally" it needs to
compensate; furthermore, the more elements of "capacity" or
"doing things intentionally" an organism is compensated, the
less peace and stability it faces, which make a cycle toward
worsening.
If that is the case, we look again at Laozi's "doing
things unintentionally and nothing is left undone," it
becomes very appropriate. Things like granite never make a
difference, but their "doing nothing" keeps them steady, or
their stable state makes them do not need to fall in a
"bustling" dilemma. The peaceful and permanent state of
"doing nothing intentionally" is precisely the ultimate goal
and the highest level of the dream for all beings of "doing
things intentionally."
In other words, "doing things intentionally" is nothing
more than securing or sustaining being, and if "doing nothing
intentionally" is more effective, then "doing things
intentionally" would definitely be an unnecessary move!
Obviously, "doing things intentionally" is probably a
helpless necessity, and if this is true to human reality, it
can be said that Laozi’s "doing things unintentionally" is a
bit like cast pearls before swine or inappropriate. On the
other hand, Confucius has the advocacy of "attempting things
that are next to impossible" can better express the
predicament of human beings in natural conditions, but
Confucius at the time could not explain why human beings
should toss themselves like this.
Based on the above, we can regard what Laozi called
"doing things" as a series of compensative capacities in the
process of natural evolution. What is "compensated" is the
substitute for the lost. Although what is compensated is not
the original thing (degree of being), it is better than
nothing. We can call the compensated things as "attributes"
(the general term for "capability" and "vitality" and
"intuition" or "doing things intentionally"). The later
derived species the weaker (in their degree of being), but
their attributes are correspondingly more strengthened
(increment of compensatory degree), there exists between the
two a strictly unidirectional inverse proportion, from which
comes the world scenario of all creatures and the organic
evolution, and this is the principle of "weakening
 Dao."
compensation," or rather, the modern annotation of "
Keep in mind that Laozi has precisely a similar saying:
"weakening is the effectuation of Dao;" it roughly means that
weakening is the way of unfolding and realizing " Dao. " Two
thousand years after Laozi passed away, modern Western
philosophers began to see some light in this field, a pair of
words "being in-itself" and "being for-itself" gradually
became frequent in usage, but after chewing for hundreds of
years, they still did not secure what the two concepts really
mean for humans beings.
Put it bluntly, "being in-itself" refers to the "doing
things unintentionally" state of the high degree of being,
"being for-itself" refers to the "doing things intentionally"
state of low degree of being, between the two ends is the
natural law of gradually rising compensatory potency, which
also expresses the weak-delusive appearance exposed by " Dao.
"
This internally weak but externally delusive final carrier is
the ridiculously ignorant humankind, and they are already
approaching the verge of collapse or extreme peril in the
process of evolution. Therefore, the attributes of human
beings are the most abundant, the most robust capability, and
the most spiritual and versatile, to the extent that
everything can be employed in pursuing their achievement;
hence "doing things intentionally" overwhelming "doing things
unintentionally," highly triumphant and noisily arrogant.
Human beings are the least aware that they actually became
the "abandoned" of Nature since long, and all their
biological function is actually the compensation to the
"abandoned," like children lost the rearing of their parents
had to master the capability to fend for themselves, which is
the essence and origin of "doing things intentionally" or
"being for-itself." Considering it from the same
perspectives, it is best for humans not to mistakenly call
themselves as "God's favored one," because they actually
already become the aged oldest. Unfortunately, the more aging
they grow, the more restless they become. So, they have to
act on behalf of Nature, involuntarily playing a romantic
farce in their older days—a situation like an unstable top
necessarily rotating in high speed to secure its standing.
—That is, it is not just a farce of the human world,
but rather a farce of Nature directing its own being or
continuation of being.
Therefore, this farce can be called the "soap opera of
Nature." Its plot has only one line: those who do things
intentionally always exaggerate the weak and helpless as
smart and arrogant, while those who do nothing always hide
their eternal strongness in sticking to natural state and
silence.
Laozi was the first sage who understood this farce in
the world, and he knew it was hopeless to correct the human
world, so he privately sighed: "the softest in the world
overcomes the most rigid in the world," which is hard for
later generations to tell whether he was praising human
beings or he was sarcastic in saying that.
 3. Pursuing Perfection
T he pursuit of perfection is the eternal ideal of human
beings, and it is said to be also the will of Nature.
Aristotle had proposed a philosophical concept of
"entelecheia," the roughly meaning is that the world has the
purpose and potential of movement toward the direction of
pursuing perfection (goodness), and he even holds that it is
this adorable "entelecheia" constituting the inherent power
of the evolution of all living things.
However, what is very bad is that this good motivation,
no matter it embodies natural law or human desire, can only
derive the opposite result. Let us first look at the work of
Nature (because even human beings are the product of its
work): according to modern theory, the universe came from the
eruption of an unspeakable state called "singularity," which
is equivalent to what the ancient Greek philosopher
Parmenides called "Being is one." At the beginning of the big
bang, there were three basic particles in the universe,
namely, quark, lepton, and boson. These "three" particles are
undoubtedly the differentiation and residues of the most
perfect "one." It is difficult to remain stable after being
differentiated, so it is needed to quickly integrate into
some structure that could return to "oneness," or rather to
quickly pursue the lost "perfection," thereby creating 92
natural elements. Needless to say, this "92" is, of course,
the result of further differentiation or residue of the
original "3" particles. Since then, the consequence has been
more and more unbearable: the 92 kinds of atoms
differentiated more than ten million types of molecules, and
millions of molecules further differentiated into hundreds of
billions of species. And the more differentiated, the weaker
and deteriorated. Therefore, the molecular structure is far
less stable than the atomic structure, and the life structure
is far less stable than the molecular structure. As a result,
most of the biological species were extinct long before the
advent of humankind.
The imperfection of organisms is apparent. For example,
a rabbit runs quickly but it cannot climb trees, so it is
inevitably caught by foxes or wolves. Though a fox is
cunning, it is not good at fighting, so it cannot escape the
jaws of the lion or leopard. A dove can fly, but it cannot
swim, so when the dove is chased by a hawk it cannot escape
by diving into the water. Fish swim but cannot fly, so they
helplessly become the food of sharks. However, thanks to the
imperfection of life that made the diversity of organisms
possible, and thus made the formation of the ecological
system established, otherwise, in facing the "perfect life"
of dinosaur villain, there would be no chance for human
beings to jump into the world stage for competition.
Now look at the human beings: human beings, in fact,
have never been perfect since the beginning, and they tend to
be more and more imperfect because humanity is directly the
result of the natural process with imperfect guidance. It is
instead the most primitive single-celled organism that was
born 3 billion 800 million years ago is relatively perfect,
even though comparing with molecules, it was already too
weak, so it has to do bio-energy exchange with other things,
which is "metabolism." Nevertheless, it is at least an
independent unit of self-sufficient and self-survivable, both
nourishing and proliferating are accomplished all by itself.
After having evolved into lower multicellular organisms, the
primitive single-cell immediately lost half of its functions:
either only nourishment or just propagation; further
evolving, it lost both function of nutrition or reproduction
in order to take care of a small part of the functions. For
example, the nerve cells are only excited and impulsive, the
bone cells are confined to bearing weight and structure, the
muscle cells are only responsible for contraction, and the
renal cells are only responsible for urinary, …etc. Up to
this step, you might think that this multicellular organism
should be a perfect life now. The answer is still No because
once the multicellular aggregation completes, the body cells
began to go next differentiation, and the body immediately
lost half of its own function, and this lost half won’t come
back again, that is, the "gender division"—love elegy has
been singing ever since.
Not only physical deterioration makes human beings
restless, the mental differentiation that follows also brings
about worsening conditions. Primitive humans in their early
years lived in the garden of Eden (pure natural environment
without artificial crop), based on animal feelings (pure
natural state of mind without any human product) as free as
birds and animals, a period of human mind still blank and
complete, clear without confusion. By and by, their survival
problems accumulate, and their doubts gradually rise, thereby
leading to the variety of totem fetishism or cult of
personality established, and for quite a time all the
problems seemed to be solved through divination or prayed for
God's concise answer, and the mind with crack mottles was
still a whole one. Later, philosophy appeared, opinions or
views gradually disputed, but each and everyone tried to
argue a doctrine or theory: Laodan left something called
Dao,
" " Confucius talked about "benevolence," Thales was fond
of "water," Pythagoras believed in the "number," ... the era
of natural science was coming quietly. Fortunately, at the
time academics did not yet split up and wise men took the
lead of the world. However, Aristotle has now put forward the
intention of "learning from different subjects," which
signaled the division of human intelligence by sciences. Sure
enough, starting from Copernicus, and forming till Newton,
human intelligence was thoroughly split. Scholars of physics
do not understand humanities. Scholars of sociology do not
understand biology. Astronomists do not understand in
geology. Psychologists do not understand the law, and so on.
The academic and technical division has got thousands of
fields, and they will be further sectioned to be more
detailed and more complex, to the effect that each person is
only an incomplete carrier of some ideology or skill to make
each one a temporary component fixed in the social structure.
As such is the consequence, where is the possible room for
the "pursuit of perfection?"
Human beings tend to overemphasize themselves or
excessively praise themselves, so they unavoidably produce
high expectations and the same degree disappointments to
themselves. Emerson’s sigh is such an example. In his
opinion, everyone should have been a small universe, but they
fell in reality and fragmented into pieces. He was dismayed
to ridicule: "the society is in such a state that everyone is
like a part broken down from the body as a whole, proudly
walking around like many monsters—a good finger, a neck, a
stomach, an elbow, but never see a perfect man." However, he
was wrong in saying that, because those are precisely human
beings, and only in this way can they become humans! For
example, the "finger" is a professional pianist and
violinist, the "neck" is the voice of a singer, the "elbow"
is just the command of a band, then, this group of elegant
people must eat, so the "stomach" is the food processing
industry running on behalf of the whole society, and such
patchwork is pretty nice. Just some free poetic philosophers
who are sick-headed and can only manufacture emotional
comments and fallacies, like Emerson, really belong to a kind
of defective human, not important to society.
 Fourier once said that human intelligence does not have
much difference, but the way it is used is different. In
other words, the direction of differentiation or
deterioration is different. A professor good at a
professional, like a thief good in the theft. You see their
wisdom between poles apart because you disdain the experience
of a clever thief. If one day the world were in disorder
because of war, the unemployed professor had to steal for a
living, he would find that the difficulty to learn the
thief's skill is not a bit easy than to read books. In fact,
elites of various fields are the embodiments of some more
incomplete personalities, it is rather the common people,
their physical and mental development are generally sounder.
So, they normally do not make Newton’s simple mistake of
cutting two holes in the door as per the size of two cats.
Just imagine, if the world were full of absurd elites like
Newton, Mendeleyev, the average human living would be
impossible?
Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays everyone wants to
become Newton, Beethoven or Nobel, and believe only that type
of personality is perfect. It is probably a natural
camouflage or natural urge on the not yet finalized
inheriting the mission of differentiation that Nature gives
to humankind.
 4. The Greatness of the Ordinary
H eroes with great achievement seeing ordinary people
living a plain life just blindly profiting to survive
like deer foraging around, would want to gently or sharply
teach them a lesson, saying that human life must have the
innovation to make it meaningful, which often let the
ordinary somewhat ashamed; as if they did something wrong.
This funny scene is just like a patient scolds a doctor
for not being healthy. It should be understood that it is
those triumphant heroes who were really wrong in what they
did. We have to explain this point from the beginning so that
we can see what is the effect of "innovation" in reality.
"Innovation" is not the unique ability of human beings.
If there were no step by step innovation in the process of
natural evolution, human species would come from nowhere. We
don’t need to mention the process of how inorganic substance
creates life, by examining the biological evolution only,
that is, the phenomenon of biological "variations," how they
"achieved" their development in progression, everything will
come to light. In fact, the most important attribute for
organisms is genetic, because organism has already been
extremely weak at birth, and then its death follows
immediately. So, organisms must find some way similar to
relays to make their short life become eternal, and that is
the original significance of the biological function of
genetic proliferation. That is to say, it must be able to
copy its gene code faithfully without changing anything,
otherwise, if it became malformed, its original life could no
longer be inherited. Therefore, any mutation is actually
teratogenic, or rather, is abnormal malformation, which has
always been the object of elimination, and its probability of
survival and continuity is extremely low. For example, a man
has a baby son with three noses, but the baby has a keen
sense of smell, the man can't bear to abandon the three-nose
baby son and fosters him up. But the son can't find a wife
for long, and so this innovative achievement of three noses
cannot be carried forward. Until one day all foodstuff
available to one-nose men has been eaten up. But the three-
nose man is not dead, because only he can smell the deeply
hidden food items, so those one-nose beauties helplessly have
to marry him. After such a natural selection, the three-nose
elderly may have numerous children and grandchildren, and the
world is full of such uglies, but they accept each other,
plus those single-nose men had all died of starvation. Only
by now the original unacceptable innovation eventually became
accepted and inherited for generations. However, if the
three-nose man accidentally gave birth to a malformed baby
with four eyes, presumably he would not hesitate to
immediately strangle this abnormal child, lest they face a
shameful circumstance in the end, because the old man should
know that it is next impossible for all the binocular people
to die of starvation again. That is to say, three-nose
species will degenerate into an ordinary community themselves
and kill all deviant heresy of innovation.
This really cannot blame the ordinary people too
conservative only, because what the ordinary people normally
do is only to act as a role of self-care physician. This
sentence not only means that the variants are the disastrous
seeds of malformation, and should be eliminated, but also
mean that the consequence of the innovative variation could
not be praised really. First of all, once the innovative
variants succeed, they would always betray their
predecessors, and they may even become a natural enemy that
makes their predecessors completely unable to oppose. This
kind of case was seen in the original blue-green algae. They
are the earliest ancestor of all creatures. Their
evolutionary variants are eukaryotic unicellular plankton who
varied notably to harvest the blue-green algae for food, and
as a result, the blue-green algae thereafter became on the
weak side. Such cases are still seen nowadays like currently
the new stars of information civilization are driving the old
ways of business of industrial civilization into bankruptcy.
Secondly, any later comers of innovation are always robust
externally but weak internally. That is, they look powerful,
but essentially their survival strength is on declination.
For example, blue-green algae quietly dominate the earth for
2 billion years, but its far generation offspring dinosaurs
only arrogantly and aggressively lived on earth for less than
200 million years before it suddenly disappeared. The
duration of later emerged higher mammals were worse, for
their total life period was around 90 million years only, all
as visitors coming and going, very few species left by now.
More ominously, humans as the last and the noblest innovation
of biological strains have only a history of less than 5
million years, but the species already shows a series of
excessive crisis before failure. Given this, it seems that
the common herd’s refusal to innovation and progression is
really discerning.
This also shows that the conservative quality in human
nature is a natural continuation of the biological genetic
law of conservation, just like the radical quality in human
nature is also a natural continuation of biological variation
law of natural evolution. The difference may only be that the
innovation of variation creates the continuation of being,
while the conservation of heredity sustains the continuation
of being. It can also be formulated in the old topic, that
is, heroes create history but ordinaries maintain history,
which of them is more important?
 We can deduct the answer to this question from a special
case of the following disease: there is a rare disease
clinically called "progeria." Its symptom is that the patient
grows too fast; as if all cells and tissues in the body have
a favor of aggressive impulses on innovative progression. All
of them want to be heroes, and no one wants to be mediocre;
as a result, a ten-year-old patient is already showing white
hair, wrinkle skin, and he will die of organ failure at a
very young age. In the light of this, which way is better: be
passively conservative, or be aggressively progressive? How
do you think?
In fact, variant elements of unstable factors in any
species, like the innovative individuals or restless heroes
in human beings, are always suppressed in a minimal range,
that is to say, there is a naturally imposed limit. According
to Jukes and King research, the probability of biological
cell gene mutation is estimated at (3 ~ 50) x 10 ＿ 10
replacement/codons/year, which is a very low probability that
could be achieved. However, along with the development of the
evolutionary process of the universe, this probability is
possible to increase gradually. Even so, in the human
population, the mediocrity as a stable level is definitely
the absolute majority in the bell-shaped curvilinear
coordinate in normal statistics. We should be grateful to
God, for it is really a gifted survival mechanism to protect
humanity, which objectively means that even if everyone in
the human population tries to let himself become an
extraordinary star of innovation, the actual successor is
always rarely a few. For the same reason, innovators usually
experience an unfortunate fate, as most of their efforts fall
in vain. Even if some of them rise as stars, they will
inevitably taste defeat sooner or later. To name a few: Shang
Yang was punished body-limbs-split due to his reform effort
in the Qin dynasty; Wang Anshi was relegated as punishment
time and again due to his reform effort in the North Song
dynasty. Galileo was imprisoned in his old years for his
innovative proposal, and Mendel lived lonely after his
success. All of this is probably the mischief of the natural
mechanism of protection.
Look at the ordinary’s life, even though they live in
predicament, they have high biological stability and low
survival risk. If you don't believe it, you can roughly
calculate the average life expectancy and the abnormal
mortality of all kinds of heroes and ordinary people in
history. If this way of calculation cannot satisfy you, you
can design any other methods you like and see if you can draw
the opposite conclusion. That is impossible. This conclusion
may not be very important, as mentioned before, the greatness
of the ordinary lies in that they are the decisive force for
stably sustaining in any species population.
However, there are signs in various fields showing that
human beings are rising the rate of innovations, that is to
say, the past great bell-shaped distribution curve of
mediocrity is now showing a tendency of flagging. It is
probably the inevitable result of the process of natural
evolution to some critical stage, to which probably no human
beings can do anything. Here, I just want to remind people
not to be confused, mistaking that such innovations show the
vigorous and promising prospect in our civilization. In my
opinion, this is really not a good sign.
 5. Greed, Anxiety and Fear
H uman beings born into the world is somewhat like an
acrobat falling from circus trapeze into the net, even
worse than that, because circus net is just a piece
protective net, preventing the acrobat from injury, but
won’t entangle him in. But human life is unexceptionally to
fall into the network of the mind. This mental system not
only hurts every individual but also entangles them forever.
Because this interlinks three nets of greed, care, and
anxiety. Greed is desire, without which it is not sufficient
to stimulate aggressive aspiration, and aggressive aspiration
leads to busy and anxiety; busy work plus anxiety achieves no
expected result, that is, greed for something but cannot get
it, then "fear" wells up immediately, which forces you to
involve in more desire. Because of this, Heidegger called
human born into the world as "degradation," and he said a lot
of thoughtful discourse full of complicated words about
"anxiety" and “fear;” however, he ultimately failed to
clarify the causes why human nature brings about such
embarrassing outcome.
What is human nature? In one sentence: human nature is
the integration and development of "material attributes."
Then, what is "material attributes"? It has to explain
from the beginning. There was originally no "material" in the
world. Before the universe came into being, "material" might
be some state of energy distribution. Einstein's mass-energy
exchange equation E E
= mc2 ( represents energy, M represents
mass, C represents light speed) is probably a portrayal of
it. For example, the so-called "atomic energy" refers to the
energy released by the mass conversion of 7/1000 atomic
nuclei. Because of the extreme stability of the "non-
material" or "pre-material" at this stage, it does not need
any attributes. Therefore, all physical or mathematical
methods fail to detect it, which is called "singularity." The
Big Bang is actually the process of transforming energy into
mass, and it also starts a natural process of differentiation
and continued evolution.
The most primitive form of the substance is basic
particles, which become the basic "material" of all the
matter in the universe. That is to say, everything later
evolved is only a temporary "form" or a temporary dwelling
"shell." For example, an atom is the dwelling shell of
particles; a molecule is the dwelling shell of atoms; a cell
is the coding form of molecules, and the organism is the
dwelling place for cells; finally, society is dwelling form
of organisms. It is Aristotle's philosophical conjecture,
namely, "from material to form," that is, the so-called
"everything in one system" with category boundaries broken up
by scientific development in the 20th century. Strangely, it
is precisely these "forms" or "shells" who are having
increasingly more attributes, capabilities and wisdom; also,
the more versatile in traits, the stronger in capabilities or
the higher in wisdom the matter forms or species become, the
lower or weaker of their potency of being or degree of
survival will be. If we put it another way to formulate it,
we can also say that the evolution of the natural form of
things tends to carry the advanced species into the deepening
survival crisis and survival anxiety.
Asides from problems of other aspects, let’s have a
look at the deepening reason of "survival anxiety."
Since the unfolding of cosmos, all things have been
evolving through differentiation. From particles, atoms,
molecules to organisms, species, and forms of substance
become increasingly numerous. This category of things rising
in a geometric progression or exponential growth becomes
great trouble for all latecomers to deal with. Because
differentiation leads to deterioration, and the deteriorated
must seek to complement each other, which inspires attributes
to emerge. For example, once the particles are
differentiated, the physical forces such as electromagnetic
induction attribute take place. The deteriorated particles
must aggregate themselves into atoms or even molecules
through this attribute. Also for example, once the cells are
differentiated, the deteriorated cells will produce an
identifying attribute similar to the immune capability of
identification, so that the differentiated cells can join
into one, which is "multicellular organism." In other words,
differentiated things have an eternal tendency to return to
one. "Differentiation" creates "conditions," and "conditions"
create "interdependence." One differentiated thing must be
the condition of another differentiated. Any differentiated
thing can hardly exist alone if it loses other differentiated
as its conditions. The process of differentiation makes
conditions more complicated, and the more complicated
conditions make the attributes increase, and the increased
attributes make further demand for interdependence. In this
way, conditional natural evolution makes the layers of
evolutionary species step by step fall into the abyss of
"conditional being," so that all derivative beings become
increasingly anxious and increasingly greedy!
Greed thus becomes an indispensable state of the human
mind, for this state of mind is originally built on the
natural circumstance that cannot be defused. In a word, human
nature is the inheritance and development of material
attributes. The deepening degree of greed in human nature is
directly proportional to the degree of conditioning of
natural things. If you are a proton, your greed is limited to
acquiring an electron, which is enough to stabilize you in
the existential circumstance of a hydrogen atom. If you
evolve into a helium core (consisting of two protons and two
neutrons), your greed will rise to get two electrons (as the
number of helium’s electrons at K shell is 2). If you
continue to evolve yourself into the carbon nucleus, your
greed is not easy to curb. First of all, you have to strive
to capture 6 electrons, without which you cannot fulfill your
"phase" as elements. Then, because your outer shell electron
number has not yet met the full requirement (the total
electron number for L shell is 8, but carbon atom has only
4), so you have to grab the outer electrons of other
elements, thus forming organic compounds. Till this step, you
can no longer stop even if you want to, because the organic
molecule is very difficult to stabilize itself, and it forces
you to insatiably grab electrons from the other elements or
similar carbon elements and ultimately evolving into large
biological molecules or even primitive organism. From then
on, your greed leaps to the height of biological metabolism
and becomes increasingly greedy as organisms develop. Until
one day, you become a human being, and your greed also
reaches the extreme level, which is because the conditions
you need to support your existence are too much, and only by
the aid of your intense greed can you make yourself survive
in the waves of ups and downs of conditions. If you want to
be free from the material world to keep from greed, you will
disqualify yourself as a human being, since greed is the
ingrained determination of grassroots that lies in human
nature.
Human beings stay in the final phase of the evolutionary
sequence, that is, floating in the highest place of the most
diversified differentiation of conditions. So, their
attributes are the most adequate, which has evolved from the
induction of physical and chemical state, through the
"sensibility" of lower organisms and the "perception" of
higher animals to the "rationality" stage unique to human
beings. However, even this is the "attribute of rationality,"
it is like the "attribute of induction" of the inorganic form
of substance, just for obtaining conditions of existence
only, besides which there is no other meaning at all. But the
difference is that "attribute of induction" is sufficient to
make physico-chemical substance obtain all the conditions
they need, like as the proton of the helium nuclei meets its
need by obtaining two electrons. But for human beings, they
can never fulfill their requirements even if they use all of
their rational attributes because all things differentiated
in this world are the objects of their dependence. However,
they cannot occupy so many things simultaneously, which
inevitably trap them in a dilemma of two circumstances:
"busy" with too many conditions to occupy; "anxerity" for
insufficient conditions to hold; therefore, fear is made an
insoluble mind in human nature.
Out of the same mechanism, the evolution of conditions
of the universe necessarily makes the degree of being of
later derivative species increasingly weaker, which is a
typical risky situation of piled-up eggs. Each condition is
like an egg, the more living conditions you need, the higher
the number of eggs you pile up, and then living on the highly
piled eggs at stake, how can your mind stay at ease! If ever
one of the necessary conditions suddenly collapses, your
ground of existence collapses immediately. What's more,
nothing in the world doesn’t change, which makes human
survival conditions uncertain. That is a simple arithmetic
matter. Assuming that the probability of changes of various
internal and external conditions in daily life is 1/10000,
and if your way of existence is as simple as molecules,
needing only ten items as necessary conditions, then you may
have one impact of change every 1000 days. If your way of
living is as complex as that of an animal, whose necessary
conditions of dependence are for example 100 items; then you
will have to adjust yourself to changes in life every 100
days. Furthermore, if the living conditions of civilized
humans, along with the rapid change of science and
technology, rise to more than 10000 items, then every day you
will have to encounter a surprising change, then, how can you
keep a peaceful mind? Therefore, fear gradually precipitated
as one of the innate feelings of human nature.
Usually, people cannot understand the hidden meaning of
the derivative conditions of natural evolution that gradually
and necessarily tends to be complex, so they always praise
the prosperity of things differentiated in development, which
is a perfect irony on human beings. So, when the Eastern sage
Mencius praises "Everything is prepared for man," he is
actually expressing the ignorance of the entire humanity. The
ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras says this more
straightforwardly and proudly: "Man is the yardstick of
everything," as if all things’ existence or non-existence is
manipulated and measured by human beings. As a matter of
fact, this remark may appear to be more appropriate if we
reverse it: the unfolding of all things in evolution is the
accurate measurements for the crises of human existence!
The above three aspects, namely greed, anxiety, and fear
are actually the internal weakness indicators of human
survival, or rather, the personification of the destabilized
material attributes. They complement each other to construct
the basic framework of the "anxiety of human survival," and
thoroughly branded the shadow originated from the
evolutionary process of material attributes in the most deep-
seated human nature. In view of this, how much can you expect
from any attempt of changing or curing human greed, anxiety,
and fear?
 6. The “Happy Formula”
W hat is "Joy?" What is "happiness?" It is a question that
few people can answer. But strangely, everyone's daily
behavior always tends to focus on this illusory object, as if
it were just in front of us and self-evident. As a result,
everyone finally harvests a basket of sour, sweet, bitter or
hot things, which is full of frustrated and depressing
experience, but seldom finds any joy and happiness.
Occasionally, if you do encounter some pure "happiness" by
chance, it is usually an unexpected piece of good "fortune,"
such as a broke and frustrated boy met a beauty and fell in
love with her, or someone won a considerable lottery bonanza
and so on. But I advise you to be careful with it, because it
is nothing but an additional debt, and you will have to
double pay back it later. That is, you will likely fall into
a jilted abyss or suffer a shrew; or you will reduce yourself
to a slave of property or become a target of a robbery. In
any case, your initial happiness will be offset by later pain
completely. Therefore, people used to say be content with
what you have, which may become a way to cheer up oneself for
those who feel not happy. Modern economists made a seemingly
accurate calculation formula: Happiness=income÷desire, which
means, the higher the income is, the greater the happiness
is; but if the income is limited, then improving happiness
can only be achieved through reducing the denominator of
desire. However, according to my observation, people who
squash their desires probably make their "happiness" shrivel
to nearly same as "boredom."
If that is the case, should you pursue your happiness or
shouldn’t? Sure, you can pursue it, but it would be better
for you to understand the outcome of this kind of hard
pursuit in advance, so as to avoid a sense of loss after you
fail to get it in the future. Because, after all, happiness
is only a psychological feeling, which has nothing to do with
your actual behavior or the consequences of your behavior. If
it were not so, that is, happiness could present itself as a
real object, then everyone would purchase it home to enjoy
happiness always.
Since happiness is just a psychological phenomenon, we
have to discuss the fundamental questions of psychology, that
is, where is the position of "psychological disposition" in
the totality of mental being? And what is the compensatory
role of the psychological phenomenon at a particular level?
How is its movement mechanism specified?
Let us have a look at one of the simple experiments of
neurophysiology. If an animal nerve in vivo is given a
continuous intense stimulation, such as stimulating a frog
sciatic nerve by a current, we will first see a towering
neural excitation peak potential. Then we will see a
potential figure moving in the opposite direction, followed
by a corresponding period of excessive inhibition, even if
the initial stimulus is there. This phenomenon is called
negative induction. After a short period of paralysis, the
nerve part will again produce a robust excitatory potential
to an extremely weak stimulus which usually cannot cause a
response, which is called "supernormal reaction." It
indicates that the nervous system has a relatively fixed
excitatory pattern and a range of activity. In general, it
remains in some middle tension, which we can simply call
nerve tension. This stable state of tension enables the
organism to maintain its normal external reaction. That is to
say, nerve activity cannot stay at any pole of excitability
or inhibition for long. Excitability will cause supernormal
inhibition, while excessive inhibition will also cause
supernormal excitement. In fact, it reflects the basic
working state of the whole nervous system, including the
central system. Strictly speaking, psychological activity is
the sum of a series of lower mental activity, and its control
center is located in the thalamus reticular system below the
cerebral cortex of the brain. So, everyone must keep the
normal psychological state on the "boring" baseline without
pain or happiness, regardless of the quality state of one’s
living conditions. In other words, any psychological
stimulation triggering a happy feeling also paved the way for
the opposite psychological movement and vice versa. Thus,
people in apparently excellent survival state and those in
apparently bad survival state are much the same in suffering
distress and enjoying happiness, just like the pleasure of a
hungry man grabbing a coarse food is no less than that of a
millionaire going for a banquet.
According to this, psychological fluctuation must have
some substantial effect on the perceptual attribute or
function of mental dependence. This effect and function are
to develop the animal's system of understanding
identification into a series of simple and efficient judgment
reactions. It is like a subjective indicator or mental
adjuster, which realizes the mobilization of the
physiological function of the biological dependence reactions
through pursuing benefits and avoiding dangers. For example,
if a wolf saw a wild goat, it will immediately produce
psychological excitement and impulse without the need for
complex logic reasoning, or the need pre-warm up for hunting.
Such a reaction of mental pleasure spontaneously coming from
brain cortex limbic system and thalamus emotional central
will promptly spread to all the relevant parts of the entire
nervous system to quickens the heartbeat and breathing,
raises blood pressure, and dilates blood vessels and so on.
These physiological measures cause the increasing amount of
oxygen supply which fully prepares for the outbreak of
muscular forces. On the other hand, if the wolf later saw a
lion or tiger, its psychological fear will also painfully
prepare this kind of physiological mobilization for its
physical movement, so that it could quickly escape. These
judgments are made instantly on the emotional level, and
while the judgment is done the instantaneous coordination of
action response is also achieved. Just imagine, if the wolf
fell into a boundless euphoria upon catching a goat, making
its neuropsychological response remained in an exciting state
of high tension but low stress, then this disgusting wolf
together with the poor hunted goat will immediately become
prey of the lion or tiger. Further speaking, if a wolf's
psychological state of happiness is all the way soaring
continuously, the wolf species must have been eliminated by
the mechanism of natural selection long ago. So, in daily
social life, those who undemonstratively keep themselves
composed no matter win and lose, that is, those who are born
to be calm in psychological reactions, are easier to deal
with complex environmental challenges, and are also easier to
obtain competitive advantages. The deep reason is that their
psychological endowment can relatively remain stable on the
baseline of boredom for the best response. That is why
psychologists believe that "EQ" is more in sense of personal
quality or personal accomplishment than "IQ."
To analyze it more in-depth, we will find that the
higher the survival strength of the species is, the smaller
their psychological fluctuation is; on the contrary, the
lower the survival strength of the species is, the bigger
their psychological swing is. Look at the inanimate matter.
Although their affective attribute is extremely low, nothing
to speak of psychological fluctuation, they are undoubtedly
the most abundant mass in existence with the most prolonged
sustaining period in the universe. The primitive lower
organisms like sponge jellyfish and fish, their sensibility
are weak and mental state smooth, that is, often in a
leisurely numb and dull state, so they stably live hundreds
of millions of years and so far so good. Organisms that
already evolved into animals of vertebrates or even mammals
show noticeable reactions of psychological fluctuation, and
the rate of their extinction suddenly accelerated, though
their IQ improves immensely. Human beings, of course, is the
most complicated species with the most psychological
imbalance, experiencing the greatest happiness and the
deepest sorrow. They are the only species that easily suffer
mental diseases like "schizophrenia". Therefore, they also
produce a large number of professional psychological doctors,
for they increasingly incline to rely on this special care.
However, they still want to go the pursuing of happiness,
seeking various stimulation, as if they are afraid of falling
into the dull state of peaceful mind. Such human conduct is
really the act of Providence, which expresses the mental law
of evolution of the natural will that correspondingly
compensates to the weakening degree of derivative beings.
That is it shows the bumpy depending trend of the subjective
will enhance correspondingly along with the differentiation
of everything in the world. That is why Schopenhauer says:
“Indeed, the passage of will into visibility, its
objectification, has graded as innumerable as exist between
the dimmest twilight and the brightest sunshine, the loudest
sound, and the faintest echo.” ( The Will and World as
Representation, by Schopenhauer) However, the strengthening
movement of the will shall only increase the difficulty of
the will’s focusing, that is, increasing the amplitude of
emotional fluctuation, and there is no other positive
significance.
Hence raises two questions: first, how is the
"psychological shock line of regression" appearing as the
basic state of "boredom" formed? Second, will the increasing
trend of psychological fluctuation bring us more happiness?
The first question cannot be clearly explained in a few
words, and readers need to remember a simple truth: all
derivative beings of the universe have to sustain themselves
on a constant baseline called "existence threshold." This
existence threshold is composed of the declining degree of
being and the corresponding increasing degree of
compensation, and the extended part of this natural baseline
of evolution is the organismal psychological baseline, which
constitutes the naturally determined ground for the mental
compensation of organisms and the movement of the will. The
expansion of the growing amount of compensation becomes the
radius of the psychological fluctuation. That is to say,
nature spontaneously develops the material attributes into
temperament, and develops the stability of material
attributes into fluctuation of temperament, which is the
common propensity of all high species with low degree of
being. In other words, the growing amplitude of psychological
fluctuation is proportional to the increment of mental
compensation, and we have no way to prevent ourselves from
being thrown into the waves of psychological fluctuation.
Some people cannot bear this kind of psychological
fluctuation and they would seek relief by means of suicide.
For instance, Schopenhauer and Camus tried to treat suicide
as a serious philosophical problem. In so doing, one is
relieved from psychological fluctuation, but the suicide
still makes him dissolve on this baseline. However, from the
perspective of the process of evolution, he just exiles
himself to the molecular phase of the non-life state of
inorganic material, which is called "the law of equipotency
of life and death."
It seems that the psychological fluctuation itself is
great pain, so Schopenhauer said that life would only swing
like a pendulum between pain and boredom. However, this is a
big mistake. Actually, he said so because he could not obtain
the happiness that he had been seeking. He did not realize
that all happiness can only arise from the movement of
psychological fluctuation because psychological fluctuation
is the most basic way of mental balance. "Happiness" is after
all the emotional impulse of biological motivation for
benefit; "pain" is after all the emotional response of
natural avoidance of harm. Once the effect of obtaining
benefit is reached, even in facing more benefit, mental state
must resume the boring baseline where an acute response is
possible. So, your happiness will not remain forever even if
you are facing ever-growing profit; on the other hand, once
the vigilance of avoiding harm is formed, mental state must
resume to the boring baseline where acute response is
possible even if the following harm cannot be dispersed. So,
your pain will not remain forever even if you are facing
endless trouble.
Besides, people in the mood of happiness are most likely
to suffer pain, because, from the objective indication, even
though they did not run into any trouble, they still feel
heavy losses just because of the slight reduction of their
previous profit, and as a result, they suffer it very much
painfully. On the other hand, people in the mood of pain are
most likely to feel happy, because, from the objective index,
even though they did not encounter any good luck, they still
feel happy just because of the slight alleviation of their
previous harm, and as a result, they feel the benefit
significantly. Such a case is identical to the "negative
induced" phenomenon in a neurophysiological experiment and
the reaction of "stress of extra-long period." In short, on
the one hand, everyone has to make his or her daily mental
state stay at the naturally determined boring baseline, which
nobody can escape. On the other hand, anyone’s mental
changes are bound to fluctuate around the boring baseline,
and the average amplitude will not reduce or expand due to
the difference of objective conditions, that is, nobody loses
more than others on this point. If changing another way to
express, the psychological fluctuation is similar to a sine
curve moving ups and downs around the median line of
regression, with its positive and negative values precisely
cancel out to zero, so that it eventually expresses itself
overall the same as the boring baseline that is undetachable.
That is the "psychological law of pain and pleasure reaching
equilibrium," and also the answer to the second question
listed above.
To this point, I have answered the question of this
essay; that is, I have in-depth philosophically corrected the
calculation error in the "formula of happiness" made by
economists. The conclusion is that no matter how you rack
your head and struggle hard, you won’t purely obtain
happiness, and everyone is destined ultimately to have the
utterly equivalent amount of pain and pleasure, and this
equivalent result is so perfect that it boils them down to a
balance of zero. Also, because of this, everyone can survive
and everyone can pursue that illusory "happiness." Then you
may ask: if that is the case, why do people involuntarily
pursue and compete for happiness? That is the ridicule of
human beings—for we are the carrier of the will of nature,
so we have to behave that way as nature moves forward. So,
even if I tell you the truth, you won’t be able to hold your
mental state on the boring baseline, and you still have to
struggle day after day. Happiness, like a carrot hanging in
front of a donkey, is a temptation that makes us move forward
without ever catching it. I can’t justify for nothingness,
but I can instead tell you the natural law on why you cannot
be nothingness even if you want to, which is a more profound
sadness and satire than the above ridicule.
 7. Adapting Oneself to Survival
H uman beings are very fancy because humanity itself is a
flower in bloom in the natural process of evolution. In
the eye of a poet, flowers are beautiful and fragrant, but
flowers themselves never cherish such romantic feelings,
their colors and aromas are just to lure insects into helping
their pollination passage, not for the purpose of decorating
the world for humans, so they grow with thorns to refuse
humans’ appreciation and hurt. Sometimes human beings are
not as clearly aware of themselves as flowers, for they often
either highly appreciate themselves or ruin themselves due to
their ignorance of the actual purpose and origin of their
capabilities.
For example, taste for animals is nothing but an energy
indicator. If you taste something sweet, mostly because your
body is in need or lack of nutrition; on the other hand, if
you taste something bitter, mostly because it contains toxins
that may harm you. It is not that the thing itself containing
the natural flavor of bitter or sweet, but your sensory
organs must distinguish it to be a selected object to take or
one to discard. In other words, your sense of taste is not
designed for you to explore the nature of the object itself,
but for you to achieve the maintenance of your own survival.
Therefore, if something that is neither beneficial nor
harmful to you, such as wood, you chewing it will taste
neither sweet nor bitter, but just tasteless; the same is
true when facing something rotting and stinking, you want to
get away, but flies must hold it really delicious. Obviously,
there is not anything change in the object, but the different
physiological needs and sensory structures between humans and
flies make the difference. Darwin's father is a doctor, and
he understands the truth mentioned above, so he never advises
patients not to eat this or that, instead, he encourages
patients to eat whatever they want to eat; when a patient
suffers a difficult time of pains, he simply lets the patient
cry out, because crying is also a mechanism of physiological
protection. Nowadays a variety of human-made flavors can
please humans’ tongue and nose, but they intercept humans’
talent ability of discrimination. Perhaps, what they have
covered up with scent contains some harmful things you should
avoid
Human beings are after all just one species of animals.
Any animal characteristic has its specific significance of
survival, and only because of being beneficial to survival,
these characteristics can be preserved or developed under the
effect of natural selection. The noble humans always want to
label these biological endowments with some meanings of
morals, and their awkward intention is enough to make mise
sick. A long time ago, someone observed that when mice
encounter snakes, they are always scared into an instant
stood-still as a stump, waiting for their natural enemy to
eat as a meal. So, a disdainful sense arose spontaneously,
and a derogatory phrase "as timid as a mouse" is famous in
many languages. Later biologists found that very often those
stoodstill mice have the most chance to survive, but those
escaping mice mostly could not get away from the snake. That
is because snakes are poor in eyesight, dimly seeing a stood-
still mouse as a hard stone, a snake will not stupidly risk
its teeth to hit the stone, so the snake will wait there for
a moment to see if that stone shadow moves or not. As soon as
the shadow moves, the snake can instantly catch it. By and
by, the gene of that mise daring to escape gradually
eliminated, leaving only those scared stood-still mice to
spread their offspring in the world. Later, we saw in movie
Death on the Nile even the talented detective famous Hercules
Poirot also dare not forget the escape strategy, when he saw
a dangerous snake in front of him on the Nile Cruise, he
cautiously sent signals to his helper, waiting for others to
rescue, rather than following the misleading strategy to act
bravely upon impulse.
All things in the world have their advantages or their
different attributes of compensation, but all attributes are
only to secure the carrier’s survival, and all are the
compensatory products out of necessity. Animal intelligence
is of no exception. Let's have a look at how the nervous
system formed as the foundation of intelligence. Single-
celled organisms depend on their large cell membrane for
material and information exchange with the outside. It is
considered "large," because if any object is finely
segmented, the table area value occupied by the unit volume
is significant; if we take the ratio of human body
"area/volume" as 1, then for a single-celled organism, such
as Escherichia coli, its ratio is about 300 thousand. Such a
living system of small volume but a large area is naturally
very much advantageous for cell metabolism and communication
with outside. The permeability of the microporous cell
membrane is extreme, which is equivalent to the body all-
around covered with numerous mouth and eyes that make
incomparable vitality for single-celled organisms.
Unicellular protozoa (such as amoeba) once evolved into
porous animals (such as sponge) or coelenteron animals (such
as hydra), the multicellular polymerization leads to the
immediate shelter between cell membranes. Since there are
only two layers (diploblastic) of cell arrangement at the
time, part of each cell’s plasma membrane can still be
exposed to the pore or cavity tube, so there is temporarily
unnecessary for the nervous system to emerge, though all
cells have to somewhat deform themselves. When further
evolved into a cell cluster of more than three layers
(triploblastic) flat animals (such as planarian), quite a
portion of the cells was completely sealed inside, so cell
division must be specified; hence different tissues must be
created. In order to coordinate the allocation of nutrition
and function between cell tissues, some cells evolved into
neurons and they communicated each other and jointly formed
the neuro net. Thus, the most primitive nerve tissue came
into being. After that, the neural network gradually formed
peripheral ganglion, lower nerve center, and even a higher
nerve center. But anyhow, its evolution and development are
just to match the physiological structure and survival
conditions of the organism.
Once equipped with nerve tissue, animals can play many
tricks, one of which is to act upon situations. For example,
what we described above how mice confuse snakes by posting
stood-still to getaway. But you must not mistake that the
ability to deal with such dangerous situations is the result
of using wisdom. In fact, using wisdom often leads to
wrongdoing; hence, there is a saying that clever people are
likely the victims of their own cleverness. Real cleverness
probably comes out of natural ignorance, as like those scared
stood-still mice, not because they knew the visual physiology
of the snakes prior to their cunningly choosing not to move
as some stood-still object, but rather the gene code, which
makes mice scare to spasm when encountering excessive
stimulation, that saves their lives. That is absolutely the
wisdom of natural creation and natural selection, and it is
indeed the supreme wisdom. We should understand that human
intelligence is only limited to the use of nerves and
intelligence, while natural wisdom lies in the creation of
nerves and intelligence.
What needs particular emphasis is that this natural
wisdom which creates everything always follows two basic
laws: one is to seek existence, the other is to adapt oneself
to circumstances; the former is the ground for any changes;
the latter is the means to seek being. So, before the
performance of biological evolution begins, there was a
prelude of molecular evolution (from inorganic compounds to
organic compounds, from small organic molecules to the
biopolymer). Before the prelude of molecular evolution, there
was a prologue of the atomic development (from hydrogen atoms
evolve to all kinds of natural elements listed on the
periodic table of chemical elements). If we count in particle
evolution as the overture of the opening ceremony of the
universe (from quark, Lepton, and boson to protons, neutrons,
and all subatomic nucleus, etc.), we’ll see that the natural
law runs through the evolution from beginning to end!
That is to say, we must first correct a common
misunderstanding that only humans or living things have the
problem of seeking being. In fact, non-living things also
have it, but they seek being in another way—that is, in the
way of being in-itself. This way of seeking being is that
when they face losing being, they change the form of their
being, by which they also change their way of seeking being.
In other words, material changing their forms are due to
their problem of being unable to subsist if not to change
their forms; humans’ ability to adjust or adapt themselves
to circumstances is nothing but a heritage of the cunning of
the material attribute.
Seek being—this is the only key to understanding the
world and the evolution of the universe! Changing is the
necessity of "being" tends to lose, and "being" is the
process of decaying to seek continuation of being. Since
ancient times, philosophers have always been confusing the
relationship between the eternity of "being" and the constant
"changing," so they gradually made ontology of philosophy a
big mess. Pythagoras’ "number," Heraclitus's "fire,"
Plato’s "form" or "Idea" as well as Hagel's "absolute
spirit," all of this was an attempt to seek "the origin of
being" between eternality and flow, but all fell into the
messy whirlpool. That is why in the 20th century, Heidegger
had to reveal "being" in human nature by virtue of "Dasein,"
but as a result, he made the emergence of human-being into a
rootless tree or a river without source. It seems that
humans’ reason cannot undergo thorough investigation,
because the most outstanding thinker among them is still
unable to answer "Why is there something instead of nothing"
(Leibniz), then, as an ordinary member of human beings, can
you clearly explain what is "being?" What is "evolving?" And
what is "human being?"
 8. Pitiful Parents
S o-called "pitiful parents" refers to the fact that
parents nurture children with all they could; but later,
children are not grateful or not doing things in the way of
filial piety to their parents. Such a saying is sure a
particular Chinese phrase because Westerners won’t have this
complaint, and even animal parents won’t have any such
feelings.
This phrase really touches many Chinese, for it is a new
formula of Confucius doctrine of filial piety, but actually
it does not have much sense. According to the fundamental
rule of biology, parents of any species must follow the
asymmetrical principle of altruism, that is, the biological
resources such as affection and material food that parents
give to children, are far more than that of children to
parents. This is because, on the one hand, offspring is weak
and young, and they cannot survive without parents’ care. On
the other hand, the more critical is that offspring life
expectancy and reproductive potential is far higher than the
aging parents, so, only species who devote all kinds of
biological resources to offspring can have a chance to
sustain itself under severe natural selection. So, organic
life is generally not more than the end of their reproductive
period, and certainly there is no way to complain children of
behaving unpiety way. Humanity is an exception of species who
pursues long life so much, which is really a strange
phenomenon that makes biologists perplexed. In the same way,
humans’ common cultural sense should also be focused on
children, so as to form such a social environment: the grave
of the elderly, the battlefield of middle-aged, and the
paradise of children. If it is established the other way
around: the paradise of the elderly, the battlefield of
children, and the grave of the middle-aged, then any society
of such civilization deserves declination!
Chinese culture has been senile since ancient times. We
pay much attention to our food, as Confucius said: "be fussy
about food"; Westerners are more concerned about sex, so they
have a saying, "life is precious, love is even more;"
obviously, the former attracts the elderly, and the latter
the youth. Even between Eastern and Western food, there is a
lot of difference: Chinese have flavors of sour, salty,
bitter and hot, almost using every flavor to make the heavy
taste to stimulate the old tongue for a good appetite; but
Westerners mostly prefer fried sweet food, which is favored
mainly by children. With respect to human characters, Chinese
prefer to be staid, deep in thought, putting up an air of
prematurely senile. Westerners look mostly simple-minded,
straightforward, and even adult can be childlike naïve. So,
just the opposite of the West, Chinese culture has been
overall biased to the elderly from ancient to modern times,
laying emphasis on filial piety, respecting authority,
suppressing competition and disdaining novelty, because of
this, it is prone to care for parents feelings. Only Lu Xun
was an exception, for in one of his works published in May
1918 he called for: save the children! He wrote ironically:
fathers’ words are always right, but sons’ words are wrong
before what they have said. It could be the first one in
China to have sympathy with children: as a result, it
symbolizes a turning point for the declining China society in
the recent hundreds of years. Since then China slowly moves
back on the track coinciding with the natural law, and
gradually revives itself!
However, this is not enough to clarify the disputes
between generations. Therefore, we need to explore the
original cause of how "father parent became family law." The
earliest parents started from primitive single cells. But
single-cell clonal fission. One divides into two, two into
four, into eight…, and as soon as offspring come out, they
are just the same as their parent cells. That is because the
genome type is 100% identical between generations, unlike
later biological bisexual reproduction, children’s genes
inheritance from parents being only 50%. More important is
that life at the moment has a very high potency or degree of
survival, which reflects two aspects: first is the keen
ability to reproduce; because they make one proliferation
every 20 minutes. If given ideal conditions, within 72 hours
their volume could become larger than the earth, which makes
the parent does not need to care about the survival rate of
their offspring, or rather, their offspring won’t be
extinguished. Second is the unnecessary raising process, and
once offspring are produced, they immediately have the
parental ability to live, so they do not need parental
support; therefore, they have no obligation to pay piety to
parents. Accordingly, parents naturally possess nothing of
parenthood to urge them to take care of their offspring. It
is only in this period that the two generations can get along
equally and do not interfere with each other, so no trouble
or gap occurring between the two generations.
With the evolution continues, oviparous fish gradually
become the protagonist. At the time, the gender split,
appearance between generations is different, children to see
their parents no as young and pretty as themselves, but
parents already treat children with a sense of love, so the
male has to court females to express it can help female to
breed offspring. But now fatherhood and motherhood are still
poor, and they just do ovulation in vitro and fertilization
in water, then they go away. As for whether their offspring
will come to life or not, they leave it entirely to nature.
Needless to say, the indifference between two generations can
be so clear is certainly because their degree of survival is
still on the high side.
Further later, things change differently, although
reptile animals still belong to oviparous species, their body
complexity rose greatly, that is, their degree of survival
gradually attenuates. After offspring are hatched, they do
not directly have the ability to live independently, which
needs to promote the parental affectionate behavior after
offspring are produced, and it also needs the corresponding
attachment from the offspring, thus the affectionate feeling
of family between two generations grows. By this time, if who
dare to hurt young dinosaurs, parent dinosaurs would
definitely not allow it to happen. When mammals came into the
world, things became severe. Child-bearing needs to undergo a
period of pregnancy and painful birth, then the mother has to
feed the baby with her secretion of milk for a period of
time. These two cumbersome processes extend along with the
evolution of the species. Parents must continue to take care
of their children, teaching them skills of survival. Children
rearing is by no means an easy period in life. At this stage,
natural affection between two generations get increasingly
close, even the match between male and female becomes picky
due to the later offspring care. Thus, parenthood fully
develops so that rearing children become a conscious goal in
life. Of course, parental suppression on offspring may become
aggravated, the reason being parents are prone to not
tolerating their children more awkward, as they have toiled
too much in life.
This process will be carried out continuously in human
civilization. For example, parental rearing becomes more
complicated, as children's education becomes longer. In the
past, one more child means just one more pair of chopsticks,
and when the child grew to the age of seven or eight, he
could help the parent to work for a living. But now, you have
to support a child much longer, for he could be still at
university for postdoctoral study at the age of 30, which
means most of your life is working hard to support your
child. It is not including your risk of having raised an
evil-child; if that is the case your life effort goes in
vain. Another problem is also a growing pain for both parents
and children, that is, the deepening generation gap and the
increasingly intense dispute between generations. Because the
aforesaid evolutionary process is accelerating, the distance
between the two generations in survival circumstance and
survival concept is also increasing. The smarter your child
is, the obvious the gap is, and the more severe dispute is.
That is to say, even if you are lucky enough to have raised a
child with promising gene configuration, you will still
inevitably taste the sour of pitiful parents.
It seems that we should sympathize with pitiful parents.
But according to the above, it is not the offspring that
cause parents heartbroken or a sad life, but totally the
result of natural evolution. What is justified is that it not
only let parents toil increasingly hard but also let children
feel more pressured and harder to grow up to be an
independent adult. Besides, children will sooner or later
become parents, so their grandchildren will revenge their
children for the grievances of pitiful parents. In the end,
nobody needs to complain of another as all is balanced.
 9. No Way to Return
B uddhism preaches "endless tribulations, repent and be
saved." It means that if you don’t convert yourself
piously to Buddhism and discipline yourself in practicing its
doctrine of emptiness, you may continue suffering after
death, for aside from suffering in hell, the transmigration
of your soul could suffer in the next life. In facing this
kind of preach, it could be true if you believe it; but if
you don't believe it, you can still idle on your life. But
what I mean here the "tribulations" and "return" refers to
real circumstances in this world, and on the contrary, it
wants you best to stay away from this thinking context, not
to consider things of religion, so as to avoid later regret.
But people are apt to have a curious impulse, which often
lures them into the abyss, and eventually, they cannot get
back to shore.
Kant once raised a question about the bounds of this
world, by which he raised the first of his famous four
"antinomies." The thesis is: the world has a beginning in
time and space; its opposite is: the world has no beginning
in time and space. The two statements at the time were both
recognized as true propositions; therefore, Kant concluded
that excessive use of wisdom—such as, to use "reason" beyond
"knowledge"—can only lead to error, which could be a sea of
fallacies that you have nowhere to land.
According to modern cosmology, the above thesis seems to
be correct, but the answer is not the original meaning of
Kant's question. What Kant holds at his time was Newton's
absolute concept of time and space, that is, time and space
only the shell or perceptual form that contains all things.
Even if you take away everything in it, time and space will
exist. At least, it still exists to humans, the subject of
cognition. So, Kant's question was actually to question if
being itself has a starting point. But modern cosmology,
based on Einstein's view of relative space-time, says that
space and time is the product of the Big Bang of the
universe, and is one of the specific attributes of the mass
in material form. In Kant's opinion, this is equal to
substitution; because if you can cunningly answer it this
way, Kant can also change a way to question: before Big Bang,
the being of energy state has a beginning or not? As a
result, your reason for the new style cannot avoid being at a
loss.
Since such a question will not have any definite answer,
nor does it have any pragmatic significance, let us reset
this question in a range where the rational can be reasonably
used. Since the universe is limited in time and space, then,
needless to say, all mass forms in the universe with respect
to their spatial distribution and evolving movement are
relative and finite, which can be termed as the "finite range
of sustaining". Take a closer look at it, you will find that
within the finite range, the more primitive the mass state,
the larger its spatial mass distribution and the longer
duration of its distribution, such as the particles and atoms
existing within stars. On the contrary, the latter derived
mass forms, the more abundant their compensated attributes
are, and the higher their ability and intelligence grow, but
their spatial distribution or that their potency or degree of
being is prone to shrinking in inverse proportion, such as
the newly evolved species of higher life. With respect to the
interaction between degree of being and degree of
compensation, it shows a clear inversed linear functional
relation, which is called the "principle of sustaining of
gradual weakening compensation." That is to say, along with
the growth of biological attributes or activity (increasing
in degree of compensation), its viability tends to approach
zero (decreasing in degree of being), which gives out a
natural limit for the reproduction of humankind that is
approaching. That is a real problem of vital importance for
humanity, which is also the bounds of the world that Kant
raised, but it is no longer an empty concept of time and
space, instead, it directly presents itself as why and how
the world and human beings exist, an inquiry so close to us
that we can rename it as the effect of evolution. It is
actually more realistic and more urgent than the hypothesis
of "endless tribulations" in Buddhism; because it suddenly
pushes a terrible bound to the front of us, which is a
critical problem that we are unable to resolve, that is why
we say the tribulations have bounds.
Further speaking, from the above trend of evolution of
natural beings, we have the hope to truly explore the origin
and essence of the two attributes or two characteristics that
human beings thought they possess them uniquely, that is, the
"mental being" and the "social being." It is precisely in
these two fields that human beings gained endless pride and
joy, but also encountered inexhaustible perplexity and
trouble.
In actuality, the so-called "mind" is the product of the
compensated material attribute of induction, and its sequence
of genesis and stratified structures came as follows: the
physical "induction" of mass state of the early universe→the
instinct "sensibility" of primitive lower organisms→the
intuitive "understanding" of intermediate vertebrate
animals→the "rational thinking" of higher primate animals.
This progression makes the later derived species gain more
subjective attributes, and they also get more warped or more
distorted perceptual objects, thereby making their survival
tend to be more anxious and more unstable.
 The so-called "society" is nothing but the product of
compensated superposition of material structural attributes.
Its sequence of formation and stratified levels came as
follows: particle structure→atomic structure→molecular
structure→cell structure→organismal structure→social
structure. It is not difficult to see that the existence of
society must have taken place after the advent of unicellular
organisms, and along with the evolution of multicellular
organisms, its structural complexity gradually increases to
the present condition. This progression makes the later
derived structures consume more energy, and the internal
linkage and variable effect become more complex, thereby
resulting in its structural stability more unstable and tend
to collapse.
Based on the above, life in this world will only become
more hard and bitter, because human survival circumstance
inevitably becomes increasingly worse, or rather, human
potency of being inevitably depletes. Therefore, according to
Schopenhauer, human’s will of survival accordingly shall
become stronger, so as to maintain their gradually weakened
foundation of survival, or to supplement their confidence to
sustain longer. The specific phenomenon of will strengthening
is to deepened anxiety and to accelerate actions. So, you can
see the pedestrians’ pace in the streets is more and
quicker, the factory workers’ hand operation is more and
more agile, the school students’ eye is worsening in myopia,
government officials’ nerves are increasingly stressed.
If further look, you will see the update-rate of
knowledge becomes increasingly shorter, which indicates that
the containing "truth" value in knowledge is reduced
increasingly. The information amount is becoming more
expansive, which shows that the scope of information is
becoming narrower. The desire for material consumption is
growing higher, which shows that internal life support is
becoming empty. The speed of social progress is getting more
quickly, which indicates that the last layer of natural
structure constructed with ourselves and we rely on it for
survival is getting more unstable. What is more, the power of
scientific inventions is increasingly powerful, which is a
sign that the day we destroy ourselves is drawing near. The
innovation of biotechnology becomes more bizarre, which
indicates that the prospect we change ourselves into
different creatures is more obvious. The consumptions of
production resource become increasingly massive, which
indicate that the day we exhaust the entire earth is coming.
The pollution of the ecological environment is worsening and
out of control, which is a sign that the day we have to
escape from the earth and move to another planet is coming.
To sum up, in a word, our natural life quality, mental life
quality, and social life quality are all declining, and we
are falling into a naturally evolved abyss of tribulations,
which is the last day of humankind. Isn’t it that the sea of
tribulations in reality is worse than that "endless sea of
tribulations" in religion?
The worst thing is that even if we realize this
unfavorable situation, we probably cannot change it, because
there seems to exist some internal and external pressure that
pushes us to move forward. For example, the stagnation of
China in ancient society is not necessarily a bad thing, but
the Opium War in 1840 immediately made the Chinese suffer
their conservative stability, forcing them to change their
mind instantly, a scenario like whipping a horse to gallop or
like a man escaping from a fire. Since then, they no longer
dare to live leisure and comfortable life. Another example,
the progress of science and technology brought about
industrial pollution, population crisis and ecological
disaster, but the only means to resolve these problems is the
further development of science and technology. Some people
have the hope of improving the use of science and technology,
but this kind of hope is doomed to fail them. Even if you
decided that the progress of science and technology is an
illusion, and determined to abandon such temptations of
science, but if others ignored your effort and still get
their benefit from science. Then you will not only lose the
benefit of science but also suffer pollution damage in the
neighborhood. If such is the come out, then nobody will
refuse the progress of science and technology. Instead, we
will all do our part to promote it, till the day comes when
we will all die together.
If there is no way ahead, nor can we stop, but then,
"repent and be saved" a good way out? I don’t see it work.
Regardless of there has been no precedent before, even if we
read through all books about natural evolution, we cannot
find any precedential example. We only know that the monkey
evolves to a man, but nobody ever sees a man changes back to
a monkey. That is to say, the universe has only a one-way
path of evolution, and here there is no room for rational to
display dialectical dexterity. Therefore, any backward move
either simply impossible or even worse than that. Cancer
cells actually are the ones who "seek to get back to shore."
But they had already become highly differentiated epithelial
cells of single function and decreased proliferation. That
is, they have been playing a boring role in human tissue with
little importance, and they are far from low differentiated
embryonic cells or stem cells that can freely stretch,
multiply, or even evolve into functional cells of various
types, full of youthful vitality and bright future! However,
if the highly differentiated cells want to move inversely
toward low differentiation direction, they immediately become
a threat to the system balance and coordination of the
overall body, and they cannot obtain the inherent advantage
of low differentiation; instead, they can lead the whole
organism to die together. Therefore, even though suffering in
tribulations there is no way back to shore! That is the
awkward situation we are facing development, and also the
natural retribution for the human pursuit of progress.
Finally, here is a positive and straightforward
suggestion: either all human beings jointly reduce the total
population, reduce the internal competition, and inhibit the
impulse of development to maintain a steady slow movement,
something like the fable of Peach Garden or Utopian land! Or,
each country’s people wish good to people of the other
country, but all countries continue to compete and fight,
till the entire humankind come to their last day!
I can't help but remember a fable in ancient China,
saying that a man runs faster and faster, for he wants to get
rid of the strange shadow and footprints that closely
following him. Zhuangzi laughed and said: He does not know to
go under shade to get rid of the shadow, and stop himself to
tramp no more footprints, what a really-stupid guy! With
this, we may reflect the trend of the entire human behavior
and the movement of its civilization, isn’t it just as crazy
as this guy?
 10. Copernicus and Vestibule
T he human body is an extremely intricate robot, far from
what Cartesian explained that can be illustrated with a
simple mechanic principle. But the question is not whether a
human body is a machine or something else, but why is human
naturally forming such an intricate physiologic structure?
Just look at the human’s inner ear: the human ear is
divided into the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The
inner ear is as small as a bean, but it contains two
important organs: one is the auditory cochlea, the other is a
receptor responsible for spatial position and movement, which
is called the vestibule. This vestibule consists of a
utricle, saccule, and three semicircular canals. These three
semicircular canals positioned in three perpendicular planes,
and these membranous labyrinth channels communicate with each
other, all are filled with lymph. Each and every basal cell
connected with a nerve ending. The whole structure is
intricately delicate, which is hard to explain in just a few
words. The function of the vestibule is extraordinarily
sensitive. One of its functions is to maintain the balance of
body posture. Even if we close our eyes, a slight inclination
of the human body won’t be neglected. It is certainly a very
important function, without which human beings are impossible
to keep upright and move around. But if the function is so
keen as to exceed the limit, it is also troublesome. For
example, a common disease called "Meniere's" is caused by
water in the vestibular labyrinth. The patient has to lie in
bed only, not the slightest body movement, not even to open
the eyes; otherwise, the patient would feel dizzy, nausea and
vomit, internally restless, so dizzy that the patient can
hardly hold up a moment.
However, human beings have been rapidly turning up and
down with the earth all the time, but their sensitive
vestibular semicircular canals do not feel the least of it,
so ignorant of it that after living on earth for millions of
years human beings still did not know that beneath their feet
is an enormous self-rotating sphere. The ancient Chinese
believe that the sky is round and the earth is square, which
is consistent with what human being senses. The geocentric
system proposed in the 2nd century by Ptolemy, the Greek
astronomer, mathematician, and geographer, is really a huge
step forward. Because at least he knows the earth is a sphere
that is like other celestial bodies. Seeing the Sun rises in
the east and sets in the west, the planets and stars revolve
around the earth, all of it made the geocentric system right
with what human feels and conform with the sublimation of
logic and wisdom. Because of this, it was so convincing, and
soon it spread to the whole world. But Copernicus's
heliocentric theory was initially puzzling. Because the earth
rotates and revolves at a speed of tens of kilometers per
second and even hundreds of kilometers, but that is contrary
to the daily feelings our vestibular organs bring to us. If
we just close eyes and turn around a few times, we will fell
dizzy, how can we stay upside down on a sphere and move with
it in the universe without sensing a little bit? So, even
after a hundred years, when Galileo made a late approval to
Copernicus, he was still arrested, jailed and reprimanded by
the inquisition. Be fair with it, can we just blame the
benighted church judges?
It would be more interesting if we approach the topic
from the opposite way: suppose we could observe with our
vestibular semicircular canals the rotation of the earth
(spatial sense) and revolution (sense of movement), we would
all be a born wise Copernicus, and the spring of science
wound not have waited until the 16th century. In other words,
Copernicus, the man who opened the prelude to the human
history of science, to a great extent, just filled a blank of
the small disability of vestibular organ, which is really a
big pity enough to make all human beings sigh!
However, here are two doubtful points to think about:
first, is the dull sense of the sensory organs a necessary
protection mechanism? Second, if that is true, what does it
mean if reason transcends the senses?
The answer to the first question is obvious: if human
beings were all in clear perception of the rotation of the
earth, which would be far worse than suffering the symptoms
of Meniere's, then human beings would have gone extinct long
ago. That is to say, the setup of our sensory function is
only to maintain the body steady survival, anything exceeds
this limit will cause harm, which is unbearable to us, even
if such excess provides us more real information. So, our
vestibular organ won’t let us directly acquire the law of
celestial movement, and it would rather illude us to maintain
us in silly ignorant to sustain being than let us dedicate
our lives in pursuing truth. In fact, the structure and
function of the vestibular semicircular canals are based on
the physical principle of gravity. It only ensures the
movement coordination between the organism and the earth in
one dimension and no more than that. The reason is that apart
from the sun and the moon, other celestial bodies have little
effect on lives at the earth surface and thus we can ignore
it; and with respect to the sun and the moon, other sensory
organs can deal with by other means, no need to involve the
vestibular organ to take care of it.
If that is the case, why does Copernicus, representing
human intentions, want to skip the vestibule to seek advance
development? This is the second point needs to answer.
Looking into the history of human civilization, this is not
an isolated event. It is, in fact, a common feature of all
human intellectual activities. For example, in the 5th
century BC, the ancient Greek philosopher Leucippus proposed
"atomic theory" in order to investigate the cause of all
beings, and that is still a frontier subject in modern
particle physics. However, this thesis to a great extent was
caused by some default in human micro sense or micro vision,
because for the most primitive mass of the universe, such as
electron or proton (everything including human beings is
derived from these fundamental particles), this is a simple
process. They need only their inherent physical attributes
(such as induction of electromagnetic force, etc.) to grasp
any tiny particles (such as protons use positive charge to
obtain negative electron). Later in the fields of biology,
induction gradually evolves into sensibility, understanding
(these two animals possess) and reason (humans own uniquely).
They are actually nothing but the products of the compensated
growth of the primitive physical "induction" only, and
advanced attributes always suppress and cover low-level
attributes, so that cognitive abilities tend to rise more and
more drifting. That is to say, the rational wisdom and
instruments humans use nowadays are only to make up for the
lost primitive senses.
For example, biologists have discovered that many
insects (such as bees), birds (such as geese) and even some
mammals (such as monkeys), can see ultraviolet beyond the
spectral range of humans. Many aquatic animals (such as
dolphins and whales) can hear infrasound frequencies less
than 16 Hz, and bats can hear ultrasonic frequencies higher
than 20000 Hz; these are the field where human sensory could
not reach or default. Therefore, we tried hard (rational) to
make every kind of tool such as spectrometer and vibration
frequency instrument, to achieve the result that is nothing
more than rebuilding some primitive dependency relations. The
role of our smart physiological structure (such as sensory
organ or thinking organ) and our compensated intellectual
products (such as the humanmade tools that extend the
physiological function) are at most equivalent for a total of
the primitive lower sensibilities of those ancestor species.
In other words, we are using a series of more complex and
uneasy ways to deal with those objects and problems that
might have been extremely simple. If so, natural evolution
leads humankind to the peak of its process and gives them a
lot of excellent subtle faculties, but if it turns out to be
a self-defeating result, isn’t it an absurd outcome?
The development of cognition beyond the sense of sensory
organs is undoubtedly a necessity also, just like the
limitation of sensory functions given by nature is a
necessity, to which no one can say anything. However, the
transcendence that humans achieved does not seem to bring us
more knowledge, instead, letting us see more fog on the
source of knowledge. That is, the higher level of your
perception rises, the further distance your ability is away
from the roots of consciousness, which is just like the
ability of electromagnetic induction that can perceive
particles or atoms, is actually not entirely separate from
your body. It only deposits in the deep cell metabolism (such
as cell membrane ion exchange), and it even lurks under your
mental activity (such as polarization of nerve response), but
in any case you can get it up to show itself as intuition or
thought, otherwise, all the problems in the history of
science would be achieved by you overnight. Because of this,
the reverse backtracking is not possible, human beings have
to move forward, and they worry if they are not moving fast
enough, to the point that Nietzsche denounces the ordinary
and calls for "Superman", as if he would like to drive all
the primitive talents into the dark hell of subconsciousness
or unconsciousness. Nobody seems to realize that the farther
you run, the more you lose behind, the total knowledge of the
natural world eventually will not overflow the limit of the
range of universe evolution. Why do human beings behave like
monkeys in cornland, the more they pick up, the more they
drop behind? If all in vain, what is the point of their fast-
advancing?
The problem may be more than that. The current
intelligent leap and progress of science and technology have
caused the earth's environment enormous damage. The whole
human survival is in danger, so human beings are now planning
how to escape from earth and fly to other celestial bodies as
a new land of survival. For this, we must first thank
Copernicus, the astronomer, who transcended human vestibule
and launched the advance of science. However, modern humans
should think about it. If we transcended the restrictions of
our sensory organs, opened our wisdom, and clarified the
relationship between the earth and other celestial bodies
only to destroy the earth then run away, why not we simply
stick to the primitive restriction of vestibular organ, so
that perhaps humanity of today and future live more safely?
The fact is that humankind has been in this world for 3
million years, during which 2.99 million years they were
under the strict control of sensory organs. Although that may
seem somewhat passive, their overall survival was safe and
sound, not at all any danger of species extinction. But since
we transcended our sensory constraints in less than a
thousand years or even just a few hundred years, by now we
have seen a lot of foreshadows of the disasters that are
coming. Doesn’t the sensory threshold of natural
determination have some profound meaning?
 11. Wiseman Worries More
I live at the foot of Mount Nanshan, where there is a stream
water surrounds the mountains, and the scenery was
beautiful. In summer evenings, the slight wind blows along
the mountainside, fresh and pleasant, I often sit in front of
the house, seeing the twilight covering the mountains and the
clear night sky arrives with a bright moon and twinkling
stars, my mood couldn’t be better. Because of the valley
stream water, bushes grow luxuriantly, besides other insects,
mosquito also breed quickly.
One evening, I took a piece of straw mat to a nearby
lawn with some trees in a not far distance. I was about to
lie down there to enjoy the sky clouds with setting sunlight
on them; some female mosquitoes were stealthily approaching
me in attacking formation. I tried to drive them away, but
they either lingering around or struck me in turns, so I had
to fight them hard with both my hands. A few rounds of slaps,
though I killed several attackers, I also got several bites
on my body. Those mosquitoes seemed not in the least want to
withdraw but determined to get a snack and suck my blood. In
facing their determined sacrifice without considering the
cost, a bit of pity for their stupid sacrifice came across my
mind. But I soon realized I might be wrong, for mosquito has
been in the world at least hundreds of millions of years, if
this stupid behavior were not favorable for them, they would
have gone extinction long ago, then how could their silly
life last forever so long?
So, I put my hands on my head and lied down on the straw
mat, showing a sign of armistice and a sincere attitude to
befriend them. I even prepared a blood meal to entertain
them, so as to obtain an answer from them about my perplex.
Sure enough, soon I saw a thin, withered scholar-like
mosquito readily approached me and landed on my nose, holding
its feet in a salute way, "You’re here exposing flesh in the
open, out of nature, we have to come bravely to dinner, sorry
for disturbing you." I waved my hand with an expression of
dismissing its hypocritically apologetic word and replied:
"It is my fault of close-fisted, hurting several your sisters
lives for just a drop of blood, I am sorry. But I have one
thing unclear and especially want to ask you. As vampire,
mosquitoes suck blood for life, but why you guys neglect the
danger of self-life to try for a suck? As far as I know, a
female mosquito can also rely on plant juice for
reproduction, why are they so recklessly attacking me for the
blood as to lose their lives? Humans will not act on anything
until they calculate the probability of success is over 50%.
But you guys offensive attack was a rate of success less than
1/3, that is, each mosquito returns with blood, at least
losing another two mosquitoes, a big miscalculation, isn’t
it? Why don't you wait for an opportunity for a safer attack?
For instance, when I have a nap, or I am busy with something
else. Why so rush to lose life?"
After listening to my question, the scholar-like
mosquito showed a stunning face color, and it trembled its
thin wings for a while and answered: "Human’s calculation
really surprised me, mosquitoes never do such calculations,
as we fly around for survival only. We feel the hot summer is
short, and if we don’t seize the opportunity to get blood to
blow; when autumn turns cold, larvae will have no time to
grow up. But what you remind me today makes I believe the
superior of mosquito’s unwise. Let us create a comparison
with your calculation: each female mosquito can lay a few
hundred eggs a time, let’s take an average of 200 eggs per
female mosquito in the summer, even if the larvae survival
rate is only half, we can still have 100 times gain with
respect to genes or species. If under such a great profit, we
worry this and that, but not to bravely rush forward, that
will be the biggest loss. For instance, not to mention the
1/3 success rate of blood-obtaining your calculated, even if
the rate is only 1/5, the species gain is still up to 20
times; on the contrary, if all female mosquitoes have a clear
head like your humans, they will certainly have a sense of
self-protection. Thus, even if all the female mosquitoes can
temporarily survive, the mosquito species will immediately
face a hopeless extinction of no more offspring. So, we can
seem that the low intelligent foolishness is a natural
protective mechanism for mosquito species, which shows that
we mosquitoes still have a powerful ability of reproduction,
no need of wisdom or something like that to help our
survival. Your calculation has just proved how powerful we
mosquito species without wisdom, and how dangerous of your
humans with wisdom in the world! Therefore, I would advise
you not to worry about our mosquitos as an ancient species,
but first to figure out why humans need the wisdom to protect
your life-sustaining."
After saying this, the scholar-like mosquito laughed
proudly, almost falling down my nose.
I had a sense of suddenly seeing the light, so I began
to respect it, for what it said really reveals a truth that
human scholars can hardly get to the depth. Human survival
and self-esteem are all based on their wisdom, so humans are
inevitably blinded by their wisdom, and it never occurs to
them why they need to have wisdom. Carefully considering it,
what the mosquito said is in excellent conformation with
Darwin’s theory of "survival of the fittest in natural
selection." Moreover, it also transcends and corrects the
misleading that implies the idea of "survival of the
fittest." Imagine, if mosquito (low-level arthropod animal)
were smarter, it would have been eliminated by the natural
selection; its unwise exactly matches its state of being, so
the species has been in existence for so long without a
problem. On the other side, those more evolved and more
advanced species, such as vertebrates, mammals or even
primates of humans, their intelligence is indeed more
developed, and in the opinion of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer et
al., their environmental adaptability of survival is also
increasingly enhanced, but why are they declining
increasingly faster? What does "adaptability enhancement"
mean for them? If "adaptability enhancement" ultimately leads
to an adverse consequence, shouldn’t it be more accurate to
say "survival of the unfit?" To change question another way
is to ask: what does the "adaptation" adapt to? Or what does
the "adaptability" of the evolved species mean?
In order to get answers to the question, I hurriedly
retained the scholar-like mosquito who was about to leave and
said I still have questions that need its explanation, and I
repeatedly said, "If you could answer my questions, you can
have more blood as my thanks to you" and so on. Perhaps the
mosquito now had a pity on me, or perhaps it was hungry due
to talking with me so long and seduced by my way of thanking
it with blood, it hesitated for a moment, and then issued a
long "statement of satirizing human wisdom:" "All these
questions you raised should not me, a mosquito, to give the
answers. Because of human circumstances, humans themselves
should be clearer. Humans have wisdom and seem to be smart,
but are just specious, which is indeed a major inherent
feature of wisdom itself, that is, it cannot find the truth,
but more often it has an effect of obscuring truth. As that
is the case, I will have to explain to you how to survive in
this world. Humans should realize that you are already a
species that is not consistent with all things in nature, or
rather, human beings have just served one of the most typical
demonstrations for the natural law of gradual weakening
compensation of the universe. As a species, you are already
weak and fragile, very difficult to survive, so you have to
sustain yourselves barely with the compensated reason. For
instance, do your humans dare to live our mosquito’s way of
life without rhyme or reason? You would disdain it, but
actually you dare not! How difficult is it you reproduce a
descendant?! How difficult is it to sustain your life?! A
woman can only give birth to one child per pregnancy, so if
you also use 1/3 success rate or even 1/5 to risk childbirth
without wisdom, it would equal that each of your children
must lose two to four women or more than that, which we
assume that the child survival rate is 100% without
meticulous care.
That is to say, you will run in one-for-five loss of
meiotic reproduction, how long can you species sustain? Apart
from breeding, look at your human life, can you live like us
just a little nectar or dew is enough for a mosquito to
survive, just a drop of animal blood will be sufficient to
reproduce offspring? The complex physical physiological
structure of the human body needs all kinds of outside things
to support, so humans have endless commodities demand in all
aspects of basic necessities of life. What is strange is that
none of the natural things in the world is directly useful to
humans. So, you have to cultivate crops, process products,
and rack your brains without end on things that are hard to
obtain, but still, you cannot get rid of the hardship of
life. Therefore, you must calculate and set your success rate
on every action for survival at more than 50% expectation, or
the efficiency of the final time success must cover all
previous loss caused by failures; otherwise your human
species or personal survival status immediately face the
brink of crisis. It can be seen that wisdom is not at all a
luxury you can brag to show off, but just a compulsion or a
necessity for you to maintain your weak survival. In other
words, the level of human wisdom is in inverse proportion to
humans’ own survival strength, or rather, human wisdom state
must match their survival conditions, which is the same
situation that our low state of intelligence matches our high
state of survival strength. Actually, Darwin's so-called
"adaptation" cannot be addressed only to the environment,
instead, it should be aimed at the overall ability of the
organism's own survival strength. Therefore, if humans don’t
restrain your process of using wisdom, it will cause adverse
consequences. That is, the excessive use of intelligence or
wisdom will correspondingly reduce the potency of being of
the carrier itself. That is the reason why Huxley's "survival
of the fittest" theory always shows exactly the opposite
effect of "survival of the unfit" in the sequence of natural
evolution. Don’t you realize that human crises such as
overpopulation and ecological imbalance are all caused by
modern science and technology, which is the product of human
wisdom? We heard Chinese has an old saying, "wise man has
much to worry," you can worry about the hardship of humans’
daily life, or you can also worry about the dangerous
situation of the entire humankind. Alas! It is the sadness
that the bearer of wisdom can't evade! Luckily! I am very
proud of being a mosquito."
I was taken dumb as a wooden cock, my eyes saw nothing,
ears heard nothing, and my whole mind was empty. For quite a
while I came back to myself. It was dark in the night, and
the wind blows like someone sobbing. The scholar-like
mosquito had disappeared without a trace; I subconsciously
touched my nose and found it was still in good shape. My mind
immediately rose a sense of remorse, knowing not the least
how that mosquito would despise me, or it might say: "Human
intelligence is not sufficient to save human life, how dare
you to make a fraudulent intention to distain human wisdom?”
 12. Philosopher's Confusion
I f you ever ask people, what do they trust most? You may
hear different answers. An ordinary person would say that
one of his friends is particularly worthy of trust. Cao-cao,
an ancient duke who usurped emperor power would say, he never
trusted anyone except himself. But Zhuangzi said he could not
even believe himself, because he once dreamed that himself
turned into a butterfly, a “vivid butterfly,” that is, he
didn’t feel the least he was not a butterfly; till he woke
up and found himself Zhuang-zi again, “exactly Zhuangzi.”
He wondered how could he still be Zhuang-zi, and for quite a
while he could not resolve, it was Zhuang-zi in the dream of
a butterfly? Or, a butterfly in the dream of Zhuangzi? That
is to say, he was confused if he was a butterfly or he was
Zhuangzi himself. But at the moment, Zhuangzi just didn’t
trust his brain judgment, at least he trusted his sensory
organs; but actually only because he gave too much trust in
his senses, he got the confusion about what he saw in his
dream and what he felt himself after woke up.
Obviously, in the final analysis, the most thing we
trust is our senses, so we have the eternal Torah, “seeing
is believing.” Apart from ordinary people and ancient
philosophers, even today’s scientists are no exception, all
scientific hypotheses or new theories have to undergo
experimental observation, otherwise, they cannot win trust in
academic circles.
However, how reliable are the senses, which is really a
question.
Descartes was the first to suspect it, and he even
distrust the whole perceptual process, to the point that he
could not be sure that anything else existed except “the
innate idea” and his rational thinking. That is to say, if
the illusion and self-deception in the perceptual process are
eliminated, then any object in the perception could be
unreal. If that is the case, the only thing that can be
confirmed in existence is the thought itself that carries his
skepticism, which is the essence of Descartes’s famous
saying “I think therefore I am,” and is the only effective
pure proof of logic in the history of human thought. Since
then, the whole history of philosophy began to explore from
visible external material attributes to a new direction of
the depth of cognitive attributes, which is the watershed of
the so-called ontology and epistemology. It is really a very
important progress, at least, it shows that the mind itself
and its perceptual process have been brought into the field
of human vision. Just imagine, if we don’t know anything
about what we feel and what we think, then what ground do we
stand on to talk about the nature of the perceived objects?
Let’s leave aside the abstract topic and look at some
interesting phenomena now. In Australia, a neurophysiologist
did such an experiment, by which he found that any of our
feelings can be transformed into a biological electric pulse
that affects the brain center. If we directly connect the
electrical pulses formed by stimulating the auditory organs,
to the visual cortex through a micro-electrode, at the same
time connect the electrical pulses formed by stimulating the
visual organs to the auditory cortex, then the participants
immediately enter such a wonderful realm: hear the lightning
but see the thundering. This shows that the world view or
objective representation presented in our consciousness is
actually the product of our physiological structure. If we
change this structure, the nature and state of the object
will also change accordingly. Sure enough, this situation
soon appeared in the clinical treatment of encephalopathy:
there is a disease called epilepsy, and when it attacks the
patient could suddenly collapse, suffer convulsions, losing
consciousness and vomiting white foam, the scene could be
very sad. The cause of this disease is an abnormal electrical
excitation in the central nervous system, which can
distribute intense and disordered electrical pulses at any
time and rapidly spread to the two hemispheres of the brain,
resulting in the complete disorder of the entire brain
function. If we can block all the nerve fibers that connect
the two hemispheres, at least when the disease happens, the
patients can also maintain some conscious and half body
autonomy, so as to avoid serious falls or other accidents. So
some patients attempted having the corpus callosum (nerve
fiber bundle connecting the two cerebral hemispheres) removed
by surgery, but the postoperative patients experienced a
series of reactions and abnormal behavior of metamorphosis.
For example, a surgery patient can’t help with his right
hand to strangle his wife, then his left hand and desperately
pull back the evil right hand. Here occur two problems:
first, for the patient, why his lovely wife suddenly became
so disgusting? Second, in facing the same object, why his
left and right brain and body produce quite different
feelings and reactions?
Obviously, the patient’s subjective state determines
his cognitive results and behavioral effects. In fact, it is
not only the patients, the case is also true to healthy
people, but the healthy people never perceive this phenomenon
and influence, because their lack of a frame of reference
hinders them from changing their position.
Take the vision and hearing as examples: vision accounts
for about 70%~80% of the total of human sensory information.
However, it is only a functional expression of bio-
physiological photosensitive systems, which might be
originated from the metabolic need of photosynthesis of
primitive life forms. It can only sense light in a limited
lux range of 400~700nm. That is to say, for human visual
sensory organs, any object emitting or reflecting light
beyond this range of wavelength equally does not exist, or,
any object does not present its attribute by emitting or
reflecting light equally does not exist. Moreover, this world
is actually colorless, and what we call “colors” are
nothing but the products of sensuous transformation of light
waves with different wavelengths in visible spectrum acting
on the visual system. A mixture of such light wavelengths
generates the sensation of white color, and the human eye can
produce different colors by a single light wavelength of just
5nm in distinction, so from light wavelengths of 400 ~ 700nm
can transform about 150 kinds of different kinds of colors,
mainly forming 7 groups in the spectrum: red (700 ~ 610),
orange (610 ~ 590), yellow (590 ~ 570), green (570 ~ 500),
cyan (500 ~ 460), blue (460 ~ 440), purple (440 ~ 400) etc.
Just imagine, if human eyes were initially a spectral
wavelength analyzer, would there be a color in the world?
Similarly, the world is actually soundless, and what we call
“sound” is only the “misperception” of the mechanical
vibration waves of 16 ~ 20,000Hz stimulating the auditory
organs. Actually sound itself cannot reflect what sound is,
but this leads the listener to mistakenly assume that sound,
even outside the ear, is still directly an objective sound.
What leads to the mistake is not just the tympanum, hairy
cells in the cochlea and auditory nerve central, even
external auditory meatus also involves in the mischief, whose
result is turning lower vibration frequencies into loud
sounds, but higher vibration frequencies remaining inaudible.
According to the resonance principle in physics, one airtight
channel can best resonate with sound waves of wavelength four
times longer than itself. The average length of the human
outer ear canal is 2.7cm, its four times is 10.8cm, which is
similar to the wavelength of 3000 Hz sound (11.4 cm).
Therefore, the resonant frequency of the human outer ear
canal is about 3000Hz. Due to the existence of this
resonating factor, when 3000 Hz vibrating waves of 3000Hz
reach the eardrum, hearing can be added by about 10db.
Imagine also, if the structure of human ears was initially a
vibratory wavelength measuring instrument, would there be a
sound in the world?
And if our sensory organs can accurately reflect the
truth of the world, what other strange boring scenery will
this colorful illusory world filled with sounds present?
In fact, our other sensory organs and senses, such as
taste, smell, and touch, are also distorting the real
presentation of the world. But it is precisely this
transformation of the perceptual distortion of the actual
state, that most effectively established the identification
system we need for survival. Moreover, for all animals, only
this distortion of the real sense can most economically and
harmoniously maintain the weak existence of life. Why should
we blame this kind of perception not founded for “truth,”
is a mistake of life existence? We need to understand that
our perceptual system is not set for seeking truth, but for
seeking survival, which is the key to the whole problem.
Perhaps, if animal sensory organs were not set for survival
but for truth, then all the energy metabolism of the animal
body is probably insufficient to support the local sensory
organs. Perhaps, if biological evolution follows a path of
perceiving truth to move forward, it may simply not until the
advent of the human beings who love truth so much, the
kinetic energy for species evolution would have exhausted.
And it is even doubtful, whether animals could form a truly
effective system of identification if their senses could
truly reflect the world. For instance, if a mottled snake was
hiding in a meadow, is it easier for a marmot to distinguish
color difference find its natural enemy, or is it easier for
it to use wavelength analysis to avoid error in identifying
the object?
Even so, human beings cannot stay in the simple sensory
level of survival like animals, so the sages among them had
to lead all of us to a rational height beyond the senses.
Despite this, philosophers will have more profound questions:
is it for sure that based on the misguiding senses, rational
won’t lead us to deeper fallacy? In other words, what makes
us think that rational knowledge is necessarily the
correction of the sensory errors rather than the extension of
the distorted senses? The problem is that, at the level of
reason, we also do not have a reference frame to transform
our position, so we will trust our reason in the same way we
believe our senses, even though this trust actually has not
the slightest reason to base upon.
Because of this, Kant specifically borrowed a strange
term from Leibniz, called “apperception.” This term
contains a self-evident meaning. Since our subjective
perceptive process is a transcendental self-closed system,
that is to say, since we do not have a non-perceptual, pure
objective channel to reach things outside of us, that is to
say, we cannot find the boundary conditions between
“subjective cognition” and “external object,” thus, we
are unable to prove the identical relationship between the
two. If so, Kant is brighter and wiser than the ordinary in
his simply throwing all “things in-themselves” to the
transcendent realm (the other shore) that we cannot sense,
isn’t he?
Based on this, if I say, we human beings are also a kind
of object that is completely buried in the dark box, what can
you do to reprove it? The difference may only be that we
blind ourselves through the way we think we know.
 13. I Know Nothing
A t the beginning of the 18th century, Irish born British
philosopher Berkeley, based on Newton optics theory and
Locke sensualism, put forward a grotesque "non-material
hypothesis," which can be summarized later in three famous
sayings: "being is being perceived," "object is an
aggregation of ideas;" "object and sense are originally one
thing." At that time, his thought was only viewed as a
ridiculous joke; some people even doubt whether he had
leprosy, and suggested him to undergo mental treatment. It is
a typical case in human history that a fool ridicule a
wiseman. Bear in mind that Berkeley was the first to put
forward major suspense in logic. That is, the ultimate
ineffectiveness of perception and reason, and it is also
based on this revelation that Hume has to reexplore the
limitation of experience itself, thereby revealing the new
chapter of human's in-depth study of the essence of mind and
cognitive movement.
In the final analysis, human cognition is based on
"unconscious subjective judgment," that is to say, you don't
know what a hole or an abyss is beneath your knowledge
platform. For example, we see an object no more than based on
its shape, color, sound, and other sensory elements, but
mainly based on its shape, the information that comes from
the visual sense. But visual sense can only reflect the
attributes of light-emitting or light reflecting the object;
if something does not emit light nor reflect light, then for
the visual sense it doesn't exist. Because of this, the
ancients never see the air, although it is most common on the
earth and most closely related to humans. As for color and
sound, both are the products of self-deception, the former is
the subjective index of the converted wavelength, the latter
is converted the auditory sense of the vibrating frequency.
Humans don't have any means besides the sensory organs to let
them take the fantastic objects into their consciousness as
reference. If this is the case, what can we use as
confirmations to the objects we sense as really objective
true, rather than an unconscious subjective assertion?
Or, you may say, my reason and thought can help me to
make the right judgment. Wrong! Do you think ancient people
have no reason? Or, physicists prior to Einstein did not know
how to think? Otherwise, why the ancestors could not identify
the mass of air? How could the scientists misjudge "ether"
that might not subsist exists throughout the universe?
Actually, the subjective judgment of rational thinking is
probably even more serious, because rational activities
consist of the following three ways, but none of these three
ways is reliable.
Let’s look at the first way, that is, the pure logic
reasoning and speculative way, presumably it is the best way
to avoid the interference of human senses. In ancient Greece,
there was a Pythagoras who was both a mathematician and a
philosopher, He was the first to realize the confusion of
senses, so he put forward the rationalism, saying "the world
is numbers." Number, of course, has the perfect logical order
and rules, and the most useful tool to thoroughly rectify the
disordered and superficial representation in perception.
However, the question is, how can we prove that the world is
"numbers," or the logical operational rules of the numbers
itself necessarily be the rules of the world's movement? That
is the question precisely what Berkeley put forward. Let's
change a way of the discussion, for example, how does the
logical movement work, it works according to its own inherent
program, or it works to truly reflect the movement of the
outside world through a reliable perceptual channel? With
this question, you will immediately fall into the eternal
philosophical quagmire, because whatever you can raise as
evidence is precisely what you should prove first, or rather,
all of that you can raise as evidence is just the object you
need to prove first. Hence this makes all proofs fall
invalid, and also make all falsifications fall invalid.
Unless you blindly assume that any evidence you raise comes
from the mind, or comes from outside of the mind, then all
your evidences are immediately effective and sufficient to
confirm each other. But, in this way, the fundamental problem
of nature and relation between "knowing and being" that you
are supposed to explore still remains a subjective assertion.
So, we can see that the contention between materialism and
idealism in the history of philosophy is totally meaningless
in logic, and that is why Wittgenstein asserts that all such
arguments in previous philosophy were the products of
language fault.
The second way is called the inductive method. That is
the most common method of human wisdom, and also the most
direct channel to accumulate knowledge by virtue of senses
and experience, so it seems to have both the advantages of
perception and rational (Let us temporarily leave aside the
prerequisite misleading caused by sensory organs, but only
pay attention to the works of reason itself). However, the
problem is, by means of logical induction all the knowledge
acquired is destined to become prejudice that can only be
used to falsify but not to prove things. Moreover, you must
also use this prejudice-as-overgeneralization knowledge to
verify all things, and so it is still a total game of
subjective arbitrariness. For example, after a detailed
investigation, you find that the swans in Asia are white, the
swans in Europe are also white, the swans in America are
still white, so you conclude that all swans are white. But
after all, you fail to examine all the swans in the world and
exhaust the investigation, so as proof it is ineffective.
Even so, you have to accept the above conclusion as an
effective proof; otherwise, you may be trapped in a
predicament of never knowing anything. If one day, an
Australian black swan as an effective falsification were also
taken into induction, then your acquired knowledge will
instantly collapse. For the sake of being prudent, you may no
longer make any more conclusion on the swan colors, although
everything in such a state of uncertain would make your life
impossible to sustain. So, we can see that induction is such
a messy way to seek knowledge: it either leads to erroneous
knowledge or leads to uncertainty. However, you cannot say
that your previous erroneous knowledge is not as good as
today's uncertainty, because after all you have to make
yourself acquire a little knowledge by means of subjective
arbitrariness.
The third way is the deductive method, which is often
used also. It is the main channel of logic based on the
judgment of reason and inference, and it has a characteristic
of great value, that is, it can deduct the unknown from the
known, which seems to be one of the basic geneses for the
growth of human knowledge. However, the case is just reversed
with an inductive method, that is, to acquire knowledge by
means of logical deduction, the acquired knowledge is
destined to become prejudice that can only be used to prove
but not to falsify things. Moreover, because the evidence
that you base on to make the deduction is limited, therefore,
the seemingly established proof is, in fact, an arbitrary
judgment based on arbitrariness. For example, from major
premise, we put forward that all swans are white; the minor
premise is: there are swans in Australia; then the conclusion
is that the swans in Australia must be white too. Based on
logic, the reasoning of this syllogism is established.
However, you have no way to verify the reliability of this
proof, that is, there is no logical falsification. Because if
you went to an on-the-spot investigation and found that
Australia has black swans, then this falsification is already
an inductive one, but not a deductive one. Unless the
evidence with which you make the deduction has nothing to do
with induction, but the purely logical axioms and derivation
(if theology, metaphysics, geometry or mathematical deduction
can be counted), then you cannot help but instantly fall in
the circular argument like in the previous way that can
neither prove nor disprove.
In this way, we can see that unconsciously arbitrariness
is also the premise of rational knowledge.
Then, can we view the knowledge of arbitrariness as
"knowledge?" Or, more properly to ask it, how does the
knowledge of arbitrariness become "knowledge?"
We could seek a resolution to this question with the
method of proof by contradiction, that is, we remove the
underlying grounds of subjective judgment to see whether the
cognition can still be reached.
In philosophy, it generally demarcates in this way:
disciplines that predicate concrete objects or existing
things are ordinary branches of knowledge or scientific
knowledge; in comparison, discipline that predicates the
predication itself is philosophy or metaphysics. The former
is to seek knowledge "within the metaphysics," while the
latter is to investigate "metaphysics itself;" the former
expresses itself as the interdependent relationship between
the being who predicates Being and the object of predication,
the latter expresses itself as the self-consciousness of the
being who predicates Being as regards his own state.
However, a paradox immediately emerges here —
As the former, although he thought he knows what the
object of his concern is because he is utterly unaware of
what the concern itself, wherewith he focus his concern on
the object. That is, he does not know how his own
“signifier” functions on the “signified,” thus what
really the “signified” still remains dubious.—That is why,
even Einstein, as the dean of science, is not that overly
confident, for he once said: "the object of all science,
whether natural science or psychology, is to coordinate our
experience with each other and bring them into a logical
system." (The Meaning of Relativity p.1) Obviously, there
already exists a problem of the need to elucidate such things
as "experience" and "logical system."
As the latter, he actually looks for but fundamentally
cannot find that metaphysical “signifier” itself, as like
the eyes cannot see the eyeballs itself, what he calls
“signifier” must necessarily be a “signifier” that
already envelopes a “signified,” as like when it comes to
“vision,” the “seer” must have something as the “seen,”
through which the function of “seer” can be abstracted. So,
those previous specified “signifiers” (such as
understanding, logic, spirit and so on) thus already become
the “signified,” as like once the eye becomes a seen
“eyeball”, the eyeball for the “seer” is no longer the
“seer”, instead, is already the “seen” laid on the
dissection table. Because of this, from Plato to Berkeley,
anyone who attempted to investigate how the “signifier”
functions, in order to elucidate the "signified," not only
failed to explain "why the ‘signifier’ can signify," but
ultimately became equally lost as regards which truly exists
between the "signifier" and the "signified." Seeing such
being the case, Wittgenstein reasonably points out,
"propositions can represent the whole reality, but they
cannot represent what they must have in common with reality
in order to be able to represent it—the logical form," so
they are things belongs to "want cannot be said, but which
can show themselves," and "the totality of true propositions
is the totality of natural sciences." (Philosophy of Logic
)
As a result, in the end, we fall into the complete
unknown.
Conversely, if Einstein or Wittgenstein did not put the
"underlying subjective judgment" into question, then the
knowers would not doubt their "knowing," instead, they rather
still undoubtedly thought that the knowledge of subjective
judgment they acquired at the time was the indubitable
manifestation of truth.
So, what can be affirmatively said is: it is the
subjective judgment that helps to establish the knowledge.
The term “subjective judgment,” with respect to its
original implication, is the term for "positing the unknown
as known." That is to say, if it is deduced from general
concepts, "knowledge" is unfounded. But it is undeniable that
people always feel that they do have some knowledge, and only
because of that "knowledge" can we survive.
So, we have to ask again: what is "knowledge?"
It is an ancient mystery that always baffles all
philosophers. Strictly speaking, nobody has ever really made
a systematic demonstration and resolved it. From Plato
onward, almost all philosophers tried to uncover this
mystery, and often they thought they accomplished the
mission. Only Socrates, Plato’s teacher, once humbly
claimed: "I know that I know nothing," intending to remind
others to be especially mindful of the ignorance of the
capacity-to-know. However, if we don’t even know what "the
capacity-to-know" is, then we really should review what is
the point we talk much about "truth?"
 14. True or False
A ccording to Lu Xun, people tend to talk about things they
don’t have, and he presumed that Confucius possibly
suffered indigestion from gastritis, for he said: "good food
sliced and well cooked." Considering his frequently traveling
from one principality to another to canvass dukes about his
ideas, Confucius should not have such a penchant on good
food. Perhaps the tedious touring in wagons of wooden wheels,
bumping on the rough dirt road, always irregular meals,
altogether led to his stomach problem, so he said such a
word. According to this inference, "truth" must be something
rare in our lives. Otherwise, why we hear a lot of this word
in modern times?
However, "true" is the last thing people cared about in
the history of China. The reason is that traditionally we did
not have to distinguish the logic difference between "true"
and "false", and all philosophers in ancient China concerned
only about the social politics and moral ethics, even Laozi
and Confucius were of no exception, so "real power" became
the inexhaustible fountain of "truth" for Chinese. With
respect to what on earth is the "true" state? And to what
extent we lack it? Average people may not even have the
ability to estimate it. Perhaps because of this, China
scholars do not understand why Western intellectuals are
prone to agnosticism; and of course, we also could not
understand why Westerners time and again overthrow the
"truth" that was proved by past practice repeatedly to be
correct and useful, so that they have pushed the science
forever moving forward?
Since the 17th century (or even earlier to 2400BC of
Plato’s age), Western philosophers represented by Descartes,
Boyle, and Bekele, already gradually realized that the "true"
objects outside, once pass through the filter of human
"senses" (referring to the sensory senses or sensibility) and
"reason" (referring to logical reasoning), immediately became
the "distorted" objects, or at least you have no way of
judging whether they maintain the "true" state in the sense
of "correspondence theory". When this development came to
Hume and Kant, the meaning of "true" linked to the "objective
entity" ("thing in-itself") was completely thrown into the
transcendent land far beyond reach. So, in order to
understand the essence of the problem, we must start from a
great philosopher called Empedocles 500 BC in ancient Greece,
but we will bypass the cumbersome history of philosophy to
analyze the problem directly.
Empedocles is the ancestor of the "materialist theory of
reflection," and he was the first to discuss epistemological
problems in a systematic way. His views were unique and kind
of close to the ordinary people. For example, he held that
our sensory organs were roughly a number of vacuum-like
"channels," forming senses through the "flow" of some
particles emitted from external objects. He also found that
our different senses have different limitations, so he
proposed the perceptual principle of "attracting the same
rejecting the different", such as the eyes are connected with
fire and water channels, "through fire channel, we see the
bright objects, and through the water channel, we see the
dark." In this way, the knowledge we sensed or experienced is
of course objectively true. As for the "wisdom" and
"consciousness," they come into the heart by blood fully
mixed particle flow, so "the blood around the heart is
wisdom," which sounds somewhat close to the "mind" that
functions for conscious thinking.
However, the "theory of reflection" is sure a big
problem. First of all, our sensory organs may not be vacuum-
like "channels." Furthermore, even if our "senses" or
"consciousness" are just like a mirror, the mirror can be a
yellow bronze one or a colorless glass one, a flat one or a
concave-convex lens one, in which the image reflected still
differs by virtue of the difference in the mirror itself;
photographs make volumes become planes. Lockean “Tabula Rasa
(blank tablet)” also makes the white depict significantly
traceless. In a word, as long as you are not “empty,” you
cannot unconditionally or without determination receive
external influence. If so, that the “object” you predicated
is “your object” or “the object of outside” immediately
became a perplexing question.
In fact, human’s "perception" originates in the
"induction" of physio-chemical material, just like humans
themselves originate in the evolution of atoms, molecules,
and organisms. However, the lower level the material form is,
the higher degree of its being is, and its affective
attributes is correspondingly lower; on the contrary, the
more advanced species, due to its degree of being tending to
decline, its "affective sense-response" attributes will be
correspondingly compensated to some height of "perception."
Since this is the case, according to the principle from
simplicity to complexity, if we can first probe the basic
rules of the physical inductive attribute, then no matter how
dazzling the "perception" or "mind" may look, its basic
movement will become clear for sure.
Take the atomic structure as an example. The average
being of electron presupposes sensing the nucleus being of a
proton (such as a proton being circled by an electron forms
the most simple hydrogen atom). For the electron, it uses its
"transcendental" negative charge to "sense" and "response"
the positive proton. That is, as the "subject," in order to
"recognize," the electron itself cannot only have vacuum-like
pores, it must first have a certain subjective attribute of
induction such as "negative charge" (i.e. electromagnetic
properties). Otherwise, it may not get any information about
the proton. Conversely, proton also needs to use its inherent
positive as an "objective entity’s" phenomenon in response
to the electron’s "sensing." That is to say, what the
electron recognizes is limited to a proton’s "positive
charge" only, and the proton’s other attributes, such as
shape, volume, quality, color and so on, do not exist for
electron; or they belong to the category of "transcendental."
Therefore, any "affective sense-response (induction)" or
"perception" is nothing but the coupling of the corresponding
attributes between "subject and objective entity" (in
philosopher's word), which are actually the "differentiated
material of the universe" (i.e. the natural state). For
instance, human vision is just the coupling of the photonic
pigment of retinal cells and optical photos, which converts
light energy through chemical energy into nerve impulses.
Moreover, there is a problem: "coupling" process itself makes
the inherent objective attribute distorted, or rather,
inevitably superposes the subjective affecting attribute to
the "objective affected attribute," so that what the sensory
organ acquired is presented a distorted entity "coupled by
two-side attributes." For example, in the moment electron
sensing proton, what it harvests is not the original positive
charge of proton, but the "neutral" product after the
collision of its negative charge with proton’s positive
charge—hydrogen (electromagnetic induction); another
example, assuming that "acid" as the subjective body, and
"alkali" as the objective body, then what "acid" (with acid
radical as its affecting attribute) in coupling with "alkali"
(with base as its affected attribute) harvested is probably
something else—salt (chemical combination), and salt is no
longer the original "alkali."
 In other words, the process of affective sense-response
(induction) or perception is bound to transform "objective
entity" into "object," and the objectivity of the object is
bound to be restricted by the affective attribute of
subjectivity. Thus, there are at least three differences
between the "objective entity" and "object:" (1) the
difference between all attributes of the objective entity and
its sensible attribute; (2) the utterly unknown of the non-
attribute trunk; (3) the distorted state of objective
entity’s sensible attribute being superimposed by subjective
sensing attribute. In a word, the "object" is no longer an
"objective entity," and it is destined to be a product of
subjectification from the very beginning, or rather, it can
only be a "false appearance" that varies with the subject.
It's just like facing the same world, the bat who depends on
the echoes of ultra-sonic to perceive objects, and the
orangutan who depends on their eyes to see the objects, their
respective objects or representations must be different. The
difference is not related to the actual carrier of the
object, but only to the actual subject of the object.
What's more, since the subject’s affective sense-
response attributes will gain correspondingly along with the
development of the weakening process of natural evolution,
that is to say, the subject’s subjectivity will increasingly
expand. According to this logic to reason, the increase of
subjectivity can only make the degree of the distorted object
worse, even though the increase of subjectivity (subject’s
affective sense-response) will also make the amount of
object’s information increase correspondingly. In other
words, the degree of human "perception" is definitely greater
than the degree of "affective sense-response (induction)" of
the primitive material, but the increase of information
amount does not mean the synchronously rising of the degree
of information truth, on the contrary, it can only be an
inverse proportion of interaction. So, please remember,
"truth" is usually not as "reliable" as "fallacy," because
the so-called "fallacy" is actually "the previous truth."
When the new truth is refined, the old truth will be
discarded as fallacy, but the speed of any new knowledge, new
theory and new theory being overthrown is faster and faster,
that is, its "true value" is decreasing, but "false content"
increasing, which causes the continued declining of its
stability. This is the main reason that people usually
complain about the "updating rate of knowledge is continually
rising."
From an intuitive point of view, the reason why people
are not easy to accept this conclusion is that the utility of
knowledge inevitably deceive us. For example, the scientific
development clearly caused a series of miracles such as
satellites, missiles, or medical technology clearly cured
diseases that were viewed uncurable by folk doctors, which
should be sufficient to confirm that human knowledge system
is getting closer to the true objective and absolute truth,
shouldn’t it? The raising of this question itself precisely
illustrates how ignorant we are about knowledge itself. So-
called "knowledge" is nothing but the pronoun of
"information;" so-called "knowledge growth" is nothing but a
pronoun of "information increment." Information is the
marginal coupling effect of evolutionary differentiation, and
"information growth" is the gain effect of the affective
sense-response inevitably caused by the process of natural
differentiation. Nobody can prove that the increment of
"information" is necessarily equivalent to the increase of
"information truth value". If information itself is destined
to be involved by the subjective interference factor of the
subject of affective sense-response or perceiver at the
beginning, then why the increment of information is not the
"increase of information distortion?"
 A bat may serve as an example here. Bat can accurately
capture another tiny irregular particle moving in high-speed
flight (such as fly or mosquito), its accuracy is much higher
than a missile hit a huge aircraft, but based on this, can we
say that bat with its superficial knowledge acquired by
ultrasonic echo alone has directly grasped the kernel truth?
Take the Chinese medicine for another example, thousands of
years ago, Chinese herbal medicine could effectively cure
severe cough caused by bronchitis, but the medical theory
believed the cough was caused by "wet spleen," so the herbal
medicine effectuates at the "spleen" (to dry spleen). Now we
know the function of has nothing to do with the respiratory
system and it is just an immune organ. Those herbal medicines
actually effectuate on the bronchial intimal and respiratory
center. But the erroneous theory in practice does not affect
its effectiveness, and only sufficient to prove the truth of
the low-level theory. But what is the point of this "proof?"
It can only prove the ineffectiveness of practice verifying
truth, and nothing else. If this case makes sense, what do we
have as reliable bases to confirm the effective theories
today that must contain more value in truth, instead of less?
In actuality, the only thing we can make sure is that today's
theory is bound to be overthrown and abandoned even faster.
If so, the "growth of knowledge" is gradually entering the
"temple of truth," or is going to the "perplexity of truth?"
"Truth" is supposed to mean the pure objective elements
left behind after excluding subjectivity. But the only way
you can get to know your object is the subjective attribute
itself. Except that, you have nothing. So, you can only
accept the "world picture" distorted by your subjective
attributes, even if it is a "false" one, there is nothing you
can do, because you may even not know your perception is
actually indulging in an ocean of distortion, which is called
the "closure of metaphysics". It seems you can ignore
philosophy, but the laws of philosophy will not let off you.
You may broadly talk about "truth," but the truth won’t get
close to you because of that. The cognitive process is
inevitably is a distorting and virtual process, but this
"distortion" allows you go-ahead for "survival," and this
"virtual" makes it possible for you to set feet on the path
of seeking practicality.
At this point, do you still want to seek "truth?" I am
afraid you won’t even say such lofty things like "I sowed
dragon seed but harvested fleas," because what you sowed is
flea! Only you did not realize that you had scattered flea.
It is not easy to understand the relation between true and
false, between what is "truth" and what is "fallacy," but it
is too easy for everyone to confuse this and that, to lose
oneself in seeking illusory "truth." What actually the entire
humanity needs to seek is survival, like all other creatures
do in nature, what else besides that?
 15. Good or Not
G “ood” is a mystery that no one can solve all over the
world since the ancient age. At first glance, everyone
seems to have a ruler for measuring good and evil, that is to
say, "goodness" is a kind of innate conscience and common
sense, so shallow and common that everyone can feel it with
his skin since childhood. For example, if you take away a
baby bottle, he will cry loudly to protest your evil, but if
you give him candy, he will instantly smile and appreciate
your goodness. So, following this without rhyme or reason
feeling, the greatest philosopher Hagel once made a most
boring comment on "good," he said, good and evil is
dialectically relative. But this is equal to that he said
nothing. It is precisely because "good" and "evil" originally
attributed to one and the same thing. It's only a matter of
which angle you stand to evaluate it that makes things become
complicated.
Aristotle seemed a little sober. Instead of looking for
"good" from the opposite side of "evil," he regarded "good"
as the ultimate goal and the first motive of the whole
universe. However, unfortunately, the evolutionary process of
the universe is just counterproductive, as it makes "evil"
more and more obvious, but "good" becomes more and thinner.
For example, if animals compete for turf, they generally post
a threatening gesture; if the other side cannot be deterred,
they will fight each other. But they normally know to stop if
the other side runs away. Animals are rarely seen to harm or
kill one another in the same species. When the evolution came
to humans, things have significantly changed, even some
little territorial disputes, conflicts between clans and
tribes would go on till totally defeated or killed the other
side; and the more civilized society, the dangerous killing
humans would perform. Even after the death number rose to
tens of millions in the two world wars, human beings still
refuse to reflect the evil within human themselves, instead,
they researched and manufactured bio-chemical poisoning
agents or nuclear weapons, with which to threaten each other.
It seems human beings will not suspend their "evil" conduct
until they go "evil" extreme to do genocide with what they
achieved from science and technology and eventually destroy
human species, which is really a shame to Aristotle’s good
wish.
Kant was vaguely aware of the discrepancy. So he accused
the unreasonable and contradictions in rational. On the other
hand, he said "good" is the moral law that can only be
derived from rational, so he held that though "goodness"
belongs to the highest realm. One should not expect it to
take root in this world, and it could probably be realized in
the moral world of transcending sensibility. What is the
moral world of transcending sensibility? Does it mean the
kingdom of heaven? Could humankind go there after we destroy
our species?
This topic may remind us of Machiavelli who stressed
that people are prone to be evil than to be good. He
repeatedly said that human is the embodiment of selfishness,
greed, fear, jealousy, changeable, devoid of gratitude. So,
the best means to rule and the highest principle for politics
should include bribery, murder, persecution of the dissidents
and treachery, and a monarch is necessary to have a double
characters of fox and lion, and should even act as a hundred-
percent hypocrites, as long as he has behind him a powerful
military force. This thoughtful and open-minded expression
surely earns Machiavelli slander. But his understanding of
the political trickery is quite close to what the Chinese
believed in the tactics of a tyrannical ruler, who might be
admired as a historical hero for his having unified China to
end the wars between states. As if only a tyrant or a warlord
could relieve the misery of the people and brings order and
safety to society. A great number of people honestly and
tactfully believe that the social conditions require
despotism, and corruption is the necessary means to work
through the sophisticated human relations, and cunning is the
tricky way for well governing, and cruelty is the expression
of a hero’s courage. In short, these people are not a penny
less than Machiavelli in understanding political trickery,
which is sufficient to make any rulers fully display their
evil as good talent.
It seems that no matter how we define it, human nature
is a topic that is hard to express clearly.
In recent years, a number of Darwinian biologists began
to investigate the origin of human nature from animals, and
the result was remarkable. Take the "incest taboo" in ethics
rule as an example. It is generally believed that the
prevention of sexual incest in the blood relatives is the
moral imperative of human rationality. But biologists found
that within most animal communities this rule is also
strictly followed, that is, once the whelp has grown up,
either male or female kid is expelled by parents from the
family group, and the displaced grown-up kid animal has to
join other groups to combine new family, in order to avoid
incest problem in this group. In the movie "Lion King," the
usurper uncle persecutes the nephew to run away, which is an
act of enforcing the rule and it has no ground to be blamed;
even if the father were alive, the young lion is inevitable
to be expelled also. But this kid came back to his family
group to restore his throne, a story which is really treason
and heresy to the biological rule of "incest taboo." We
should know that animals instinctively abide by the morality
of incest taboo, because the species that do not follow this
rule will be extinct due to the dominant rate of harmful
genes. That is to say, the ethical source of "no incest" is
the natural selection rule. Thus, later the "forbidding man
and woman incest" as the number one human morality was not
all any sage’s masterpiece. Strictly speaking, primitive
clan society grew out of intermediate society of animal
genetic relatives, which means in human arranged marriage
system of "parents’ decision, match-maker’s word" hides the
spontaneous rationale that "only parents and matchmakers can
distinguish the relation between son and daughter-in-law," or
it hides natural moral thread of the gradual progression or
transition from biological society towards human society. It
indicates the unified and corresponding relationship between
bioethics structure and biosocial structure. Naturally, as
the small patriarchal communities of genetic form tends to
collapse, as well as the social structure of superfamily
becomes increasingly prominent, the relations between
children of close relatives gradually alienated, many even go
different places before they grow to adult age. So the risk
of "incest" reduced significantly. But later, the ancient
virtue of "forbidding the communication between man and
woman" all of a sudden become a feudal joke, instead, the
corrupt "sexual liberation" became rampant.
Some people put forward the theory of gene determinism
of "good," which is not without reason, because "good" is
after all just the form of altruistic behavior, and as its
earliest presentation altruistic behavior did occur within
the kinship. For example, parents generally have the most
selfless dedication toward their children, and the degree of
mutual assistance between siblings is usually higher than
that of outsiders. Based on this, some sociobiologists even
worked out mathematical equations to calculate a "good"
value. It bases on the theory that genes tend to continue and
expand their existence, and life is just a temporary
transport carrier of genes, that is, "organism is nothing but
the tools for DNA to manufacture more DNA," or, a hen is just
the "transitional form" of egg to produce more eggs. When
biological evolution comes to a certain stage, the selfish
gene needs to have variations of some altruistic karyotype,
so that it is more beneficial for its reproduction and
expansion, which is why "altruistic acts of goodness" first
appeared in biological genetic relations. Clearly, that
"good" begins with a motive of "non-good" from the very
beginning, and so good and evil are destined to be integrated
into one.
Base on this theory, since altruism is only for more
effective "egoism," the altruistic object of a gene is
necessary corresponding to the coefficient of genetic
relations. The so-called "coefficient of genetic relations"
refers to the given genotype proportion. For example, in the
biological species of bisexual diploid breeding, the
offspring and their parents share 1/2 gene of the same type,
and it reduces at the same rate according to the multiple
relationships between generations, that is, the same genes is
1/4 between grandpa and his grandson generation, the same
gene is 1/8 in great grand generation and so on. In the same
way, the coefficient of genetic relationship reduces at each
interlayer in collateral relatives. With this method to
calculate the "good" ratio in a limited range seems to be
very accurate. For example, according to the study done by
social biologists Dreyfuss and Hale, they found that in
yellow ant community of Hymenoptera, due to male ants are
haploid genotypes, the queen ant is diploid genotype, the
same gene coefficient between male offspring and female
offspring workers shows a low ratio of 1/4, but the same
genotype coefficient ratio between the female offspring
worker sisters shows a high rate of 3/4. "As a result, the
female biomass is three times higher than male biomass, so
feeding the former female workers have to make effort three
times more than that they made feeding the latter."
Sociobiology
( by Michel Veuillez) This multiple relations
coincides with the genotype ratio between them. That is to
say, the distribution of goodness coincides with the
distribution of homotypic genes. However, once applied this
theory to human society, it will soon go wrong. For example,
geneticist Haldane once joked that he would be willing to
jump into the water to save three drowning siblings or nine
drowning cousins. Because considering the balance of natural
selection, he shares 1/2 the same genotype with his brothers,
so he must save out three his brothers to make sure his own
valuable gene is sufficiently inherited. In the same way to
consider the value of his risk, since he shares only 1/8 the
same genotype with his cousins, he needs to save out nine
cousins to make it sure that his own gene is sufficiently
inherited. If there is one drowning brother or seven drowning
cousins only, or even dozens of people neither relatives nor
friends are drowning, he would rather not risk his life to do
the "good deed."
In fact, the evolution of the whole biological society
is precisely a declining process of the coefficient rate in
genetic relations. The average coefficient rate of genetic
relations in unicellular organisms is as high as 100%, but
there is not at all a tiny bit of altruistic behavior between
them. As the evolution of biological society comes to the
stage of the modern civilization of human society, the
national average genetic coefficient rate has fallen to the
most distant relatives. But the commercialization of social-
economic structure, democratic social-political structure
melt with the social-cultural structure is established on the
most widely altruistic relations, even though this altruistic
relationship may indeed contain worse selfish, greed,
exploitation, and injustice. It is clear that the theory of
genetic altruism is not yet sufficient to reveal the origin
of "good" or the root of "morality."
In any case, "good"—even if it contains "evil"—is a
creation of this world, then what is its essence? Where is
its source?
"Goodness" is itself "evil" at the same time. In the
final analysis, it is only a "biological attribute coupling"
problem. If we explore it further, we find it is a problem of
"social structural process." "Attribute" is for
"integration;" "integration" is for "interdependence." Then
the point is: under what circumstances do we need to rely on
"altruistic attributes" to achieve "egoism?" In what
circumstance must we rely on "structural integration" to
achieve "interdependence?" Let us draw our conclusion from
here.
Everything comes from the evolution of the universe
through differentiation, deterioration, and integration.
"Differentiation" is "deterioration," and "deterioration" has
to go "integration." Although integration has temporarily
achieved compensation to the deterioration and
interdependence, it cannot prevent the trend of continuous
differentiation. So, the natural progression of "integration"
follows the movement of differentiation continuously:
particle differentiation leads to atomic structure→atomic
differentiation leads to molecular structure→molecular
differentiation leads to cell structure→cell differentiation
leads organic structure→organic differentiation leads to
social structure...... it goes on and on, making the
evolution of the universe. This progression of structuration
is rolling to expand through the superposing layer upon
layer, and it has the following four characteristics. (1) The
structural stability of the system reduces gradually by
layers; for instance, the dissociation of molecular structure
is far easier than that of the atomic structure. (2) The
compensated attributes of structure progressively increase;
for example, the function of cellular structure is much
higher than that of the molecular structure. (3) The
consumption of structural energy distribution worsens; for
instance, the absolute value of animal energy consumption is
far greater than the material energy metabolism of single-
celled organisms. (4) The velocity of structural changes is
increasing; for instance, the speed of social development is
much higher than that of biological variation. In a word, its
degree of deterioration becomes increasingly serious with the
deepening of natural differentiation. Its internal need for
dependence becomes increasingly urgent with the deepening of
deterioration. It is the source of "good," or rather, the
essence of goodness. In a word, "good" is a pure product of
natural compensation; of course, it has its own specification
of evolution and direction of a social movement.
We can see that the so-called "altruistic attribute" is
not related to the homotypic coefficient of the gene. It at
most has the differentiation of gene molecule accompanies it
for period of journey in the evolution. In the final
analysis, your deterioration makes no ground for you to be
selfish or a dependent-in-itself; if you are self-complete,
you cannot be altruistic even if you want to. Selfishness is
a self- completeness that self-repels from group-
structuration; altruism is totally helplessness of egoism. If
you became deteriorated, you take altruism as a premise for
your selfishness, and your altruism is actually selfishness.
From the point of view of common sense, altruism is just an
identity of more cunning selfishness. From a philosophical
perspective, altruism is undoubtedly the necessity of natural
differentiated entities flow from "low degree of dependence"
to "high degree of dependence." In other words, selfishness
means selfish individual (or "entity of dependence in-
itself") cannot integrate itself into the structure of
society. We should say it is not because it is selfish, but
because it doesn't need such structure at all. If you need
this structure, but you behave selfishly uncompromising in
opposing it, appearing to be misfit everywhere, then you work
on your own undoing. In short, whether altruism is out of
sentiment or will, it cannot become the basis and reason for
the integrated social structure. It won’t be any bit errors
if we say it the other way around: it is the natural
evolutionary progression of social members and social
structure that determines the "selfish" or "altruistic"
behavior or mode of the organism.
To this point, the "origin of goodness" that has been
arguing over thousand years wells up itself: that is, the
"brilliant deterioration." Because if one is "self-complete
and independence," naturally he doesn’t need to "treat
others good." If one becomes "deteriorated and need to depend
on others," he will be "good to others." If one is not
"deeply deteriorated," he will not be "very good to others."
If one is not "thoroughly deteriorated," he will not be
"widely good to others." If one is badly "deteriorated," he
will be too much "good to others." If one is completely
"deteriorated," he will be entirely "good to others." That is
the "highest good (entelechies)" (Aristotle). Needless to
say, the so-called "evil" is the intermediate form of
expression for "good," or rather, the incompletely
deteriorated state and swinging state of dependence. So, it
may cause severe friction and damage to others; and the state
of "highest goodness" refers to the extremely natural
differentiation or extremely social deterioration, as like
computer hardware and software, they have to combine and work
together to show their value, without any part, the other is
useless; but integrated as a whole, they work excellently.
Individual to others or society means the same to some
extent.
 16. Beauty Measures
A great Chinese painter once said, the artistic conception
of "beauty" lies in between like and does not like, "like"
is kitsch, "does not like" is deceiving others. Then how can
one manage it between the two? It seems that "beauty" is
really an annoying obsession, and the more obscure and
subtle, the more beautiful it appears, resulting in the
infinite pursuit—far beyond reach, exhausted or intoxicated?
Clear or perplexed? Harvest or lost? Appreciating or
possessing? These are the eternal dilemma and endless
anxiety. So, Bacon says, the beauty of the figure is better
than the beauty of looks, and the beauty of grace is better
than the beauty of the figure. It is because the beauty of
looks is apparent, the beauty of the figure is somewhat
difficult to describe, and the beauty of grace is purely
mental illusion, and therefore it is beautiful beyond words.
So, the three most profound philosophers, Plato, Kant, and
Hagel all attributed beauty to "idea." That is because the
objective things you can capture in hand, and the moment you
get it, it lost the sense of beauty. But if you put it into
the conception of the mind, its implication will be conserved
in mind, and its fragrant beauty will spread.
However, "beauty" always needs to have an object, as a
pure mind cannot produce "beauty" without any source.
Therefore, naturalists emphasize the externality of beauty,
and the result is also undeniable. To put it bluntly, in the
midst of a landscape, materialists say, "beauty" is due to
its inherent style, only with a quiet mind enjoying it, one
can see the excellent beauty. But idealists may say, "beauty"
is something of a particular feeling from the mind, only when
the feeling melts with the scenes, could the mind swing to
appreciate the colorful scenery. In view of this, as the
first teacher in human history to explore the aesthetic
essence, Plato once commented at the end of his work "Hippias
Major:" "beauty is difficult" to say the subtle of "beauty."
Since then, "what is a beauty" became a disputable question
for argument, and it even became one of the most difficult
topics in the system of philosophy. However, it is necessary
first to ask: what is the source of "beauty?" Where does it
come from and where it goes? In a word, what is the meaning
of "beauty" to human beings in their effort to secure their
"survival?"
There is nothing in the world that has nothing to do
with survival or subsistence . For example, the suspicion is
a kind of unstable situation; that is, the surface feature of
the subject’s degree of being reduced. So the desire for
knowledge arises and through the increase of knowledge and
ability to secure the compensation of suspicion; so that the
subject whose degree of being reduced can return to the
necessary existence threshold required by sustaining. It is
obvious that the connotation of knowledge is not to seek
truth of the object but to seek the "sustaining" of the
subject, which is the essence of "knowledge. That is to say,
there is no unprovoked "suspect" in the world, and there is
no unprovoked knowledge, and of course, there is no
unprovoked beauty. Then, where is the root of "beauty?"
We have to start with the "capacity-to-know." The source
of capacity-to-know is the "induction" of materials, and
induction consists of two parts: that is, affective sense-
response; so more accurately, the "capacity-to-know" is the
part of "sense" in the "induction." Once the primitive
material is differentiated, they necessarily rely on
induction to achieve interdependence. The initial induction
is reached within "one-touch," that is, the "sensing" process
is the realization of "response," and the "response" is the
end of "sensing." Like electrons and protons, the moment
they’re "sensing" each other, their interdependence of
"response" is secured in the atomic structure. But with the
evolution of the universe, material affective attributes
correspondingly expand and differentiate/split. For example,
later derived species’ perceptual abilities tend to enhance,
and their perceptual modes tend to be complicated. When it
comes to human beings (including sequence of animals prior to
humankind), they have developed the electromagnetic induction
of the physico-chemical phase and the primitive biological
phototactic reactions to the photographic vision, and
differentiated the simple all-in-one "senses" into visual,
auditory, olfactory, taste, touch and other complex "senses".
Moreover, they also differentiated the vertically superposed
"understanding" and "reason" based on the physico-chemical
"induction" and biological "sensibility." At this point, the
"one-touch of sense-response" has completely split into
discrete steps of "sensing" (confirmation), "recognizing "
(discrimination), "responding" (behavior), and the related
process of integration. Because of this, it brings about two
potential problems. First, the process of affective attribute
gain is the process of growth of the subject’s subjectivity.
That makes our perception of the object tend to be more
distorted due to the increasingly superimposed subjective
attributes. Second, the split of sensing, knowing and
responding becomes increasingly large, which inevitably
causes the integration of them to be increasingly serious
swinging, or even cause missing, dislocation and fracture to
some extent. That is to say, the "distortion of sense" makes
it difficult for the realization of response, and the
disconnection between "sensing" and "responding" makes the
realization of response a direct crisis. Bear in mind that
"response" is the purpose and the stable implementation of
sustaining. "Sense" is only the means and the unstable state
of groping. Then what is the use of "sense" if "response" is
not finalized?
—"Beauty" thus emerges from in between, which must be
presented as a series of tempting attraction, so as to
maintain some necessary pulling force between subject and
object, between sense and response. It is clear that the
premise of "beauty" is the separation of sense and response;
because the one-touch of sense-response within
induction/sensitivity leaves no room for "beauty" to occur.
Moreover, it is precisely because of the splitting of sense
and response that causes the anxiety of hard-to-realize. In
other words, the leeway of "beauty" is in "dislocation," that
is, it lies in the gap between sense and response where the
sense is unable to reach the response instantly, and the
response is unable to finalize the sense. Or rather, it lies
in the dislocation between the "unclear sense" and
"unfulfilled response." Therefore, any "sense" that does not
reach "response" can be presented as "sense of beauty."
Moreover, the worse serious the separation between sense and
response, the stronger the sense of beauty is. It can be seen
that "beauty" is neither purely objective nor purely
subjective, but rather a subjective experience that occurs in
the objective attributes of sense-response, or rather, a
psychological action that promotes the coordination between
"sense" and "response."
Therefore, it can be said that the dislocation is
"beauty," that is, missing but not lost is the sense of
beauty. Dislocating state is precisely the portrayal of the
relationship between human and nature.
Because of this, "beauty" appears to be such a state.
Whatever is actualized is not beautiful (because
"response" actualized "sense" as uninteresting "sustaining");
 Whatever is not true is also unbeautiful (because
"response" is after all the ultimate target of "sense").
Perhaps the following contains some redundancies, but it
may help to clarify some misunderstandings: what we call
“not beautiful” is by no means the concept of “ugliness,”
but rather what is “neither beautiful nor ugly,” because
“ugliness” is just only a component part of “beauty,”
that is, the cadence melody of “beauty.”
So-called “actually real” is the realization of
“response,” which is to say, “responding” is more real
and deeper than “sensing,” it sufficiently reaches the
original being and thereby achieves the original being, which
is why we say that the actualization of “response” is the
consummation of “being.” In comparison, the shallowness of
“sensing” is obvious, it initially is an agent inducing the
“response,” and once “the response” is actualized, “the
affective sense” immediately becomes uninteresting and
disposable; only when the “affective response” is not
available, does the “affective sense” need deepening, which
brings about “beauty.”
"Appreciation of beauty (aesthetic)" is the shallow
intuition and explicit contemplation that emerges in the
deeply hidden texture of affective attribute or the mental
core; with regard to this, we could say that "aesthetic
phenomenon" is the wave or ripple on the water surface of the
"essence of beauty." The aesthetic theories of average
scholars but float above this surface. However, even floating
on such waves and ripple comfortably, they still cannot avoid
missing another distinction between the shallow meaning of
"beauty" and "ugliness," which is the indexical as well as
the indicative distinction of affective interdependence or
effective compensation. So, one may ask: why would there be
such a perceptual sense of "beautiful" and "ugly" in the
aesthetic act of appreciating beauty? Answer: between beauty
and ugliness there hides the difference of directional
indications of incentive interdependent being, in the same
way that sweet, fragrant, putrid and bitter in sensation
actually guide creatures in their metabolic choice between
quantities of energy and degrees of harmful toxicity. For
instance, the supple feminine beauty of delicate waists and
round buttocks actually comes from whether the pelvis size is
conducive to child-bearing. The manly masculine beauty of
robustly build actually originates from the necessity of
large muscles and firm bones that is favorable for survival
competition within or between species. What the blossoming of
fresh flowers reveals is the beauty of the vigorous life of
plants in the flourishing state of breeding. What the wilted
lotus and dilapidated willow show is the ugliness of
withering in the fading stage of vitality approaching zero.
The magnificent bright beauty in spring and summer is the
reviving of all beings; the bleakly soughing desolation in
autumn and winter is the cold and lifeless frigid frost; and
so on. Clearly, every problem of aesthetics is but the
concern between life and death, the distinction between gain
and loss, the reflection on the continuation of being, and
nothing more.
Obviously, in the final analysis, the substance of
beauty is found in sustaining interdependent being, or more
figuratively, "beauty" is nothing but an adhesive for the
dislocated bond between "sensing" and "responding."
From this, let's take a look at what is "natural beauty"
and what is "art beauty."
First, let us talk about the beauty of nature, which is
also called the beauty of reality. It originates from "stress
and expectation prior to response," so it is the " beauty
prior to response." It mainly comes from two situations. One
is that the subject has already "sensed" a specific object,
but cannot immediately get "response," so the temptation of
"beauty" is involved in to maintain concern between subject
and object. The other is because the later derived subject
must face increasingly more differentiated and dependent
objects, but it cannot simultaneously occupy all the objects
or realize all the "response." Also, it won’t like to allow
those objects temporarily having no direct links to entirely
fall out of its sight and its concern, so "beauty" occurs to
give the effect of gathering them, establishing a "non-
response" relationship or a guide of "response." Only in such
a state of neither friendly nor aloof between sense and
response, could the "subjective aesthetic" and objective
"beauty" secure a tacit understanding, which is the "real
beauty" (or "natural beauty"). Needless to say, whether the
object is "beautiful" or not depends on whether the subject
itself has the inherent requirements and impulses to be
interdependent with it. For instance, facing a grinning
crocodile, nobody will appreciate its appearance, but it
doesn't matter at all that the opposite sex crocodile sees it
as the most beautiful one in the world, and the more it is
hard to court, the more it becomes beautiful. We may also
deduce from this that the "beauty" and "aesthetic" are not
stagnant thingamabobs, but are rather a sequence of virtual
compensation having developed in the evolution of natural
attributes of sense-response.
Now let us talk about art beauty, which Hagel almost
said is the only beauty. It originates from the "comfort and
contemplation posterior to response", so it belongs to the
"beauty posterior to the response." It appears only in the
creation of human activities, as the depletion of degree of
being makes humans possess the most compensated perception
and the most complicated depending objects. This overly
disordered way of life inevitably causes a lot of overly
superficial "response in confusion", which in turn causes the
following two consequences: one is the extreme tension and
anxiety in sense-response activities (i.e. the total of
knowing and responding); the other is the relative limitation
and loss in sense-response activity (i.e., individual
narrowness in social practice). It leads to the double
necessities of "soothing anxiety" (reducing mental tension)
and "supplementary contemplation" (supplementing the lost
stimulus of sense-response in reality).
Based on this, “beauty” is something that can adjust
the tension or alleviate anxiety. That is, before
“responding” it must turn the responsive tension into the
seduction to respond. And after “responding” it must purify
the responsive anxiety into responsive contemplation. Here
the meaning of “contemplation” we used is what Schopenhauer
once accurately explained as “losing oneself.” But it is a
shame he never clearly explains what is lost in “losing
oneself.” And this “self-losing” actually does not mean
directly losing oneself, but rather refers to a state of
being for-itself losing itself in responsiveness, or it
refers to freeing oneself from the tension of “not knowing
what to respond.” Only in this way will the “affective
sense” always accompanying the “affective response”
present itself as “the sense of beauty.” That is to say,
once the increasingly anxious “responsiveness” and the
increasingly expanding “sensitivity” transcends responding
and consequently reflects on responding, it is bound to
produce a “beauty” that is far plentiful than “the actual
beauty prior to the response,” which is “artistic beauty.”
In other words, artistic beauty must fulfill two
preconditions: that is, free from anxious responsiveness and
spontaneously affective contemplation, the former makes
something not beautiful appear as “beautiful;” the latter
makes something “not existing” appear as “existing.” In
this way, on the one side, it fulfills the role of
temporarily adjusting the psychological state of the
subjective bodies (making the boring ones undulating, the
stressed ones relaxed, thereby shaping “the peak of
pleasure” in the curving line of pain and pleasure). On the
other side, it achieves the “sublimation of art” which
develops in sync with the expansion of affective attributes
and the tension of psychological state. We may also deduce
from this that the “beauty” and “art” are not stagnant
thingamabobs, but are rather an increasingly beautiful
phoenix forged in the mental hell of the increasingly anxious
affectivity of Nature.
However, at this point, beauty is already reduced to
imperfect and unwell being, that is, the appreciator of
beauty is undoubtedly a defectively un-whole being, and
certainly a tottering dislocated loser; because if a being
itself were wholly actual and perfectly complete, there would
definitely be no such derivation of "beauty. In other words,
"beauty" is the same as "truth" insofar as its gorgeous
degree directly indicates the subject’s lost degree of being
from whom it derives, which is the refined essence of
"beauty."
It is not a surprise that Aristotle said the art of
tragedy has the highest state aesthetic value. Because
tragedy directly permeates in the process of human existence
and their way of survival. The reason it can cause the most
intense resonance and shock in the deepest part of our soul
is that all tragedy reflects and cares the most profound and
most universal final or natural fate of "the carrier of art
beauty" (namely, the enjoyer of art). Therefore, since
ancient times, there are always art of tragedy presented
through artistic works with the most touching stories one
after another, moving people’s tears run like rivers of
sorrow in the human history, watering out of numerous
beautiful art flowers; but few people ever ask, who did our
endless tears shed for? And why did we shed the tears?
 17. The Joy of Fish
I n ancient China, Huizi was a friend of Zhuangzi. He was a
political official, and he enjoyed his social position.
He was fond of chatting with friends. Zhuangzi was a local
official, but his rank was much lower than Huizi’s. They
often gathered to talk about some common interested topics,
during which they had many witticisms ridiculed debates,
below is one of the famous allusions cited from their
conversation.
One day, when Zhuangzi and Huizi were standing on the
bridge of Hao river sightseeing, Zhuangzi saw some white
strip daces swimming in the river, and he exclaimed, "how
happy those fish swimming leisurely." Huizi saw the white
swimming fish but found nothing in particular, so he asked,
"You are not a fish; how do you know the joy of fish?" This
is an interesting question that involves logical issues, as
it actually concerns the effectiveness and limitation about
human perception, but Huizi himself did not know the thesis
his question covers, so he finally let Zhuangzi cunningly got
away with a slippery answer. Zhuangzi said, "You are not me;
how do you know I do not know the fish?" It sounds very
witty. He was refuting Huizi, saying you are not me; how
could you judge that I would not know the joy of fish? His
empty reply did not answer the question. Then Huizi did not
further investigate it either, instead, he personally closed
the deep meaning of the topic. He said, "I am not you, so I
don't know you; you are not a fish, so you don’t know the
joy of fish, that is all." Such a reply was extremely wrong,
and it would be much better if Huizi said nothing and simply
left a pending case, like the Goldbach conjecture, waiting
for future talent to answer. But his playing smart led to
Zhuangzi saying something more stupid: "Let’s return to the
beginning. You asked, "how do you know the joy of fish?" Your
question shows that you know that I know the joy of fish. I
know it when I am standing on the river bridge." In this way,
Zhuangzi again avoided giving a positive answer to the
question, only this time his answer was not as clever as he
did last time.
To this point, intelligent people of later generations
also consider that the question is already solved, which is
the sad way of how the Chinese scholars behaved in discussing
philosophical issues.
This story reminds me of the ancient Greek philosopher,
Zeno of Eleates, who was about the same time in history. He
also often rose some strange questions, but he would never
play ingenuity on the surface. For example, he once proposed
a "catch turtle debate," saying that the running hero
Achilles in Greek mythology would never catch up a turtle if
the turtle started moving a distance first. Because no matter
how fast Achilles runs, he must first run half the distance
from the departure point to where the turtle is; after he
finishes this half, he has to run the next half to where the
turtle is; thus he runs the length by half endlessly. Even
though Achilles is getting closer and closer to the turtle,
as he cannot finish that endless remaining half, so he can
never catch up the turtle in front of him. Zeno also said
that "a flying arrow is not moving." He held, since an arrow
in a stationary state must occupy the same length space of
the arrow itself, then we can set this length of the arrow as
a number of equal points, so the flying progress of the arrow
is made up of many stationary points, so the flying arrow is
not moving in general. If it is moving, it is equal to admit
a contradiction that the flying arrow is simultaneously at
this point and not at this point. Because this is impossible,
so "a flying arrow is not flying." Such "Zeno propositions"
may sound absurd, but they represent some fundamental
questions on significant issues like "time and space,"
"motion and stationarity" and so on, which contain profound
logical rationality. Because of this, Western philosophers
and scientists of later generations constantly explore these
issues, until two thousand years later Kant, Hagel, and
Newton, Einstein still have to think about it continuously.
Such similar topics also had recorded in Zhuangzi’s The
World. Topics Huizi raised and discussed include "a flying
bird does not move;" "a flying arrow has a moment of
stationarity;" "a rod of one-foot length cut by half, and the
cutting can be endless;" and so on. However, they just raised
it, made some superficial debates and then dropped it. This
is the reason why these important issues later became objects
of leisure conversation among scholars in ancient Chinese
scholarship.
Now, let's answer the question for the two of them who
just superficially talked about it.
Huizi's question involves two subjects, namely
"Zhuangzi" and "fish." Generally, what a subject faces is an
objective entity as an object, even if the object is an
entity of life with perceptual ability. That is to say, what
Zhuangzi faces is a general object; therefore, this question
concerns only the objectivity of the object (see "True or
False" of this book). But Huizi's question was unique, in
which the fish is not only Zhuangzi's object, also a mental
carrier juxtaposed with Zhuangzi; and, as the subject, how
Zhuangzi’s mind communicates with the mind of fish as the
object, is the point of the issue. But Zhuangzi’s answer
only gives an empty "I," and a no-boundary, no-definition "I
know," and then he pulls in another subject (Huizi), thereby
making it a three-party, two kinds of subject anaphoric
relations; or even more complicated than this, making it into
a two kinds of relationships of subject-object transposition
between three parties. That is not a way to answer a
question, but instead merely mixing it up into a muddy
problem.
Obviously, in this case, the debaters have to answer
what is the subject and what is the object first, and they
also need to understand how come about the progressive
relations and the different phases between the subject and
object? Otherwise, there is no way to further talk about the
topic. From the original sense, that is to say, examine from
the axis of the evolution of natural differentiation, those
separate objective entities taking objective entities’
sensible attributes as objects are the subjects. Relative to
the other objective entity's sensible attribute, this
objective entity’s sensible attribute is the subject’s
sensing attribute. That is to say, the subjective entity
itself is a component part of the objective entities. When a
differentiated being as affective entity transforms another
differentiated being (also an affective entity) into an
object, thereby realizing itself as subject, that other
objective entity (or those objective entities) transformed
into object(s) in turn also treat the said subject’s
reciprocal affective attributes into sensible attributes, and
thus simultaneously also transforms the said subject into an
object, namely, instantly reverting the subjective entity
back to an objective entity. That is the primitive state of
interchangeable positions of subjective and objective
entities. (For instance, the simple antithetical relationship
of electric charge between electron and proton, between
electron and atomic nucleus, and even between electron and
molecule.)
The subjective body that is reducible to the objective
body is the fundamental phase state of the subjective body.
 Later, as all objective entities (which are also
subjective entities) continue to weaken and differentiate, if
a line of derivative beings as part of the objective entities
necessarily remain as the sustainable objective entities,
they must evolve themselves into some complex affective
entities capable of communicating with other increasingly
complicated objective entities. Their complexity of their
substantial state (physical state) and their affective state
(mental state) must be equal to or greater than the overall
complexity of the longitudinal process of evolution preceding
it. Since all of those relatively simple beings are the
indispensable conditions for the later derivative beings to
rely on necessarily for sustaining, not to mention these
latecomers also have to communicate with complex entities as
grotesque as or more grotesque than themselves. Thus, those
late affective entities must have in themselves a series of
objective qualities as objective physical things and also
affective attributes as subjective human nature, which is the
"qualification of the subjective entity."
However, a subject that exists in the locational phase
of a later derivation has already become the subjective
entity whose position is not interchangeable with that of
precursory objective entities prior to it. That is, the
unequal locational phase of beings, or, the non-reciprocal
nature of interdependence between beings of prior phases and
later phases, cause asymmetrical efficacy of affective
attribute. That is, the entities’ efficacy of sensitivity of
the later phase can cover that of the entities of the prior
phases, but the entities’ efficacy of sensitivity of the
prior phases cannot cover that of the entities of the later
phase. That is the natural constraint of the transmuted
being’s locational phase upon the efficacy of sensitivity.
Based on the above, with respect to the concrete
question Huizi raised, now we can draw at least three brief
comments. 1) compared to human beings, fish is at the
primitive phase of the natural evolution, and its affective
sense-response efficacy is relatively low. 2) But because of
this, fish is one of the human ancestors or necessary stages
of evolution from primitive animals to human beings.
According to biologist Haeckel’s theory of "embryo replay,"
the individual biological development is just the miniature
replay of the entire evolution of the universe. An embryonic
cell has to develop from the fertilized egg (equal to a
primitive single-celled organism) to blastula period
(multicellular integrated body); then it undergoes the early
stage of an embryo similar to gilled and tailed creatures
like fish, salamander, and turtle; and then it enters
intermediate stage of an embryo similar to that of higher
terrestrial animals like pig, cow, and rabbit, and eventually
it develops into an infant replete with all kinds of physical
and mental potentials. Or we could also say, a human being
was once a fish in the early embryo period. 3) Apart from the
differential in human civilization (which is another a
problem), as far as the two men at the time of the dialogue
are concerned, they were in the same phase of the natural
evolution. That is, they both were at the equal position of
perceptive efficacy, so they could certainly understand each
other, that is to say, Zhuangzi’s using "you are not me" to
prove "how do you know that I do not know the joy of fish" is
not founded, but only a sophistry.
Now, the answer to "Huizi’s question" has become self-
evident, but let us help Zhuangzi to finalize the unfinished:
"I am a far-distance offspring of fish, so I know the joy of
fish." That is the simple answer to "you are not a fish; how
do you know the joy of fish." Let me explain it as follows. I
am in the higher locational phase later than the fish’s
phase. Therefore, I can understand the affective sensibility
of fish’s lower phase, for I was a fish for a period when I
was in my mom’s womb, and I could not feel intense pain or
joy due to the low sensibility of numbness of the fish’s. I
am now a human being with a more weakened potency of being
but correspondingly more compensated perceptual ability, I
feel it is not as good as that numb-like, worry-free, dull
stability of fish species, and thus I produced a sigh with
that comment.
The question is solved here. But it may trigger a few
deeper meanings for further discussion. For example, even if
your perceptual efficacy is enough to cover previous beings,
it is still a question of how much your perceptual efficiency
can run through all your objects? If not, where is the limit
of your perception? How does the movement of perception
deepen? Moreover, as a subject of the non-interchangeable
phase, namely, as the perceiver, can you sufficiently acquire
your subjectivity based on that you can perceive objects to a
certain extent? For example, Zhuangzi refuted, "you are not
me, how do you know I ..." it seems that only he knows his
own state, but does he really know what he is?
Here, I want to say a few words of something else in
response to a question someone asked: why do I use " Zifeiyu
(you are not fish)" as a pseudonym? Answer: I am not a fish,
so I cannot know fish completely; even if I were a fish, I
could not know why I was a fish; in short, I found that it is
impossible for me to ultimately reveal the truth of the
world, though I rack my brains hard in the hope that I could
do this. So, I finally understand that what I know is limited
to what I need; what I need is confined to my sustaining
phase. When my "sustaining phase" changes, my "state of
knowledge" adjusts accordingly. Such a "knowledge" in
conformation with the "sustaining phase" is obviously only
the waves on the surface of the "sustaining phase," and from
this point to understand things, "what I know" and "the joy
of fish" are of no difference in essence. Because of this,
the phrase "you are not fish; how do you know the joy of
fish" is precisely a question regarding my philosophical
situation.
 18. No Leap in Nature
T ake a stone to compare an octopus, and you will
undoubtedly find that they are entirely different things,
and are not comparable. Then, if we compare man with animals,
such as a puma, though you know there may have inheritance
relations of evolution between them, you will think there is
a considerable leap forward in between, and the two already
appeared difference in their constitutions. So, from
conventional sense, "leap" seems to be an undeniable fact;
otherwise, how there are thousands of thousand different
things in the world which are so distinct in forms? Thus,
Hegel, "the most complex thinker," labeled by Marx, had
prepared the "leap" theory as "from quantitative change to
qualitative change" long ago, which is quite fit to conceal
the ignorance, and soon became a common sense that makes
everyone feel a peace of mind with this theory in hand.
Darwin didn't have time to play about dialectics, so he just
blurted out the intuition and faith in his mind: "there is no
leap in nature!" I guess he had only one thing as ground,
that is, biological species in natural evolution don't need
such an extra awkward thing to illustrate.
The "leap theory" generally explains itself with such an
example. Water becomes solid-state of ice at a temperature
below 0 ℃ . And with the temperature gradually increases
(quantitative change) to a critical point, such as a
temperature above 0℃, it soon turns into liquid (qualitative
change). If the temperature of the water is heated
continuously, that is, continue the quantitative change, when
it comes 100 ℃ , the water quickly becomes vapor. Such a
process of "quantitative change" gradually leads to
"qualitative transformation" is strong evidence of the "leap"
phenomenon. But this example shows precisely that never
occurs any "qualitative change" or "leap," because no matter
how water changes between solid, liquid or vapor state, it is
still the water composed of the same molecules of two
hydrogens one oxygen (H2O). What it changes is its "state,"
but never its "quality." You may refute that I purposely cite
this example, so it should not serve as evidence. Well, let
me mention one example that you would probably think it too
much, take a stone (inorganic molecules) to compare with a
puma (mammal animal), there should have happened "quality
changes" and numerous "leaps" between the two, right?
However, this example still does not establish, not
establishing from ancient times up to the present. As early
as in ancient Greek natural philosophy period of two thousand
years ago, philosophers have been exploring the "origin of
the world," for example, Thales became an ancestor in the
history of human thought just for a famous saying he left
behind, "water is the origin for all things," then soon
Leucippus and Democritus put forward the "atomism." Please
note that there is an inherent meaning or concept of "all
things are homogeneous" and "all things are of one system."
Modern natural science is simply the continuation of the
philosophy of ancient Greek. From the "atom" model made by
Rutherford, to the "fundamental particles" that frontier
physics has been tracking, then to the current discovery of
"quark" and "top quark," the primitive concept of "all things
are homogeneous" and "all things are of one system" are
further confirmed. This problem has become a scientific
puzzle, or it even already goes beyond the scope of
scientific research and the range of scientific objects. And
it can be evidenced by the famous "Gell-Mann perplex." M
Gell-Mann is a scientist who discovered "quark" and therefore
won the Nobel prize in physics. This great scientist who
pursued the ultimate, clearly put forward a big problem that
has been suspending since Thales: "The quarks are basic
blocks of all matter, every object that we see is composed,
more or less, of quarks and electrons. Even the jaguar, that
ancient symbol of power and ferocity, is a bundle of quarks
and electrons, but what a bundle! It exhibits an enormous
amount of complexity, the result of billions of years of
biological evolution.” M Gell-Mann asks, “What exactly does
complexity mean? though, in this context and how did it
arise?" This question actually contains such a set of super-
scientific philosophical suspicions: what is "material"? What
is a "category?" What is the "phase state?" What is " form?"
Moreover, what is "evolution?" What is "transformation?"
Return to the original topic, that is to say, if the
"material" of all things is the same, and the difference is
only the "state or form" of things, then the so-called
"qualitative change" will never be founded. Because
ultimately they are simply the "changes of state or form," as
like a child using the same mud to create different toys,
then, what is the "leap" here regarding the toys?
From a point of this height, Darwin said, "there is no
leap in nature," which is obviously more philosophical than
Hagel's "leap from quantitative change to qualitative
change." Even though Darwin is just a biological scientist,
while Hegel is a professional philosopher, and is regarded as
one of the greatest philosophers, this is something that
really makes all philosophers feel ashamed.
As for the answer to that question, I can't explain it
in this small essay, but the reader should at least
understand, the so-called "quantity" of "quantitative change"
need to be explored from a deeper level; the so-called "
content of phase state" of " content change" is forever
unchanged in whatever the "form" it may be. All
"transformation," "transmutation," or "evolution" are
destined to be a homogeneous process. Therefore, we should
combine the two empty concepts of "phase state" and "form" to
the identity of degree in the meaning of beingness, that is,
they are identified in the same "measure" of sustenance. If
we have to divide "phase state" artificially, we can barely
say that the " phase" expresses the determination of degree
of being; while "state or form" shows the determination of
degree of compensation. Considering the degree of
compensation is the realization of degree of being, any
division cannot be founded after all.
The phase state of human beings is rather frivolous.
This frivolity is reflected in their gradual drifting away
from the origin and entirety of the universe along with the
decline of their degree of being in the evolution, and in
their totally pinning themselves on the late derived form of
being that is in minimal amount but highly differentiated.
The so-called "highly differentiated" refers to highly
compensated or highly complexified. In order to survive or
interdepend in such a troublesome situation of dislocation,
they had to correspondingly establish a highly differentiated
perceptual system of identification, which must contain the
following three cardinal features: first, perception is
necessary to have the maximum universality and clearness
toward the relatively close living conditions. That is it
should be able to extend the range of the perceptive objects
as much as possible, and also be able to expand the nuances
of material category as much as possible. Only in this way,
it will not miss anything, while also not to fall into a
state of confusion. Second, for the relative primitive basic
conditions, it should be able to use them as media to sense
the close living conditions, and only in this way could it
reach the universality of perception. Because of this, all
biological visions are founded on the base of various objects
emitting or reflecting the primitive optical photons. And
their auditions are founded on the vibration, one of the
basic motion forms for primitive particle waves as the
stimulation source. Their taste is composed of some essential
elements, "sour" for instance also comes from the
physiological function of primitive proton (i.e., hydrogen
ions) of the nuclear matter on the taste receptors, etc. All
of this is to secure the high efficacy of organic
sensibility. Third, since this is the case because the
primitive conditions are always sensed in a mixture with the
sensible attribute of close conditions (or mixed as one of
the sensible attributes of close conditions), so the sense
for primitive conditions inevitably loses its clearness. This
loss is both necessary and useful, for it can reduce the load
of our perception, and also not to cause us indifferent
ignorance to present living conditions.
However, it is precisely the previous three
specifications of perception that make the world become
"leaps" in our eyes. It is not because things in the world
are drifting, but because our minds are drifting. Just like
practitioners in a meditation of Zen could not keep their
mind concentrated to their inner world, but saw the
fluttering flags and felt the wind blowing, for which their
master told them, neither flags fluttering nor wind blowing,
it is their mind shifted away from concentrating internally.
I am not going to deny the objective evolution of things, but
rather to emphasize that the apparent form of the evolved
thing is necessarily subject to the way we perceive it. The
corresponding ways of perception are as follows:
First, because our mode of perception tends to expand
the nuances of the object, which lead us to misjudge the
smooth and progressive movement as "leaps." For example, with
a triangular prisms we can divide the mixed light into
visible spectrum, human can see: red (700~610nm), orange
(610~590nm), yellow (590~ 570nm), green (570~500nm), cyan
(500~460nm), blue (460~440nm), purple (440~400nm) etc. seven
groups in the spectrum. These seven colors are distinct in
our subjective sense, but in fact, between the wavelengths of
adjacent color is smooth transitions, without any bit of
default or "leap." However, if we have no sense of the cut-
off or "leap" in our perception, we would inevitably fall
into a state of confusion. So-called "myopic" is someone who
cannot see the distant object boundary, that is, the eye
focusing defects lead to fuzzy boundaries on distant objects.
This is like an ape-man searching for slight red ripe fruit
(700~610nm, at least only 20nm) in yellow-leaf autumn (light
wavelength 590~570nm). If his subjective perception would not
"leap," that is, refuse to make a boundary in central visual
processing, then the poor human ancestors would probably
starve to death, which would not leave us a chance to discuss
"leap" or not today.
Second, we can only resort to the primitive state of
living conditions (such as photons, wave particles, protons,
and electrons, etc.) to establish the mental, neural
physiological system. Therefore, not only our sensibility,
our understanding, and even our rational thinking systems
must also be established on the basis of sensibility, then
further increase the distinction in objects’ representation
and concept. That is the fundamental laws of the "formal
logic" that Aristotle discovered (namely, the logic of
understanding). The so-called "law of identity" (A=A), "law
of excluded the middle (A is B or not B), "law of
contradiction" (A is not non-A) and so on, are all to
logically process the objects that were not distinctively
different. Without such logical distinction, there is no way
to establish the intension or extension of any idea or
concept, which in turn hinders the proceeding of the most
basic activities of thinking or reasoning. Although the later
logic of reason tried to break this subjective error, the
lower rational logic (for example, "dialectical logic" in
transitional stage from understanding to rational) can only
raise this error to a higher level to mix up, as a result, it
not only fails to eliminate the error, but instead makes the
trivial error a thorough misleading.
Third, because we have mixed the sense of primitive
micro-conditions with the perception of close macro-
conditions long ago, that is to say, our perceptual system
established on the basis of the absence or the elimination of
fine sensibility, which lead to our easily ignoring or
neglecting the micro-dynamic changes occurred on the
fundamental level. For example, under normal circumstances,
we cannot see the molecular changes and cellular changes as
the foundation of the biological evolution, nor can we know
the particle changes and atomic changes as the foundation of
the evolution of the universe. In fact, any physical form and
material property changes may have occurred in or rearranged
at the fine particles or atomic level. Since we are blind to
these extraordinarily delicate and important things, how many
reliable reasons do we have to boldly talk about
"quantitative change," "content change," and "leap?"
In my opinion, speaking from the depths, this imperfect
world may never have any "leap" even once, for it moves
extremely stable and steadily forward, still making its
creations suffer unbearably, many species already gone
extinct, so how dare it to be so frivolous as to leap
forward? In this world, only human beings dare to act rashly,
so they are relatively easy to mistakenly believe that all
things in the natural world work the same. That is excusable,
for humans themselves are the ultimate products staggering
unsteadily in the final part of the material evolution of the
universe as if a drunkard seeing the world, all things become
incoherently disordered.
 19. Dialectical Logic
I f a way of thinking is always starting from an original
point, after a big circle, then go back to the original
point, which is a typical circular argument. For example, if
one asks, "what is a man?" Answer: "a man is a rational
animal." And if one goes deeper and asks, "what is a rational
animal?" The answer turned back again: "a rational animal is
a man." As a result, what you get from the predicate is at
last nothing more than what the subject asks. That is
dialectics. According to Hegel himself, his philosophy is a
logical system "like a circle," starting from an "absolute
Idea," and finally goes back to itself. But you should be
careful, for this kind of circle is usually just a trap. It
is no need to say that the trap first caught Hegel himself.
Speaking of Hegel, among the Chinese who slightly know a
little philosophy, all extend their great admiration and
reverence toward him, and they would easily mention "method
of dialectics" or "theory of contradiction," jumping back and
forth with a few philosophical nouns to display their wit.
However, I doubt how many people can really grasp his
thought? Generally, for theory, if you cannot surpass it, you
won't be able to understand it completely. Those who look up
at it and criticize it, such as Feuerbach, are probably some
bigger fools.
Let's take a look at what Hegel's philosophy wants to
solve.
The history of Western philosophy roughly developed a
pathway as follows:
At first, it hastily and directly investigated the
material world outside of the self, that is, the "substance
of being," such as the ancient Greek period of natural
philosophy. Following this investigation of the external
world philosophers also discovered that such an investigation
inevitably always reflects traces of the investigator’s
mind, or the "background of the Ideas," like the Pythagorean
movement, Eleatic school, and Plato in particular.
Philosophers ultimately never thought about or never proved
that the questioning of a natural substance (that is,
"ontology") directly involves questioning the mental
substance.
It was not until the 17th century when Descartes
perceptively noticed that the so-called "being of external
world" has to be perceived in the mind for it to become
predictable "being," so he asserted that the "cogito
" is the
only provable being, hence he becomes the forerunner of
modern "epistemology." However, intuitively Descartes could
not deny the being of the external world, and thus the
notorious "dualism" came into being.
However, hence arises a whole series of questions: since
"mental substance" is the only provable being, how could we
say "material substance" exists or not? Isn’t it clearly
intended to offer proof for what we hold is unprovable?
Obviously, Descartes started by doubt, but he walked into
dogmatic judgment, and the rational inference should be: it
is entirely unknowable whether or not somethings exist
outside of the mind. This naturally led to the Humean turn.
Since it is "agnostic (unknowable)," then how would we
"have some knowledge of it?" "Understanding," even if it is
the "pure understanding," should be examined at the time;
otherwise, wouldn’t speak of "knowable" or "unknowable"
amount to unexceptionally a new dogmatic judgment? Kant
thought about it in his late years, and he became the first
person in modern age after Aristotle to investigate the
"determination of knowing." Frankly, his endeavor was
remarkably fruitful, but he ultimately failed to clarify how
the determination of knowing is one with the determination of
being, and instead, he dished out a pile of troubling
"antinomies."
At this point, someone must appear to pick up the
pieces. He could neither run out of "the mind" to
dogmatically speculates nor completely ignore the "object" of
mental cognition. And at the same time, he must try to
resolve all sorts of contradictions and confusions in
understanding or reason raised by Kant and his predecessors,
which is by no means an easy affair. Therefore, even if he
uses some far-fetched method of analogies, as long as he can
resolve such a complicated bundle of problems in one fell
swoop, he is worthy of receiving big applause. So, it is not
so much a surprise when the brilliance of Hegel’s "absolute
Idea of the dialectics" appears so dazzling in the history of
human thought.
Based on such a history of thought, later philosophers
sighed about "the end of philosophy." It is not wrong because
Hegel certainly filled-in all the holes on the surface of
traditional classical philosophy. But correspondingly, he
also fully exposed all the profound inadequacies of past
philosophy: that is, he could not explain why logic itself
would exist (so he could not but resort to a dogmatic
“absolute supposition”). And accordingly, he could not
truly explain how logic itself exists (so he had to resort to
that hackneyed “dialectical method”).
It is clear that Hegel's purpose is to clarify how the
"closed mental system" can be unified with the "whole system
of being." That is the dialectical method is nothing but a
logical tool that he temporarily borrowed to make quibble
discourse.
If so, what kind of evaluation should we give to
dialectics or dialectical logic itself?
In short, as soon as Australopithecus became human,
dialectical logic began playing a trick on the new species of
life. That is to say, Hegel's logic is not a mature
expression of rational logic, but a childish embodiment of
rational logic. His contribution is that he made such a
thorough logical interpretation of such an unmatured logic.
In a word, dialectics is the most primitive and low-level
transitional form of rational logic.
Testament may find in history: dialectics was already
popular in the world before humanity had written language,
for instance, the Chinese have historically called Laozi’s
dialectical theory as "the Huang-Lao doctrine," that is, it
began with the first civilized ancestor in Asia, the "Yellow
Emperor" (黄 帝 huangdi ), whose primary method of thought was
dialectical logic. Look at China’s earliest classic, Book of
Changes , in which we find a thorough account of the
dialectical movement of yin and yang , together with the
divinatory witchcraft used habitually by primitive tribes. It
was recorded and organized in written by later people, the
most basic symbol yao爻(made up of broken and unbroken lines
in a hexagram) were actually the broken tree branches or
leftover bones (later replaced with yarrow’s stems) which
primitive people used to display divinatory graphs. The West
was of no exception in this regard. The majority of
philosophers or sages in early ancient Greece were all
dialectical thinkers, such as Heraclitus, Zeno, Socrates and
Plato, and so on. And it was due to that serious Greeks were
inclined to see it as a vulgar "sophistry," that scholars at
the time disdained to see it as the aim of the research, or
at most they used it occasionally as a far-fetched
interpretation on some severe problems that were really hard
to clarify at the time. So, Aristotle meticulously
investigated Logic, and gave us the three law of what we call
the "formal logic," namely, the law of identity, the law of
exclude middle and the law of no contradiction, which implies
what Aristotle held is that contradictions emerging in logic
is impermissible, for it is a manifestation of the confused
thought. That is a point that even the greatest scientists
and their theories are strictly followed, even though they
follow it at higher level of rational logic.
Having read the above paragraph, you may have a slight
feeling of disgust, thinking that I deliberately belittle
dialectical logic. In fact, I just want to replace dialectics
in its proper position instead of seeing it frivolous in a
high fever. But I think, Hegel said that Aristotle's "formal
logic" is "the logic of understanding," which is correct; but
he made two fundamental mistakes, and consequently let
Russell gave him a lower evaluation: "almost all of Hegel’s
doctrines are false." (see Russell’s History of Western
Philosophy ) The two mistakes: first, he failed to explain the
natural origin of human rationality and mental phenomenon, so
of course he cannot tell the true connotation of the logic of
understanding. That is he did not understand the logic of
understanding is a typical "animal logic," and human
"rational logic" grew out of the animal logic of
understanding. Second, he also failed to explain the
predicament and future development of dialectical logic in
the evolution of the natural history of logic. That is,
although he recognized the dialectical reason is just the
intermediate stage to reach rational speculative thinking, he
was ultimately unable to explain the motion law of
speculative logic, that is, he was unable to get rid of the
stereotype way of three-one dialectical synthesis to
illustrate the ideal logic.
 Here I do not want to speak things complicated, but
stick to some interesting topics, but we need to filter out
some obvious errors. First, let’s talk about the origin of
the mental phenomenon. People used to regard the "mind" as
the unique rational state or rational temperament to human
beings. But look at it this way, you will never find the
essence and provisions of "the mind." That is the reason that
all previous philosophy, including Hegel thought, is
incoherent. In fact, according to the natural evolution
principle of "one system for all things," the "mental
phenomenon" is nothing more than the compensated product of
gain from the primitive physico-chemical "inductive attribute
of sense-response." That is to say, as the diminishing of
degree of being in natural evolution continues, the
differentiated interdependent attributes of later derived
material things increase correspondingly, it has experienced
such an uninterrupted process of evolution from primitive
physico-chemical "induction of sense-response," to the low
organism "sensibility," to metazoan animal "understanding,"
to advanced human "rational," that is, a progression from
"induction" to "perception." The problem is that the more
progressed and more advanced species, the worse their
stability of being. Reflected in their "subjective
attributes" is that their perceptual state becomes
increasingly staggering. For example, electromagnetic
induction between particles is very accurate and stable, and
their respective depending object is only a single pair
relationship ("sense" and "response" is achieved instantly at
the same time, namely, "sense-response in one induction").
The primitive biological sensibility is relatively still
reliable; the primary sensing organ is very simple, that is
no need to sense too many things outside ("sense" and
"response" occur one after another, namely, "induction
hysteresis").
 But when it comes to vertebrate animal understanding,
the case becomes troublesome, because it must face the highly
differentiated many dependent objects, which gave the
emergence of what Aristotle called "formal logic" or "logic
of understanding." So-called "logic of understanding" is, in
fact, the instinct recognition reaction or intuition judgment
that all metazoan animals (namely, vertebrates) have at
different levels, and this judgment reaction is determined by
the genetic code of each species. Therefore, it is naturally
static. We say it is "understanding," because it must choose
and make judgment among many objects in a relatively complex
perceptual representation. Take a sparrow, for example, it
can see both branches and leaves, and it can also see the
seeds and caterpillars. It will instinctively choose from
this image of representation, and make a judgment on how to
avoid the trunks to go straight to the edible seeds and
caterpillars. Here it expresses the most primitive "law of
identity," that is it won’t have confusions on
identification. When it evolves to the mammals, such as an
African lion, the "law of identity" is not enough for it,
because it faces more complex objects. For instance, it has
to choose among many preys, and make sure how it can catch
its prey under different conditions, then, the "law of
exclude middle" and the "law of non-contradiction" came into
being as auxiliary laws to prevent it from hesitant judgment.
In fact, most of the reactions in human activities are still
using understanding inherited from animal, or the mixture of
understanding and reason. Obviously, understanding has two
features or advantages: first, after instinct or intuition
choice judgment on perceptual representation, it can
immediately react to the related object ("sense" and
"response" are not yet fully split); second, therefore,
compared to the rational, it is a relatively simple, stable
and efficient system of identification. The disadvantage is
that if you have to face more complexified dependent objects,
it will be difficult to cope with.
The reason arises to respond to the situation. It
features that after the subject completes judgment of
understanding, if he is still undecided, that is he is still
in hesitant critical judging state, he has to convert the
result of judgment of understanding into "concept" to
continue weighing the results before he acts, or he reasons
between a series of more complicated concepts. That is reason
("sense" and "response" completely split). Since he turns the
"behavior" after understand into "concept" is due to his
hesitant undecidedness on judgment of understanding, it is
necessary for him to ponder the flickering, swinging
"concept" further, or instead, he must make sure that unclear
boundary of intension and extension of "concept," which is
the initial necessity that dialectics or dialectical logic
came about. Therefore, Eastern Confucius or Western Plato and
Aristotle, they all warn people to look out for both ends
before one acts; so that one can finally find the "golden
mean" point to start with, avoid running into the wall. For
example, Plato said, "brave" is an appropriate discretion
between funk ("soft") and reckless ("passion"), but it must
be under the control of "wisdom" to display the "justice"
character in personality, and so on). This saying is
beautiful, but when you really face robbers armed with
weapon, you should behave partially to cowardice or to the
reckless, which specific point is brave is a difficult
problem, particularly under such a critical situation. Most
probably you will have to submit the control of self-behavior
to understanding, that is, let your instincts judge and
gifted personality to immediately decide you to escape, to
fight, to negotiate, or to beg for pardon. What is the result
is hard to say, but it is better than your staying in
dialectical thinking without knowing what to do next.
 It is in this way that human beings fall into the trap
of dialectical logic because you will encounter increasingly
more complex problems than robbery. However, the example
shows that dialectical logic can only make you perplexed
without knowing what to do and which way to go. Although it
is an inevitable period that matches your survival status and
sense status, it is only a very embarrassing transition of
rational initial stage, and you cannot stay at this stage for
long, and you have to either go back to logic of
understanding for simple problems, or move forward to the
ideal logic field. "Ideal logic" refers to the nuanced
quantitative analysis and qualitative judgment between two or
multiple objects of extremely complex conditions. For
instance, Galileo used an "experiment of logic" to falsify
Aristotle's free-falling principle, or Einstein used a
virtual method of "ideal experiment" to establish the theory
of relativity. To put it in a simple way to say, Hegel once
said, "every moment of life is both life and death."
But if we discuss questions like that, you’ll never
know what is really the essence of life. Modern science and
logic prove that in multicellular organisms, despite in every
moment in vivo cells death and regeneration occur, but each
kind of cell proliferation is limited, it goes through a
process of gradually shortening, until the proliferation
stop, and life comes to its end. It is a one-way process;
there is no possibility of jumping at two ends. Life
originates from the molecular evolution, and it transmutes
forward through biological evolution. The more recent, more
advanced species, the more depleted the survival strength is,
till their life completely disappeared from the earth, which
is also a one-way process, and also there is no possibility
of dialectically return. That is the essence, origin, and
trend of the movement of life. Looking at the entire
universe, the entropy of energy movement tends to increase
continuously. This second law of thermodynamics does not give
any space for dialectics to stay, which indicates that
dialectics can't find its foothold in such a big natural
world.
I have no intention to deny the existence of dialectical
logic since it is a necessary stage for the whole development
of natural induction and the evolution of biological logic.
But I don't want to adore it at all, because it is really the
lowest level of human rational logic. It is necessary to know
that its universal applicability is precisely due to its
primitive low end, because the lower the level of things, the
wider range it covers, and the greater stability it
possesses. Limited to space and limited to readers of this
book, I don't want to discuss the deeper state of rational
logic here. It's a boring professional topic. You don't need
to study it, and it won't prevent your thinking logic from
rising to a higher level. However, if you stick to dialectics
with infatuation, you’re simply standing still, as if a man
who was left out of a marching crowd and left behind too far,
and he could no longer see the marching crowd in front but
proudly thought he was unparalleled in the world.
 20. Logic of Reason
I didn't intend to discuss the logic of reason in the way of
rambling, for it is dull, and might disturb the reader’s
interest in further reading. Another reason is that this
incoherent way of discussing it is not rigorous, and cannot
explain the complex logic clearly. But my friends encouraged
me to try it, saying that you’ve criticized dialectical
logic, so you should tell others something better instead.
So, I write this essay as follows to see if it works.
Logic has developed into various categories, and become
very complicated. Here, I can only follow the inherent
pattern of "logic of understanding" ("formal logic") raised
by Aristotle, to give a general framework of "logic of
reason," as for the formation and details regarding its
connection to precursory logic, we will not talk about here.
First, it is inappropriate to call a logical thinking
state as "methodology." Because which inference procedure
your identification depends on is not subject to your
arbitrary choice, for it depends on where you are in the
natural derivative phase; and secondly, it depends on the
specific problems you face. But fundamentally, the two are
one thing, and you cannot be a chooser anyway.
In order to explain it more clearly, I may have to talk
about it redundantly.
As mentioned previously, human's logic of understanding
is inherited from animals. Strictly speaking, higher
animal’s logic of understanding is developed from the logic
of the sensibility of lower animals. Some people may ask,
does the simple intuitive senses also have logic? Yes, the
fault of past philosophy is that it could not find this
natural root of logic. Imagine, you input a lot of data
symbols or pixel information to a computer, and the computer
presents you a virtual image of realistic color, how could it
do so if there is not a set of complex logical program behind
it? In a similar way, the hundreds of millions of sensory
cells in animal and human input also such a jumble of
disordered information elements to the sensory center. The
reason it can present a picture or an idea is due to that
there is a set of processing programs of inductive logic in
our gene encoding, sensory structure, and nervous system.
Only that in human obvious consciousness we have no direct
access to the deep underlying integrating process of basic
logic. To further probe it, we should say that the logic of
sensibility has a more primitive and more simple
physicochemical inductive interaction as its foundation. For
example, things that can activate sensory cells and nerve
fibers are something of the most obscure substance in the
universe, such as photon, electron, and ion, etc. Therefore,
the "evolution of logic" (history of logic) and the complete
"cosmic evolution" (natural history) are of the same origin,
and they coordinate each other all the way. In other words,
in any species, its cognitive logic necessarily matches its
phase in natural evolution, and vice versa, any logical
state, if it has become somewhat unsteady, the carrier of
logic necessarily evolved its phase in natural evolution,
which in turn demands some the update of its logical system
in a way of compensation.
Human’s dialectical logic is the product and state when
its inherited animal logic of understanding had been
unsteadying, which became the harbinger as well as the
initial stage of rational logic.
As far as perceptual attribute itself is concerned, its
natural determination is to establish a clear and effective
identification system for biological interdependence, and if
this system becomes confused or shaken, biological existence
would be in a critical state. Unfortunately, the only way of
natural evolution is to go "differentiation," which makes any
kind of later derived species or carriers have to face
increasingly complex interdependent objects. This also caused
the mode of appearance that could have been simplified on the
logic of understanding level, now must be reintegrated in
another way. Moreover, this new way of integration must take
as far as possible the principle of parsimony; otherwise the
survival situation of this biological species will
immediately fall into distress. That is the reason why the
famous "Occam's razor" in the history of philosophy or the
principle of "economic thinking" to be thoroughly
implemented.
Now, let us cut into the point.
The logic of understanding (formal logic) is a naturally
established state that animals carry out the "principle of
A=A
thinking economic." For example, the "law of identity" ( )
is used by animals when they face A, B, C, D ...etc. various
depending objects, to according to the specific circumstances
and their physiological needs, they have to make
identification and judgment instinctively and temporarily on
only one interested object; while the "law of excluded
A
middle" ( is B B
or not ) and the "law of non- contradiction"
A A
( is not non- ) help higher animals to instinctively avoid
identifying confusion when facing higher degree of
differentiated series of depending objects, so that their
judgment immediately returns to the logical state of "law of
identity;" as for the "law of sufficient reason" added up
later by Leibniz et al., it is already beyond the causal
judgment of logic of understanding, or you can see it as an
uninterrupted intermediate link between logic of
understanding and rational logic. Further looking down, we
can still say that dialectical logic is the same paradigm
that human beings were unconsciously constrained by the
principle of "thinking economic" or "principle or natural
reduction." For example, according to Hegel's "antithesis
A A
theory," the two concepts of and non- may contain numerous
different things or may contain only some negligible nuances,
then how to define its intension and extension depends on
what you need at the time. Another example is the dialectical
yin-yang theory popularly used in ancient China, with which
you can refer to men and women, refer to north and south, in
and out, up and down, strong and weak and so on, but this
uncertainty and confusion it makes on identification are also
enormously vast.
Along with the progression of human survival or human
civilization, a logical program attempting to correct the
previous confusion or chaos in human cognition emerged, and
it still carries out the "principle of thinking economic" in
a deeper and wider range and more rigorous way. Its basic
operating state is similar to the highest "ideal experiment"
currently pursued in the field of science (referring to the
pure logical deduction or hypothesis conjecture way that
temporarily separate from the observation condition of the
laboratory), I especially follow this paradigm to define what
I said "the advanced stage of rational logic," that is, I
give it a special term—"ideal logic." The "ideal" here has
nothing to do with any utopian "hope," but rather refers to a
way of thinking that transcends the intuition of sensibility
and the judgment of understanding. "Ideal" is the term for
the "thought of pure reasoning," that is, the process of pure
thought that starts with "reason" and ends with "reason,"
which is the typical sense of the term or the highest form of
the term for "logic of reason". Its basic characteristic is
to convert the "judgment" of intuition into "inference" of
thinking on concept, or rather, to convert the "cognition" of
low differentiated dependent objects into the "speculation"
of high differentiated dependent objects, so that the logic
movement itself is enough to observe the whole world with
super space-time or multi-directional plasticity. To be
honest, this is due to the fact that humans have evolved to
such a point that they have to use almost all of
differentiated things in the world to support their weak
state of being.
Now, let's focus on the laws of ideal logic, which are
developed from the four laws of the logic of understanding:
Law of the Simple One—corresponding to the "law of
identity" in the logic of understanding. That is, in sorting
out the raw material of understanding, the movement of
thought must consciously or unconsciously follow the
presupposition of "all beings belong to one system," and
tries to reduce this "one system" (or abstract it on a stage
higher than perceptual series) into "one reason," which is
the "law of simple one." It differs from the law of identity
while corresponding to it in that: the law of identity at any
point or area of the perceptual system strictly adheres to
A A
the determination of " = ," while the law of simple one in
any differentiated branch of the perceptual system strictly
sticks to the determination of "systemA A
= principle ."
Annotation: Every truly rationalized system of thought
generally runs along with a basic principle, that is to say,
you could ultimately reduce it to an extremely brief
conceptual series, and the more profound it is, the briefer
it most certainly is. Those superficial and crude thoughts
that never reach the ideal level normally appear vaguely
confusing with many tangled threads to attend to. So,
Newton’s entire system of mechanics could be expressed as a
formula, F =ma ; Einstein’s basic theory of mass-energy
conversion could be explained with E mc
= 2
; Darwin’s massive
workThe Origin of Species and its entire theory of evolution
could be reduced to such a basic concept as "natural
selection;" and in this book the law of the cosmic evolution
of all beings that I aim to describe is ultimate "the
principle of weakening compensation." Moreover, it is these
combinations of rational concepts (it actually appeared long
ago in the fruits of primitive human thought, such as “totem
worship" and "deities" and "God," and also Thales’ "water,"
Dao
Laozi’s " ," Plato’s "Idea," Ptolemy "geocentrism," so on
and so forth) in consistence with the law of the simple one
that construct the fundamental "cultural genes" of human
mental system (similar to the units of cultural propagation
known as "memes" in Richard DawkinsThe Selfish Gene ), and it
is the development, sublation or variation of these culture
genes that ultimately pave the way for the compensative
growth and evolutionary unfolding of the human mental system.
Besides, even if someone believes that the world is in
disorderly chaos, he would still have to put forward "one
principle or reason" of why "the world is in disorderly
chaos;" otherwise he would not amount to having a rational
thought, but merely an incoherent representation of the
understanding or "hazy mist of understanding," by which he
won’t normally produce such a "thought" that the world is in
disorderly chaos, or at least won’t produce such a "theory"
that the world is in disorderly chaos. In fact, the reason
why human beings can be "reasonable" or be "understood by
reason," that is, why human beings tend to discover or accept
the "reason, stems from the determination of the logic of
reason. An interesting phenomenon is that animals must reach
the state of the "law of identity" in the logical
representation of understanding, while human beings in the
logical representation of reason finally reach the state of
the law of the "simple one," very similar to the continuation
of the dual relationship of "one-point-like" affective
induction between primitive subjective and objective bodies
(for example, the dual relationship of simplicity between
electron and proton, electron and atomic nucleus, electron
and molecule), which shows the unity of Nature’s
compensating determination from "affection" to "perception"
as well as the effect of the evolving and unifying
materialization of the "reductive principle" in the entire
process of logical development.
Law of Arranging Order—corresponding to the "law of
excluded middle" in the logic of understanding. That is, in
sorting the representational system of perception, the
movement of thought has to break down the complicated system,
whose complexity could no longer be simply processed by
“excluded the middle,” into several components and
determine the quality, quantity and position of each unit’s
state of being with the entire system as frame of reference,
which is the "law of arranging order." It differs from the
law of excluded middle and yet corresponds to it in that: the
A
law of excluded middle prescribes a relationship of " is B
B
or is not " at any point or area of the perceptual system,
while the law of arranging order prescribes the combination
A
of " is B C D
and , and ..." in any differentiated branch of
the perceptual system, thereby establishing the ordered
structure of the logical system.
Annotation: Here, the "middle" that the law of excluded
middle must "exclude" is precisely the vacant slots or
positions in which the law of arranging order must
“arrange,” and obviously, A at the moment is fully
compatible with B, C, D
, etc., and the very reason that A
A
becomes , is that it embodies the compatible relationship
with B, C, D
, etc. This logical transformation perfectly
coincides with the structural differentiation of the
evolutionary process and the system differentiation of the
perceptual sequence, which is to say, this is the source that
the "analytic judgment" and "synthetic judgment" in
philosophy stem from. In retrospect, it becomes clear that
"judgment" itself also necessarily undergoes the development
from "point" to "area" to "volume", that is, in the natural
evolving compensation of affective sense-response, the
initial judgment is only a "judgment" without any
"distinction" (referring to the affective process of sense-
response enacted at one "isolated point with zero area" and
hence no "distinction" to speck of); and when it becomes
"distinguishing" it simultaneously completes the simple
combination of "judgment" (referring that the affective
process of sense-response has materialized at one "point of a
multi-point plane" a locational position where the law of
excluded middle is realized); it is more later that the
combination of "judgment upon distinction" takes shape, in
which analysis and synthesis harmonize in a coordinated act
of "distinguishing and judging" (referring that the affective
process of sense-response is materialized at one "point of a
volume of many areas," which is the logical locational phase
of the law of arranging order). From this, the unity of
logical dimension or "logical space" (manifested in the
multidimensional state of "infinite thoughts") and the
natural dimension (manifested in the multidimensional being
of "infinite space-time") is realized along with the unity of
the logical sequence’s own progression from the lower-
dimensional state to the higher dimensional state.
Law of Eliminating Contradictions—corresponding to the
"law of non-contradiction" in the "logic of understanding."
That is, in sorting out various abstract elements in each
layer of the perceptual system, the movement of thought is
bound to try eliminating all of the confusions, perplexities,
and obstructions to connectivity between them, and sort
through any incompatible or even contradictory things on the
surface into a harmonious unified system in accordance with
what is prescribed by the law of the simple one as the "one
system" ("one reason") principle, which is the "law of
eliminating contradictions." It differs from the law of non-
contradiction and corresponds with it in that: the law of
non-contradiction is under the control of the determination
A A
that " is not non- " at any point or area of the perceptual
system; while the law of eliminating contradictions is
A
discovering the mechanism that " is A
because it originates
A A
from non- or leads to non- " in any differentiated branch of
the perceptual system, thereby making contradictions
ultimately untenable.
Annotation: From this, we can see that every
"contradiction" is the product of Abecoming isolated from
A
non- , or rather some kind of misconception that leads to
A A
barrier of communication between and non- . The "opposites"
and "identity" in Hegel’s theory of the identity of
opposites are separately the general portrayals of the
movement from "the isolated state" to "communicating state,"
and his entire philosophical system finally can only be
A
effectuated at this one " " point of "absolute spirit," but
A
cannot simultaneously be effectuated at the "non- " point of
"absolute matter," which shows that even a system of thought
that writes about "contradiction" must also follow this iron-
clad law of the logic of reason, namely, the law of
eliminating contradictions. Moreover, the "non- A"
is not
A
necessarily the precise opposite of " ", even though it is
A A
indeed "non- ;" attributing every "non- " (everything other
A
than ) to the opposite extreme of " " is really the A
manifestation of primitive destitution when rational thought
temporarily cannot extricate itself from the confused state
of the understanding’s representation, or rather it is the
lower transitional stage where the immature logic of reason
inevitably stops at nothing in a far-fetched use of mind. By
the way, this destitute state of (dialectical) logic began
with Heraclitus (or more earlier it could be traced back to
the age of Zhou dynasty in ancient China when Emperor Wen
founded the Chinese doctrine of Yin Yang
- through reorganizing
The Zhou Book of Changes , or even before the thought of the
Huang-Lao school), ended with (or culminated in) Hegel,
having crossed over thousands of years in the history of
human thought, is now rapidly declining and will eventually
be replaced by ideal logic.
Law of Tracing Back to the Origin—corresponding to the
"principle of sufficient reason" in the logic of
understanding. That is, in reorganizing the interactive
relationships in the structure of perceptual representation,
the movement of thought tends to track down the cause of
existence and cause of linkage in each interdependent unit,
and try to reach the state of "original oneness" (the "simple
one") by ascertaining their intrinsic relations to one
another at different depth (degree), which is the "law of
tracing back to the origin." It differs from the principle of
sufficient reason and yet corresponds with it in that: the
principle of sufficient reason is directly ascertaining the
self-sufficient response of the prior cause at any point or
area of the perceptual system; while the law of tracing back
to the origin is the response preparation procedure of
indirectly probing the totality of connections or the "multi-
causal origin" in any differentiated branch of the perceptual
system, thereby bringing about the end of the "understanding"
divorcing out of "the affective sense-response as one" (that
is, divorcing into "sensing," "understanding," and
"responding").
Annotation: Logic in this way becomes independent from
logos as "rational substance" (or "Idea," "mind," "soul,"
"consciousness," etc.). In actual fact, the four laws of the
logic of understanding are themselves the natural steps of
evolution through which the logic of reason is derived,
namely, the law of identity→the law of excluded middle→the
law of non-contradiction→the principle of sufficient reason,
which consecutively express the progressive degrees of
dislocating compensation from the certainty of sense-
response→instability of sense-response→confusion of sense-
response→extension of sense-response, thereby leading to the
gradual emergence of the logic of reason. Strictly speaking,
the "principle of sufficient reason" initially expressed by
Leucippus as the "causal relation" (Leibniz later formulated
it as the ground or rule of "factual truth"), is actually to
be appropriately designated the "law of causality," because
at the early stages of understanding, "cause" cannot yet
present itself as "reason," but is still some “irrational”
intuitive representation. Even though it later germinates
into "reason" (at this point "understanding" is not much
different from the early stage of “reason”), that "reason"
of "positing the cause as reason" still cannot clarify why
the "prior cause" "became causal," so it cannot possibly make
the "reason" of acting as "cause" truly "sufficient," even
though the reason why this "reason" cannot be "sufficient" is
precise because this shallow "reason" is already adequately
useful or sufficiently compensating for the relative degree
of being of understanding carrier itself. The "principle of
sufficient reason" is only tenable in this sense when the
"law of tracing back to the origin" is connected with it
seamlessly, thereby making the "reason" continue remaining
"sufficient."
This process will continue to develop without stopping
at each stage of the evolving compensation of the logic of
reason, for example, Einstein spent his later half-life on
tracking down and probing the "unified field theory" that
synthesizes the four great forces of physics, and his beliefs
and motivation actually came from this logical law. Even
though he failed to complete this task, when eventually it is
realized, it will carry today’s theory of physics to a much
higher state of the "law of the simple one."
In light of this, it is clear that the logic of reason
is not dialectically reactionary to the logic of
understanding, but is rather the compensative extension of
the logic of understanding, which actually expresses the
intrinsic determination of "the self-consistency of general
logic." Moreover, if that "intuitive cause" that came out of
the understanding wants to become the "sufficient reason" in
the faculty of reason, it must break free of the constraints
of the relatively rigid "intuition," that is, it must become
further "virtual" along the path of the "virtual affectivity
of sense-response" to the point of making it reach the realm
of "the thought of pure reason"—which is the constitution of
the "ideal logic."
What's more, what Aristotle summarized the logic of
understanding has been used in natural biological history for
more than hundreds of millions of years; what Hegel concluded
the dialectical logic has been used in the history of human
evolution for more than tens of thousands of years; and what
I talked about this "ideal logic" has been used in the
history of human civilization at least for thousands of
years. That is to say, the history of logic must roll forward
in natural history, and it has some subtle evolvement at any
time, and there is no clear demarcation between logical
forms. We have to divide them in the concept, only shows that
our own subjective attribute state has to accept the
domination of animal logic of understanding, or, only shows
the natural determination that precursory compensated state
of constitution (such as "logic of understanding") has on
later compensated state of constitution (such as "rational
logic"). Furthermore, any kind of logic theory certainly
belongs to rational thinking, but this does not mean that as
the object of logic itself must also be rational, these two
are not the same thing, we should distinguish them.
Let me hasten to stop, for this is already something
bluffing rather than light philosophic essays. So, I have to
say sorry to the reader. But, if you happen to do research
work, and what here talks bring you a little help, that would
make up for the time you spend on this one.
 21. Popper's Suspense
M odern people sincerely believe in science, which is
normal, because people want to believe in something
anyway. In ancient times there was no science so ancient
people would make some superstitious tricks to believe in
this and that, otherwise, they would feel empty-minded.
However, at least two things should be clear before we
believe in science: first, what is scientific knowledge? That
is to ask, why do you believe in it? After having a clear
answer to this question, the next question is more realistic,
namely, how does scientific knowledge grow? That is, if you
want to be innovative in science, how can you do it? At first
glance, these two questions are too common for people to
understand in the age of science. However, if you try to
answer them, you will find that they are a bottomless abyss.
In the middle of the 20th century, there were
"philosophies of science" that devote to investigate this
problem. During that time in Europe rose a famous scientific
philosopher named K.R. Popper. He put forward a set of sharp
theory that can be briefly called "falsificationism," which
made the above two questions more complicated and confusing.
First of all, Popper asked: how do we distinguish science and
non-science? Since modern thoughts made a scathing critique
of the tedious empty speculative methods held by the medieval
Christian scholasticism, it is easy for the ordinary to
follow Francis Bacon, the first person who sounded the horn
of empirical science, to believe that the main
characteristics of science from non-science is that the
former has special inductive method and its provability. (as
for what is "provability," it is a very delicate problem of
logic, very few people can clearly explain it. Limited to
space, we don’t discuss it here.) That is to say, scientific
knowledge must be the result of the accumulation of
observation, and the result must be sufficiently proved by
the experimental process or by the experienced fact. On the
surface, this is already a common sense without any doubt or
suspicion. However, Popper chose to put forward an entirely
opposite opinion, he said, the only difference between
science and non-science lies in the falsification of science,
that is, all scientific stuff can always be proved to be
wrong, and the higher accuracy and the more precious content
of a scientific theory is, the degree of its falsification is
higher. That logically means that the truth of scientific
knowledge is very low and tends to be lower and lower.
Is Popper's conclusion right or not? Let's talk about it
with historical facts.
First, look at what cannot be falsified: what Popper
lists include religion, theology, astrology, metaphysics and
so on. One may ask, can you come up with an example to prove
that there is absolutely no God in the world? But religion
can always cite numerous facts to prove that the delicacy of
the world must be dominated by gods; Materialism and idealism
have been in debate for over thousands of years, what is the
result? Nothing in result. Because whatever you can enumerate
as evidence is precisely the thing you should prove, or
rather, whatever you can take as evidence is right the object
needs you to prove first, which makes both proof and
falsification fall invalid. Therefore, how right materialism
is, then also how right idealism is, and they both are the
eternal truth that both are irrefutable but irreconcilably
oppose each other.
In comparison, the experience of real science appears
rather tragic: Ptolemy, the ancient astronomer,
mathematician, and geographer, was the first to discover the
atmospheric refraction and the change of the North Star in
position, and he also observed the irregular motion of
planets and the moon, and made a credible theoretical
explanation on them, which became an indispensable ring in
the history of science. But unfortunately, his "geocentric"
theory later turned into a misleading example in science,
suffered notorious repute. It was based on the criticism and
falsification of Ptolemy's theory, Copernicus established his
famous "heliocentric," thus creating a precedent for modern
science. But it was only a few hundred years, Copernicus's
theory was proved to be incorrect; because the sun is not the
center of the universe, not even the center of the Milky Way
system; and the planets’ orbits are not circular, but oval.
There are a lot of such cases. For example, Carolus
Linnaeus’ taxonomy is pretty much rigorous, but was finally
falsified by Darwin's theory of evolution; Darwin’s theory
seems now to have loopholes one after another and sooner or
later may be cast aside and neglected. The advent of
Newton’s mechanics once shocked the world immensely, and the
comment that it has created human industrial civilization
should be reasonable; moreover, in the practice of science
and technology for over two hundred years, it is proved by
the scientific community as absolutely true, to the point
that many physicists thought that it was "the end of
physics;" but before long, Einstein's theory of relativity
greatly challenged Newton’s mechanical system, its general
effectiveness has now greatly reduced. In view of this,
although the theory of relativity seems to be overwhelming at
present, its theoretical universality is sufficient to span
all fields from micro to macro, but Einstein made an early
announcement that his theory was merely a "short-life
transition." It seems that scientists have been scared by the
unreliability of science itself and its characteristic of
falsification, their confidence is far from theologians’
confidently firm, and their spirit is far from that of
conceited and dignified materialists.
Moreover, the real activities of scientific innovation
do not need empirical observation and induction methods in
advance, which is what needed after the theoretical
innovation and has nothing to do with creative thinking
activities. Popper agreed with Hume's criticism of induction.
Hume held that the universal proposition could not be derived
from the single proposition, and that the repeated events in
time and space were attributed to the inevitable causal
connection, is lack of logical rationality. On the basis of
scientific facts in history, Popper put forward his famous
"P1 (problem)→TT (tentative theory)→EE (P2 to eliminate the
error) →P2 (new problems)," the so-called "trial and error"
method of the growth of scientific knowledge, so that the
motive force of scientific development change from the
negative and passive waiting for the accumulation of
experience to such a positive and creative activities of
"conjectures and refutations." Popper admitted that this
ambiguously expresses a profound insight into Kant's thought
of philosophy. In fact, innovation of scientific theory or
hypothesis has always been done this way. For example, when
Crick and Watson proposed the double-helix model of DNA,
people did not see the fine structure of chromosomes; also,
Einstein’s conjecture of relativity hypothesis was raised
first, then Eddington made his trip of expedition to Africa
for observation; that is to say, the scientific innovation
must have an idea of falsification to guide in the front,
then it needs to be verified with experimental observation.
Copernicus questioned Ptolemy's "geocentric" and put forward
his own "heliocentric," but his evidence at the time was not
sufficient. It was after a lapse of one or two hundred years,
the most convincing evidence of the "wax and wane of Venus,"
the "aberration" and "stellar parallax" were gradually found;
when Darwin made his trip of investigation with ship Berger
around the world, what he initially saw the intermediate
variations of individual species in several islands, was not
insufficient to deny the classification theory of the entire
biology, but the suspicion and idea of falsification thus
caused was undoubtedly the starting point for his 20 years of
experiment and research after he returned home.
There was another anecdote in the history of science
that can clarify the above problem from another angle: in
Tycho was a famous astronomer in the 16th century, and he had
the first truly modern observatory built for him by the king
of Denmark. Tycho worked in this royal observatory
dedicatedly for nearly 20 years, and the astronomical data he
observed was systematic and accurate, including almost all
the astronomical phenomena that the naked eye could observe
before the telescope was invented. However, because of his
religious beliefs, Tycho firmly opposed Copernicus' new idea
from the beginning, holding the old logical model of
"geocentric," and as the result, he had no big achievement
throughout his life. You can't say he didn't want to make a
breakthrough, because till he was dying, he still mumbled:
"How I wish my life could be more meaningful!" His life was
meaningful, for his student and assistant Kepler, who
supported Copernicus in secret, precisely based on Tycho’s
observation records, extremely accurately calculated the
orbits of the six planets in the solar system, and created a
landmark of "Kepler's three laws," thus he was later called
"sky legislator." Moreover, one thing in particular, when
Kepler discovered that the planets’ orbits were not
circular, he noticed that a long time ago in ancient Greece
Apollonius had completed the study of elliptic nature of
conic, and using this set of mathematical logic could
adequately fit the basic operations of objects in the solar
system. The typical event made the contemporary philosopher
Whitehead exclaimed: "The matter had not come, the mind has
appeared." Even Einstein also exclaimed, "knowledge cannot be
derived from practical experience only."
Tycho's life-long regret was actually due to his lack of
the idea of falsification, and the same observations sparked
Kepler's scientific revolution was in fact due to
Copernicus’ question on geocentric. In other words, in the
eyes of Tycho, all the "facts" was nothing but a continuation
of Ptolemy’s logic; but in the eyes of Kepler, Copernicus’
logic created totally new "facts." Here we have one question
that is quite intriguing: should theory be in front or
observation in front? Should logic guides facts or a fact
guides the logic? Some people say that this is a metaphysical
theory similar to "should chicken come first or an egg
first," but I don’t think so.
It seems totally unfeasible to take "the observation and
experience as the starting point of empirical logic" as a
criterion to distinguish science and non-science. Popper's
"falsification" is indeed the only boundary mark of science
and non-science. The fact is all non-science or pseudoscience
have a prominent common feature, that is, no matter how
seriously incompatible fact appears, such theories can be
finely adjusted, and then still claims their original
doctrine is irrefutable. In other words, the basic
characteristics of non-science and pseudoscience lie in their
"universal applicability" and their forever "applicability."
No one at any time can amend or overturn it. On the contrary,
most of the scientific things must be tested more rigorously.
If there is a slight discrepancy, it will start to shake till
it partially collapses or totally crashes someday. Moreover,
with the development of science and improvement of the theory
accuracy, the speed of its falsification tends to become more
quickly. For instance, Ptolemy’s geocentric theory stably
ruled the ideology for 1400 years; but Copernicus’
heliocentric theory was found to have serious deviation in
less than 400 years; Newton's mechanic theory was more
unsteady as its life sharply reduced by half, having stayed
in popular for only 200 years before it was pushed to the
back seat by Einstein’s theory of relativity.
So, there arises a significant confusion: if non-
sciences are unverified pseudo-knowledge, and sciences are
verified pseudo-knowledge, then for all human thoughts and
achievements, including the three cultural development of
theology, metaphysics, and science, where is the basis of
their reliability or validity? It is a greatly troubling
problem that Popper’s philosophy has to face but has no way
to answer—we could call it “Popper’s suspense,” leaving
the readers to think for themselves.
Here, I just want to turn the topic to a direction that
has some inspiration to readers, that is, if you're going to
be a promising scientist of some contribution in the future,
or just want to have some innovation in your own field of
research, then the following two elements are necessary to be
thoroughly understood:
First, "A wide range of studies is absolutely not truth"
(Hegel). That is to say, don’t let yourself busily reading
all the ready-made knowledge created by others, turning
yourself into a bookworm; and don’t blindly collect and sum
up all the material about the subject you’re studying, which
is boundless and endless. What is important is that you can
find a suspicious point of the research object, that is, you
need to keenly find traces that may generate an idea of
falsification on the previous ideas, then mobilize your mind
to establish logic model of speculation or hypothesis, from
which you can truly enter the state of research. Otherwise,
you may work as a circus clown busy all the time, sweating
all over, but finally nothing will be accomplished.
Second, "the yardstick of truth is the truth itself"
(Hegel). That is to say, you should never believe that
practice is the standard of testing the truth, because all
past theories were already tested by practice. If this proves
that it belongs to truth, what is the point of your working
on it? Bear in mind the longer practice tested the closer the
"truth" to its collapse, it is rather a fallacy that needs
you to subjectively remodel it than an objectively proven
truth. Also, you shouldn't expect you can find truth with
everlasting foundation, because things with unsolid
foundation mean that what you found is falls in the
scientific category rather than in pseudo-science. As long as
it is proved later that your logic temporarily corrects some
vulnerabilities or deviations in the current theory, your
hard work is worthy of being applauded.
If the "truth" we discovered is so "absurd," why do we
desperately and endlessly pursue it? In order to make you
temporarily forget such doubts, and continue to work
wholeheartedly, it is necessary to amend the above Hegel's
first quote to read: "A wide range of studies never give you
new knowledge;" the second quote to read: "The ground of
truth is in no truth." In this way, you can freely advance
along the direction of science, that is, "falsification—
innovation—falsification—innovation," all the way forward,
no need to look around, and no need to worry about the
authenticity, as nobody knows where you will arrive at, but
one thing is certain, that it will never be the glorious end
of the absolute truth.
 22. Logic or Fact
I f you look at this title, you may feel that it smells a
little bit of a great sensation. It seems that it
literally reveals the clamor of idealism. However, I think
this title has not yet expressed its due depth. Because, in
my opinion, idealism belongs to shallow thinking, it can only
see the "mind," but cannot found the deep elements that
dominate the "mind," as Rousseau said: "The mind has the
reason that rationale doesn't know it."
Of course, materialism has two possibilities: one is
that it is shallower than idealism, even neglect the "mind,"
a situation like a fly disorderly bumping against the glass
of partition but not taking the glass into its horizons. Its
most prominent feature is to criticize idealism, as if that
fly points at the scene outside the glass as evidence,
insisting that the glass does not exist, but it does not know
that the glass may be a piece of embossed glass, the "scene
outside of glass" is actually the patterned glass itself. The
other is that it is far more profound than idealism, that is,
it not only wants to clarify the scenery as the whole story
across the foggy glass, but especially to analyze how the
overall existence makes the glass generated, so it won’t
illusorily destroy this glass, so it naturally won’t
uselessly dispute with idealism. If it were to criticize
idealism, it would first express its accommodation, saying it
fully understands the smart of these poor philosophers why
they would rather prostrate on the seemingly transparent
spiritual entity, than recklessly running into the glass
wall; then it would point out that this is like dancing on
the vertical plane of that glass but cannot be commended as a
way out. In this way, however, it is no longer a materialist,
because it contains idealism at the same time, so it is
useless to label itself as "materialist."
In fact, saying "logic is more realistic than fact" is
only a meaningless tautology. Because, in facing any "fact"
before you speak about it, the "fact" is already a "logical
fact" or "logic proposition;" therefore, saying that "logic
is more realistic than facts" is equal to say "fact is more
realistic than fact"; so, it means you said nothing. It's
like someone pointing to the sun hanging in the sky and asks,
"what is the sun?" Then you cannot just also point to the sun
with your finger as your answer to the question, but you have
to say your idea about the sun. If you lived in ancient
times, you would say: "the sun is the sun god's dwelling
place;" or if you’re a modern person, you can say: "the sun
is a star of hydrogen fusion." In short, your idea about the
"sun" is not that bright one hanging in the sky, but one that
is continuously changing with your "logical proposition" or
"logical idea," or to be more exact, a "logic model" that
continually evolves.
If that is the case, why do I say "logic is more
realistic than fact"? It is necessary to first look at how
the "facts" are formed and how the "logic" drives the "fact"
in its chain of thinking. However, this topic is somewhat too
long-winded, you'd better read a little Wittgenstein’s
logical books. Here I just want to do a sketchy account, so
you’ll continue reading this fascinating essay. Wittgenstein
said, "The world is the sum of facts, not the sum of things."
Its meaning is what I mentioned above. But Wittgenstein's
"logic" is downward, that is, "fact" is made up of "events"
or "atomic facts," and "events" consist of "simple objects"
as the ultimate unit of logic. What I have to say at the
moment is how the "facts" develop upward along with the
"logical change," that is, in a more troublesome direction.
 Again, take the "sun" as an example. In the 2nd century,
based on the "facts" that the sun, the moon, and the stars
were all going around the earth, Ptolemy gave his "logic
model" of "geocentric," so the two were utterly coincide and
consistent, at that time, you should have the sense of "the
fact is more realistic than logic," that is, "facts" came
first, and "logic" followed. However, when Copernicus in the
16th century proposed his "new logical model" of
"heliocentric," what people saw the "facts" did not change,
that is, the sun, the moon, and the stars were still going
around the earth (same with the old logic model). This time,
the "facts" separated with the "logic," then which is more
real? Most people at the time thought that Copernicus was
naturally purely nonsense, only Bruno and Galileo held that
"logic is more realistic than facts," as a result, one of
them was burned to death, the other was under house arrest,
but eventually "logic" defeated "facts." From this point
onward, "logical change" in front, "knowledge update"
follows. Since then "logic is more real than facts" suddenly
unfolded, and strictly speaking, the scientific era appears
in such a grotesque manner.
Let's see another example. In the 4th century B.C.,
Aristotle first put forward a "logic" of the free-falling
object, which is consistent with the fact, that is, the
heavier the object is, the faster it falls. If you do a test,
throw a piece of paper and a stone at the same time, and the
stone will hit the ground first. But you have to be careful.
When the "fact" is fully coincided with "logic," that logic
will probably be in problem, just like that piece of paper
fell on the ground later. Indeed, Galileo started from
Aristotle’s logic, and made an inference that Aristotle's
logic was not founded. This method is called "reduction to
absurdity": according to Aristotle's theory, a big stone
falls faster than a small stone, but what will happen if you
put the two stones together to fall? From the perspective of
the small stone, the fast-falling big stone should be slowed
down by the slow falling of the small stone. On the opposite,
from the perspective of the big stone, small stone’s falling
will be accelerated by the big stone’s, and the overall
speed seems to be faster than that of small stone but slower
than that of big stone. However, putting the two stones
together their weight is heavier than the big stone itself,
and the falling was slower than that of the big stone alone,
and the result of the reasoning was contradictory to
Aristotle's theory. So, before he did the specific experiment
on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Galileo already realized that
the falling speed of the big and small stones should be
equally the same. At this moment, the speculative "logic"
smashed the seen "fact," straightforwardly proving that
simple mind is more reliable than eyes plus the mind. So, if
this time the philosophers, such as Descartes and Berkeley,
began to suspect the "objects" outside of the "mind," and
"sense" outside of "thinking," I am afraid you can no longer
say their nervous system goes wrong, and it is rather the
ancient proverb of "seeing is believing" would become a
degenerative common saying. Incidentally, we used to call
science as the "outlook of the universe," and call philosophy
the "outlook of the world," which is obviously a big mistake.
In fact, they are nothing but always some erratic "view of
logic" or the "series of logical models."
The amazing story is more than that. After Galileo,
Newton made a more singular "logic" than the "fact." In the
real world, if anyone wants to move a static object, he must
exert some external force on it. But Newton would say that
keeping the object in motion state does not need external
force, but to change the object in motion state, for example,
to stop it, needs intervention of external force. Newton
applied his law of motion to the law of Kepler's planetary
law, which led to the law of universal gravitation in 1687.
This logical function is not only to change the existing
facts but also to foresee things that seemed at the time did
not exist. The most significant contribution of the law of
gravitation is that this theory provides a logical method of
calculation for the actual astronomical observation, that is,
with only few observations, we can calculate the length of
the orbital period of celestial bodies, and the calculated
result is very accurate. Using this logic, people later
predicted the position of Neptune and Pluto that were
invisible to the naked eyes, and we eventually discovered
these distant planets. From then on, it is no longer a matter
of "logic is more realistic than facts" or not, but rather
the "objective facts" can only be explored and discovered in
the "subjective logic." Later, the Maxwell equation and
Einstein's theory of relativity are historical proof of this
logical progression. You won’t see any trace of those modern
"facts" that they deduced, even if you totally open the eyes
to look for it. In fact, all the scientific "facts" since
19th century, no matter they belong to the physics (such as
atomic physics or particle physics), chemistry (such as
inorganic or organic molecules) or biology (such as the RNA
or DNA gene), are no longer the combined products of
empirical "state" or "simple objects." And the movement of
this logic function, as we will see from below, tends to
become emptier, instead of closer to "facts." Clearly, there
is a problem in Wittgenstein’s logical positivism
philosophy.
Here, we have a doubtful point that is worthy of our
consideration, namely, what is the difference between
"objectivity" and "subjectivity"? Because both "objective
view" and "subjective view" actually come from a perspective
of the same subject, and in the final analysis, their actual
state is the same. Like the cat’s "subjective ability" is to
catch mice, which is directly an "objective natural
phenomenon." That is to say, all so-called "objective facts"
are unexceptional "subjective facts." The only difference is
that people usually take "sensual facts" as "objective" and
"facts in concept" as "subjective;" at the same time, they
hold that sensual images are closer to the truth than
concepts in mind. However, the development of human cognition
is in just the opposite direction; that is, the concept
running in logic beats the sensory facts. This helpless
situation is ground that we say "logic is more realistic than
reality."
Then, can we say that "logic is more reliable than
fact?" I don’t think so. Because, according to the above,
though we may determine that all "objective facts" are the
products metamorphosed from "subjective logic," the so-called
"realistic" in "logic is more realistic than fact," in fact,
only expresses the meaning of "real," and what "real" can
express is only the coordination between "logical subject of
high speed change in phase" and the "relatively static
objective world." Whether this kind of coordination
relationship is necessarily built on the "realistic" basis is
really suspicious. The reason is simple: if "real" is
reflected in between, then due to the "objective world" is
relatively static, "logical facts" should be relatively
stable. Now that there is a dislocation between the two, and
you won’t say the "objective world" is not real, then
"logical fact" must be the one that has problem. It might be
true, and we should know the facts that metamorphoses in
"logic" series tend to become more and more challenging to
verify, which is undoubtedly true in history. Because of
this, the logic of free-fall by Galileo could soon be
verified at Leaning Tower of Pisa; Newton’s logic of
universal gravity had to wait to be confirmed a hundred years
after Neptune and Pluto were discovered. When it developed to
the logic stage of Einstein, the field of physics made such a
lament, "relativity is the heaven of theory but the hell of
an experiment." In other words, the transcendental "facts" in
later phase of logic is becoming less and less "facts," but
more and more precarious. The reason why people have to use
the experimental observation to confirm it is that we
instinctively believe that "facts" in the primitive phase of
logic may be more reliable, such as the "seen facts" or the
"experienced facts." "Sense" (cognition) is for "response"
(dependency); if later "sense" (referring to "transcendental
facts") make us more and more difficult to "respond"
(challenging to adapt), then why do we say it can be more
"real?" So, we can see that the low instinct also has its
reason sufficiently.
This instinctive way of "reason" comes from the
following natural determination: from the evolutionary
progression of perceptual logic, the more primitive, the
lower cognitive mode (constitution of logic) is, the more
stable it is; and the later derived, the more advanced
logical sequence (cognitive mode) is, the more precarious it
is. For instance, sensibility is more stable than
understanding, and understanding is more stable than reason.
So, in millions of years of human history, they always see
green leaves (sensibility), which will never change; but to
determine which leaves can be eaten or delicious
(understanding), they will behave a little shilly-shally or
vacillating. If they are asked about the biological mechanism
of the growth of leaves (reason), then the answer can be
rapidly changing: 200 years ago it was the "theory of
vitality," 100 years ago the "theory of evolution," and now
the "theory of gene," and we don’t know what "theory" will
be in future. If we follow this perspective to look at the
history of human thought, that is, the "facts-changing"
history in the process of human civilization, you will find
the more primitive the "knowledge" or "fact" is, the more
stable it is, and the less easy to be falsified. The more
modern the "knowledge" or "fact" is the more precarious it
is, and the less easy to be defended. For example, human
thought history has come across three stages, that is,
theology, philosophy, and science, theological things are of
the most difficult to be falsified; a philosophical concept
initially can be stable for thousands of years, then for
hundreds of years or about 100 years some changes occur;
scientific "facts" as above-mentioned, are not firm for
probably decades of years. The statistics that were done by
someone say that the aging speed of contemporary knowledge on
an average is to be updated every ten years. It seems that
Popper's "falsification" theory of science and non-science
only covers a small scope of phenomena. What it expresses in
the history of large-scale natural evolution is actually the
trend of distortion and instability of logic itself.
Therefore, humanity immediately slips into such a
dangerous situation: on the one hand, they have to admit that
"logic is more realistic than facts;" on the other hand, they
also have to admit that "logic is more precarious than
facts." In other words, our eyes tend to be more and more
blinded, and our minds tend to become less effective. We were
previously just ignorant beings, but we will become reckless
flies in the future. Because, we must live in "facts," but
"facts" have to be metamorphosed in "logic," while "logic" is
like a wild horse, not obedient to man who is riding on top
of it, and the horse is running at high speed toward the
thick mist. Humanity is in such a dangerous situation, so
what shall we do for the future?
 23. Ape or Man
D o apes want to become humans? It seems to be a difficult
problem to deal with. Because you are not an ape, so your
answer is invalid, and the ape can't answer it for the time
being. Wait until it becomes a human being to answer, it
would be too long to wait, and also that answer would be
still human's answer, so still invalid. So, only one way we
can try is to infer it inversely, that is, ask a human
whether he wants to revert to an ape. But this way, you will
get into more trouble, because the respondents will
immediately feel irritated, taking your question as an
intention to vilify him. However, at this moment, the above
question has got its answer: your trouble shows that humans
are reluctant to revert to apes, and inversely apes should
want to become humans.
It is probably based on such complex reasoning that when
people try to interpret why apes (primates apes) would become
humans, they always add their own will into it. For example,
generally it is imagined this way: a thundering light hit a
forest and set fire on the part of it, in a panic the apes
jumped off the trees to escape. After the forest fire was
over, most of them returned to the forest to live as before.
But a small number of clever apes decided to stay on the
ground for a new life. Because of this, they had to
straighten up themselves in order to see enemies in the
distance and foraging around, gradually their ass shrank to
the front, chest muscle raised, erect pose became a habit;
thus hands were freed to do things. "hands are not only the
organ of labor but also the product of labor." (Engels) As a
result, these apes wanted to change their lives, and at last
they fulfilled it—labor created human.
This vivid story sounds authentic, and it has captured
the hearts of countless clever ape offspring. Anyway, nobody
can remember his ape days, so it can be regarded as a true
story. However, this awkward story sounds like the
description of "the neck of giraffe" made by Lamarck, a
famous biologist. He proposed the evolutionary point of view
half a century before Darwin. However, his explanation is
unique, for example, he said, because the lower leaves of
bushes were eaten by other deer, giraffes had to stretch
their neck for higher leaves on the trees; in evolution
animal organs will develop if used, and will degrade if not
used, so giraffe's neck became long. That is a so-called
"acquired variation theory." But there are a lot of questions
to raise: Why did the rest of the deer that refused to
stretch their necks were not starved to death? Moreover, now
the apes still living on trees have already a model of
humans, but why are they not willing to transmute hard to
become humans? What is more, why can’t we pass our knowledge
and experience through heredity to our offspring?
In fact, this problem was resolved by Darwin a long time
ago, but because most people just learn evolution
superficially, never seriously read Darwin's work, so
Lamarck’s error theory of "use and disuse" could spread
widely. Although Darwin himself admitted at the time that he
could not understand the internal causes between heredity and
variation, observations and experiments showed that variation
and evolution were coordinated by innate mutation and natural
selection. That is to say, apes change into humans based on
the distortion of some genetic attribute, but this kind of
distortion is precisely consistent with the determination of
natural trend of evolution so that a certain class of
abnormal species among many random mutations could be
retained. Perhaps, these deformed apes of human-potential
were very resentful, just as one had two-head of double-
cleverness may not make him feel any proud. In addition, we
could imagine those apes came down from trees at the time
must be very awkward initially, for they could not walk
steadily, no place to take shade under sunshine or shelter in
bad weather. What made them especially chagrined were that
they left those ready-made fruits hanging on the trees, and
plunged themselves into the plight of hunger and cold. Slowly
they learned to beat sparks with two pieces of stone to get a
fire for heating, they hunted, nomadized, and farmed in
seasons, and they toiled hard unbearably. So, the question
should be raised reversely, why those early human ancestors
inevitably produced a contrite feeling later, could not
revert to their happy old days? Also, why it is those
deformed, hobbling apes falling from trees, then became a
species of such arrogant mainstream in the world?
The first question is probably related to the
unidirectional trend of natural evolution: the inertia
mechanism formed by some internal and external pressure made
the initial division increasingly widening, even one section
of the division eventually went astray as alien, it could
only develop along the line. Let us suppose that one of the
long-legged erect-apes wanted to revert to its previous life
on trees, and even the tree apes accepted it, but it could
not find its sexual counterpart, as if a normal girl nowadays
refuses to marry a man of freak. Therefore, it had only two
options: either stayed single to let its excellent variety
die without descendants; or consciously returned to its
strain of the long-legged apes to continually carry on its
family line. Until a very vast time-span passed, the
offspring of this strain has gone so much in evolution that
they could no longer recognize their own ancestors were one
of the tree apes, and they could produce a sense of beauty in
themselves, and also definitely won’t allow their daughters
to marry those queer apes. At this point, the division was
completely fixed, the new species was established, and their
evolution was finally completed. All those who wanted to
become humans or apes would no longer dream it, so
respectively they recognized their fate and were delighted.
The second question is probably related to the
establishment of compensating differentiation necessarily
based on incompleteness. Incompleteness need supplement or
compensation, and any mode of compensating process is also a
process of differentiation or will form a new point of
division, and the differentiation or division also makes the
inherent incompleteness worsening, which in turn demands a
new round of compensation. Thus, it gradually evolves such a
prosperous world with millions of billions variety of things
in it. In other words, all of "phenomena of division" is
natural, and its basic momentum in the evolution of the
universe is called "differentiation," that is, any kind of
homogeneous things tends to evolve towards multi-directions
of heterogeneity. Moreover, whether its development will have
a bright future depends on whether it will maintain the
momentum of continued differentiation. If not, it will form a
blind end or a fork on the tree of evolution. Only those that
keep the trend of differentiation can make the tree of
evolution of the universe grow higher. And so-called
"maintain the trend of differentiation" is to maintain or
even carry forward the deterioration and the unstable state
of expecting compensation. For example, in the evolution of
atoms, helium came out earlier than carbon; according to the
order of arrival, helium’s path of evolution should be
longer than that of carbon. But because the shell K electron
number in helium is full, it makes helium become inert
element, that is, it can only stay in the level of atomic
state, completely lost its great expectations to evolve into
molecular layer. Although carbon came out late, the number of
electrons in its shell L lacks half, which makes it, in any
case, cannot independently maintain stable. So, it has to
pull the outer electrons of other elements to form chemical
bonds, in this way it enters organic layer of molecules or
even biological realm of evolution and becomes forever
restless in progression, thereby creating millions of
molecular species and forms of life. That is to say, self-
imperfection and self-instability are the pre-conditions for
further differentiation in evolution.
At this point, I’d like to talk about a popular topic,
that is, the rise and fall of the Eastern and Western
civilizations. It is said that civilizations outside Western
Europe appeared earlier, such as the civilizations of ancient
Egypt, ancient India, and ancient China. According to the
estimate of famous historian Toynbee’s research, there were
at least 600 kinds of differentiated forms of prehistoric
civilization, but why they were all inevitably eliminated, is
a problem that really puzzles human-sociologists, including
Toynbee himself. The "theory of moderate environmental
challenge" put forward by Toynbee actually did not touch the
root of the problem, because in a limited range of latitude
on the earth, once there were simultaneously many kinds of
civilizations, and the harsh environment they faced were
roughly equal, but why ultimately the outcome of their
development was so different? That needs to seek other
interpretations. First of all, we should see, civilized
society as a kind of high-level natural existence is
inevitably a highly differentiated end product of the
universe. That is, a complex entity that must be subject to
the comprehensive influence of many differentiated
conditions, therefore, it cannot possibly be a research
object of single-factor analysis only, and because of this,
it necessarily has to follow the previously determined
natural law of differentiation to sustain. So, the
differentiable constituent within a civilized society is the
real critical problem.
What are the "differentiable elements ?" In one word,
that is a self-incomplete state of always demanding for
compensation. The Western civilization in ancient Greece—
ancient Rome—Christianity runs through a basic axis that
cannot make itself stable and complete from beginning to end,
which manifests in three aspects. Politically the formation
of the slavery of democracy and freedom since Solon
legislation, economically the formation of mainly commercial
freedom since Pericles, and culturally the formation of
freedom of thought exchange since Athens state established.
The results brought about by the freedom is the continuous
turbulence, swing, gradual changes, and differentiation in
every field, though there were some delays such as the
medieval religious hegemony, ultimately it maintains the
trend of developing historically with radical activity,
thereby eventually developing into a secular state called
capitalism since modern times. Now, at first glance, it seems
that Western civilization is eliminating multiple social
differentiation of other types, but actually it is not so.
The reason it inclines to let all other old civilizations to
become blind ends and branches of the natural tree of
evolution is that it is the most powerful impetus to further
differentiation of the social structure. It changes the past
simple and rough class division of intellectual,
agricultural, industrial and commercial, and uses the social
differentiation blade to directly segment the specific
functions of each individual, namely, the social division of
labor is increasingly showing an extremely meticulous
tendency of each social member designed with his specific
good point, thereby pushing the forever natural
differentiation into the highest stage of social structure
gradually becoming more and more dense and unrest.
 Conversely, the ancient culture in China was always
characterized as experienced, thoughtful, and steady. It was
always emphasizing on only social order, but not freedom; on
only stability, but not activity; on only previous old
system, but not a future new requirement. It was designed so
perfect, to the point that its three cardinal guides and five
constant virtues were sufficient to make every big family a
small pecking order of court, thereby making anyone young man
rigidly decrepit. It ran so well that even 1400 years ago it
had implemented a system of non-hereditary talent selection
through imperial examination, resulting in any one
intellectual person did not seek innovation but only an
official career. It was so perfect in self-completeness that
it never left a little bit of free space for swing, and it
was too stable like a self-sufficient inert element. So, it
could be seen as a perfect full stop rather than a declining
civilization, and it finally converges itself as a historical
blind end on the tree of social evolution, isn’t it
inevitably the best natural outcome?
 24. Freedom in Evolution
The Natural Evolution
Y an Fu translated a book called ,
which talks about how human beings necessarily accept the
test of "survival of the fittest" like animals in natural
selection. I would like to talk about the truth of evolution
here, but I want to point out that human beings and animals
are apparently in different phases of natural evolution.
Humans see freedom as the most precious thing, but
animals do not have such subjective will and demands. It is
not to say that animals do not need freedom at all, but that
their social structure of freedom must be relatively
satisfied. According to observation, animal society is quite
similar to human society, and the more advanced species, the
closer the social relationship to primitive human
communities. Take the primate animal, for example, the monkey
kingdom is ruled by the power of arm strength. Who fights
invincibly, who is the monkey king. The king’s dictatorship
and autocracy are unexceptionally for interests. As for the
monkeys, they mainly concern only two things; one is the
female resource; the other is the energy resource. The former
relies on dominating females; the latter depends on competing
for food supply. The king not only enjoys priority privilege
on the foraged food, but also on the females within the
group, and other males can solely rely on secret adultery to
release themselves. However, once the king is sick or old, it
will face a ruthless coup, it either die in the coup, or stay
alone the rest of its days, which is reasonable, for the
throne of authority is a product of strength, and it is
always in the hand of the most powerful one. So, "freedom" in
monkey societies means nothing more than "democratic
adultery" or "reasonable coup." Since monkeys do not speak,
otherwise, they will demand "freedom of speech," the minimum
terms, as "monkey right."
It is sad to mention that the poor Chinese never had the
"freedom of speech" in the history of their civilization,
though they could speak. We should admit that the Chinese
have been suffering no freedom all the time: the powerful one
rules the country, the weak people keep silent; when they
could not bear it anymore, they rose up to struggle or fight
against the tyranny; but a new regime would soon restore
social order and revert their privileges. In a word, they
have been in the social phase similar to the monkeys.
However, the Chinese enthusiasm for freedom seems to have
never been stronger than that of the Westerners. In China's
traditional culture, "freedom" was thoroughly absent. So, we
had such sad stories: just a few Westerners came in a few
gunboats, and they could beat this vast "central country" to
pieces, its emperors running away like refugees, but that was
inevitable and was consistent with the natural trend. In
modern times, there finally came a few figures in China who
called for "freedom" loudly to the whole nation, but it is
really doubtful whether they understand the value of freedom
or not. Because once they step up to rule the country under
such banner, they exert all they could gather to put out the
idea of freedom, and the nation could do little against that.
So, only by this point, we dare not say that the future of
our revitalization is a bright one.
So, what is "freedom" in the world? Why does it relate
to our survival?
So-called "freedom," in the final analysis, is nothing
but the "autonomous activity" of a series of natural
biological derivatives. Strictly speaking, all matter has
"active propensity." The problem is the difference in the
degree of autonomy. This autonomy is the stipulation of
"freedom" or "being for-itself." The velocity of particles or
atoms is astonishing, but this movement has nothing to do
with their internal structure or internal requirements. Brown
molecular motion is the primary way to reach the equilibrium
structure of random collision between each element or
molecular ions, which already reveals the specific inherent
constitution and specific pattern of motion in the process of
molecular formation. The earliest activity appeared in
primitive single-celled organisms in the family of protozoa,
such as Paramecium, their way of motion is only a slight step
forward than their molecular motion, that is, they still keep
the random movement or "low autonomy," but it already appears
the most simple directional characteristic. For example,
through a series of random movement (with sheltering or
approaching movement) to finally reach or avoid a source of
irritation. This simplest action is called Kinesis. For
example, "place a carbon dioxide bubble in the water,
paramecium in water reach it or swim closer to it would avoid
approaching it, paramecium swims randomly in water, but none
of them swim near the bubble." Then, there appears "taxis"
movement with more strong autonomy and directional ability,
taxis movement demonstrates directly approaching or leaving
the source of irritation, the previous random staggering
phenomenon disappeared, for example, moths fly
phototactically; cockroach crawl away from light into dark;
but for higher animals the autonomy of taxi is insufficient.
For instance, "put a new-born baby mouse of eyes not opened
on a tilted plate, it will climb upward, this is the negative
taxis to gravity; but when the baby mouse opened its eyes and
see the outside around, this simple taxis behavior will
change, it could climb not upward; instead, it climbs down to
the ground.” This action of climbing downward shows that its
autonomic ability or degree of "freedom" is further improved.
 In actuality, the biological natural evolution is always
accompanied by the ever growth of activity of autonomy or
degree of "freedom": from primitive kinesis action
(transitional stage from molecular motion to biological
motion),→taxis (preliminary occurrence of primitive
"sensibility")→reflection (nervous system has
formed),→instinct ("understanding" began to
establish)→"motivated" behavior (self-dominant intention
gradually sprout). Development to this step, "freedom" has
gradually converted itself from "spontaneous biological
activity propensity" towards the direction of "mentally
dominant ability." In the meantime, some deepening process of
learning is interspersed. This seemingly brilliant "learning"
behavior began to appear in the very primitive low level of
mollusks, such as octopus. Its evolutionary steps are as
follows: learn accustomed to (learn to ignore the repeated
irrelevant stimulus to save body energy),→learn by imitation
(learn to imitate adult behavior for guidance in later
survival)→learn by connection (reaction procedures evoked by
some interconnected source of stimulation)→learn by error
trial (through repeated experience of trial and error learn
to adjust behavior)→learn to judge (the ability to deal with
current situation based on previous experience)→learn to
reason (learn to deal with more complex circumstances or
problems by means of concept and general principles).
To this point, "rational" begins to emerge (which marks
"intelligence" has got off the shackles of real object and
enters the realm of logic variable plastic fantasy), and
"freedom" has transcended to the "rational" level (which
marks the "physical ability" has got rid of the bondage of
genetic traits and enters the realm of human-computer
combined transformed tools). It is a process of evolution of
the self-domination from low to high, and also a blooming
process of the subjective will from latent to manifestation.
It makes the biological scope of autonomic activities
increasingly open to expanding, and also makes the degree of
freedom of biological behavior tend to linearly increase. The
track of this systematic evolution is evident. From the
static non-life motionless substance gradually evolves into
primitive organisms such as low motion fungi, sponges and
corals; then evolve into a wide range of jellyfish, fish, and
even amphibious reptiles. Then it is followed by oviparous
spinal animals like dinosaurs, birds. And then it came to the
mammals of higher degree in physical movement and smart head
such as tiger, lion, wolf, and dogs. And finally are the
primates like apes and Australopithecus that migrated all
over the world, and from this line evolved humankind who has
already advanced to an out-of-control situation with their
extended tools through science and technology, and all of
this is an inevitable natural creation.
The question is, why does the degree of "freedom"
(autonomic activity propensity) in the evolution of the
universe necessarily tend to increase? Readers who have read
the previous essays carefully should know the basic
"principle of weakening compensation." In order to more
accurately and clearly explain the above question, let me
make a summary here. To gradually weaken or differentiate to
interdepend is the only way of the evolution of the universe.
Since the development of subjective attribute of any state or
species is to pursue conditions of self-existence, when some
kind of biological beings already lost in over-dependent
conditions or objects, correspondingly their autonomic
activity propensity will emerge compensatively, so that they
can change their passive condition-encountering to actively
seeking conditions to improve or restore the rate of finding
conditions catering for their existence. That is to say,
"activity propensity" or "will of freedom" is a compensated
attribute that has to develop to cope with the excessive
expansion of conditions and the reduction of opportunity to
meet the required conditions. In other words, any carrier’s
"degree of freedom" is inversely proportional to its degree
of being, and the trend of "freedom" is the natural
determination for biological survival and social development.
If we use an analogy to explain it, we can say: suppose
there is a rock unexpectedly weakened to such an extent that
its body surface would have to be filled with nerve endings
and all kinds of sensory receptors for it to sensitively
transform any minute disadvantageous stimulus into the
feeling of “pain” and it escapes. It would have to be
endowed with an intricate physiological structure and motor
faculties for it to capture the opportune moment to transform
any meager condition of survival into the desire of
“pleasure.” It would even need to be equipped with logical
thinking capacity and selective judgment capacity; otherwise,
it would never find its own secure position of survival in
the vastness between heaven and earth. And the rock would
certainly have to go investigate being, even if the
investigation inevitably brought about the infinite
perplexity of doubting more in direct proportion with the
more it questioned—this softened or weakened rock is “human
being.” Bear in mind that the reason why a hardened rock
could peacefully remain silent is that the question of its
own being was already relatively solved long before it
raised. That is the trend of "instability" or "dislocation"
of natural evolution. "Instability" leads to "doubts" and
generates "the mind." "Dislocation" creates "freedom" and
develops into "will," which is the natural source of "free
will" or "freedom of will."
Speaking of "free will," Westerners always show great
concern and interest in it. Although it may arise from
different views or may even something far-fetched, this
proposition did expand a broad atmosphere for their
scientific thinking, and the spirit of social contract. In
the early middle ages, Augustin preached that the will of God
decides everything, but he cannot deny the freedom of human
will, so he simply denounced the free will as the source of
human evil doing. It was from this "evil source" that Buridan
found the point to reverse Augustin's idea in the late middle
ages. He put rational into will that carries out science and
emphasizes when will is in the choice of two seemingly
contradictory equivalence and happiness, freedom finally
reveals a dominant human significance. Later, people laugh at
Buridan’s excessive ignorance on the objective constraints
that may affect the "choice of will," and they asked: if a
donkey faces two piles of completely equal fodder, will it
die of starvation for failure of making a choice? That is the
free choice paradox of so-called "Buridan's ass." Humans have
a strong will for freedom, which sufficiently serves as proof
that they are already the weakest species with respect to the
potency of being or degree of survival. Human will for
freedom is well reflected in one of S. Petofi’s poems, but
since the poet was not aware of that, we need to give further
comments in regards to the “bio-social evolution” and
“process of biological freedom:”
“Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For love I’ll sacrifice my life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice my love.”
Life emerged in the Archean era more than 3 billion
years ago, so it is precious; precious in that life was
activated from dead matter, inorganic material. At that time,
life possessed very low degree of free activity and very low
degree of social structure as well;
Love emerged in the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic
era, roughly 500 million years ago. As the continuation of
natural differentiation, sexual division occurred together
with sexual attraction for the sake of reproduction, which
was the beginning of social structuration. At the time,
organisms’ degree of freedom expanded somewhat, but it
resulted in the necessity of their compulsively embedding
themselves into the structure of vital recombination of
deteriorated sexes;
Liberty or “biological freedom” is a natural
attribute, but “social freedom” is a compensative problem
of being for-itself that organisms had to face since Neozoic
civilization. That is to say, when the progression of natural
differentiation passes the stage of physical sexual
deterioration and enters into the more comprehensive stage of
mental traits deterioration, the erotic form of familial
social combination already recedes to a secondary status.
Those who risk their lives for freedom are nothing other than
a demand of self-sacrifice for organismal society to enter
the higher stratum of natural structuration;
“Liberty or die,” why human bravely forges ahead at
the risk of life-sacrifice is that at this point, “no
freedom means no continuation of being,” just as before,
“no sexual love means no possibility of reproducing.” That
is to say, the differentiated beings of higher stratum must
achieve the corresponding higher stratum of structuration, to
make the continual sustaining of themselves as well as the
entire species.
In this natural evolution stage of "freedom" as the
basic way of sustaining, any mechanism that undermines the
activity propensity of the carrier is bound to be the same
mechanism that causes the carrier itself to collapse. Like a
tiger confined in a cage, no matter how strong its
physiological function is, so long as it cannot get freedom,
it will die soon, because all of its physiological function
is displayed on the basis of self-domination. In the mid-
1980s, as one of the world's superpowers, the Soviet Union,
just because of the fear that personal computer and
peripherals like printers could threaten its control of the
national spirit, the country strictly restrict their import.
At the time some Westerners predicted that the Soviet Union
is coming to its end! Sure enough, just a few years later,
this enormous giant fiercer than tiger soon collapsed to
pieces, so quickly that even its enemies were somewhat
surprised. Such an outcome was obviously not the victory of
its enemy or the Western camp’s strategy, but the
retribution of nature for the country where freedom is
despised. It was ridicule that the retroactive Soviet Empire
thought it was the only new system representing the trend of
human society in the future. This historical event fulfilled
a prophecy said by Sun Zhongshan: the world’s trend going
forward with great strength, so vigorous that anyone moves in
its direction will survive, anyone moves inversely will die
out!
After all, the power of a country is the totality of its
national biological energy. If every citizen is suppressed,
difficult to stretch or display his potential biological
ability, how could the country become strong and prosperous?
This is a simple addition of arithmetic that needs no other
arguments. So, in today's world, the domestically freest
country is the most powerful and most qualified superpower to
dominate all foreign countries. Though its history of power
accumulation is not very long, it has not a very big
population, and it has many resentful enemies in the world,
and even because of its domestic freedom, it has the most
difficult people to constrain, and its army men fear death
most, it can still run amuck everywhere in the world. That
depends on the fully compensated social status.
"Freedom" is indeed a product of compensation for the
weakened carrier, but "no freedom" is direct to degenerate
with loss of compensation. In other words, human beings are
the weakest species that rely on their mental compensation
for their survival, and "free will" is the basic attribute
and compensatory premise of all mental creative activities.
To restrict freedom is to destroy the mental vitality, and to
destroy the mental vitality is to destroy human nature. In
ancient Rome, there was an emperor named Marcus Aurelius, who
experienced a lot of accidents and hardship in his time of
reign. He has a philosophical mind and was the last inheritor
of the stoic school, and as a ruler, he has a position to
overlook the world, so he finally left such a notable saying
on "human nature:" "A man is a bit of soul carrying around a
corpse." If we destroy this bit of soul or we cut off the
wings of freedom that the soul depends on, "human" as the
last and the noblest form of being will have nothing left but
his corpse.
 25. Verdict of Prometheus
A ccording to Greek mythology, Prometheus defied Zeus by
his stealing fire and giving it to humanity. As
punishment, he was nailed to the Caucasus cliff to let the
eagle pecking his liver, which was really harsh. But one
question has been obviously neglected for long, that is, why
Zeus was so angry? This "unjust case" might be difficult, so
Zeus just punished him without a verdict or curse words, so
people simply thought that Zeus was angry for Prometheus
transgression to privately benefit humanity. However, in my
opinion, this is doubtful, as the supreme god Zeus should
also be the master of the ancient Greeks, or even the whole
humanity (at least in the eyes of ancient Greeks). Therefore,
even if he sees humankind as worthless, he would not be
presumed to hate humanity, to the point as he hates anyone
who brings the world a bit welfare. It might be that
Prometheus had done something disastrous, but human beings
did not have the insight to realize it, and Zeus clearly saw
it from a high plane, knowing the seriousness of the
consequence, so he got so angry on Prometheus.
Speaking of human fire, it was really the beginning of
human civilization in this world. Historians often mistake
the making and using tools as human intelligence, but
actually they fail to notice that making or using tools had
been widely emerging long before humanity came into being.
For example, smart apes knew how to use a carved stone to
break nuts, how to make an ape ladder to reach fruits on high
branches, how to use branch sticks to fight enemies, etc.
Also, some birds use tools, raven, for instance, can finely
cut branches as a single chopstick to get food. However, so
far no one has found any kind of animal has the courage and
ability to use fire. Therefore, we could be quite sure that
since Prometheus gave fire to humanity, human beings have
embarked on a way that is diverging from animals, or that God
(I do not know if it is the alias of Zeus) was angered and
kicked human ancestors out of the garden of Eden.
"Fire" is one of the most common energy on earth, which
is a phenomenon of energy release of molecules dramatic
oxidation, we may call it "earth fire." Humans now are not
satisfied with such a fire, so they start to diligently
indulge in " cosmic fire." The so-called " cosmic fire"
refers to the energy discharged from atomic fusion or nuclear
fission in star series. So clearly Prometheus did not steal
"fire" from outside earth, he just picked up a fire in this
world and dropped it to us. But even it is so, Zeus could not
forgive him. Because, according to sociologists, the best
measure of human civilization or social progress is to see
the increase in their energy consumption, which is true. From
primitive men’s wood-burn fire to industrial men’s coal,
coke, and petroleum, and then to modern men's utilization of
nuclear energy, social development, and energy consumption
march forward side by side. It means once "earth fire" is
used, "cosmic fire" will be explored and robbed; like once a
treasury store’s door is opened the treasure can no longer
be left.
But Zeus was not afraid of losing the treasures, rather
he worried that he would lose the whole world. I guess,
Zeus’ concern came from such a law of the universe, the
truth of which we could slightly change a few words of what
the sociologist said to blur out: the best indicator to
measure the instability of all material structures of
evolution is to see the degree of change of their energy
distribution.
 Let me explain it as follows: the material structure of
the universe evolved is superposed by layers. In this
process, the energy distribution within each structure tends
to gradually change from positive to negative, and the higher
the internal energy, the more stable the structure is; more
consumption of the internal energy, the more unstable the
structure is; thereby leading to the eventually approaching
to the critical point of collapse by the later derived dense
structure. On the surface, it seems to be a pleasant process
from disorder to order, but in fact, it is a completely out
of order and irreversible movement. With respect to this
point, it is quite consistent with the law of entropy, that
is, the second law of thermodynamics. Let us have a look at
the following example: at beginning of the Big Bang, the
earliest material structure is the basic structure of
particles composed of quarks, leptons, and such structure of
sub-nucleus state is the structural form with maximum
internal energy. In a physics experiment, the reforming of
elementary particles requires the highest energy, so it is
called "high-energy physics." For instance, to realize the
generation of new particles by unprecedented impact, it
generally needs energy more than one billion electron volts,
so people cannot find free quarks, that is, they cannot solve
the problem of "quark closure," and it might be related to
the primordial structure with even higher internal energy
that composes hadronic quark itself. The nucleus is the
structure state of internal energy-reduced, so the energy
required in reforming nucleus in atomic levels is the middle.
For instance, to split natural stable atomic nucleus, roughly
needs energy about millions of electron volts, if to separate
meson from the nucleus, it requires energy about hundreds of
millions of electron volts, so it is called "intermediate-
energy physics." The atomic structure about its nucleus is in
the form of low energy distribution, that is, the reforming
of the electrons movement outside of atomic nucleus needs the
minimum energy. For instance, to isolate the inner layer
electrons of heavy atoms needs energy about thousands of
electron volts; and if only to separate the outer electrons
in general atoms, needs energy only a few or dozens of
electron volts, so it is called "low-energy physics."
Low-energy physics is already a research topic of the
field of molecular physics because molecules are nothing more
than the coordinated form of low-energy between atoms sharing
their electrons of outer layers, thereby stepping into the
natural structure of chemical level. Molecules are composed
of several atoms that may vary in numbers. Energy
distribution of molecular structure is extremely low, as that
many molecules, once put into water, will automatically
ionize into ions or chemical radicals, such as sodium
chloride (salt) or sodium hydroxide (caustic) in aqueous
solution can be dissociated into sodium ions, chloride ions,
and hydroxide radicals. Obviously, the stability of molecular
structure is far from that of particle structure or atomic
structure. This is because the molecular energy distributed
on the chemical bond is almost in the equilibrium state of
neither releasing nor consuming, or more precisely, the
energy in molecular structure has nothing to do with its
quality conversion, that is, the energy it releases from the
chemical bonds completely comes from the energy it consumes
in the formation of these bonds. In the evolutionary process
of the universe, the emergence of molecular structure is
certainly later than that of the atomic structure, just as
the emergence of atomic structure is definitely later than
that of particle structure. Because the molecular structure
is a new layer superposed on atomic structures, just like
atomic structure is a new layer superposed on particle
structures. Here it shows that as the energy distribution
gradually decreases, natural structural state tends to be
more discrete.
After molecules, it is a more unbearable biological
structure. The most primitive bioactive structure is a
single-celled structure. This sentence has two special
details that need to clarify: one is called "primitive,"
strictly speaking, before single cell there has been a
subcellular structure of biological macromolecules, such as
DNA, RNA, viroid, virus. But because they cannot
independently re-set their unique energy distribution, that
is, they cannot sequentially create a startup mechanism of
energy-consuming structure on molecular chemical bond of
energy decreasing, they had to wait until after the emergence
of single-celled organisms, that is, after the forming of a
relatively complete material energy metabolism path in the
cytoplasm, to show some vigor. The other is called
"bioactive," accurately speaking, activation is the
instability of the energy-consuming structure. "Energy-
consuming structure" refers to such a distress state that it
is a necessity for the structure to rely on external forever
energy supply to maintain the structure in existence.
Therefore, energy-consuming structure is bound to face two
formidable tasks of "finding energy" and "using energy."
Using energy has to mobilize the structure work inwardly,
causing the internal components to operate endlessly; finding
energy has to mobilize structure work outwardly, causing the
free activity attributes to grow increasingly; "activation"
is a general expression for such two kinds of unstable
operating states. Therefore, "life" (live, activity)
expresses the serious instability and crisis for structural
system of evolution, while "death" (die, degeneration)
becomes the concrete form and necessity of collapse of the
structural system. At this stage, biological being has to
seek a mode of compensation to prevent itself from perishing,
attributes of "genetics" and "variation" arise at the
historic moment, the former can make a short life eternal,
while the latter can make shaky structure strong. The other
two layers of structures of the biological system, namely,
multicellular organismal structure and social structure, are
sequentially established on such vulnerable foundation.
As a superposition on the single-celled organisms, the
structure of multicellular organism’s increasing energy
demand is obvious. In order to effectively absorb energy, the
structural system has to differentiate complex organ systems,
such as motion system (for finding energy), digestive system
(using energy), nervous system (internal coordination) and
reproductive system (maintain sustainable) and so on, and as
a result it brings about differentiation and deterioration of
functional traits gradually emerging in individuals of the
same species. Because of this, the next layer of structure
has to be derived, which certainly overrides its precursory
body structure, so as to vigorously reorganize the trait-
functionally deteriorated individuals. That opens a Pandora
box of the social devil. Standing at a high position to look
back on this structural system of nature, we will see that
the compensating process of the universe structuration gets
increasingly complicated along with the gradual decline of
energy distribution, and becomes increasingly unstable along
with the expansion of energy consumption. The former makes
the state of structure tend to be complex and dense, while
the latter makes the state of structure tend to be alienated
and loose, and the two complement each other, advancing side
by side, and finally bring humans into such a dilemma of
longing for freedom but pursuing standard. It seems nature
will never let any being stays outside of its layers of
network, so even the extremely arrogant cosmic elves like
humans will have to bear the taste of constraint.
Thus, "society" (namely, "social structure") is after
all the ultimate form of superposition in natural
structuration or the final product of compensation. Moreover,
human society necessarily grew out of biological society,
which is a smooth progression of continuous process, and
during which there aren’t any turns caused by human will,
but rather, human will must express laws of nature will. Or
rather, all human desires, popular ideology and great
inspiration of transforming the world, no matter how it is
changed in forms, are eventually just the pioneer effort in
opening up the road in the evolution of the universe.
Furthermore, based on the above, we should also come to
realize that "human beings" are nothing but the filling
materials for the last piece of solid structure in nature,
even though it is hard for humans to imagine what a kind of
situation this would be. Let me venture to offer two
analogies for better understanding: every single cell in our
body, in the past was a vivid independent life, but today,
every human views them as part of our body nothing worth
mentioning. In the "view" of a molecule, atoms are only its
natural filling material, but in the "eye" of those atoms,
the molecule is but a performance stage and sports venue they
built to express their inherent attributes. Humans are just
holding such a narrow view on their society like those atoms
on molecule, aren’t they?
Of course, humans are not ignorant atoms or incompetent
single cells, and the difference in between is tremendous. As
we already said previously, the more primitive the structure,
the more stable it is, such as quark in a hadron, atoms in a
molecule, etc. When it evolves to life material, structural
stability reduced sharply as the structure itself became more
complicated, but all of the changes in natural structures are
a perfect sequence of systems. When it evolves to structural
stage of humans and human society, things change so much
considering the amount of time and space that it is
unimaginable to people at large. Primitive clan society
(which grew out of animal blood relative society) stably
existed for over a million years. Agricultural civilization
sustained about 100,000 years. Industrial civilization from
1769 Watt created the first steam engine till now passed only
230 years, but industrial and commercial activities already
made human society less stable and more complicated. We now
live in an era called information civilization, accompanied
by the swift development of science and technology, and
social structure has all the way become increasingly dense
and increasingly unstable. Nowadays, as if nerves and nerve
functions of social structure, the internet and information
cover everywhere on earth, and the whole world has interwoven
into a colossal structure. Obviously, the more advanced
social form it is, the more stirring and turbulent it will
be, and the more internal factors of survival crisis it
accumulates, and correspondingly, the higher of the total
energy it consumes. To summarize in short, this sequence of
structures evolving through particles, atoms, molecule,
single cells, organisms, and societies in the natural
history, has a distribution of energy consumption clearly
going increasingly high, while the stability of structures
tends to become more and more low, between which shows a
trend of a linear inverse correlating function of
considerably accurate.
Let me stop this boring explanation here. Actually, this
is a simple interpretation of the evolution considering
nature, humans, and human society, not even a word of the
details and principles mentioned. Because my aim is to
illustrate the reason why Zeus was so angry with Prometheus,
so, here, let me venture to make a verdict on behalf of Zeus,
so as to erase humans’ misunderstanding that it was unjust
for Prometheus. Here is the verdict: "Sin with Prometheus,
arrogant and ignorant, contempt of the heaven, ignoring the
common weak on earth, privately figuring he was doing good to
pass fire to the world, thereby causing endless trouble hard
to terminate. Giving fire to humans, as quenching thirsty
with poisoning drink, helps human to become wise, frivolous
and cunning, mind stirring, material desire proliferating,
impatient disposition, restless bustling; conflicts and wars
everywhere, blood and death everywhere; energy consumption
increases, survival hard, civilization declines and society
shakes; environment polluted, nuclear weapons threat, monster
clone, virus spread, all lives endangered. Alas! The most
beautiful ecological system of nature and the most favorite
doll of gods—humans, all put on fire! It makes me painful.
There is no sentence heavy enough to punish such a sin, a bad
consequence of destroying all the essence of the natural
world! Therefore, Prometheus is ordered to have the most
severe punishment of heaven, shackles to the cliff and
suffers eagle’s pecking his liver endlessly. Hence, the
decree of the divine!"
 26. Specimen of Society
W hether humans are intelligent or not, one thing can
reflect it sufficiently: a social system is clearly meat
grinding machine that natural evolution or biological
evolution prepared for humans, but the conceited humans
insist that society is a sky-high building that they
construct for themselves. They proudly gather in it, and
believe that they are the owner of the building, and then
reasonably they compete with each other for the ruler of all
the rest people in it!
However, biologists have long discovered that "society"
had been in the natural world long before human beings came
out. Moreover, its mode of operation is often the same as
that of a certain stage in the development of human society.
I just want to talk about some interesting phenomenon of
group behavior within Hymenoptera insects, though they may
not be the mainstream of the whole biological social
evolution, they can still be regarded as a natural specimen
of society for biological deteriorated traits coupling.
The prominent feature of Hymenoptera lies in the
formation of heterogeneous phenotypes at the beginning of
their physical traits. For example, the queen of bees or ants
is the only female who has the ability to reproduce, it is
like an egg-producing machine, as it can do nothing except
reproduction, for its own life and the upbringing of
offspring, etc. are all done by working bees or ants.
Although working bees or ants are females, their sexual
organs are all in an acquired developmental abnormal state,
so they only busily work with endless chores. They are born
to have a set of tools for economic systems, such as working
bees possess mouthparts for pollen-gathering, hind lateral
sunk in as "pollen basket" etc. But drones and male ants are
simply a group of dandies, ready to mate the queen for
breeding, and once it is completed, they will die resolutely.
In addition, there are more surprising roles in ant society,
such as in many ant species, there is a special class called
soldiers, they have developed jaws especially hard as
fighting weapons. These soldiers are born to defend their
group interests and attack other colonies. In short, any
member of the group of Hymenoptera, due to their own
deteriorated or deformed physical traits, cannot survive
individually. Their social fabric (structure) in fact is just
to reach the recombining vitality of its members’
deteriorated traits. The reason I talk about these is only to
illustrate such a simple truth: the essence of so-called
"society" is nothing more than the compensated form of the
final structure for naturally differentiated or deteriorated
beings. It is just like deteriorated atoms necessarily reach
a molecular structure, and deteriorated single cells
necessarily combine into organic structure; the only
difference is that, if the deteriorated phenomenon continues
to show its trend in the organismal level, it would form a
structure of the universe which we ignorantly named
"society." Obviously, human society is a natural product that
grew out of animal society. Strictly speaking, the
fundamental proposition of sociology is not superficially in
how human behavior is made into a society, but rather in in-
depth research of how natural determination molds human
social behavior.
Now let's look at how wonderful the Hymenoptera can
show. Generally, agriculture and animal husbandry are the
products of human intelligence or human civilization. We do
not know how to measure the insect IQ, but it seems not too
big in brain capacity or creativity, insects can also create
these things quite wholly. There are several ant species in
South America, and African termites who are entirely
unrelated to these species can cultivate fungus plantations,
among them, the most famous is "parasol ants" in South
America. These ants have a particularly strong ability of
reproduction, and someone found that some of the ant nests
have more than 2 million individuals. They nest under the
ground, made complex corridor and passageway connections,
which may go 10 feet deep, the excavated soil is up to 40
tons or more. Their subterranean rooms include fungus
plantations. This kind of ants consciously sows a special
variety of the fungus. They chew leaves and mixed them as
special fertilizer to scatter on the fungus so that the ant
workers would not have to directly search for food, so long
as they collect leaves for fertilizer use. Their way of doing
the plantation is exactly the same as how humans farm. This
group of parasol ants has an incredible appetite in eating
leaves, which makes them a major pest of economic crops, but
leaves are not their food, rather the food for their fungus.
After the fungus matures, they harvest for their food and
also used the fungus to feed their larvae. These ants also
weed the plantations, not allowing other kinds of fungi to
grow. As no other fungi to compete, their garden crops can
grow flourishing. How these ants behave like human farmers!
Then look at their animal husbandry: ants have their own
livestock... Aphids are good at sucking juice from plants.
They can skillfully suck all juice from the veins, but their
efficiency of digesting and absorbing this juice is far low
than their sucking, so they will drain some liquid which
still contains some nutritive things. Drops of such
nutritious juice secreted from the posterior part of aphid
drain very fast. An aphid can produce juice more than its own
weight in an hour. When the honey-like juice is falling on
the ground, several species of ants would be waiting there,
ready to take the food from aphids. Some ants would use
tentacles or legs to touch the aphids’ buttocks to milk it.
Aphids react positively. Sometimes they do not purge their
juice intentionally until ants come to rub them, they let the
juice drip. If the ant is not ready to accept it, aphids
sometimes even hold the juice in their body. Some people held
that they saw aphids transmuted their hips similar to ants'
face to better attract ants for their rub service. Like cows
in our ranch, aphids live a sheltered life. Because aphids
are often taken care of by ants, they have lost their normal
means of self-defense. Some ants carry aphid eggs back to
their nest underground and properly take care of. They feed
aphid larvae, and after the larvae grow up, they gently send
them back to the ground by the land under ants’ protection.
Such animal husbandry, such a high yield of "milk,"
especially the mutual coordination between master and
livestock, probably even the pride grazing human would feel a
bit far behind.
It is said that slavery society did not emerge until
farming and animal husbandry civilization or labor
productivity had developed to a certain level, that is, after
the so-called "surplus labor" or "surplus value" appeared. It
is not clear how ants measure productivity, or how to
calculate the surplus labor in ant society. Anyway, ants had
established complete "slave societies" in millions of years
ahead of human beings. Darwin once carefully studied ant
slave society, it is no wonder that he did not spend a glance
at the Das Kapital Marx kindly sent to him, because Darwin's
observation is much more important than Marx conjecture.
Darwin wrote in his work that he was lucky to see the red
ants move from an ant nest to another once upon a time. These
masters carefully carried the slaves with their jaws, not
like red-brown ants, masters being moved away by slaves. That
was a very interesting spectacle. The other day, there were
about twenty ants who kept slaves in the same place looking
for something, but apparently not they were not foraging,
which attracted my attention. Sometimes there were three ants
who kept slaves pulled red ant legs, and they cruelly killed
red ants who tried to resist, and then they dragged the
carcass twenty-nine yards away into their nest as food, but
they can't get a pupa to develop into slave. So, Darwin dug
out a small group of black ant pupae from another nest and
placed them in an open area near the place they had killed
the red ants, so these tyrant ants eagerly caught them and
dragged away, as they probably thought they won these in the
last battle... One evening, he saw another group of red ants
dragging carcass of black ants (not in migration) and many
pupae back into their nest. So, he followed a line of ants
carrying loot about forty yards away into a dense Heather
bushes, where he saw a last red ant dragging a pupa; but he
could not find a ravaged nest in the dense thick bushes. But
Darwin was sure that the nest must be somewhere near the
place, because he saw there were two or three black ants
extremely scared rushed out with pupa in mouth, staying on
the heather twigs top, looking at their destroyed home with
an expression of despair. Reading to this point, you might
not be able to tell whether it was the ants in grief or
Darwin in sorrow.
How do these slaves hatch from the pupae? Darwin
continued his description: these red-brown ants necessarily
live on slaves; if there were no slaves to help this species,
it must be extinct within one year. The males and fertile
female do not engage in any work, that is, they do not build
the nest, nor do they foster the larvae. When their old nest
is no longer useable it is slave ants to decide their moving
and the slave ants use their mouths to carry their masters
away. These masters are so useless that when Darwin and his
friend captured 30 of them and detained them without a slave
together. They gave the ants favorite food and even put in
their larvae and pupae to stimuli them to work, but these
ants just didn't do any work, and they did not even eat
themselves, so many of them starved to death; later Darwin
put one black ant (F. fusca), a slave, into the detained
place. The slave ant started to work immediately. It feeds
the larvae and rescues those red-brown ants still alive;
everything was soon in good order. Darwin felt these positive
facts were really strange. It seemed that Darwin could not
explain this biological social phenomenon, so he finally
condemned the "vile red-brown ants living on slaves."
Lewis Thomas made a comment on the social behavior of
Hymenoptera: "Ants are so much like human beings as to be an
embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock,
launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and
confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor,
exchanging information ceaselessly. They do everything but
watching television. " (The Lives of a Cell ) After reading
this comment, can anyone still say that "social production"
and "social activity" are only the behavior of humans?
Incidentally, Lewis seems to have a perception: there is a
similar or replay mechanism between the process of organism
socialization and the process of cell’s organization, so he
could not help but sighs: "Bees, ants, termites, and social
wasps, they all seem to have two lives. They are individuals,
doing things today and cannot see if they think of tomorrow
or not, and they are also a cell composition of the anthill,
ant nest, bee nest, these writhing and thinking huge animal
The Lives of a Cell
body." ( ) This replaying mechanism implies
a natural force effect of implementation.
What I need to specifically clarify is that biological
research alone is not sufficient to reveal the profound
motivation of social evolution, and "social Darwinism" is
definitely not the correct theory of sociology, and even
"sociobiology" that is raising recently in the West is not
pertinent. Darwin himself never used his biological point of
view to illustrate human society. That is some other
people’s understanding, and it has nothing to do with
Darwin. However, just look at the society from the narrow
standing position of human beings is destined to secure
nothing of high perspicacity. Such a short-sighted vision is
like tribal men who are familiar with the nearby countryside
and believe the land is on the back of a huge turtle. This
proposition or object must be placed in a larger scale for a
clear vision. Since humanity itself is a natural product of
biological evolution, similarly, human society also cannot
possibly be to the result created purely by human behavior,
no matter this kind of behavior is cultural or economic.
There is no doubt that social existence, that is, the whole
process of the progressive evolution from biological society
to human society, must run through a chain of natural law.
This chain is so gorgeous as it created the Hymenoptera
as a living social specimen, amazing as well as puzzling. It
makes all theories of sociology confined to "human
rationality" or "human behavior relationship" fail to hold
water, and it also warns people not to easily believe in the
"ideal society" or "social truth" created by any human being.
Since social development has its own laws of movement and
direction of movement, how can you be sure that your"ideal"
or "truth" will not bring you to somewhere unexpected?
 27. Chance and Choice
M ost of Chinese believe that "everything is predestined,"
which probably relates to the concept of fate and the
popularity of Buddhism culture, as Confucius said: "one knows
his destiny by the age of fifty," which means that one's fate
is predestined, and he wouldn’t understand it better until
after 50 years old. Then "chance" or "opportunity" seems
coincidence, but actually it is predestined. It cannot change
anything, but only plays tricks on one’s life. Westerners
prefer to believe in "contingency," though they invented
science to especially investigate "necessity." Obviously,
Westerners usually separate "science" with "humanities," and
they mostly oppose determinism or fatalism as long as "life"
is concerned. So Sartre said, "existence precedes essence,"
meaning that your nature depends on how you live or how you
plan life, you do not have anything predestined, nor anything
predefined, and like an empty shell, you must fill yourself
through self-opening, free-choosing, and self-creating.
Clearly, the former is "the unity of heaven and man,"
somewhat negative and passive; the latter is "man’s will
conquers everything," somewhat arrogant and conceited. Then,
which is right?
Any direct answer to this question is probably not
proper. Some people like to explain this kind of problem
through the dialectical method of necessity and contingency,
which often makes people confused and disoriented. So, let us
change a way to approach it.
Soon after one is born, he falls to a world of chaos and
complexity. In facing all kinds of strange phenomena that he
has never seen before, there is not any ready-way for him to
deal with, which inevitably makes him panic and fear. In
contrast, the advent of an atom is much simpler, as shortly
after the outbreak of the universe, there was no material
differentiated yet. In an electron’s view of negative charge
(equivalent to the human perceptual system), there is only
one thing different in the world, that is the positive charge
of other things (the corresponding electromagnetic attribute
of protons); so it just needs to hug or be attracted
together, thus it completes its location (the formation of
steady-state atomic structure is secured). But a human has to
ask questions about the world, purpose of which is to find
out a way of living in his chaotic plight. Therefore, Chinese
parents or saints prepared a whole set of survival methods
and guideline for their children, so that young people won’t
be confused or at a loss what to do. However, parent’s
experience is really limited to this much-complicated world,
plus the vicissitudes of life, young people always face
patterns differently, therefore, parents’ advice may well
become life traps. Western philosophers seem to understand
that, so they preach freedom, adventure, unknowability,
human’s will conquers all difficulties to guide young
generations to have self-confidence, to bravely go ahead,
because in facing such a complicated world an ignorant mind
is more effective than a wise mind, at least it won’t let
one be self-opinionated then misled into astray. Judging from
this point, Sartre's view is correct, or rather, appropriate.
However, this may raise a question: why an ignorant
reckless mind in life may have a higher probability of
success? We have to explain it from the perspective of "the
unity of heaven and man." Human is the creation of heaven and
earth, so he is born with the potential of natural being.
Otherwise, he or his predecessors would have been eliminated
by natural selection long before. In other words, everyone's
disposition, behavior, and even thinking are all a given
pattern in natural progression. What is learned gradually and
behavior to cope with changes are all the mobilization and
development of the gene potential. So, even if we accept the
same education, each and every personality and temperament
will still be different; therefore, everyone inevitably makes
the same mistake, like the cat-changed beauty in Aesop's
Fables she will pounce at a mouse whenever she sees it. If
this is so, people doing things in their own interests,
hobbies and intuition, their probability of success and
effect of behavior will, of course, be higher, because
interest, hobby, and intuition is actually his innate
qualities and guiding signs. From this point of view, the
rationality of "free choice" is precisely due to the
determination of "the unity of heaven and man," and the two
have nothing in contradiction or inconsistency.
Concerning gene manipulation, a typical biological
experiment can better explain it: there is an infectious
disease called "attack pupa disease" or "rotten disease"
(foulbrood) in bee community, and this disease mainly invades
larvae still in the hive. Biologists found that bees can be
divided into two classes of "health" and "infection," each
behaves in a different way. Bees of health type will put
disease pupae from hive and throw them out of nest, so as to
avoid the spread of infectious disease; infection type is
entirely indifferent, the result is a great number of
victims. W.C. Rothenbuhler hybridized the two strains of
bees. The first generation of hybrid was all infection type,
which suggests that the health behavior gene is recessive.
Later, he used the first generation of hybrid to backcross
health type parents, and the offspring have three kinds of
behaviors: the first is health; the second is infection; and
the third is discounted in behavior, namely, they can find
the disease pupa and open the hive wax cover, but their
health behavior stop here, as they refused to throw disease
pupae out of the nest. Rothenbuhler concluded that the
infection type of backcross strains probably just do not have
the capacity to open the nest cover, so he helped them to
open nest cover, sure enough, half of the bees immediately
pull disease pupae out of the nest, even if the opened hive
has no disease larvae, they still pitilessly throw them out.
Clearly, it shows that health behavior is a rather complex
genetic combination. It involves three separate and
interrelated actions, including identifying disease pupae,
opening wax cover and dragging disease pupae out of nest. So,
we can see, the genetic behavior is so subtly intricate, how
could "chance" and "choice" be completely accidental and
completely free?
For example, you have a chance to encounter some kind of
opportunity, but do you have the ability to identify it as a
rare opportunity? Also, you can make an important choice, but
do you have the ability to carry out this choice to the end?
If not, is that objective opportunity a "good luck" for you?
Doesn’t that seemingly best "choice" just lead you astray?
In fact, the preconditions that human has to deal with in
circumstances is far more complicated than animals, not only
he has to be influenced by many congenital factors, the
acquired conditions are also a series of elements that he
cannot ignore. Because, in the process of evolution, the more
advanced species, the longer their acquired growth and
development process, the more content and ability to
participate in learning, that is to say, there exists a
natural rule that "the conditions to mobilize and exert its
innate potential tend to become increasingly complicated."
For instance, there is a child with a brain wiser than
Newton, but he was unfortunately born in a remote village
without an environment of education, and he does not have a
bold gene to run out of that rural area. Then, as a result,
he is too clever and too picky to be a farmer, but he is
illiterate and cannot become Newton, even if he were to be
transplanted with genes of bravery and strength, he may
inevitably take a gun to become a rebel. Anyway, it is always
an uncertain thing whether or not he becomes a landmark
scientist. If such is the case, can you still be able to
distinguish between "destiny" and "choice," "necessity" and
"chance?"
So, for such a disordered question, can we find some
reference of integrated theory? This question must have two
steps to answer.
First, let me talk about "chance" and "choice." Starting
from the point of personal life, you need to especially
incline to the secretive chance and full respect for the
right of your free choice, that is to say, never believe that
there is some rule of necessity or predestined future. Bear
in mind that most of the lucky things in the world belong to
good fortunes. Exert your directional efforts on the path of
luck, and make good grasp of the fortunes is called "choice,"
and giving up the bad luck is called "freedom." If you don’t
have the right to plan your own life, instead, you give in to
"fate," let others control your life and stay easy with
whatever the circumstance is, your life is doomed to be a
failure. Because even if you blindly follow others but still
live a stable life, the opportunity once you forfeited is
like a brighter reference that may always make your current
situation into the shade. It should be understood that "joys"
and "happiness" are purely the psychological experience,
while what you cherish in mind is something that your natural
desires, without which your other belongings may seem much
devalued to you.
This paragraph talks about the philosophical mechanism
of "contingency and necessity," which you may need to combine
the principle of evolutionary differentiation of the universe
mentioned in previous essays to understand. Necessity refers
to the destined trend of matter toward exponential
differentiation, while contingency refers to the present
state of anyone differentiated entity’s diminishing
probability of randomly coupling or forming on-the-spot
interdependence with other differentiated entity. The two are
not at all contradictory in between, instead they are
continuously implying one another and well compatible, that
is, the "state of contingency" is the phase index of the
"course of necessity" in the progressive effectuation. The
earlier the derivative phase the interdependent beings (such
as the inorganic series) find themselves in, the higher
probability for them to collide into an interdependent
assemblage (appearing as non-contingent). The later the
derivative phase the interdependent beings (such as
biological evolutionary series) find themselves in, the
lesser probability for them to encounter each other
(appearing as contingent). Here it presents a volume
increasing trend of continuous differentiation in one
direction, during which there is absolutely no dialectical
spare room for jumping between two extremes or two-
directional interpretations. No doubt that human beings are
at the end of the evolutionary process of natural
differentiation, therefore, the survival of human beings is,
of course, the extreme accidental freedom and the state of
separation. That is the comprehensive essence of "chance,"
"choice" and even "predestined fate."
Second, let me now talk about "necessity" and "destiny"
in a practical and intuitive way. Although from a personal
perspective, you can decide your life through your free
expansion and voluntary creation, your biological quality and
social stage are already given in advance, which is not up to
your freely change or reconstruction. Of course, you can
ignore it, and only by ignoring it, you could do things
voluntarily. However, what will happen to the result of the
free collision to survive or group effects? Biologists Smith
and others found a natural phenomenon called "evolutionary
stable strategy" (ESS), concept of which can be put in this
way: in any biological groups, even if every individual is
free to choose the most conducive to their own behavior
strategy, no matter this choice is made out of conscious
consideration or unconscious instinct, they will eventually
reach a steady state of equilibrium structure of
socialization. For example, suppose that there are two kinds
of individuals with different behavioral characteristics in
one animal group. One sort is fiercely aggressive, which we
call hawk. Another sort is cowardly and peaceful, which call
"dove." In the competition, hawks bully doves always in
advantage, so, because doves could not find wives and were
unable to continue their family lines, or because doves
consciously learned to become arrogant and hawks, in any
case, the number of doves was gradually shrinking. Since
then, hawks’ rival turned to be hawks themselves, the small
number of doves would stay cowardly aside watching. At first
glance, these doves suffered too much, but at least they
temporarily saved their lives, and they could have a little
leftover anyway, that is, their average gains were positive.
Hawks fought each other, dead or disabled, so their average
gains inevitably became negative now. As a result, an
opposite trend began to appear, the number of hawks decreased
gradually, because girls would privately love those generous
doves, which led to dove offspring tend to increase, and even
some hawks learned to be doves, so as not to fight and lost
life. In the end, the number of hawks and doves is bound to
return to the original balance, and in fact the range of
fluctuations between the two is very small. According to
biologists, the stability ratio of hawks and doves is 7:5,
that is to say, the average yield of hawks and doves is
exactly the same in the final implementation of grouping. Of
course, the actual situation is far more complex than such a
simple analysis, but no matter how many patterns may emerge,
the final social balance is always the same. So, actually no
one gains more than others in the end, then what is the point
of everyone’s initial free choice and strives hard?
It is not yet complete. We need to know that once
society is formed, it has its own laws of evolution and
movement, and in turn, it inevitably affects your "chance,"
"freedom" and "choice," so as to secure some interactive
effect between individuals and society. You won’t be aware
of this effect, because what you encounter is always
accidental chances. Such accidental chances force you to make
various choices of freedom. These free choices, in turn, push
the society towards the direction of destiny. As a result, it
can be said that the "contingent chance" and the "choice of
freedom" are purely blind masks. However, because of "blind,"
it brings you the joys and griefs out of the blue, and
because of "mask," it leads you to the winding depth of life.
If you could clearly see fate or destiny of your whole life
in advance, then what is the hope or interest of your life in
future? So, this "contingency" of nature is an indispensable
and inexhaustible source to excite everyone’s life. Of
course, only with this endless excitement and inducement that
humans are made willing to go together with nature to the
"inevitable destiny."
 28. Love and Revolution
I have a friend who made a wonderful metaphor about love, he
said that love is like a revolution. The two have the same
following characteristics: first, they need plenty of passion
and fantasy; second, they need courage and endurance; third,
they need to deal with strength in between; fourth,
participants of two sides or more involved in the deal need
to use a few tricks; fifth, firm and hesitant, confidence and
inferiority, loyalty and betrayal, attack and retreat, all
intertwined, changes of scenario is inevitable. Moreover, if
this revolution fails, it definitely will leave great pains;
and if it succeeds, it will often turn out to be somewhat
disappointing. This metaphor is really vivid and appropriate
of every phrase and word.
Actually, love is a revolution, because they share a
more important ground in common, that is, the two will create
a completely new life or new survival pattern. I think,
however, even to this extent, it still fails to tell the
deepest connotations of love.
If you don't believe it, please ask yourself: why people
who fall in sexual love need to mix love with various tricks?
Perhaps, some will say, this is due to the complexity of
human society, and is one of the forms of expression that
human beings are different in reproduction from that of
animals. However, such an answer just makes things the
opposite. We need to know that all of these are the inherited
products of biological evolution, or rather, the spontaneous
determination of the two sexes genetics in the biological
sense, from which we draw a more profound background.
Biological survival behavior is constrained by the
molecular derivative state, just as the molecular derivative
state is constrained by the inherent quality of atoms. So-
called "gene" or "DNA," in the final analysis, is nothing but
the transformed mode of molecules, and the so-called
"organism" or "human," at best, is a temporarily borrowed
survival machine of molecular genetics. Its mode of
performance is very straightforward: the gene is passed down
generation to generation, but the body is constantly
abandoned in the process. Any fragment of gene molecule has a
tendency to seek survival or pursue expansion of its own
existence. Biologist Richard Dawkins and others put forward a
complete set of new theories about "the war of two sexes" or
"love game", which sounds very effective to explain the
origin of those endless tricks.
The general principle of evolutionary differentiation
leads to the split of two sexes. The split between the two
sexes leads to the occurrence of "passion of courtship."
Needless to say, gene molecules at the moment if they cannot
make the carrier to have the impulse for courtship, these
genes won’t be able to sustain. Initially the gametal cells
(i.e. meiotic sexual cells) may be equal between each other,
but as the life structure gets complicated, the expanded
gametes may possess the advantage in after incubation.
Because it contains more nutrients, which is directly
conducive to the development of descendant life, and this is
the original purpose of the female ovum to come out (such as
a hen’s egg is an ovum egg). Accordingly, male gametes tend
to shrink their size accordingly, because in this way it can
save consumption, which is conducive to producing more sperm
to compete for female resources. The consequence is that the
small size of the egg and the large male gametes were phased
out. So, male gametes had a cunning mind from the very
beginning, which opened the prelude to a "comedy of love."
However, playing smart does not always mean success,
instead, it may often encounter greater punishment. On the
surface, female at the moment is in a disadvantageous
position, as the burden of offspring fostering seems to be
whole on the shoulder of a female. Since the survival degree
of primitive aquatic species is very high, their offspring do
not need much care after birth. Moreover, even with the
development of biological evolution, difficulty of incubation
gradually increases, female animals also have their ways to
deal with. Otherwise, the excessive unilateral consumption on
the feminine side would cause female be destroyed, which
would also bring perish to male animals. Arguably, since
female eggs are big and rare, it has to cause more losses on
male side to make a sense of balance. As expected, the first
round competition between female and male starts like this:
the majority of fish are in vitro fertilization. In this
case, which side release germ cells into the water, it can
run away first; the other side arrived late has to stay to
look after the fertilized eggs and baby offspring not
becoming snacks of some other evil species. Male fish
discharges sperm in large quantity and let them drift, so if
they discharge sperm first, the sperm will inevitably drift
away. So male gene won’t like such a huge loss; while female
fish eggs are big and bulky in body, and they will be
discharged with a little mucus secretion to stick altogether,
so as not to be washed away. So female fish can blithely
ovulate first, and then speed away; male fish have to follow
the female to ejaculate sperm, and then stay around to do the
duty of father.
With more biological species landed and became
terrestrial animals, in vitro fertilization became
impossible, because their germ cells are easy dried to die.
Later, till mammal animals emerged, the baby could only be
conceived in mother's womb, which led to the balance of
offspring care increasingly tilting towards female side. At
this step, the unequal situation between two sexes became
more and more serious. However, natural selection designs a
set of "happy family" strategy to deal with the situation: in
order to prevent the female from dying overwrought, that is,
female in love stage must both reserve arrogance and be
affectedly bashful so that males before mating had to pay a
high price of courtship. Female has two benefits in such
behavior: so that male won't easily abandon its sexual
partner, because male needs to consider the daunting
experience of courtship; also test whether the male partner
has a loyal nature, so as to expect it sharing the burden of
fostering children. This process is also beneficial to the
male, for, during this protracted courtship, the male could
make sure that she was not carrying another male’s baby.
Nearly all kinds of mammal animal period of courtship are
about the length of female's pregnancy. Of course, such ideal
matching partners require a prerequisite, that is, the
females must all be virtuously haughty-reserved; otherwise,
some irresponsible cunning males would take a chance to lure
females, just happily spread seeds, and then walk away
easily.
So, in any animal group of preserving dual-sex life,
there exist four types in the two sexes matching competition:
females differentiate into two genetic types: the "arrogantly
reserved" and the "open lustful;" while males also
differentiate into two types of strategic behavior: the
"loyal" and "unfaithful." At first glance, this arrangement
seems to be the most favorable to the "open lustful" female
type and the "unfaithful" male type, but it is not so in
fact. Although initially these two types may have some easy-
going advantage, it is not difficult to imagine, that this
cheap moment will earn them long-term trouble. Because the
open lustful female may often meet some of the loyal males,
but she made those unfaithful males sexually easy-going,
while those loyal males spent much energy on taking care of
offspring, which pressed them no longer have time or chance
to make extra love; but those unfaithful males can make extra
love easily, so they could have more offspring than those
loyal males. However, henceforth, those open lustful females
will have a high probability to encounter unfaithful males,
if this is the case, such females must pay a high price in
raising child all by itself, and if it doesn’t want to take
care of children, it would lose her gene gain together with
the unfaithful male’s; thus these two types of gene will
reduce in generation. But those arrogant reserved females
were unlikely to be seriously harmed by unfaithful males,
whose existing only adds some difficulty to the virtuous
females in finding husbands. Compared to those open lustful
females, virtuous females’ situation will slowly improve,
and ultimately compress the lustful type females into a very
small proportion. That is why prostitutes inevitably suffer
disdain from males and depression from society, though they
may still be coveted by some males privately. Furthermore,
those unfaithful males who initially had a pretty good gain,
could not escape the heavenly retribution. With haughty
reserved females gradually occupy major part of the
community, these males’ lack of sincerity and endurance
nature will make their process of courtship continuously
fail. They consume much love energy but lack an effective
reproduction, their gene gains finally unavoidably fall
negative. As a result, the loyal type males and the haughty
reserved type females will again become the mainstream of the
total animal group. According to biologists, the haughty
reserved females usually account for 5/6 of the total
females, and the faithful males usually account for 5/8 of
the total males. Of course, the stability ratio is only
estimated according to a specific parameter.
Once the matching is reached, the passion of love will
subside, because they must save energy to deal with the
tedious things in home construction and long-term
preparations for family reproduction. At that time, they need
to be calm and meticulosity rather than enthusiasm and
passion. Therefore, "marriage is the grave of love" is
actually the natural principle set by the survival process.
That is like a vigorous revolution has been successful, so it
is appropriate to take back that kind of revolutionary
fervor. If the couple continues to keep that overheated
emotions like wildfire to spread boundlessly, it will result
in a sudden fall apart marriage. It is clear that the so-
called "continuation of revolution" after the revolution is
over is probably troublesome. In view of this, if you find
the intensity of love between husband and wife after marriage
somewhat subside, you need not be depressed and complain
about it, instead, if the new couple continues their passion
at a high level, they probably will stir up some friction or
concussion that should not happen.
Till this point, the natural background story about the
game of love seems to have been completed. However, to be
honest, this is just the most superficial part of the rules.
The deeper cosmic events that it triggered has just come to a
new stage or new threshold. Think about it why "social
revolution" is so similar to "biological courtship?" If there
isn’t any natural law running through it, how could such
"replays of natural law" be displayed again and again in the
world? Believe it or not, how the harmony structure of
hydrogen atom evolving into 92 kinds of uneven elements, is
familiar to the self-complete single cells differentiating
into hundreds of millions of subsequent weak and deteriorated
life forms? Moreover, how the simple dispersed primitive tiny
molecules evolving into the complex structures of big gene
coding is similar to that mini cell colony differentiating
into the enormous human society that is. It is an objective
force during which the consistent natural law is gradually
unfolding, and a process of great momentum of the universe in
which humanity is also coercively involved. In the middle of
this process any tricks revealed are but some mode of
phenomena in the significant background.
In fact, what the biological courtship causes is not
only a chain of life reproduction but also a flow of social
structuration. That is to say, from the primary sub-
structured society of primitive single-cell clonal
reproduction, through the vigorous combinations of
multicellular organic heterogeneous cleavage, reached
intermediate low structured animal genetic society based on
physical traits differentiation. Thereafter, it evolves into
the human family clan society, then with the continued
differentiation of intellectual traits it eventually develops
into the highly structured advanced society of human
civilization. Here, the reader may neglect the tedious long
development of biological evolution, but just knows some
epoch-making incidents in the bio-social history that is
enough: "sex division" plays the first group of comic roles
on the stage of "social structure," or rather, the impulse of
"sex coupling" is just the first link to start the
"development of social structuration." Although in your eyes
biological love and courtship are but a particularly
interesting emotional journey, and it eventually forms a
combined family of incomplete or deteriorated life entities;
however, this seemingly insignificant "family" is exactly the
basis or predecessor of the later formidable "state" or
"state union."
No matter how people ardently praise love stories,
Francis Bacon always kept a cool head. He said that love
brings misfortune to life, "it sometimes resembles the
tempting witch, and sometimes it resembles the goddess of
revenge." There is a famous ancient saying: "the greatest
flattery, people always keep themselves, but the flattery for
lover is an exception; because even the proudest person is
willing to lower himself in front of his lover." So, people
should be vigilant about love. What is this misfortune to be
teased by a witch or a goddess? What is the consequence we
should be vigilant to avoid? Bacon replied incisively, "it
will not only make you lose others but lose yourself as
well." This is really a punchline! But unfortunately, he was
unable to give the last comment: after Adam and Eve’s love,
where did humans lose themselves to? Let me add this for him:
they lost themselves to the natural network that biological
society has woven, or rather, they lost themselves to the
cosmic abyss that social structure has created. Where else
can we go for our destiny?
 29. Malthus's Fault
P eople often take a serious and precautious attitude to
make absurd and ridiculous things. Such cases were common
in the past, and there will such cases in the future as well.
Such cases can be divided into two categories: one is
confused at the time, and later became understood; the other
is sober at the time but became confused continuously after
that. This article begins with the first one, and gradually
comes to the second.
Nowadays if we recall how some senior officials and
ignorant literati noisily and massively criticized Malthus’s
theory decades ago, people must feel it was ridiculous . In
my opinion, it was ridiculous or sad, neither because Chinese
population was made a consequence of increase like a plague
of locust, as that was human inherent biological instinct,
not to blame a few big shots misleading; nor out of my
admiration of Malthus's theory, for he made a wrong
conclusion. He said population explosion would cause famine,
pestilence, and war; in fact, the modern people now face
trouble of overeating to the point that it induces all sorts
of queer "diseases" such as obesity, diabetes and so on. The
point is that if we really want to shame someone with an
ungrounded accusation, we need to think about the
consequence; otherwise, it might turn out to be a farce that
we pour dirty shit on our own heads.
Darwin is really a great man with unique insight, and he
is a broad-minded, calm, and steady temperament. In facing
Malthus’s predictive theory on biological population, Darwin
did not hav a scientist e a heart of complaint or aversion,
instead, he saw from it some most important natural signs and
clues of thought. Malthus was the first to discover the
natural ability of biological proliferation expands in
geometric increment, and is always greater than their actual
survival group or actual viability. Therefore, it is assumed
that the intraspecific competition of organisms must be
extremely cruel and inevitable. Regardless of whether it was
necessary for Malthus to warn human beings, it is only a
series of basic problems implied in this phenomenon—for
example, what is the meaning of the potential excessive
reproduction of organisms? What is the natural limit to
suppress this reproductive capacity? What is the advantage
with which the survivor of intraspecific competition wins?
And where will these so-called dominant groups lead
themselves to?—is enough to trigger any person of thoughtful
for deep thinking. Later, in the introduction to his great
book The Origin of Species, Darwin made a special mention of
the scientific contribution and enlightenment of Malthus's
theory. That reflects it is not an easy thing for the
ordinary to understand Malthus’s theory.
In fact, the problem of "rich man’s disease" that human
beings now face can also find an explanation from Malthus’s
theory. For instance, it is a good thing to have enough food,
because any spices of life is not willing to suffer
starvation. So, the first "survival competition" is to
contend for food. However, in the natural state, how many
animals are lucky to find enough food for their stomach every
day? Just imagine, if animals are sufficient with food, they
must be active in sexual desire, and they will produce
numerous offspring, but the food in the natural world is not
unlimited. More offspring means many of them will often go
hungry, but as animals do not have contraceptive measures,
their impulses for offspring are difficult to control, so
their population will continue to expand until natural food
can no longer support them. That is to say, the excessive
reproduction of organisms will inevitably cause all
individuals to suffer from hunger to famine. In such a case,
none of them will be infected with such a disease like
obesity. That is probably the reason the ancients called the
ugly big-belly appearance of idle ones as "rich."
In view of this, the reputation of "rich appearance" or
"obesity" could only belong to human beings. However, this
obesity also reveals a serious problem in the sense of
natural evolution: since human biological ancestors all
belonged to survivors of hunger, then human physiological
structure and physiological function are necessarily most
suitable for the half-starving state of life. In other words,
after millions of years of natural selection, species who
need to have enough food to maintain their vitality must have
been eliminated long ago. Those who survived must be capable
of sustaining themselves through starvation, which is why
your having full meals will make you feel weak, tired, even
lost your body shape, and fall in constant chronic disease.
That is why the more progressive the agricultural science and
technology is, the worse the population becomes, finally to
the extent that the previously good earth is now suffering
"ecological disease."
Now let us talk about diabetes. Since starving is a
constant state in biological evolution, all those who could
survive probably possess a little bit innate energy saving
capability; otherwise, once they became hungry and weak, how
could they fight and compete in survival struggle? So, it is
not difficult to understand that for all survived species,
including humans, their genetic nucleoplasm must include a
DNA encoding type of "energy-saving gene," which is in charge
of how to sustain with less energy and more work. It is also
responsible for turning excessive heat into fat and stored in
body or subcutis, so that when body experiences hunger or
starvation it could mobilize such stored energy to support
body for an extended period. We often heard some fat persons
complained that they "put on pounds even they only drink
water," and probably their genes of this type function
especially. On the other hand, if the body experiences a long
period good time, that is, having enough food and
accumulating excessive energy, this group of genes could soon
become a pathogenic factor. Because they continue to gather
energy for the body as usual, not allowing the slightest
waste, so that all somatic cells are fully loaded with energy
without a break. Then all the cells rise to resist, and the
result is energy substances discharged from the urine.
However, at this moment all somatic cells have already been
hurt, thereby causing the complications of diabetes mellitus
that affects almost all body tissues and organs.
Clearly, every one of us is a carrier of diabetes or a
potential diabetic patient. The only factor to induce this
disease is the development of technology that fills our
stomach too full. Perhaps you can positively go on a diet
yourself, but the development of technology has dramatically
reduced our physical exertion of energy or our daily
activities. Even if you are not on a diet, the natural
reduction in human food has already led to the deficiency or
imbalance of a variety of other nutrition except for energy,
so your diet may also bring your body more damage. In a word,
you can't escape the survival atmosphere of science and
technology. You have been far away from your own animal
nature; how can you return to the primitive state of animals
or apes? Sure enough, the natural incidence of human diabetes
in the past was far below 0.2% ~ 1%, but now, in developed
countries or moderately developed countries, the rate has
risen to 6% to 25%, increasing several times or even dozens
of times, and it is still spreading at a very high speed.
According to some medical specialist speculates, if the trend
continues, in the near future, there will be 50% or even more
than 70% of the human beings at the risk of this disease. By
that time, people who have no diabetes may become an unusual
group.
In fact, the diseases that human beings created for
themselves are far more than the above one or two. For
example, the biological clock is regulated through the eyes
sensing light, but since Edison invented the light bulb,
large-scale insomnia or neuropathic pain broke out in the
world, making people relying on long-term use of sleeping
pills or analgesic to maintain basic physiological balance.
Another example, the prevalence of greenhouse cultivation and
catalytic agent artificially alters fruit and vegetable
growth cycle, resulting in the change of plant components,
and the accumulation of intermediate metabolites such as
nitrite. These harmful substances cause the increase of
cancer incidence, and its additional long-term consequences
are still unknown to us. Such examples are numerous. In a
sense, half of the pathological factors in the clinic are
related to scientific progress or man-made mischief, which is
not critically serious. Anyway, human life has been extended,
and its harm is just to let you suffer a few more years. But
if we measure all kinds of other technological troubles made
by humans, we may see that the total life span of humanity as
a species will be greatly reduced. In recent years, Britain
and other western countries found from their study that the
number of human male sperm compared with that of the 50s of
the 20th century was significantly reduced, and the abnormal
sperm ratio increased significantly. This is a very dreadful
sign; because such phenomenon usually will occur before
mammalian extinction. For example, the endangered China
pandas not only related to the destruction of food chain of
vegetation in habitat, and probably their male sperm failure
is a more severe index of natural life that can't improve.
At this point, we can review and judge the achievement
or fault of Malthus's theory. Strictly speaking, Malthus's
"academic starting point" and "general guidance of theory"
are all correct. The former has been proved by Darwin, and
the latter has been repeatedly verified in the long history
of human social movements. In fact, the credibility of the
interpretation of stories made by sociologists and historians
is generally very poor, because their simple view in
humanities really lacks a bit of necessary natural depth. It
is important to realize that the cyclical unrest of human
society usually is the undermining of human biological
elements. For example, in the history of China society, every
two to three hundred years there was a fierce and bloody
dynastic change. It was always caused by the general
livelihood of famine, followed by pestilence and then
repeated wars; these bloody wars made the whole population
fell sharply. Then, a new dynasty established with the
complete inheritance of the old dynasty’s political pattern.
As the entire society consistently longed for peaceful
recuperation, the total population would then gradually
recover and increase. Then various factors of social unrest
began to accumulate again until the next round of social
unrest and change occurred. It is discovered that the curve
of these ups and downs of social turbulence coincide with the
curve of the rise and fall of population quantity, a
phenomenon which is quite like the periodic swarming of bee
society. Besides, the international disputes over territorial
sovereignty are quite similar to the phenomenon of animal
"seizure of territory" among same species. One of the reasons
Hitler launched the second world war was what he declared of
competing broader "living space" for the Germans?
Then why do I say that Malthus's theory has a serious
fault? This needs to be explained from the accelerated
compensation of "human mental attribute," which is quite
difficult to make it clear. To make it simple, Let me put it
into a direct proposition of knowledge growth and scientific
progress for an easy explanation here. The reader needs to
remember, the sublimation of rational human ability is the
inherited product of material inductive attributes and
evolved biological perception. This natural process of
"attribute gain" will inevitably lead to the corresponding
deterioration of the existing modes of the carrier, and the
corresponding change in the metamorphosis of the carrier
structure. Because Malthus ignored the directional trend of
progression of "science and technology," which I call the
"final compensatory mode of natural attributes of induction
or biological perceptual attributes." That is, he ignored the
inverse interactive relationship between what is called
"potency of compensation" and "potency of being" in the sense
of philosophy, thereby resulting in his lightening the
problem of social survival. In fact, the trend of human
biology or prospect of sociology is much more severe than
what he predicted, just as humanity’s evolutionary phase
place is more dangerous than that of other organisms. That is
to say, those past criticism made on Malthus has just
reversed the problems.
Malthus's theory of intuition applies to the apparent
phenomenon in the biological world and is also partly
applicable to the early history of the low level of human
civilization. But with the rapid development of science and
technology, the situation also changes. This change is
reflected in humans temporarily solve the trouble of
excessive reproduction within a limited range. From this
point of view, Malthus's theory failed, and it not only
failed, but also faces the opposite situation. For instance,
the problem of "starving to death" has changed into "over-
eating diseases." However, this factor that has led to the
failure of Malthus's theory is the large-scale development of
science, which is a more terrible problem than the
competition within biological species. The biological
competition within species generally does not directly cause
the extinction of the species, but instead, it may lead to
the variant selection and evolution of the species.
Nevertheless, to be honest, this "variation" and "evolution"
are the real driving forces that lead to the extinction of
the species. So, we see that the more advanced species, the
faster their extinction is. The so-called "speed extinction"
is synonymous with "speed variation;" moreover, higher
species often becomes the natural enemies of lower species,
or rather, lower species usually constitute the basic food
chain of higher species. Therefore, the result of evolution
is nothing more than creating a speed death for biological
being themselves."
What is the progress of science? This is the fastest
variation and the most intense evolution! Bear in mind that
the evolution of organisms is accomplished through the
variation of "physical traits" caused by "gene mutation,"
while the evolution of human beings is realized through the
variation of " intelligent traits" caused by "transformation
of logic." So-called " intelligent traits" refers to the tool
type physical extension that animal or human beings make with
their own intellectual attributes. That is to say,
intelligent traits are necessarily the direct continuation or
functional development of physical traits, just like
intelligence itself is something gradually develops in the
process of biological evolution. So, what we call "tools" all
are the extensions and supplements of animal physical traits,
such as the telescope and microscope are the extension of the
eye, the gantry crane and planning machine are the extensions
of the arm, vehicles and ships are the extensions of the
feet, the electronic computer and artificial intelligence are
the extensions of the brain, etc. In sum, we could
overarchingly call all tools “extra-physical traits.”
 This is a continuous progress of natural transition, and
also the fundamental reason that human beings have been far
away from animals. The natural division and archaeological
broken ring between animals and humans were actually already
connected perfectly by human civilization steps. That is to
say, the mind through reshaping and remaking its own extra-
physical traits makes each of its evolutionary steps an
equivalent of biological variation or even biological
speciation: from "ape-man" to "paleolithic-man," "Neolithic-
man," "bronze-age man," "iron-age man," "mechanical-age man,"
"electronic-age man," as well as developing to "genetic-
engineering man" and more; or formulating the same thing in
another way: from "ape-man," "primitive hunter/gatherer,"
"nomadic herder," "farmer," "industrialized-man,"
"informational-man," developing all the way to "post-modern
man" and more.
What's not good is that mental evolution completely
inherits the natural rule of physical evolution, that is, the
degree of survival of primitive species is obviously higher
than that of the later derived species, and the degree of
stability of the evolved species tends to reduce
acceleratively. This momentum is particularly prominent in
the civilized stage of human beings, which seems to mark the
approaching of a critical limit at last. We can see that any
biological strains, even the highest mammalian or primate
animals, their species life generally maintain tens of
millions of years or millions of years; from Australopithecus
evolved into Homo erectus, it experienced about sixteen
million years. However, once it entered the stage of Homo
sapiens, the situation suddenly turned immediately for the
worse. "Stone man" existed at most hundreds of thousands of
years; "agriculture man," "bronze man" or "iron man" existed
only ten thousand years or even less than a few thousands of
years in history; and "industrialization-man" existed only a
few hundreds of years before they were rapidly flooded by
"information-man." Such an intense variation and evolution is
like declining on a slope then suddenly falling into an
abyss, and the driving force of this falling is the logical
change and scientific development. This is just to see it
abstractly from the vertical axis of time flow, which does
not involve the transverse plane of those concrete crisis of
human survival that has been highlighted in the world, such
as population explosion, ecological damage, environmental
pollution, climate anomalies, weapons of mass destruction and
horrible consequences that may bring about by biological
technology, and so on.
Special attention should be paid to that the progress of
science and technology and its harmful effects I talk about
here, do not refer to its negative effects, but rather means
its positive function, just as the "effective compensation"
and "invalid compensation" in philosophy belong to the same
process of the universe or same logical concept. In other
words, it is the beneficial effects and active function of
scientific development that leads to the rapid transformation
and rapid deterioration in the situation of human survival.
If a technological invention creates only some side effects,
it can't be generalized and applied for a long time. If it
only brings some adverse effects, it will be easier to
eliminate. The problem is that the positive significance of
any scientific achievement is at the same time its negative
effect, or rather, the negative effect of science and
technology is the implementation of its positive effect. The
greater its positive meaning is, the stronger its negative
effect is, and after all, the two are the same thing that
cannot be divided. Only that if one wants to comprehend this
effect, he usually needs to take a long-time observation from
a far distance.
We often hear some people say that science is a double-
edged sword, so it can serve and hurt as well, which all
depends on how we use it. That is a complete mistake. In
actuality, science is only a single-edged knife, which is
efficiently sharp, capable of invincibly cutting anything,
but its "edge" is precisely cutting off the survival time of
human species. Its every step moving forward in silence is
much more powerful than any vigorous war, famine or plague,
because its operation promotes or marks the implementation of
the natural laws in the process of the universe. In contrast,
how lack of strength and power is Malthus's light prophecy!
 30. Human's Place in Nature
I n facing the vast universe, only “human beings” have
the qualification to raise questions. This qualification
comes from their cognitive ability as well as from their
suspicious nature. All “knowledge” starts from raising
“questions,” therefore, Aristotle once said: “It is owing
to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to
philosophize.” (from Metaphysics ). But no one ever asks a
step further: why people have such wonders? Or, why have
people a suspicious nature? All creatures in the world are
good in existence, and none of them raised questions, but why
human beings must raise questions for their existence?
That is the first important question in the world.
Because it is actually asking what is “man?” From the
famous saying “know yourself” engraved on the wall of
Delphi temple in ancient Greece the 5th century BC, to the
question “Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we
going?” raised by the 19th-century impressionist painter
Paul Gauge in his masterpiece painting, all are relentlessly
making the same inquiry. However, if we only stay in
“human” itself to make circular argument, this question
will never get an answer. Because of this, we should change
the way we approach this question, that is to ask what is
humanity’s place in nature?
This question is always the core of human culture and
thought, and we may even hold that all knowledge of humanity
is directly or indirectly inquiring this question. Therefore,
it naturally shows two characteristics: first, whenever a
theory gets close to the question, even if it is purely a
topic of that subject, it inevitably spreads into a universal
concept or popular ideology. Second, its conclusion always
seems uncertain, shaking or unsteady, but it always tends to
descend, thereby making human’s place in the natural world
more and more declined.
Let us have a look at what happened in the civilization
of human history. Religion was the most primitive cultural
form in all human races; that is, theology was the way of
human beings understanding the world and themselves. In such
a rough logic system, the human’s place in nature was the
highest. Because from the totem worship to personalized
fetishism, gods or deities became more and more like men
themselves. Except for condescending to the virtual gods,
humanity’s position was above all other things in between
heaven and earth, as they executed the authority in the name
of gods and naturally held themselves as the master of all
things. This idea was in existence for a very long time in
human history, and it remains still seen from time to time.
When humanity entered the age of philosophy, science
sprouted under philosophy, but philosophy was still
overshadowed by theology. Therefore, even if some people
changed the mode of thinking into complexly mixed thought,
they still held their position the same as gods, its typical
representation was the “geocentric” raised by Ptolemy (90
– 168). Rationally speaking, Ptolemy’s theoretical model
was purely a topic of subject. His work was called Almagest,
which contains a lot of valuable scientific observations and
findings. He himself was the most qualified astronomer,
mathematician, and geographer of that time. Such a profound
theory later became the popular view of the universe in the
western world. It was largely due to that it directly has
touched the very sensitive question of man’s place in
nature.
Later, as the pioneer of modern science, Copernicus
(1473 -1543) raised his “heliocentric” in his work On the
Revolvings of the Heavenly Spheres , a monograph of a very
high level in the specialization. At first, only Bruno and
Galileo were influenced by his academic ideas, which led both
of them into trouble, but its overall impact subsequently on
humans were really unusual: marking it an epoch, the flow of
scientific ideas suddenly became surging flood in the secular
world. In fact, his theory is not that correct. His imperfect
circular orbit model and his theory of taking the sun as the
center of the universe were full of serious flaws, so they
were soon replaced by the new theories of Kepler and Newton.
However, his universal influence is rare. Because he was the
first man to pull human beings from the height close to God
down to the habitants of an ordinary planet. It is an act
that made human’s place in nature greatly descended.
In 1859, Darwin published his book The Origin of
Species. It is a pure biological monograph. I believe that
there were not many people who really have read this
masterpiece. However, the effect of uneasiness and sensation
caused by this book was enough to compare with that of any
founder of religion. The reason why it was so disturbing is
that he pulls down man’s place in nature to a new low level,
resulting in that the intelligent part of the universe,
namely, the distinguished human beings, sharply falls to the
place of apes’ offspring. Relatively, he actually thinks
high of humans, because by the concept of “survival of the
fittest” human beings can still see themselves as the best,
the most survivable adaptive high species. Nevertheless, this
could only be regarded as a piece of comfort after being
belittled, so he inevitably suffered personal insults from
all sides. Claiming to be his bulldog, T.H. Huxley defended
his theory in defiance of humiliation and made lectures from
place to place. Later Huxley especially wrote a book entitled
Man’s Place in Nature , which shows how deeply he knows the
value of Darwin’s theory. Since then, Darwin’s evolutionism
gradually becomes the trend of modern thought and
philosophical ideas that permeate the whole world, and it
even plays a special role of inspiring human’s aspiration
and stimulating competitiveness among human beings.
To this point, what human beings had to disdain other
things in the world has left not much to mention. If they
indulge in self-admiration, what they could gather was only
some virtual things like “spirit” or “rational” that
might emit a little light. However, unfortunately, at the
moment, there emerged a geek, who was only a psychiatrist.
Since he could not bear the past method in psychiatric
treatment, such as electrotherapy and tightened vest, which
was tantamount to torturing, so he determined to investigate
the fundamental elements affecting the mental activity.
Unexpectedly, in so doing he actually smashes the last piece
of privacy that human treasures. He found that man’s noble
mental being is actually disturbed by the most primitive and
lowest sexual repression of biological endowments, which is
possibly transformed into some subconscious disorder, and
then it exerts the most powerful domination of mental
activities. Then, humans, like the Sphinx in front of ancient
Egyptian pyramids, though possessing a big head of seemingly
rational, their mental activity is completely subject to
their animal’s flesh and blood. He was Freud (1856 - 1939),
an Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist who creates
“psychoanalysis.” Freund’s theory also belongs to a purely
professional category. The reason it later spreads to every
field of human culture is that it has caused another serious
downfall to human place in nature.
Then, is man’s place in nature corrected completely?
No, not yet, and far from it.
Take Darwin’s theory of evolution as an example, his
hypothesis of natural selection is reasonable, but his
conclusion that “the process of species evolution leads to
the increase of biological adaptability and survival
efficiency” is a significant error. According to his theory,
the more advanced species, the stronger their adaptability,
the higher their degree of survival, but the actual
circumstance is just the opposite. Throughout the biological
history, primitive single-celled organisms born 3 billion 800
million years ago are still the life form of the strongest
degree of survival and the most widely distributed. Next,
from single-celled organism evolves to prokaryotic cells,
multicellular integrated organisms, even lower metazoan
animals like the poriferous phylum, coelenterate phylum and
flatworm, the time gradually accelerates, and when the
development came to the stage of notochord animals, the speed
of variation and derivation of new species was almost in a
state of explosive emergence, which occurred in the famous
Paleozoic era of Cambrian age 570 million years ago. Since
then, each and every new species comes and goes hurriedly
like a nine-day’s wonder, and the more latecomers, the more
outrageous dazzling of their debut, and the higher rate of
their extinction. For example, as representative of the
oviparous reptiles, dinosaurs dominated the Earth about 100
million 6000 years; but, as its offspring, the mammals
derived till today only 70 million to 90 million years, and
they have all fallen into a dying circumstance. Especially,
unfortunately, the best part of biological evolution, that
is, human beings having been in the world just around 3
million to 5 million years already clearly show the critical
phenomenon of excessive prosperity before failure. This
critical phenomenon emerges suddenly in less than 500
thousand years (human using fire), or less than 5000 years
(using language), and even less than 500 years (using
science) since their civilization. That is to say, in the
99.9% extinct biological strains within billions of years,
the more advanced species in evolution, the higher
probability and the faster of their elimination, that is, the
lower of their degree of survival. Why is it the
“strongest” extinguished, but the “weakest” is still
alive? That is to say, behind the apparent phenomenon of the
fittest survival in natural selection, there actually implies
a one-way rule of “natural selection preserving the weakest
of the most unsuitable for subsisting.” Indian poet Tagore
said: “we mistake the world, but accuse the world deceives
us.” Is Darwin wrong, as a giant in science, or is there in
the natural world any other rule beyond our cognitive
ability?
The worst circumstance is more than that. In this world,
only human beings can shout such heroic utterance like
“conquering nature;” but in fact, having truly “conquered
nature” are those primitive organisms that we perceive as
incompetent. The fact is that when the earth was formed, it
was surrounded by a reducing atmosphere, within which the
oxygen content was less than 0.1%. It was those anaerobic low
organisms, such as primitive unicellular cyanobacteria, or
tiny coral and the like, and lower plants that landed on
continents later, exert their effort of millions of years to
have transformed the atmosphere into the current oxidized air
that higher organisms like human beings need for survival.
The range of change is up to 210 times more (the current
oxygen content of earth’s atmosphere is 21%), and they also
prepared an ozone layer that is indispensable for all
terrestrial organisms. Not only that, even the terrain of the
earth’s surface has been transformed by those humble little
things. For example, Chinese Guilin Scenery was made by coral
generations by turning themselves into deposition by
absorbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and after years
of rain wash before finally forming the typical Karst
landform. It seems that only those primitive lower creatures
are really the heroes of “conquering nature,” who made
great changes to the earth world. Looking at humankind, not
only our creativity to do good for the earth is limited, but
also our most basic survival tolerance is weak and poor. For
example, the content of carbon dioxide in the primitive
atmosphere is about 200 thousand times higher than that of
now, it is those low creatures in such harsh environment that
they created the advanced organisms of prodigal offspring
like us, but today, we have just increased the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in less than one time
comparing previously by way of pollution, we already live in
a scene of chaos, all are at a loss.
As for Floyd’s theory of “mental factors,” it is
really a superficial talk. We should understand that the
depth of the mental ocean is far from being able to get a
clear answer from just the superficial aspect of biological
“sexual division,” though the primitive physiological
elements of biological evolution do have certain grassroots
impact on mental activities. Mental perception of advanced
organisms actually derives from the “physio-chemical
induction attributes” of inorganic substances, and is deeply
affected by the necessary provisions of the primitive
induction attributes, just as our sensory system and nervous
system are entirely subject to the electromagnetic induction
in the cellular level. This topic is somewhat complicated, so
I won’t talk about it here in detail. The reader should at
least understand that previous theories are far from
clearance of the natural depth and operation mechanism of
mental phenomena. And more importantly, the compensatory gain
effect of mental attributes in natural evolution cannot
improve the degree of existence or survival of the perceptual
carrier, but instead, maybe a direct indicator of the
carrier’s lost degree of life. That is to say, our hope to
rely on raising our rational degree or the progress of
science and technology to enhance the potency of our survival
is probably just an opposite effort that does not do good at
all. Instead, it is the best way that we accelerate
humanity’s approach to the final death, or rather, that is
the way we help natural process of evolution with continuous
efforts to eventually effectuate its destination.
Anyway, I just want to advise people, or warn the entire
humanity, that this world is derived from a natural mechanism
or cosmic process of “weakening and compensation,” that is,
the more later, more advanced form of being, the lower its
potency of existence, and the weaker its strength of survival
is, though they may appear apparent tendency of more abundant
compensated attributes, and stronger capability of being for-
itself. In other words, all past theories of “man’s place
in nature” may have misled us. Although we are at the peak
of the evolution of the universe, it is precisely this peak
that is most likely to collapse, that is, our survival
circumstance is actually below all other things, rather than
above them. We are only the last and weakest carriers of the
universe. The reason why we have to raise questions while we
live is due to the fact that we have developed to the weakly
stage of natural evolution. The reason why we seem to be full
of knowledge is due to the fact that we have to rely on
attribute evolution to maintain our weak existence. A student
asked me, since I admit my theory is unexceptionally not a
“truth,” how can I determine what the human circumstance is
definitely worsening? I can only say, by the trend of human
cognition. That is, since human theories about their place in
nature always tend to decline, then, even if one day my
theory is falsified, you will find the next theory less
unbearable than mine. What is more, the overall crises of
human survival are enough to give ground to the theory. My
doctrine only provides a theoretic foundation for this actual
circumstance.
Pascale once said, “man is but a thinking reed,” which
is a sigh filled with the pride of human wisdom and the
lamentation of human weakness. But he might not realize that
human wisdom is the product of human weakness. The reason
that man has wisdom but reed does not is due to that human is
much weak than reed. Reed has sustained itself for over one
billion years, but the survival of human life is probably
less than 1/10 of it. If we are not proud of our weakness,
we’d better not cheer for our wisdom, because it is
precisely between weakness and wisdom that exists a naturally
determined linear function in inverse proportion. In 1970s a
group of famous scientists in the name of “Rome club”
published a report of prediction called The Limit of Growth ,
in which they clearly issued a warning of “exhaustion of
resources” and suggested that the entire humanity should
take the “zero growth” economic strategy. Lease aside
whether this proposal is feasible or not, only that the
content of the report is entirely wrong. They did not realize
that the fundamental problem is not whether the natural
resources in the external environment will be used up in the
process of economic growth, but rather whether the natural
vitality of humanity itself will deplete in the development
of civilization. Perhaps, the evolutionary process of human
nature is precisely our inner identity that the natural
evolution is approaching its ultimately destined end, and the
brilliant civilization is precisely the last radiance of the
spirit of nature’s creation. People thought that the wisdom
(biological attribute) and civilization (social attribute)
was a Norah Ark that could save humanity from the drowning in
the sea of bitterly suffering, but it actually carries us
heading for a more disastrous gate of hell.
Therefore, in my opinion, human survival of wisdom
essentially still belongs to the state of “blind being”
(essentially still belongs to the continuation of a
thoroughly consistent process of evolution), for their wisdom
is only to hoodwink themselves or to hoodwink the state of
self-harming. Although, I admit, I can’t find any way to
alternate it, at least I’ve understood it, and I hope the
entire humanity will also understand that the development of
human wisdom is by no means our guardian, it is more like
that adorable demon Mephistopheles with whom Faust sought to
make a pact!
The question is how we can get rid of the demon’s
entanglement? Or to ask it more realistically: how on earth
should we go with the demon whom we can’t get rid of? That
is a matter of life or death that the entire humanity will
have to face sooner or later.
 Postscript
EASTERN ANCIENT THINKERS FORMULATED PHILOSOPHY through forms of poetry or
fables. The former has examples of Laozi and Quyuan ( Lao Zi
is the first book of the Sao style, while Quzi's Tianwen
concerns much exploration of cosmology), the latter is
exampled like Zhuangzhou and Lie Yukou ( Zhuang Zi is a book
full of interesting fables, while the articles in Lie Zi are
vivid but gloomy). In comparison, Western ancient
philosophers formulated their thought in a more serious way,
for what reflects from reading their works are a professional
face of concentrated countenance that easily makes the reader
drowsy even though their analysis is clear and thorough.
In view of this, after writing the modern philosophical
monograph A Unified Theory of Evolution
, I decided to change
my way of writing to a light style, so that even the content
is still disappointing, the formulation could be easy and
humorous . However, after the first edition, most readers
still think that my scientific talk is dull, and my
philosophical theory is abrupt. As such, I dropped my plan to
further write another hundred similar essays. After some
consideration I concluded that besides my rigidity and lack
of talent, one more important reason is that modern
scientific and technological knowledge has already wiped out
the innermost childlike interest and imagination in modern
humans. When the great ancient poet Li Bai "raised his glass
to invite the bright moon for a toast," people at that time
could still have the imagination of the moon palace, the
laurel tree, the jade rabbit, where the fairy lady Chang'e
danced once a while. Nowadays, everyone knows that the moon
is just a celestial body where exists no lives. If someone
still wants to have any antique feelings, he is sure to run
into the embarrassment of an old man singing “twinkle,
twinkle, little star…”
With such an introspection, though I could not muster up
the courage to continue my essays writing, I decided to keep
my essays published as they are, in the hope that in another
thousand years, presently-fashionable things like "science"
will probably not escape the fate of being abandoned or
disregarded by future generations. At that time, looking
back, these essays would become something valuable or not,
who knows.
Here, what I need to reiterate is that this book is a
collection of easy essays, and the topics remain on the
intuitive level only, and it involves a small part of the
system of my philosophy. So, it may probably leave you more
doubts than solutions. For example, as far as the philosophy
of Nature is concerned, what path does the "law of weakening
compensation" of natural evolution follow? What is the
compensatory relationship between "attributes" and
"structures?" Why is the process of cosmic evolution framed
within a non-spatiotemporal "range of finite sustaining?"
Concerning philosophy of mind, there are probably more
questions like, as a natural product, what is the origin of
"the mind" or "reason?" Where is its fundamental
determination grounded? How does the mechanism of their
functions unfold? Why does the "essence" become an eternal
problem in the history of philosophy as Russell said? Since
we cannot secure "true knowledge," why must the "correctness"
of knowledge be expressed as "three consistencies of logic?"
As for philosophy of society, we probably even have to revise
the most basic concept of nouns concerning “society,”
because it is not at all a simple human phenomenon or human
product; instead, all human phenomena are nothing but a
continuation of a natural process. Therefore, the current
demarcation between "social sciences" and "natural sciences"
is bound to be eliminated soon.
 Obviously, such questions cannot be answered in leisure
chats. Those who are interested in this topic, please refer
to the book A Unified Theory of Evolutionl , which is
available in the English version now. But I need to remind
the reader beforehand that it is just a soul-skeleton without
flesh and skin. Reading that book is by no means a relaxed
affair, the after-gain is abundant for sure. Of course, if
you don't want to suffer it, I deeply understand.
However, human culture is undergoing profound changes,
and those who prefer to stay out of it will fall behind. A
student listened to my lecture and felt like the world is
upside down, so he asked me how he would communicate with
others later on. I answered him that it was not whether you
could communicate with others, but whether others could
communicate with you. That is an awkward situation of the
asymmetry of cognitive phases. The question is, do you want
to be "a fish of joy" or do you want to be a man who has to
suffer?
Human life begins with knowledge. If I had the choice, I
would rather be a fish of joy in swimming. Unfortunately, I
am not a fish, so I have to suffer what a human suffers.
How many choices do you have?

Author 11-25-2009