Ai-China

Philosophy is a vast and complex subject. It cannot be understood by reading a few introductions, general reviews, or even 100 million characters of text. It is like reading a 500-character Baidu Baike article on Buddhism, Christianity, or Communism and thinking you understand those religions or ideologies. It is also like listening to a high school teacher read from the textbook for 400 characters and thinking you understand the topic. To truly understand philosophy, you must have life experie ...

Philosophy education is inevitably narrow in scope, due to the practical problem of limited time and resources. This narrowness permeates all aspects of the academic community, from your teachers to the editors and translators of the books you read. Even you, the student, are not immune to it. The Western academic community prides itself on freedom, but even here, there is a hierarchy of knowledge. Those who have gone before you have laid the foundations for your education, and you are expected ...

When it comes to philosophy book lists, there is a tendency to recommend the same ones over and over again. However, it is not the materials that need preparation, but our mentality when approaching them. We should not adopt a mindset of “I’ll read this material and then I’ll understand philosophy,” or “As long as I read enough good materials and get a good score on the test, I’ve learned philosophy.” Rather, we should approach philosophy with a mentality of exploration. What is the difference? ...

People have a trick where they first emphasize something they think they lack as absolutely critical, then raise the bar for defining that thing infinitely high. Because the bar is set so high, it’s always easy to deduce “I don’t have this thing.” Added with “This thing is absolutely critical, all success depends on it,” what conclusion is reached then? The conclusion is “Don’t expect anything from me, I’m useless,” plus “It’s not my fault that I’m useless.” There are many things this technique ...

A: To people who say “you don’t understand depression”, what a pity! A: In fact, when people make the judgement “you don’t understand how I feel”, it often has nothing to do with the facts. It’s just a preemptive way of “invalidating” reactions they don’t like. It’s similar to when someone loses a loved one, and sees that others don’t show the “sympathy” and “comfort” they expected, so they declare “you don’t understand my pain”. But when saying this, is there any real investigation or verifica ...

A: To be honest, telling depressed people “it’s not your fault, it’s the world’s fault” is a moral issue. A: I’ve written so many passages, yet some people are beyond persuasion. In short, they listen to whoever speaks nicely, listen to whoever says the mistake is not yours, listen to whoever helps me curse my parents, the government, teachers, schools. As a depressed person, the only thing you really need to think about is “where did I go wrong”. If you still think you did everything right and ...

Then, some people will criticize you for being “blindly optimistic”. I believe you should not feel unfamiliar with such criticism. This kind of thing usually happens like this - A discovers that B does not see a certain risk but maintains an optimistic expectation of the matter. So A will explain this danger to B, and then advise B “don’t be blindly optimistic”. This plot happens over and over again, naturally as breathing. Right? “Blind optimism”, what a terrible thing. “You are being blindly o ...

Outside of this, optimism and pessimism do not exist. What exists is the question of “how to face the challenge of facts” mixed into the issue of optimism and pessimism. But this confusion carries great weight, so we will address this related issue separately - the answer is no matter whether you feel the facts make you delighted or fearful, your guesses are wrong. What you need to do is discern all aspects of the definite event about to happen, and make the proper response. All facts that are c ...

Let’s look at this big question again - should people be optimistic or pessimistic? This seems like a ridiculous question - of course one should pursue optimism, how could anyone pursue pessimism? Maintain pessimism? This greatly underestimates the appeal of pessimism. The reason pessimists love pessimism is that they feel pessimism is safe. If I’m pessimistic and my prediction of misfortune comes true, then I’m prepared; if I’m pessimistic but it surprisingly doesn’t happen, then I gain a pleas ...

After seeing clearly that “luck is the foundation of everything”, many people not only did not feel relieved, but became more nervous - so how can I be sure that I will continue to be lucky in the future? This is a very good question. Indeed, if luck is so crucial, doesn’t it make the future even more unpredictable for me? At this point, there are a few things you need to resolve: First, truly let go of your arrogance. What is truly letting go of arrogance? It means starting to recognize how po ...