Ai-China

Philosophers must be wise and experienced, with a deep understanding of life and death, rise and fall. They must have drifted among the sea of people and formed strong rational intuitions about the world. Without this kind of intuition, philosophy is nothing more than a waste of space full of jargon and saintly quotes. Good philosophers are not just good talkers. They are also able to accomplish things, unite people, and take care of themselves in work and life. If the purpose of studying philos ...

Philosophy: Not for the Young or Timid Only after experiencing something firsthand can you truly understand it. History infuses certain things into your soul, guiding your intuition to convey them to the world through your writing. The writer is simply a mouthpiece, and does not actually grasp the full meaning of the words they are writing. Their age is irrelevant. The true soil and nutrients for the seed are those who are meant to hear, remember, and ponder those words. These are the people wh ...

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 ...