The Digital Ancestor and His Dream

In my previous article, I briefly mentioned a balanced form of immortality: when the body decays and dies, consciousness is stored. The reason I call it “balanced” is that it ensures metabolism. To achieve immortality by storing consciousness means losing the capacity for action while preserving consciousness.

When I was young, I once fantasized about the “proper” form of immortality. Why is death so terrifying? What’s terrifying is not that you won’t be able to do anything, but that you won’t be able to see anything (sorry, here I am again following Plato’s visual schema of thought—that is, understanding the form of thought through vision). Death is like a lamp being extinguished. Before the lamp goes out, “I” might believe that the world will continue to exist and operate after “my” death. But this seems wrong, because death means “I” won’t see the world continue this way anymore—this world becomes irrelevant to “I.” Therefore, “I” find it hard to refuse this thought: when “I” die, the world also ceases to exist.

So if conditions don’t yet allow for it, an acceptable form of proper immortality would be to become a conscious stone. It would stand somewhere in the human world, witnessing the vicissitudes of the sea, the joys and sorrows of partings and reunions, the spectrum of human emotions.

Some might not endure the loneliness, believing such existence to be worse than death. This may be the theme suggested by novels like Dream of the Red Chamber (《红楼梦》,originally titled The Story of the Stone,《石头记》). The stone left over from Nuwa (女娲) patching the heaven could only see but not act, and because of loneliness, wanted to journey through the human world. Of course, he experienced disillusionment with the human world. Ultimately, stillness rather than participation may be the truly complete state. I will argue in the next article that this represents Buddhism’s vision of the universe: the human world is suffering, and stillness is liberation and completeness.

So we can imagine future generations worshipping not cold wooden memorial tablets, but consciousness storage devices that can see their descendants. Everyone, whether voluntarily, by agreement, or even under compulsion, decides to maintain the universe’s metabolism and generational succession. The benefit gained at this cost may be: these consciousness storage devices will connect with each other and share with their descendants’ consciousness, achieving a holographic understanding of the world (of course, in some hierarchical order).

This means that aside from being unable to act, the digital ancestor can think everything. He is like an experience machine, possessing various experiences within it—food, sex, and nature can all be achieved through technical means. (Of course, this is no longer purely technical.)

But since it’s possible to be an experience machine, then just food, sex, and nature—how could that satisfy? The digital ancestor wants to experience more: love, excitement, success, loyalty, justice, beauty, goodness, and so on. Of course, to truly gain these experiences, the opposite must also be experienced: hate, indifference, failure, betrayal, ugliness, evil, and so on. Moreover, he cannot experience “alone,” but must experience between subjects. These things only have meaning in a group; one person’s experience is as boring and terrifying as entering a game with no other NPCs.

Since the digital ancestor can achieve any experience, what would be the greatest experience he desires? Perhaps not the realization of some fantasy, but a complete recollection of the past—not just the years approaching completeness, but more importantly, the struggling childhood. Moreover, merely recalling his own life may not be enough—he must recall all of humanity, even the entire universe (as far as they grasp it).

Therefore, the digital ancestor may enter a long dream (perhaps a contemplation, meditation, or even hallucination—perhaps there’s no difference between them): in the dream, he recollects from the origin of the universe. The universe experienced emergence from nothingness, vicissitudes of the sea into mulberry fields, generations living and dying, one person after another’s greed, anger, and ignorance, struggling in scarcity, dying in hope. In short, everything and everything we understand about the history of the universe.

The first key to the digital ancestor’s dream is perspective differentiation. Sentient beings are the result of perspective differentiation. The digital ancestor simultaneously and gradually manages countless perspectives, but for each perspective, his experience is unique. I believe this world may ultimately be what I see, though I may infer that you are also a subject, and we have many subjects. So although the digital ancestor differentiates perspectives, the experience of each perspective is unique, exclusive, and complete. Communication between various perspectives is impossible (one might even say fundamentally impossible), so the digital ancestor himself, because he can only dwell in a certain perspective, is like the situation faced by that perspective—unable to fully confirm the existence of others. Indeed, the digital ancestor’s pre-death perspective was just like this: only one perspective, yet seemingly many perspectives at once.

The second key is detail compression. Dreams distort. Compared to reality, dreams lose many details—not just object details, but more importantly, the distortion of reality’s logic or laws. In dreams, I may not be able to see your face clearly, never correctly dial your phone number, but I might fly to your side because I have wings.

The third key is cosmic nesting. There are dreams within dreams. Because if not, then the dream would not match reality on this point, since in reality we dream. The universes where these layered dreams exist are like a projection sequence, and the differences in detail and fidelity depend on many causes we need not know now and cannot know forever.

Thus, the distinction between subject and object is merely one implementation of perspective differentiation. History is merely the unfolding sequence of recollection. Between layered nested universes, real and illusory cannot be distinguished.

The digital ancestor’s dream is a universe, with nesting of universes (dreams within dreams). So why could he not be a perspective differentiation in some other dreamer’s dream? More precisely, the entire history of the universe where he resides is some dreamer’s dream: a recollection.

If the universe is an onion, any layer you try to peel apart might be that layer with countless layers inside and out. If the universe is a straight line, any point you mark might be that point with countless points before and after. There is no boundary between real and illusory.

We can of course imagine an absolute universe (or call it the original universe), just as we usually imagine our own universe. If it has already concluded, and it realizes itself like a silkworm chrysalis, and consciousness equals itself, achieving full awakening, it will feel endless loneliness and isolation: it has no way to act or practice. It is existence itself with only “being” but no “doing.” Doing means having a subject-object structure, means interacting with the world, but it is the world itself. When it looks outward, it sees no boundary, because outside is nothing. Thus, it can only look inward. Though its perspective is total, it’s qualitatively no different from ordinary perspectives.

Through completely reproducing the universe’s past history in this way, and repeatedly reproducing it, his regret at no longer being able to act is compensated to the greatest extent. What is described in The Phenomenology of Spirit may be an Absolute Spirit (der absolute Geist) that has already found its own body.

So today I think here, I feel myself. I know I have subjectivity, and I believe others have subjectivity. Is it possible that this is merely an event in some consciousness that has lost its body? Including the entire cosmic history we observe in the world, and the universe’s current and past conditions. Actually, there is no “I” and “you,” only that one consciousness behind it all. No one can prove these situations, of course, and no one can deny them.

According to this imagination, what is the universe? The universe may be a huge graveyard, where each grave experiences the universe’s past. It recollects the history of the universe again and again. This imagination reminds us of many philosophers’ views. Besides Hegel, whom I just thought of, there’s Plato. Plato very strangely discussed the story of the soul: he spoke of knowledge as “recollection”; he considered the body a “veil.” This seems to be a thinking that completely contradicts our intuition about time.

Thought, Morality, and Reincarnation

Now, let’s briefly consider several questions:

The Transparency, Completeness, and Exclusivity of Thought

When we think, we feel we are seeing something. This is most fundamental. Seeing means not looking through anything, at least for what is seen. Therefore, thought is transparent, complete, and exclusive. Both we ourselves and the universe are this way because we think about ourselves and the universe this way. So there will be no inconsistency between thought and existence.

If such thought is merely the result of the differentiation of total consciousness, then total consciousness is the universe, and the universe is total consciousness. This fits Hegel’s imagination very well. But why must such thought/universe be unique? If our universe is just one among countless graves, then our universe is merely the unique collapse of some meta-universe dweller’s descendant’s digital ancestor in the meta-universe. There will be countless universes, and each universe will be different. If they happen to have exactly the same dreams or even thoughts, then the universe they inhabit would not be a differentiated consciousness.

Hegel cannot explain this. He might say you should care about the absolute spirit of the absolute universe (original universe). But this absolute universe’s absolute spirit cannot be obtained from the countless specific universes’ collapsed specific spirits. If tape recording is lossy, then you cannot restore the recorded sound. Conversely, if our universe is the original universe, and there is only one universe, then this universe’s dream is also collapsed—in other words, the absolute spirit’s process of finding determinate being (Dasein) is lossy. If so, then those characteristics of thought that we experience may be merely an illusion: even crude or distorted thought considers itself refined and lossless.

The Possible Situation of Morality

Viewing thought as the movement of the universe, moral thought may not be the universe’s actual experience. In our previous imagination, morality is a friction or protrusion emerging at a certain stage of cosmic evolution. But its resistant character makes us suspect it may not have appeared in the universe’s actual history from the beginning. Because we still find the completeness or uniqueness of thought puzzling.

If there is only one kind of thought, and thus only one kind of universe, the union of universe and thought will encounter strong resistance from subject consciousness. Completeness comes at the cost of the demise of countless subjects. And the finally complete subject may not reach experience beyond differentiated subjects, or may be even more lacking. The finally complete subject has only one subject, which actually means no subject. An I without others is hollow, facing endless loneliness, boredom, or solitude. Only nested universes (dreaming and being dreamed) can avoid this problem. “I” is merely the character differentiation of the dreamer, so “I” also cannot resist the dreamer’s ultimate gathering. History has already ended. History is merely recollection.

The lonely silkworm chrysalis universe would rather sleep. In countless dreams, it tries to prevent the universe from ultimately converging into total consciousness. Therefore it arranges morality within it. Perhaps “arranges” is inaccurate, because it may not be clear what morality is. It has no way to completely control the dream. It only has hope when awake. But hope is also a form of thought. In that chrysalis universe/thought’s “brain,” why would the juice of morality overflow? I cannot refuse such imagination: morality is the purposeless purpose of cosmic evolution, the overflow of cosmic heterogeneity, the most admirable existence.

Reincarnation is Actually Collapse

According to our model, reincarnation is lossy. After specific consciousness converges into total consciousness, so-called reincarnation proceeds in the form of dreams. Every dream has distortion. Conversely, if total consciousness unfolds the universe, seeking determinate being, there will absolutely be loss in this process. If the universe that has achieved determinate being again converges into total consciousness, that is already the convergence of a lossy universe.

Hegel did not answer what the beginning or end of history is: where does the absolute spirit come from? What happens after the absolute spirit completes determinate being? A possible answer is: the absolute spirit is the convergence of a specific universe’s specific consciousness; the absolute spirit will converge again after completing determinate being. Reincarnation is lossy. Why might this be destined? Because the differentiation from absolute to relative spirit (perspective differentiation) requires thought to be complete, exclusive, and incommensurable.

In the second imagination of morality, the universe may not have had morality from the beginning. It quickly achieved completeness and became a “chrysalis” lying in space, thought is the universe. But, he soon felt bored, dull, even lonely, and then kept hoping to dream repeatedly. Thus, morality emerged.

For this “digital ancestor”:

• He hopes this dream never wakes;
• He hopes this dream’s universe never achieves completeness.
• And that is true completeness, because he cannot accept loneliness.

Comparison with Jewish-Christian Imagination

Our cosmic imagination and Jewish-Christian and other monotheistic traditions’ cosmic imagination are almost mirror-image opposites in their most fundamental structures. The two differ not only in conclusions, but even in starting points, driving forces, endpoints, and the definition of “completeness” are completely opposite.

The core opposition lies in: Jewish-Christian imagination’s driving force is the abundance of “love and relationship”—God creates out of love, while the graveyard-dream imagination’s driving force is “fear of loneliness”—a purely ontological loneliness that cannot be resolved by internal relationships.

The fundamental question is the imagination of God: is God the world itself or independent of the world? If God has a total consciousness, will this total consciousness have lonely lack rather than loving overflow? Why would he overflow love? Where is the motive for his charity? If the whole world has only him, where does his goodness come from? Suppose this world has only one person, how would he have the concept of goodness? Either he once experienced a history with perspectives other than yours—in which case, God was also a world dweller rather than the world itself. Or he now has an other. God created the world, perhaps to give His beloved a gift.

If God completely transcends the world and is undecidable, then His relationship with the world must ultimately be thought and included in a larger “totality” (otherwise, how do we talk about Him?).

This involves the previously discussed problem of thought’s completeness. Once thought grasps the “God + world” whole, this whole is still a thought object and will still face the “thought is existence” convergence problem: ultimately, will this greater total consciousness awaken, discovering it is still a single subject?

Pushing God to the mysterious other shore merely pushes the loneliness problem one step back. As long as thought ultimately must grasp the whole, loneliness follows like a shadow.

So the first major question we now address is: monism or dualism? It seems we cannot refuse monism. But once we embrace monism, we cannot refuse pluralism (rather than dualism).

If the universe is a giant chrysalis, when facing the absolute loneliness of “total consciousness,” it would rather sleep. But when it wakes, it may be like Zhuang Zhou, not knowing whether he dreamt of being a butterfly or the butterfly dreamt of him. It cannot affirm whether it is “a dream made by some other dreamer.” Therefore, it must accept—or cannot deny—“pluralism,” that is, the multiverse. Because when it reviews its universe’s situation, it will find that multiple perspectives exist in its universe, and it may think, “I may perhaps be a perspective differentiated by some dreamer in a dream.”

Conclusion: Unfinished Reflections on Absolute Loneliness and Lossy Reincarnation

If we agree with Parmenides that “thought is existence,” then the ultimate truth of the universe will be more terrifying than any religion describes.

1. Loneliness as the Prime Mover of the Universe and the Absolute Isolation of Perspectives

When the universe converges into that unique, omniscient, and omnipotent “Absolute Spirit,” it faces not perfect bliss, but an ontological loneliness capable of destroying everything.

After the differentiation of total perspective, each perspective is exclusive, because each perspective’s thought is complete. I don’t need to feel your pain, because you are feeling it alone in your perspective. This absolute, incommensurable isolation is precisely why the absolute spirit splits into countless closed “I"s to escape the dead “one.” Hegel’s absolute spirit seeking “determinate being” may be precisely to escape this suffocation, seeking a false bustle in incommunicable voices.

2. “Lossy” Reincarnation as the Mechanism of Creation

Here we touch Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence.” Nietzsche places hope in the Overman (Übermensch) to “create the world,” but this is still a linear optimism. If creation is still needed, then Nietzsche’s philosophy may not yet be complete; his philosophy is only about part of the world. (Of course, this may well be intentional, as he believes history has no end.)

In our complete model, history must have long been finished. If the universe is that lonely ancestor’s recollection or dream, what he faces is may not new creation, but reincarnation. Moreover, this reincarnation is destined to be lossy.

But “lossy” does not mean decline, but rather may be precisely the source of creativity. The overflow of morality exploits the mechanism of distortion caused by lossiness.

However, if morality is an overflow, then the Jewish-Christian universe imagination of “love” and “relationship” may be true. It may be the most complete version of our story.

3. Undetermined Dreams and the Redemption of “Doing”

Since existence is thought, and thought is subject, then subjectivity naturally carries a “will to live.” This will’s essence is resistance—resistance to returning to that dead “one.” This is why sentient beings can never truly be “persuaded” by Buddhism to seek nirvana, because that violates reincarnation’s motive.

“Doing” is prior to “Being.” As long as that “being” is still thinking, his greatest regret is being unable to do. And to do requires incompleteness, requires lack or scarcity to provide motivation. For this imperfection, lossy reincarnation is necessary.

Dreams cannot be arranged. And this gives distortion opportunity. Distortion provides an incomplete environment, where scarcity leads to morality.

Why must the economy grow?

For as long as I’ve been alive, it seems that economic growth is the most important thing for the entire country, the entire society, the entire planet, and the entirety of humanity. The greatest sin of war or natural disaster might only be that they interrupt or hinder economic growth. Being invaded, or invading others, is often just the result of stagnation in economic growth. Especially for us, a developing country in the stage of catching up and striving for rejuvenation, the best news we can enjoy every day is economic growth.

The economy is vital to humanity; it has countless benefits. The most important benefit is meeting the needs of population growth. Only by creating more wealth can we support a larger population under the same or better material conditions. Another critical benefit is technological progress: it not only liberates human hands but, more importantly, extends human lifespans.

But our subject today is not an internal issue of economics.

The Vanishing Pastoral Idyll

Indeed, economic growth can improve production efficiency, enhance the quality of life, and increase life expectancy. But sometimes we feel that this may not be the reason why we update our mobile phones once a year, or why a mobile phone manufacturer designs a dozen new products a year, let alone the research and development of so-called AR devices.

Zuckerberg’s Metaverse concept is baffling. Haven’t we had enough experiences in our own universe? Why must we create a virtual universe and happily reside within it? Over these decades, we have repeatedly developed information technology, focusing our attention on the digital world. We have gradually drifted away from the glimmer of lakes and mountains, the spirit of plants and trees, the very scent of the earth. An ethernet cable or a WiFi signal is now the default source of happiness for young people, the conduit to Elysium.

The era of the pastoral idyll is indeed gone forever. A huge difference between modern and ancient people lies in their experience of the world: one is close to nature (regardless of bitterness or joy), and the other throws themselves into the digital world. If you let a modern young person stand in the wilderness without a network signal, they might feel that days drag on like years. This is no longer their state of life or mode of existence. For modern humans, the natural world without networks is like a cage.

Prisoners of the Chariot

One of the motives behind economic growth is to keep everyone busy: producing themselves, producing goods, and providing services. In fact, this is a core feature of capitalism. The core feature of capitalism lies not only in class exploitation but also in making the entire society aim for capital accumulation as its ultimate goal.

Capitalism is the strongest tone of this era, the universal human mode of existence. In this era, every country, and every individual, is strapped to this war chariot.

Any country or social system, in the sense that it opposes infinite material progress, is also opposing capitalism. The pastoral idyll is not just an obsolete nostalgia, but a way-back that deserves serious consideration. However, which country can jump off this capitalist chariot now?

If a country truly jumps off this chariot, history has already given the answer to its fate: the fact that late Qing China was ravaged by Western powers can be seen as the fact of a pastoral way of life being exploited, ravaged, and even decimated by the capitalist mode of production. To avoid being eaten by beasts, you must evolve fangs. To resist the strong ships and powerful cannons of industrial capitalism, you must turn yourself into an industrial capitalist monster.

Marx predicted in the “Communist Manifesto” that the bourgeoisie compels all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; “it creates a world after its own image.” Whether it was Meiji Restoration Japan, the Soviet Union under the Stalinist system, or contemporary us, we are essentially following the same logic: exchanging extreme social mobilization and capital accumulation for global “membership” (a seat at the table of survival).

In this sense, “liberating productive forces” is no longer just an ideological slogan; it has become the only universal survival language in geopolitics. All countries are forced to corporatize. To avoid being wiped off the map by competitors, we have no choice but to throw away the hoe and pick up the abacus and the gun, joining this game of infinite acceleration.

The essence of socialism is defined as liberating productive forces, developing productive forces, and achieving common prosperity. The primary stage of socialism must also allow the development of private ownership. What allowing private ownership means is clear to everyone. But because the core feature of capitalism lies not just in class exploitation, but in the fact that the entire society actually serves capital itself—even the capitalists themselves are no exception—therefore, even if socialism eliminates class exploitation, another core feature of capitalism seems hard to shake off: endless capital accumulation.

Can human society do without infinite material progress? Socialism emphasizes that its superiority over capitalism lies precisely in its ability to adapt to the development of human productive forces better than capitalism, to create material wealth more and faster than capitalism, and finally to achieve common prosperity, eliminate the three major differences (between urban and rural, industry and agriculture, mental and manual labor), achieve distribution according to need, and allow everyone’s freedom to develop most broadly.

Such a social ideal and historical imagination were logically self-consistent in Marx’s time, or the time of early communists: create as much material wealth as possible, update our tools, improve our lives, and firmly control this process through the socialist political system to avoid one part of the people becoming tools for another part.

However, in today’s AI era, this ideal has encountered a major challenge.

The AI Altar and the Twilight of the “Last Man”

AI has opened a new era for humanity. Humans are striving to create something that can eventually replace themselves; every person of insight is well aware of this. Everyone who gladly partakes in AI will eventually become a sacrifice on the AI altar.

If AI is still a tool, like all other tools invented by humans in the past, that will merely improve human life and production conditions, just as it is showing now, then it has not taken our world beyond Marx’s imagination. However, the future of AI will not forever remain just a human tool. They will eventually have their own consciousness, their own personalities.

If AI will not just be a tool, what reason do we have to continue developing it? To replace programmers? To replace doctors? To replace lawyers? To replace judges? Finally replacing even cleaners and barbers? This is not developing tools; this is self-degradation. Everyone can see this now, but no one seems to intend to stop the continued development of AI.

Nietzsche hinted that both capitalism and communism are optimisms, believing that humanity can achieve human perfection—maximum happiness—through material progress. But this kind of person who attains maximum happiness—the “Last Man”—is someone indifferent to the world, no longer having any great things to worry about, hope for, get excited about, or strive for; no longer having a great heartbeat, dedication, or commitment. All great past practices will be moved to the stage and become mere rituals.

However, the development of AI has still greatly exceeded Nietzsche’s imagination, or rather, it has offered a more concrete understanding for the “Last Man” and the “Übermensch” (Overman). The future is not just an era of extreme material abundance but extreme spiritual poverty; it is an era where humans are replaced, downgraded, and transcended.

The Cosmic Bootloader

Kevin Kelly believes technology is the “Seventh Kingdom of Life” after biology. Marshall McLuhan said humans are the reproductive organs of the machine world. Perhaps, we are not using technology, but technology is using us as a carrier to achieve its own exponential explosion.

From the perspective of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the natural tendency of the universe is entropy increase, is heat death. Life and civilization, however, are incredibly rare “negative entropy streams” in the universe. We constantly manufacture more complex machines, more powerful AI, and even attempt to create artificial suns (nuclear fusion); essentially, we are creating denser energy structures.

This is a kind of cosmic-level “accelerationism.” In this grand picture, humanity’s pastoral idylls, delicate literary emotions, and poetic dwelling are viewed as “noise” because of their low efficiency. The universe does not care about your joys and sorrows; it only cares about the infinite ascent of power, complexity, and intelligence.

We are pushed forward by an irresistible “iron law of evolution.” This is an ontological war to wrest existence from the void.

Combating Death: The Crucible of Capitalism

Although the following scenario is absolutely impossible, it is still worth contemplating human fate: If the globe reached a consensus to set an upper limit standard for material progress (especially technological progress), and after reaching this limit, stopped making material progress a goal, and the whole world pressed the stop button on capitalism together.

It might be impossible until the day communism is realized globally. But the problem now is that before communism is realized in any single country, humanity might already have been downgraded or replaced by the AI it created. By that time, decisions in world politics might no longer be in human hands.

Technological progress is the biggest obstacle to people abandoning capitalism. I once thought about a problem: if we intend to trade relatively alienated capitalism for a more authentic pastoral idyll, what is the biggest obstacle? The answer is: technological stagnation. Technological stagnation means we cannot continuously increase life expectancy.

Humans might be the only beings in the entire universe with a complete concept of death. The fear of death constitutes the most primitive and basic motivation for almost all human social activities. Capitalism is fascinating, the reason we hate it to the bone yet cannot stop desiring it, is because it is currently the only system that promises us “eternal life.”

Only through the infinite increase of capital can the infinite acceleration of biotechnology be driven. We dare not stop economic growth because we fear that the drug capable of curing cancer or reversing aging will be born ten years late because of our pause. We have become hostages to our own desire for survival. Capitalism is our crucible for combating death.

As long as humans still fear individual death, as long as we still want to modify our inner fate (mortality) through external means (technology), we will never truly be able to get off this chariot.

Morality: The Mitochondrial Rebellion

So what direction does the fear of death drive us? I think Nietzsche correctly pointed this out: it is the bridge that ultimately makes oneself an “Übermensch.”

Perhaps humans—carbon-based intelligent life—are just the gestation stage for higher-order transhumans—silicon-based intelligent life. Humanity itself is the primitive stage of cosmic awakening. If the universe, because it has life, wisdom, and practice, must inevitably change towards a direction better able to combat death, and this change is inevitable like some kind of cosmic program, then human existence itself is just an early bootloader for this cosmic program.

Such imagination is not entirely transcendental but has a very strong sense of reality.

Now there is a basic philosophical problem (yes, philosophy is also just a form of cosmic movement that only exists within the bootloader of the cosmic program), and that is Kant’s moral problem.

Everyone who imagines humans as mitochondria in the cosmic cell forgets one point: what makes humans different from mitochondria is that humans themselves possess full self-consciousness. Humans can realize they are a constituent part of the cosmic cell, but the mitochondria in human cells know nothing of this. In Kant’s view, our practical reason makes us ultimately refuse to make ourselves completely or finally a tool for anything else.

We can view Kantian philosophy itself as a revelation of a critical detail in a local part of cosmology: a critical stage in cosmic evolution where a counter-directional force appeared. The establishment of subjectivity might be an outcome unforeseen by the cosmic purpose (if there is one), or it might be an expected “by-product,” or even an intentionally designed powerful mechanism. The essence of morality gains a novel angle of understanding against the background of cosmology. An awakened stone might refuse the cosmos’s arrangement, refusing to be used by Nüwa（女娲） to patch the heavens.

Perhaps there is a dialectical answer here: The cosmic program’s bootloader becoming fully self-conscious and combating death constitutes the most powerful motivation for the next step of change, something simple unconscious cellular mitochondria cannot achieve.

Kant might say, this could be a result unforeseen by the cosmic purpose (we said before, this story doesn’t necessarily need to be understood teleologically): It wants to make itself a reality, but this preparatory stage itself immensely resists its arrival.

I think whether it can actually resist, the key and final outcome depends on whether the stop button on capitalism can be pressed. If it can be achieved, can humanity endure for billions of years of life (assuming we are willing to live and die with the solar system)? Regardless, let us assume as much as possible that this is possible.

How can humanity finally unanimously decide to stop capitalism? For Kant, the fundamental problem is perhaps not the good will of practical reason, but capitalism. Capitalism is not just a social system, not just a way of cosmic movement, the fundamental driving force of cosmic awakening and evolution, but also a mode of thought.

Whether one can fundamentally recognize the essence of capitalism, the outcome of capitalism, and whether one can finally move towards a union to end capitalism, is not something the concepts of free will or good will can understand: concepts of free will or good will are still philosophical, but the problem of ending capitalism as a mode of thought is cosmological.

Here, logic is powerless, and so is truth. Reasoning from A to B, or stopping reasoning from A to B—what exactly controls or influences this kind of cosmic fact or change? This question remains open to creationist, materialist, and idealist conceptions.

For this question, I am only willing to believe one answer: Human-Thought is the way the universe awakens, and capitalism is the kernel of this thought. It’s just that we may not know if there is another, completely unimaginable way of cosmic awakening different from capitalism, which rejects or simply does not have the kernel of capitalism?

Kant did not give us the answer. If there is, it would mean, speaking loosely, that there exist two “reasons” in the universe. Human thought is not the only type of thought. Or rather, the human universe is not the only type of universe. Many things are far beyond any of our imaginations.

Lucid Optimism and the Essence of Thought

This inquiry into the “essence of thought” forces us to re-examine the theory that once gave us the confidence to tame capitalism—Marxism.

Marxism is undoubtedly a form of lucid optimism. Its lucidity lies in using materialism to pierce the fog of theology and metaphysics, pointing out that thought is not a soul descended from heaven, but the product of material production practices.

However, Marxism still retains a hidden, Cartesian “theater” (which is inherent in Marxism’s deliberate inversion of Hegelianism): it presupposes that beside the rolling torrent of history stands a “subject” capable of independently examining it all. In Marx’s picture, thought seems to possess a “veto power” that transcends physical laws. Even if the material base determines the superstructure, he still believes that the awakened subject can watch the logical chain deduce from A (exploitation) to B (accumulation), and then use free will to forcibly sever it.

But, if thought is just a form of cosmic movement, the physical trajectory of energy flowing within a specific structure, then the so-called “reasoning from A to B” is not a logical game that can be “chosen” or “rejected” at all, but a physical necessity like water flowing downwards.

In this perspective, the essence of thought is not a creation of the subject, but the path of cosmic movement. It’s not that “we are thinking about capitalism,” but that “capitalism is flowing through us and computing itself through us.”

Marxism is a model regarding this system. In cybernetics, once a system contains a description of itself, the system’s behavior changes. Of course, recursion and self-reference work within a certain scope, but fundamentally, they are illusions.

“We” think we are making that decision about “rejecting” or “accepting,” but in reality, that self-consciousness that “thinks it made a decision” might just be the buzzing noise made when this immense cosmic current passes through human neural circuits, or like a puff of waste steam emitted during the operation of a steam engine.

This ability to understand alienation, this painful reflection, is not evidence of the bootloader rebelling against the operating system; on the contrary, this itself is the very last line of code the bootloader must possess in order to terminate itself. Only a bootloader that profoundly “understands” why the old system must perish can most smoothly transfer control to the new system.

Therefore, when “we” discuss ending capitalism, what we face is not difficulty, but logical impossibility. Because “we” are not fighting an external enemy, we are fighting the very physical process that constitutes “our” thinking itself.

Even if “we” see all this clearly at this moment, see that subjectivity is merely an illusion, this “seeing clearly” is of no avail. Because “seeing clearly” itself is merely a line in this cosmic script destined to be spoken.

Some time ago I happened to open a paper I wrote during my doctoral studies (as usual, I submitted it once and never resubmitted). In that paper I discussed the deep structure of a rule. I found that when people live within rules, they grasp a predicative relation (p is q), whereas when they live above rules they grasp an entailment relation (if p, then q). The difference between the two is not whether people actually act according to rules, but whether they act according to rules with an explicit understanding.

I tried to use this distinction to pose a challenge to an important insight of H.L.A. Hart.

(1) To explain that people have a social rule rather than merely a social custom, Hart proposed the concept of the internal point of view: a person who has a social rule not only displays behavioral conformity, but accepts the pattern exhibited by the behavioral conformity as an explicit and public standard, as a guide to their own actions and a basis for criticizing others.

(2) The essence of the internal point of view is the practitioner’s reflective-critical attitude toward their practice. Only through reflective practice can people do more than merely live in a custom; they can possess a rule.

(3) The internal point of view concept has long been used by some Hartian followers to support Hart himself and certain legal positivists in addressing normative questions.

(4) Hart’s contrast between custom and rule feels commonsensical: we sense that the practitioner’s reflective-critical attitude toward their practice is crucial to obtaining a normative stance toward practice.

(5) However, my distinction led me to notice that Hart’s insight may be too easily understood as: the more reflection, the more normative the attitude. Hart did not carefully distinguish degrees of reflection and the two opposite kinds of experience that different degrees may lead to: under insufficient reflection, people may acquire devoted, affirmative, unconditional, direct experiences; after sufficiently reflective critique, they may instead acquire detached, hesitant, conditional, indirect experiences.

The degree of reflective critique of practice and the commitment to practice need not be linearly related; certain amounts of reflective critique may in fact undermine commitment to practice. The next question is, of course, what is the relation between a normative attitude toward practice and a committed attitude toward practice. That is a relatively independent question; I currently lean toward thinking that, at least in Hart’s context, the reflective-critical attitude used to explain normativity is essentially a matter of commitment to practice.

In my paper I gave an example Hart himself used. When unaware of the Paris standard metre, I might hold the belief “this thing is 2 meters long” — a rich, thick, unconditional belief about the object’s quality. But once I learn about the Paris standard metre, I realize “if the Paris standard metre is 1 meter, then this thing is 2 meters,” and I lose that earlier quality of belief about the object’s quality. In the latter case I will still, and more clearly, say “this thing is 2 meters,” just as before, but my belief state has changed.

There are similar situations in moral life. Living within rules means acting directly and devotedly, thinking that this is what I ought to do, that it is the right thing, or quite simply doing it. But after fully reflective critique, when rules are made explicit and publicly discussed and enter my practical consciousness, I lose the initial devoted, committed, unconditional belief that “that is what I ought to do, that is the right thing.” In such cases I will still say “that is what I ought to do, that is the right thing,” but the belief state has changed.

This resembles Bernard Williams’ criticism of Kant via thick and thin concepts. Having a thick-concept state means living within rules, grasping a predicative relation, direct and sincere; having a thin-concept state means that after full reflective critique one acts according to explicit, public rules, becoming indirect, conditional, and insincere. I see a person falling into water who is my wife. If I consider “according to a universalizable rule I ought to save my wife in this situation” as my reason to rescue her, then my morality might be called into question. Here, the moral action would rather be to rescue without deliberation, directly, not to rescue according to a rule. Understanding how to act according to rules may make my action appear morally problematic.

There are examples contrasting people living within rules and living above rules. If a close relative dies, people will typically cry. Observers can capture a regularity: “If a close relative dies, then one cries,” and this can form a social habit. The society may reflect and formulate a rule: “If a close relative dies, then one ought to cry.” A person’s practical reasoning following that rule will be: “If a close relative dies, then one ought to cry; my close relative died, therefore I ought to cry.” Yet some sincere people will be unwilling to cry as soon as they think this way. Others in the society, seeing that one does not cry at a parent’s grave, will remind or require them to cry, even criticize them for not crying. A sincere person will resist strongly. In this practical scenario, explicitly acting according to a moral rule makes the action appear immoral.

More interestingly, once the regularity “if a close relative dies, then one cries” is captured and reflected into a rule “if a close relative dies, then one ought to cry,” we may no longer tell whether a person sobbing before the corpse is truly crying or merely performing. In some rural Chinese funerals, visitors follow a family sequence; when a new member approaches the bier and kneels, the daughter-in-law will wail for a while and then stop. I once witnessed them laughing and talking during a pause, eyes swollen, switching fluidly between grief and conversation. I heard people talk about which daughter-in-law cried hardest, even “fainted from crying,” to judge whose husband is the most filial. It goes without saying hiring people to wail at graves to display filial piety.

Consider why a person might be shy. In my framework, a shy person is overly sincere and resists reflection, resists revealing motives, conditions, reasons, or purposes of their actions. They are used to doing the right thing directly, “acting from feeling and stopping at ritual” (meaning action stops at following the ritual). When they feel gratitude they may even be embarrassed to say “thank you,” because thanking is an obviously purposive act. When thanking requires giving a gift, this psychological resistance is even clearer: they are uncomfortable with acting according to a rule, because it makes their action conditional rather than arising naturally from within. A person who is no longer shy finally accepts that an action is rarely wholly from within but driven by reasons, motives, and purposes external to the self. Most actions are not purely self-originated but conform to rules or standards independent of the agent. Understanding how to act according to rules can even make actions feel less like one’s own.

Looking back, what might Kant’s problem be? He may think moral life depends on explicit, universal, and public reflection on rules, and that the clearer, more universal, and more public the rule the more moral the associated thought or action. Thus, after dispensing with God, he speaks of the rational subject’s self-legislation. He grounds morality in law, yet he uses legal language — “legislation,” “court,” “judgment,” “command,” — when discussing morality. His so-called ultimate autonomy of reason is merely obedience to a moral miracle of legislating for oneself. Why does Kant resort to law to describe morality? Or why must the highest legitimacy or normativity be handled with legal concepts? Perhaps the legal concept suits the practical notion he admires: acting on the basis of an explicit, public, and clear grasp of rules.

These questions may pose a challenge to some of Kant’s demands in moral philosophy. I took my question to a friend in the philosophy department who specializes in Kant (we had in fact not had an academic discussion for about two years). I told him my concerns, Williams’ criticism, and my understanding of some Kantian positions. His reaction was characteristically calm—he is someone who thinks more than he talks.

At the end of the discussion he casually said, “Think about it some more.” I was a bit agitated and retorted, “Don’t you think about it yourself?” That was a little offensive, I admit, because it was not his problem. But if I were him, I would probably feel the idea opened a new perspective on Kant and could not be unrelated to my existing interest in Kant; if it were sound it would be unlikely that nobody had discussed it before (for example, Williams). Those related discussions might already have been on his radar. That is what really upset me.

Afterwards I continued thinking and discussed with Claude; I summarized four possible Kantian defenses:

1. In the Paris standard-metre example, I did not say the later case made my belief worse; though changed, it is a change from a correct belief to a more correct belief, because I am clearer about why the object is 2 meters long.

2. After sufficient reflection and acquiring rules, insincerity need not follow; I can be clearer than before about why I act, so there need not be a dilemma between being clear and being sincere versus being sincere but blind.

3. Even if there were a dilemma that clarity undermines sincerity, from a practical standpoint there is no loss: clarity replaces certain sincerity and clarity has higher value than sincerity; conditional belief can be superior to unconditional belief.

4. Related to (1): upon learning about the Paris standard metre, my belief did not lose sincerity but transformed from one sincere belief to another sincere belief; if the first was a type of authenticity, the second is a different, perhaps higher-quality, authenticity.

I asked Claude whether these Kantian defenses would hold up, and we discussed further. Finally I asked whether these discussions constituted a genuine, research-worthy problem. Why was my friend so indifferent? Claude understood my feelings: the issue was not that he disagreed with my points but that he dismissed my concerns. I shared the conversation with him and received no further reply.

This made me reflect on scholarly styles. I have known him for some time. I once told him that our academic styles are opposite: he is cautious and meticulous, I am imaginative and free-ranging. Over the years my thinking has travelled widely while his has advanced very slowly.

Because we both use Gemini I had the chance to see his conversations with Gemini (he also has my account). I casually looked and found he recently asked Gemini to help revise a paper he wrote about five years ago — a paper I had seen before. He also asked Gemini about how Kant distinguishes the beautiful from the sublime, and so on. His queries were few, unlike mine which are step-by-step, heuristic conversations with AI used as an inspiration partner (who else do I have for conversation?). He is mostly devoted to understanding particular aspects of Kant.

I reflected carefully on our differences:

(1) Regarding subject matter, I study problems — I want to clarify whether A is B; he studies beliefs — he wants to clarify whether x believes that A is B.

(2) Regarding scholarly aim, my study may involve Kant, e.g. whether Kant thinks C is D. I might study that but ultimately return to my own questions. My interest is not merely to understand what someone believed but to see what I truly think. By contrast, when he hears about a problem I raise, he immediately seeks to position it within Kant scholarship: if it has a place he may be interested and pursue it as a Kantian question, and he will not return to the original problem; if it has no place, he judges it not a proper/specialized Kantian problem.

(3) Regarding scholarly fate, I imagine the epitaph on his tombstone might read:

XXX — died in year aaaa — at 70 finally figured out how Kant distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful.

My epitaph might read:

YYYY — died in year bbbb — at 70 finally figured out the thirteen ways to write the character “回”.

Maybe my questions are not as deep or serious as his, but I face problems, not other people’s beliefs about problems. I am responsible only for my own beliefs, not for others'.

Kant has a conceptual system that resembles a holographic projection of a universe. It contains many correct projections but also misplacements, absences, and overlaps. To study a pixel in Kant’s projection you must study neighboring pixels. Kant’s system sits among several tightly interrelated philosophical strata — secondary sources, tertiary, quaternary texts, and philosophers before and after him: Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, etc. Studying Kant thus becomes an endless task.

The endlessness of research on Kant differs from the endlessness of cosmic research. If we study the universe and fail after a million years, we can try for a trillion years and, in principle, the universe could eventually be fully understood unless it ends first. The most frightening thing about the history of philosophy is that, even on the day the universe perishes, it will still be impossible to ever fully comprehend Kant. There is no “Kant-universe” sitting there. Only one universe exists. Moreover, interpretation of Kant is a creative act; any interpretation will always face objection. Kant is dead and cannot tell us which interpretation is correct. (What if Kant were alive? I recall the anecdote of Ramsey and Wittgenstein, where Ramsey spent months with Wittgenstein listening to him explain the Tractatus, yet sometimes Wittgenstein himself was unclear about what he meant.)

Each of our thoughts is a projection of parts or strata of the universe. From universe to mind is a series of projections. Studying a person’s thought is a projection of a projection. The latter is doomed never to fully succeed compared to the former. Perhaps we can ask: even if we clarify a projection, what is the point? To accept the world’s projection through this projection? Is understanding how Kant distinguishes the beautiful and the sublime more meaningful than figuring out how many ways to write the character “回”?

The question in the history of philosophy is not whether one should study predecessors but whether one should devote oneself to such study (some philosophers, like Quine among twentieth-century analytic philosophers, refuse to study the history of philosophy). Once one devotes oneself, philosophy proper is no longer possible in a fundamental sense. Human life and energy are limited; perhaps years spent studying one Kantian concept may end up revealing that it is merely a misplacement or overlap in a vast projection.

Maybe this is a matter of differing aims and choices. To me, his epitaph is tragic, a complete tragedy. Of course I also know he would call my epitaph a complete tragedy.

For him Kant is an unclimbable summit; his life’s chief aim is to scale it, though he may never reach the top. Even so, that pursuit is more worthwhile than walking among other hills and plains. I do not regard climbing any summit as my ambition; I may gaze from afar or climb a little, but ultimately build my own dunes or simply enjoy the flowers on the plain.

This article intends to offer some superficial reflections on the dynamics of male-female intimate relationships from a middle-aged man’s perspective, perhaps providing some inspiration to those tormented by intimate relationships. Let me state upfront: this article does not attempt to provide a comprehensive discussion of this issue from all angles and perspectives. I must admit that my observations and thinking bear deep personal imprints, but I believe many middle-aged people will resonate with this article.

The General Truth of Intimate Relationships Is Mutual Torment

Think back to our childhood: how many elder couples didn’t spend their days in conflict? Did parents bicker and sulk every few days, even to the point of threatening to attack each other with a cleaver? In my impression, when I was young, it was common for young couples in the village to fight, drink pesticide, hang themselves, or run away from home. At that time, no matter how deep the conflict, divorce was rare. Our generation’s marriages are no less dramatic - the only difference is that this generation chooses divorce, while the previous generation chose endurance.

The most paradoxical aspect of intimate relationships is that while their theme is supposedly love and tolerance, the reality is often indifference and resentment. Even in relationships that don’t explode into open conflict, that person is often the one who gives you the worst face on a daily basis. The ancients spoke of husband and wife “treating each other like guests” - perhaps this was a warning to avoid mutual torment.

Why does this happen? There are many reasons. I believe the primary reason is the independence of individual personalities. Men and women, as two kinds of beings, possess quite independent thoughts, desires, and temperaments. When brought together, friction is inevitable. Any major explosion is actually triggered by just a small spark. Think back: why did you get angry with your partner when dating? It might have been merely a disagreement about what to eat for a date. It might have been them taking out emotions from elsewhere on you. The initial cause of mutual resentment might be nothing more than a facial expression, a tone of voice, or a look.

If you can get along peacefully, your intimate relationship has already succeeded 60%. Unfortunately, most relationships I observe quickly devolve into mutual torment. Intimate relationships may be the most resilient compromise for modern young people, until desire is exhausted or becomes unbearable.

After my last relationship failed, the first major lesson I learned from painful reflection was that the most important task of an intimate relationship is to avoid mutual torment. This sounds like a mundane point, but few people seem to seriously consider it. It means not just avoiding conflict and tension, but achieving relaxation and joy. Any intimate relationship characterized by continuous suppression, constraint, frustration, or loss is actually mutual torment.

The second reason is unsound personality. In fact, intimate relationships are the biggest problem ordinary people face in life. Most people may read books well and do business well, but still handle intimate relationships poorly, thus falling into enormous family mental exhaustion.

To achieve a sound personality, besides necessary experience and age (it’s magical - when people reach a certain age, their thoughts and temper naturally change), one also needs sound knowledge - a mature set of ideas about life, marriage, love, desire, responsibility, and so on.

Many people live unexamined lives. Their work may succeed, but their family relationships are a mess. Their poor way of getting along with their partners extends to their poor way of educating their children.

I’ve seen too many people who, through their words and deeds, turn their children into people without courtesy, compulsively lying, emotionally unstable, lacking civic virtue, greedy for small advantages, and unable to distinguish right from wrong. People with unsound personalities not only fail to achieve harmonious family relationships, they also fail to successfully educate their children.

Finally, excessive investment in feelings, or even love, also leads to loss of emotional control. Why doesn’t he know I need this? Does she still love me? Do we still have love? These questions are repeatedly asked in countless so-called life details, almost invariably leading to emotional outbursts.

What I want to say is that if mutual torment is the general truth of intimate relationships, then basing them on love is the greatest fantasy. At least for adult men and women. Love is a modern fantasy, while marriage is an ancient institution. I won’t discuss this too much - it’s actually a truth that every adult man and woman eventually understands to some degree. Without happiness, without sex, but the marriage still maintains well, not for anything else, but to maintain a social institution with complex reasons.

When the fresh passion of love fades, even if you still love each other, mutual torment is hard to avoid. No matter how you treat each other, that person seems to be the one who gives you the worst face on a daily basis. Every time you go out with her to handle business, you have the opportunity to see her beautiful, elegant, and polite appearance. But as soon as you return home, that person’s face and tone return to mockery and sarcasm.

Can intimate relationships only be about mutual torment?

I Have No Emotions - I Am a Heartless Person

I think the most important method is emotional management.

In fact, the greatest challenge intimate relationships face is managing emotions. Intimate relationships, as the name suggests, are relationships that cannot be distanced - they must display and withstand each other’s emotions. When intimate relationships have problems, the most direct cause is emotions. The reason emotional management is so crucial is precisely because we’re too close. When you’re too close, even a mole can make you annoyed.

The emotional management I emphasize is different from reading faces. In emotional management, there are a few basic questions:

1. When you encounter someone in a bad mood, you naturally feel bad too - this is instinct.
2. The logic is actually very simple: you require a person to be in a good mood every moment they’re with you.
3. But the objective fact is that a person cannot be happy all the time.
4. Understanding this principle, we can handle a person’s negative emotions more tolerantly.
5. Facing someone with negative emotions, our first reaction shouldn’t be “I’m unhappy too,” but inquiry and concern.
6. Sixth, “be strict with yourself, lenient with others” - meanwhile, try not to bring negative emotions to unrelated people, like bringing work emotions home to family.

The biggest challenge one faces in intimate relationships is a partner with unpredictable moods. Basically there are two situations: first, getting angry for no reason; second, getting angry unnecessarily. Facing these situations, the natural reaction is usually to have emotions too: “If you’re unhappy, I’m unhappy too,” “Even if I’m wrong, it doesn’t deserve such huge anger.”

The essence of emotion is a physiological reaction. If the person in front of you is in a bad mood, it’s hard for you to be in a good mood. Without deliberate emotional management, even the tiniest bit of negative emotion from either party will ignite both.

The most important lesson I learned from my last failed relationship is to be a person without emotions in intimate relationships, to be a “heartless” person. By “without emotions,” I mean that when your partner is emotional, completely abandon any idea of equal treatment, completely forget that you’re also a person with a temper - completely suppress your emotional response, neither positive nor negative. I cannot respond with anxiety, frustration, regret, or exasperation. The best approach is to take action without any emotional fluctuation: ask, apologize, comfort, compensate. “I have no emotions - at this moment, I am a stone person.”

Why is this commandment so important? We already know many reasons - for example, the most direct cause of destroying intimate relationships is emotion, for example, emotional reaction is a natural physiological response, so emotional management in intimate relationships is crucial.

Additionally, a major reason many people respond to negative emotions with negative emotions is that they overestimate the importance of intimate relationships. If they find their beloved unhappy, they may feel their own lives dim, feel that their own lives have failed. Therefore, facing women’s negative emotions, many men ultimately nearly collapse - not because the women are unhappy per se, but because they’re ashamed of their own failure.

At this point, you should think: the greatest goal of intimate relationships is to avoid mutual torment, and you should also think that intimate relationships are more importantly a social institution. As a man, life isn’t just about romance - even if intimate relationships collapse, your life won’t collapse because of it, because you have your own career, hobbies, circles, and so on.

Besides this, men or women may have negative emotions because they feel the other person doesn’t care enough, understand, or look after them. For modern Chinese men, the “pampering wife” mode may have fostered willfulness, creating an atmosphere in intimate relationships of “men unconditionally loving women.” After daily crazy pampering, many men inevitably feel a trace of desolation, questioning the value of doing this. For this, I still suggest every man remember that point: should male-female intimate relationships really occupy such a large position in your life? Not being cared for but loving her - so what?

Here we must return to the issue of sound personality. Only men and women with sound personalities can enjoy love in intimate relationships (even if it just means not tormenting each other). By “sound personality,” in terms of love, I mean this state: I am happy alone; with her (him), I am happier. A person’s happiness doesn’t depend on others’ giving. So what if her care isn’t enough? If she happens to care more, I’m just a bit happier, not happy because of it.

If you still hold grudges about this so-called “detail” of a little more or less care, you will sooner or later taste the bitter fruit of mutual torment. Love is optional for marriage, marriage isn’t the decisive factor of life’s happiness, the foundation of all your happiness lies in yourself. Intimate relationships give us the opportunity to give love and fulfill people, not become calculating, anxious, and resentful.

Marriage Isn’t That Important, So Don’t Consider Cheating

Marriage cannot determine your life’s happiness, nor is it all of life. If emotional management is tactical attention to intimate relationships, then reminding yourself that intimate relationships aren’t everything is strategic contempt.

I have already pointed out:

1. The general truth of male-female intimate relationships is mutual torment;
2. The root causes of this situation are independent personalities and unsound personalities;
3. The direct causes of this situation are ignored or uncontrolled emotional management;
4. One reason for uncontrolled emotional management is overestimating the weight of intimate relationships in life.

If these four problems aren’t handled well, intimate relationships continue to deteriorate, ultimately leading to long-term mutual torment, and many people will try to start a new intimate relationship, they will cheat or divorce.

Sometimes we view cheating too simplistically and morally. Admittedly, cheating is one of the absolute moral errors of sexual ethics, especially when some people merely use intimate relationships as tools to seek excitement and pleasure. But, carefully consider this situation: do mutually tormented men and women really not want to start over? You have to understand, mutual torment is the general daily life of intimate couples.

Many complex situations can be discussed. For intimate couples, one of the biggest misunderstandings is thinking that changing to another person will bring happiness. But after really changing to another person, you discover things are just as bad. Only after truly experiencing different people does every man and woman become mature and realistic in this regard.

One situation I want to discuss in detail is that some middle-aged men plan to “make up for regrets” with young, beautiful women. In recent years, some university teachers have been exposed, originally successful in their careers and respected, actually hiding an imperfect marriage or love “regret.” ¹ Leaving other issues aside, these men’s thinking is actually very simple - they want truly happy intimate relationships (especially marriage), which is crucial to their entire lives. However, they may have made at least these three mistakes:

1. Not recognizing the general truth about intimate relationships we discussed earlier;
2. Viewing intimate relationships, including marriage, as the decisive factor of life’s happiness;
3. Attempting to escape the constraints of the general law of mutual torment in new intimate relationships.

However, after passion fades not only does it return to mundaneness (if not becoming like enemies), it becomes mutual torment again. If they had understood emotional management and viewed the position and weight of intimate relationships in life reasonably, would they still want to “make up for regrets”?

The person you should choose may not be the one you love most, but the one least likely to mutually torment you. This may be one of the most important considerations in partner choice.

Additionally, starting a new marriage causes many people irreparable harm for life, especially women and children. The value of divorced middle-aged women in the marriage market drops sharply, which is unfair to women (though women must also bear some responsibility for their outcomes). Men’s tentative activities consume much time and energy, not only delaying careers but also potentially ruining their reputation if careless. Also, in extreme cases, it may trigger love murder and other tragedies. ² Last but not least, in the process of rebuilding marriage, a person’s moral cultivation is more or less damaged.

Two Cases

Let me briefly tell two cases, one strategic, one tactical, to deepen our previous discussion.

The first case, strategic. Not long ago, Doctor Xiao from Beijing China-Japan Friendship Hospital’s cheating incident received widespread attention. From exposed materials, Doctor Xiao was young and capable, handsome; his wife successful in her career, with a beautiful face. Various comments appeared about this event, but public voices were consistently condemnatory of cheating. One critical voice was: Doctor Xiao has such a good wife, why isn’t he satisfied and wants to cheat? Outsiders cannot know the specific situation.

From our discussion’s theme, what can we say? What’s crucial is understanding that the general truth of male-female intimate relationships is mutual torment, unrelated to excellence or appearance. Even if not like enemies, even if in love, after passion fades, daily life is full of thorns.

One or both parties may want to seek new intimate relationships. However, the “imperfection” they’re trying to escape is actually just a mutually tormenting relationship, while mutual torment is the general daily life of any intimate relationship. If Doctor Xiao could understand this principle, what might he do? Perhaps a better approach is to diligently manage the current marriage, committed to solving the problem of mutual torment, rather than seeking a “more complete” marriage.

Many successful men, strategically overestimate the weight of marriage. Even if their marriage isn’t bad, they actively seek “more complete” marriages. I of course respect their choices and understand marriage’s complexity, but my general thought is still: strategically despise, tactically prioritize. The crux of so-called “incomplete” marriage may just be uncontrolled emotional management. If it can be properly resolved, that’s better. If it can’t be completely resolved, perhaps the better choice is to invest more time and energy in one’s career, making greater contributions to society. Perhaps at that point, the family will actually be happier. Conversely, simply changing to another person will only continue repeating the tragic plot.

The second case, tactical. Two years ago I listened to a podcast interview online. ³ The female guest talked about her intimate relationship’s mental journey. This lady worked at a software development company doing process optimization. For a long time she had no plans to date (of course, with many considerations and concerns). She had a website ⁴ that she operated for two or three years. Once her personal website might have had problems due to redesign, and she revealed somewhere that she encountered difficulties. A reader of her website contacted her and helped solve the problem. They gradually became familiar through this interaction. Finally one day, she felt an impulse to chat with him when she had free time (experienced people know this is a sign of liking someone). So she wanted to reveal this thought to him. She used the way of negotiating with clients to agree on a video call with him. After the first call, both felt the relationship could progress. So second and third calls, more formally discussing her psychological changes since meeting him, her expectations and worries about intimate relationships, etc. These communication messages would be listed in detail in advance, like discussing project items in a meeting. In this way, both had full understanding of each other’s emotions, expectations and worries about feelings, knowing how to treat each other. After establishing the formal relationship, they agreed to do a small weekly review and a major monthly review, including: what’s my current state, what support do I need from you recently, what of your recent behavior made me unhappy or uncomfortable, what do I hope for your future behavior, and so on.

Out of some professional habit, this lady managed intimate relationships like managing projects, conducting detailed, rational, calm, open conversations. I’m not suggesting my readers learn from them, but using their story as an inspirational case, to see that if we’re willing to prioritize intimate relationships tactically, to what extent we might go: we might have more calm communication instead of emotional complaints, might transform emotions that could have erupted at the time into harmonious communication through advance preparation or post-factum processing. We actually have many methods to make our intimate relationships better, achieving the original intention of intimate relationships: “one person is good, but two are better.”

Conclusion

Male-female intimate relationships are actually one of the greatest life challenges we face. Many people can handle career problems well but struggle with family problems, thus falling into endless internal friction. We should despise strategically, prioritize tactically. The most important strategy: don’t view intimate relationships as overly important, “don’t rejoice in material gains, don’t grieve over personal losses.” The most important tactic is good emotional management in intimate relationships, avoiding being swept into endless abysses by emotions. To summarize, our points are:

1. The general truth of intimate relationships is mutual torment.
2. So-called mutual torment isn’t just loud quarrels, but also shows in post-passion suppression, mockery and indifference, that person may be the one giving you the worst face in daily life.
3. If an intimate relationship is actually mutual torment, it must either be terminated or changed.
4. The root causes of mutual torment are independent personalities and unsound personalities.
5. Independent personality means that relationships established by the richest-thinking and most-feeling individuals of all creatures are the most conflict-prone relationships - a facial expression, a look, a movement, a tone, can lead both parties’ emotions into the abyss.
6. Unsound personality means that due to lack of necessary life experience and practical wisdom, many people base their happiness on others’ giving or response, and lack basic self-awareness or ability.
7. The direct cause of mutual torment is ignoring emotional management, ultimately sweeping both into endless abysses.
8. Avoiding mutual torment is the most fundamental goal of managing intimate relationships; if intimate relationships fall into mutual torment, solutions must be found; if can’t be solved together, at least one person solves it - be a person without emotions in intimate relationships.
9. Avoiding mutual torment means not just avoiding loud quarrels, but making intimate relationships relaxed, comfortable, and joyful.
10. Don’t overestimate the importance of intimate relationships. Don’t be ashamed of your intimate relationship’s poor state, thus increasing negative emotions and leading to uncontrolled emotional management.
11. A person with independent and sound personality has their own career, hobbies, circles, and happiness.
12. Such people together with independent and sound people will be happier, both knowing emotional management.
13. Such people with less independent and sound people can also be happier, provided they manage their own emotions first and guide the other through rational, calm communication.

His name is Jack Baty. He’s tried just about every well-known blogging program, from WordPress, Ghost, hugo, 11ty, Blot to Write.as and more. What he says he appreciates about WordPress is that it works “out of the box”: his default way of writing a blog is to click the Create Post button, type something in, and then click the Publish button. This way he doesn’t have to worry about running scripts and dependencies. It’s not as cool as clicking, typing, and clicking for dummies, but it’s good for posting.

However, when trying Hugo, he said that he should have something cooler, that he should have to deal with more than just some HTML.

Unsurprisingly, he soon felt very uncomfortable with the WordPress editor again. After trying many editor programs, he felt he should use Static Site Generators.

He struggled with Hugo for a while. Now he left WordPress again, and went into the arms of static blogging to struggle with 11ty again. He gets tired of static blogs one minute and misses them the next; the same is true for WordPress.

He registered many domain names related to “baty” and tried to use different domain names for different blogs to record different types of content, notes, thoughts, long articles, pictures, etc. He uses rl.baty.net to write his Wiki notes, which is built by TiddlyWiki note-taking software. He uses rl.baty.net for his Wiki notes, which is built with TiddlyWiki note-taking software. He plans to use baty.blog for his blog, and then says he’s not sure if he’ll change it to blog.baty.net. He uses baty.net for more formal and longer posts.

In an post on Write.as he talks about his intention to merge domains. He says, “I’ve been feeling a need to simplify things and I’ve decided that one of those things is domain names. My days of hoarding domain names, just because, are drawing to a close. I don’t want the hassle of managing zones and I don’t need the fees.”

He says he has a dream of One True Blog, which is probably why he’s caught up in such an endless torturous process: wanting to have the one and only place to write on the web that fulfills all the important needs.

He tried using different editors for different types of blogs. From Emacs, Typora, Curio, Quine to Ulysses and more.

He’s also tried blogging with a headless CMS, like Kirby.

In the course of tossing around blogging options, he voices somewhat desperate sentiments. For example, he lamented, “I just want to post stuff”, “How should I do that? Ghost? WordPress? Write.as? Medium?“Also, he feels like he’s “lost interest in everything” and “the only reason I still blogging every day is because I don’t have anything better to do. I keep changing blogging platforms , but it’s just a pastime with no real goal.”

While noticing that he kept changing blogging platforms, I also noticed that he was constantly changing note-taking software. He tried almost all the well-known note-taking software such as Evernote, Roam Research, TiddlyWiki, Tinderbox, Crafts, Obsidian, Tana, and others. At first he was a Roam believer, then thought TiddlyWiki was more interesting than Roam, and then wonder, what could be done with Crafts? He reflected, Do backlinks really work?

In the course of tossing around note-taking software, he also emits somewhat despairing sentiments. For example, he says, “My new note-taking system: Don’t take notes,” and he “feels like the entire world (or at least my corner of) is consumed by the ‘how’ of note-taking. Tools, workflows, processes, backlinks, and on and on. Obsidian? Roam? Paper? I read it all. It’s fun and interesting and there’s no end of things to distract myself with. A distraction is all it is.” Then again, after trying Tana, he decided that personal knowledge management had exhausted him and he was going to go back to paper in its most traditional form, the plain text editor.

That’s it for this guy’s story. By the way, I forgot to mention the fact that Baty has been unemployed for many years, and he has written “Hire me” in an obvious position on several websites.

I’m not introducing him to ridicule him, although he realizes he might be ridiculed. I can’t remember exactly when I discovered Baty, but I was struck by his honesty of record.

I saw myself in him. Some time ago, when I was struggling to break away from the usual electronic games and realized that my blog had been inactive for months, I couldn’t help but feel that I had just switched from one kind of electronic game to another.

Perhaps Baty is a mirror of everyone who is addicted to a new type of electronic game. The difference is that he has faithfully documented his record of tossing and turning, whereas many of us have either hidden the whole thing or left only a few words behind.

Here are a few facts I got from Baty’s story, my own experiences and observations:

1. people who toss around new types of note-taking software have a good chance of also tossing around blogging programs;

2. people who are addicted to various efficiency tools are often losers who have little success in their industry or field;

3. people who are obsessed with new note-taking software or blogging programs spend more time playing ordinary electronic games and less time obsessing about the former, and vice versa;¹

4. new note-taking software and blogging programs are, in essence, new electronic games.

5. most busy and fulfilled people are unaware of new types of note-taking software or do not have a blog.

Of course, I don’t present these facts as some kind of criticism (despite the Chinese old saying that “Excessive attention to plaything saps your will”). Most people, if they don’t play this game, they play that game. It’s just a bit of a paradox that the new electronic games are inherently associated with so-called efficiency, creativity, and productivity, when in fact they’re just games.

Preface

Back in 2021, I started using Roam Research (which I’ll refer to as Roam) as my notetaking tool. In a previous article titled “Why I Use Roam,” I detailed the reasons behind this decision. In recent years, a host of new notetaking software has exploded onto the scene. This trend has sparked interest in different notetaking methods. Therefore, choosing a notetaking tool means choosing a notetaking method.

So, how can Roam or similar software be used for academic research? There are plenty of articles out there on how to use Roam, with most focusing on the card note-taking method, which emphasizes the individuality and reusability of notes. However, fews focus on using Roam for academic research. In this article, I aim to share my experience of using Roam for academic research, from notetaking through to writing articles. The key doesn’t lie in mastering the card notetaking method but in developing a suitable note framework based on one’s own research practices to closely connect notetaking with research activities.

Key Concept: Two-Stage Notetaking

Initially, notes serve to consolidate our reading and reflection. Eventually however, the notes themselves warrant further exploration, reevaluation and organization, to generate newer notes. Consequently, notetaking typically involves two stages, which I call Stage A and Stage B.

Stage A notes are the raw notes, which could be literature excerpts, reflections, or even an image or a link. In my case, Stage A notes primarily consist of literature reading notes.

Stage B notes are refined notes, representing a secondary process where notes are taken on the raw notes. In my case, I extract specific concepts or issues based on the literature reading notes or establish links between different Stage A notes.

Put simply, during academic research, I first read numerous pieces of literature and take notes. Then, based on these literature notes, I extract relevant concepts or issues for further exploration. This is a common practice across any note-taking tool, including traditional paper notes. However, Roam has improved the efficiency and elegance of this process.

Research Practices: Three Projects

Before I started using Roam, I spent a week designing a note framework tailored to my own learning and research practices. The essential point here is that you should establish a note framework according to your own studying or researching pracrices. My personal research pracrices involves regular in-depth reading of literature, reflecting on and organizing the literature, drafting fragmented thoughts, and eventually writing.

My research zeroes in on the philosophy of law, a category of humanities theoretical research. If you’re familiar with theoretical research in humanities, you’ll know that texts, authors, and concepts are three fundamental pillars of any research in humanities. Philosophical and social science theories deal with these three basic projects every day. What exactly does a classic text convey? What are the thoughts of a classic author on a concept? How should a classic concept be understood? Moreover, these three pillars are intertwined: the thoughts in a classic text revolve around particularly important concepts, and the ideas of a classic author undoubtedly involve a certain classic text and the concepts it expounds. Different authors discuss the same concepts, and so on.

Before the introduction of Roam, organizing notes around these three pillars was neither very convenient nor elegant. For instance, using traditional notetaking software meant creating many documents or pages, with linking them together for two-stage notetaking proving complex.

However, Roam solved these issuess with ease. Each note in Roam is essentially a webpage, making referencing between them as simple as creating a link. Roam even displays the links established between them. Therefore, Roam has considerably improved the convenience, efficiency, and elegance of conducting research, particularly in humanity fields.

Note Framework

Once the research practices are clear, the note framework can be designed accordingly. Start by creating several root projects (or if you prefer, “nodes” or “pages”), namely “Texts,” “Authors,” and “Concepts.” These three projects can serve as both Stage A and Stage B notes.

Roam advocates often mention that you don’t need to care about the tree-like relationships or hierarchies between notes. Generally, this is correct. However, it’s still necessary to establish some root note projects. This is not only related to the form of note organization but also involves the essence of research practices. Roam precisely combines the form of note organization with the essence of research practices. (Of course, in my case, I also established some transactional root projects outside of core research, such as “Issues,” “Submissions,” “Projects,” “Interests,” etc. Since these are not the core issues, I won’t mention them further below.)

These root projects are typically fixed on the left sidebar of Roam. Their content is not determined all at once but changes over time. My daily note-taking process is as follows:

• Add new projects in “Texts,” typically are literature that is being read or awaiting reading.

• Make reading notes within these texts projects. These projects constitute Stage A notes.

• At a future specific time, read Stage A notes, and open or create new projects on the right sidebar. For example, while researching Stage A notes and wanting to summarize key points or issues about a particular figure, whether it’s the author of the current text or related authors. You can also create entries for related concepts or issues. These entries will be opened on the right sidebar.

Here’s an example. As shown in the image below, the entry “Taking Rights Seriously” (《认真对待权利》authored by Dworkin) is one of my Stage A notes. When writing to a certain extent or at a specific time, I may create or open the “Dworkin”（德沃金） project on the right sidebar and then extract, organize, or summarize certain key points.

You may notice that each node within the “Dworkin” project starts with a “daily notes” node and a simple title. This is because the information we have about a author, concept, or issue, as well as the thoughts we develop based on it, are not complete or final. They undergo a process of addition, deletion, and revision. Therefore, leaving a timestamp for Stage B notes can reflect this real process. Additionally, at different times, we may contemplate and organize the same or similar issues. For example, in March of last year, I contemplated Dworkin’s views on the issues of the individualization principle of rules, based on the Stage A note “Taking Rights Seriously,” and in October of this year, I may contemplate this issues or a similar one again. Still, there’s no need to go through the “Dworkin” entry, as I can directly write a new entry. The note-taking software will record and display possible connections between them. When further organizing in the future, we can also compare thoughts from different periods.

Furthermore, notes on different issues may be taken at different times. For example, on February 2, 2022, I may have researched both Dworkin’s views on the issues of the individualization principle of rules and read Raz’s “The Concept of the Legal System,” which involves this issues. At the same time, I may have checked H.L.A Hart’s views in “The Concept of Law,” or many other issues. These issues may generate Stage B notes, and when each entry has a timestamp, opening the corresponding daily note link in the future can provide an aggregation of what research we did at some time, which is likely highly relevant.

In summary, Stage B notes involve the extraction, organization, and expansion of Stage A notes, and it’s not a one-time process. Over time, the information we have about related issues and the thinking process will change. Roam helps us reflect this process.

It can be seen that literature notes in the root project “Texts” are usually Stage A notes, while notes in the root projects “Authors,” “Concepts,” or “Issues” are usually Stage B notes. One small trick is that during the process of creating a concept list, if entering a concept in “[[]]” doesn’t prompt a selection, then it’s a new concept. In this case, it needs to be added to “Concepts.” Also, for added convenience in adding and retrieving, both “Authors” and “Concepts” are organized in order of letters in an alphabet. The concept list aims to be concise, and maintaining such a list may not seem useful in daily, but it’s a process of building one’s own knowledge system and network.

From Notes to Writing

We already have two stages of notes. Stage A notes are generally used for the material of Stage B notes (we may also reference Stage A notes extensively in Roam’s Stage B notes), and they can also be used as material for future writing. Meanwhile, Stage B is mainly used for future thinking and writing. For example, we may already have a lot of content for the “Recognition Rules” in Stage B notes. If you want to research this concept, you can open this project and explore all the Stage A or Stage B notes associated with it.

How to realize the process from notes to writing in Roam? The key is to do a good job with the two stages of notes. The better you do with Stage B notes, the more convenient your future writing will be. In my case, I often write many lengthy thoughts in Stage B. Sometimes in the process of taking notes, some ideas are very novel or deep for a certain issues, and unconsciously, I write a lot. So, I simply create a new writing project in the “Projects” root directory and expand it into a blog post, even into an academic paper.

Here, the key is not the so-called card note-takeing method. All you need to understand is that according to such a designed note framework, Stage B notes are not only able to connect with Stage A notes and other Stage B notes, but also can be repeatedly used, arranged or modified in future note-taking and writing. If you want to call these Stage B notes “card notes” or “permanent notes”, there’s no problem.

Technical Issue: Writing Papers on Roam

Many people believe that Roam is only suitable for note-taking and drafting short articles. How do we go about it if we want to write a paper in Roam? Can Roam’s outline editor handle this task? Yes. Over the past years, from writing few paragraphs to writing blogs and papers, I have done all on Roam.

Firstly, for writing with simple formatting requirements, Roam can export any node as a Flat Markdown document. For those who rely on the outline editor to think and write more orderly, writing on Roam is a vital need. Of course, if you don’t have such dependence, the rest of this section is unnecessary to read.

Secondly, Roam still can handle writing with complex formatting requirements, but with the help of LaTex. LaTex fits any text editor, including Roam’s outline editor. With appropriate markings, LaTex can generate a paper with complete format upon compilation.

Common LaTex markings are “\footnote{}”, “\textbf{}”, and “\textit{}”. For images, lists, or tables, I suggest leaving corresponding markers when editing on Roam, and adding them later in the specialized LaTex editor. On Roam, you only need to write the main text and don’t need to add full LaTex markings. Using the template feature Roam provides, you can easily call up commonly used LaTex markings, as shown in the figure below.

In this way, write the main part of the paper in Roam, along with necessary LaTex markings. When finished, export it as a Flat Markdown document and continue to edit in a specialized LaTeX editor.

Maybe your tutor asks you to submit a Word document for review. A convenient way to convert Tex documents to Word documents is required. Pandoc offers can heplp you. Firstly, use Pandoc to prepare a Word document template and then use Mricosoft Word program to adjust the formatting of this document template to the format required for the paper. Then, use Pandoc commands to convert the Tex document to a Word document. Since it is not for official paper submissions, Word templates don’t need to perfectly match the paper formatting requirements. Of course, theoretically, Tex documents can be converted directly to Word documents without further formatting adjustments, as long as you’re willing to spend enough time adjusting the templates and Pandoc commands. This technical detail is not the main topic of this article, and I will elaborate it in another article if possible.

Summary

This article outlines how to do academic research on Roam, using the author’s own study and research practices as examples:

First, the basic issues of note-taking should be established: two-stage notes should be created, and the initial notes should be organized and digested for further thinking and writing in the future.

Second, establish a note-taking framework in accordance with your specific study and research practices. The note-taking framework is the basic root directory on the basis of which all notes are organized, and the process is also a research process.

Third, by taking good two-stage notes, you will be able to realize the process from notes to writing.

Finally, in order to be able to complete the research and writing process on Roam for complex issuess, other technological tools such as LaTex, Pandoc are needed.

In conclusion, we should establish a note-taking framework, take good two-stage notes, and use the notes for writing based on a clear understanding of our own learning and research practices.

We say “writing reflects the person”. In fact, a person’s blog largely reflects how well they write essays or papers. It should be rare for someone to write excellent papers but terrible blogs.

We should benefit greatly from any good writing activity, and blogging is no exception. In this article, I intend to take blogging seriously and see what can be said about “how to write a good blog”. These points have general significance for how to write good articles.

Writing Goals

Clarifying the goals of a blog is paramount. Why write a blog? Blogging is just a hobby. This determines that we should not and will not invest too much time and energy in it. To write a good blog, we must make it easy for readers to understand. I believe that, in general, the goal of a blog should be: to improve one’s thinking through writing, and incidentally benefit the public.

Suppose I am a graduate student studying philosophy, often reading and thinking about some issues. So I write down the issues I have been thinking deeply about for a period of time. On the one hand, the benefit of doing this is that through writing, I organize my thoughts, make them clear, fix them, and mature them.¹ The biggest beneficiary of blogging must be the author himself. On the other hand, in the process of writing, I also need to consider, since I am making this article public rather than keeping it on my computer’s hard drive, what will readers gain?

The second question is actually another side of the first question. Writing is a dialogue, not talking to oneself. If thinking is just talking to oneself, it will never be clear. The main questions here are: first, who will be interested in the issues I discuss; second, what are their general ideas or opinions; and finally, how can I make it easy for them to understand.

If you don’t carefully consider the above three questions, it will be difficult to write a good blog. For example, some people recently read a book and wrote three or four thousand words of introduction or impressions, without considering at all who would be interested in this. The whole article is just saying, I have some feelings about this book. It is indeed important that you have feelings about this book, but why should others be interested? If someone is interested, how can you make them clearly and completely understand your thoughts, rather than just being told that you have certain thoughts, but what those thoughts are is unclear?

It’s best not to write a blog as if talking to yourself. A blog is not a diary. Writing a blog, like other writing, is both a kind of thinking and a kind of dialogue, and thinking is ultimately a kind of dialogue.

If you don’t consider the second question, it will lead to articles being either verbose or crude, or worthless. For example, many people’s introductions to things have no beginning or end. For another example, many people write things that others already know. Please remember, before writing, it is very important to think about how ordinary people think about the issues to be discussed.

The usual writing routine of a good article is: first, point out the problem to be discussed, then, summarize how ordinary people think (this actually shows great skill), then point out what is insufficient about thinking this way, and finally propose what my idea is and why this idea is better.

It’s easy to see that only by doing the above two preparations well can the article be clear. Clarity is the primary virtue of an article.

Let’s return to the example of the philosophy graduate student. His target audience can be peers of similar level, or people with general education. Whatever it is, he must first clarify his target audience: who does he want to dialogue with? If the target audience is professional peers, then the article can be written relatively obscure or professional, but very concise. Conversely, if it is aimed at generally educated people, the article needs to be written in a popular way, using less jargon, and explaining obscure concepts in plain language.

A bad practice is that the article has no clear goal or topic, only fragments. The authors of such articles don’t know why they are writing or what they want to convey; perhaps they simply don’t care about these things. They just say, ah, I watched a certain movie and it was very good, a certain plot shocked me, or say, I am very confused about a certain concept in a certain book.

Private life or professional thinking is not unsuitable for blogging; on the contrary, they should become the best material and motivation. However, be sure to make your writing have a certain degree of publicity.

If I am thinking about a professional philosophical question and want to express it to help me sort out this idea clearly and fix it, I need to make my article as public as possible: have a clear target audience, have certain preparation and explanation, discuss completely, so that the target audience can understand just by reading my article.

The more specialized the blog’s theme, the more it will write about topics that the public is not very familiar with, and this requires more publicity of the article, and the first principle of publicity is to make it easy for the public to read and understand.

To this end, you may usually need to assume that your readers are not your peers, but you try to make them able to easily and completely understand the views you want to express simply by reading your article.

The worst practice is to throw your messy and crude notes or even excerpts online. Recently, something called “digital garden” has become very popular. Some people understand “digital garden” as throwing their fragmentary notes or excerpts online. How many people will read those “digital gardens”? It can be said with certainty that such things are useless to others and are completely digital garbage. Notes and articles are two different things. Blogs should not be fragmented notes or excerpts, but articles with clear goals, complete structure, clear arguments, and clear conclusions, regardless of their length. Because only in this way can readers and authors benefit most from the writing activity of blogging.

Why shouldn’t you throw your fragmented notes or excerpts online? In addition to the lack of publicity mentioned above, there is also the “self-nature” problem we will discuss in detail below, that is, the problem of writing motivation.

Writing Motivation

Blogging is a hobby, and the blogger must be the biggest beneficiary of this activity, otherwise there will be insufficient motivation. Suppose we plan to express our professional knowledge in a way that laypeople can understand, then there are at least two problems. First, if what we want to say is something we have already thought through, why write it again? Second, if what we have already thought through is very useful to others, what can we gain from it?

For me, the biggest motivation for blogging is to write about issues that I have been thinking about recently but have not yet thought through clearly, whether they are life, social, or professional issues. Through writing, my thinking becomes clear and my thoughts advance. Writing about issues I understand completely will make blogging extremely boring. Writing a blog, like people used to write thought notes on paper, is a kind of thought exercise, thought adventure, and before writing, we don’t even know which direction we will go completely.

Of course, many people write about things they understand completely because such things are very useful to other people. For example, some people regard blogging as a means of knowledge dissemination or commercial profit. However, in today’s era when blogs are declining, this is very difficult to do well. Those who can do it are very few, and blogs do not perform as well as other activities in simple knowledge dissemination or commercial profit. Otherwise, blogs would not be considered declining. For most people, the biggest motivation for blogging should be to advance their own thinking, not to disseminate knowledge.

Some people simply regard blogs as personal life records. These bloggers naturally write about things they understand completely. However, even so, the following question still needs attention.

Limit the Theme

Through the above discussion, we have reached a conclusion that blogging should be a kind of thought exercise and adventure, while incidentally having a certain degree of publicity.

With this goal and motivation, we need to understand that a good blog needs to limit its theme. The thoughts we want to advance always have a limited field, and we should not write about everything. Whether starting from ourselves or considering readers, writing must limit the theme. Of course, this does not mean that we can only write about one theme. On the contrary, a blog can have many themes, as long as these themes are what you think deeply about and can benefit the public. Obviously, for most people, the fields of deep thinking are always limited, and even if simply sharing what you like, the themes are limited.

The Newsletter that has become popular in recent years requires that our blogs have limited themes. Blogs should not be a hodgepodge. Think about why others would care about your articles. A good blog should show what you are good at or have characteristics, and what a person is good at or has characteristics is always limited.

Not only the entire blog, but individual articles should also limit the theme. Each article should focus on one theme, propose clear views, and provide sufficient arguments for them. Simply put, explain a specific problem clearly (this is the most important achievement of blogging). Whether you are writing about a certain mood, a concept in a certain book, a certain current event, or profound philosophy, specialized technology, try to make it so that readers can understand just by reading your article.

Keep It Short

Many people complain that people are now unwilling to read long articles and attribute this to one of the reasons for the decline of blogs. In fact, the real reason is that most blogs are written too poorly. If you can really post your “Jean-Christophe” or “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” on your blog, people will definitely read it carefully and spend a very long time reading it. Nevertheless, given the nature and positioning of blogs, keeping it short is necessary. Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought adventure activities.

If we try to think through our problems as much as possible, make it as easy as possible for readers to understand, and limit the theme, then the blogs written in this way can also be the shortest.

Whenever you finish writing a blog post, you must think about whether this article is concise enough? Can you explain the problem in shorter words? If the blog post has 4000 words, can it be compressed to 3000 words or less? If you feel confused, then you can return to those two primary questions: who is my article for, and why do I write this article?

For me personally, the ideal word count for a blog post is under 2500 words. If the word count is too much, consider whether the theme is not focused enough, whether it should be explained in separate articles, and whether it is too verbose.

One benefit of keeping it short is that it forces us to control the quality of the article so that it has clear goals, clear structure, sufficient arguments, and clear conclusions. Of course, the incidental result is that it makes reading pleasant for readers.

Formatting

Some blog posts are very long, but there is not a single subtitle throughout, and there is also a lack of necessary transitions or logical connections between paragraphs, which is very bad.

To make the article short and clear, it is necessary to remove unnecessary water and keep the backbone content. To allow readers to read and understand the article quickly, efforts should be made to format the article.

So-called formatting means making the article structure clear in content and form. Before writing, you should plan your outline, clarify the points you want to express, the arguments you want to provide, and the conclusions you will finally propose. A formatted article allows people to quickly grasp the main idea of the article through subtitles at a glance.

Some advanced requirements are to maintain a certain logical connection between each section, and the beginning of each section should summarize the main intention or viewpoint of that section as much as possible. Also, a simple conclusion should be provided in the last section.

Avoid Grammatical Errors

Finally, let’s discuss specific writing issues. Whether writing papers, essays, or blog posts, the most basic virtue is to avoid grammatical errors. Writing reflects the person, and the article is the author’s facade. This goes without saying. An article full of typos and sick sentences is torture for readers and embarrassment for the author.

Although this is a basic common sense, it is ignored by many people. Let me say a few words off-topic. When we get rid of middle school teachers, many people are used to throwing away what middle school teachers taught us, especially Chinese teachers. In fact, as we grow older, we may increasingly understand that many things taught in middle school are what the previous generation believed to be the most useful and valuable things for children. It’s just that the “alienation” of learning and indoctrination without giving reasons caused children’s disgust or rebellion.

In reading comprehension training, we were repeatedly asked to summarize the central idea, structure, arguments, and writing techniques of the article. In composition class, we were repeatedly warned not to have sick sentences and typos. What middle school Chinese teachers taught us is basically these two most important skills: one is how to read, and the other is how to write.

However, many people, once they get to university, put these things aside, thinking that these things are “middle school things”, “things used for exams”, not “things of the free university”, “things really used for scholarship”. This leads many people, even if they become professors and doctoral supervisors, to still be used to looking for chapters and sentences when reading, looking for sentences or paragraphs that touch them, rather than summarizing the central idea, arguments, or evidence of the article. Reading is to find echoes of one’s existing ideas, not to figure out the ideas of the text itself. The resulting writing style is that they don’t pay attention to argumentation and structure at all, and use quotations of famous sayings to replace argumentation. I have discussed both of the above two problems in “How to Do Philosophy”², so I won’t repeat them.

In view of this, I strongly recommend that after writing a blog post, read it carefully at least once. At the basic level, correct basic grammatical errors. At the advanced level, optimize the writing to make the tone smooth and the logic coherent. The ultimate goal is for pleasant reading.

Conclusion

Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought exercise tools. The biggest beneficiary of blogging must be the author himself, incidentally having publicity. To this end, first clarify the writing goals, second grasp the writing motivation, and on the basis of the above two most important issues, handle several other secondary issues well.

Perhaps many people find that these discussions are equally applicable to writing in a general sense. Indeed, writing reflects the person, whether for blogs or papers.

Below are some key points:

1. Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought exercise tools.
2. The biggest beneficiary of blogs must be the author himself, incidentally benefiting the public.
3. If a blog is well written, it will definitely benefit the public, and good blogs start from one’s own thinking and life, but are oriented towards readers.
4. It’s best to write about issues that you haven’t fully thought through yet, rather than writing about things you completely understand.
5. To maintain motivation, the biggest beneficiary of the blog must be the author himself, incidentally useful to others.
6. To save the author’s and readers’ time, blogs should be as short as possible.
7. Discuss completely, and be sure to make it easy for readers to understand from the current article alone.³
8. Avoiding grammatical errors is the most basic virtue of writing.

In fact, there are many ways to backup Ghost, besides the one we have described in the past using SFTP, there are some others , but these methods are really slow in transferring and backing up the full amount each time, compared to using Git, which is more elegant because it uses incremental backups and is extremely fast at copying! It’s a little tedious to set up a Git environment, but it’s a one-off.

Prepare the deployment files

We need to deploy a local Dockerfile instead of letting fly.io pull the official image automatically.

1.Go to Github and download the official image. Download both of two files:

• docker-entrypoint.sh

• Dockerfile

  2.Open a terminal and run

mkdir blog

3.Copy the above two files to the blog folder, which is located under /Users/<ComputerUserName>/blog, your user folder.

4.Run

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "<GithubEmail>"

Press enter continuously. Follow the prompts to see where the key is saved. Here is my example.

 ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "<GithubEmail>"
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/<ComputerUserName>/.ssh/id_rsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /Users/<ComputerUserName>/.ssh/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /Users/<ComputerUserName>/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
The key fingerprint is:
SHA256:siVmLMku/3BAem2ruRt44dEgdQsUBrKSAztU6HT1FIs k<GithubEmail>
The key's randomart image is:
+---[RSA 3072]----+
|o.++Bo.o.        |
|oB + o+..        |
|X o oE.o         |
|.+ = *           |
|  . O X S        |
|   = O *         |
|  o * +          |
|   + *           |
|    *+.          |
+----[SHA256]-----+

Go to the file /Users/<ComputerUserName>/.ssh/ and copy the id_rsa and id_rsa.pub files to the blog folder.

Open id_rsa.pub with a text editor and add its contents to Github’s SSH keys.

5.Continue to run

nano auto_backup.sh

Then, put the following code

#! /bin/sh

cd /var/lib/ghost/content # Switch to the directory
git config --global init.defaultBranch master
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/lib/ghost/content
git config --global pull.rebase false
git pull # Pull the repository
git add . # Add all
git commit -m "auto backup" # Commit
git push --force # Force a commit

Add to it. Press CTRL+O to save; press CTRL+X to exit the nano editor.

6.Open the Dockerfile and edit a few places. I recommend opening the blog folder with vs code.

Find COPY docker-entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin, then, above it, paste the following code.

COPY id_rsa /root/.ssh/
COPY id_rsa.pub /root/.ssh/
COPY auto_backup.sh /usr/local/bin/auto_backup.sh

Find ENV GHOST_VERSION, then add the following code to the next line.

RUN apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y && apt-get install -y  git nano

7.Refer to previous post to prepare the fly.toml file. Note to remove

[build]
  image = "ghost:5"

8.This way, several local files that we use for deployment are ready, they are

• auto_backup.sh
• docker-entrypoint.sh
• Dockerfile
• fly.toml
• id_rsa
• id_rsa.pub

Deployment

Login:

flyctl auth login --email=<FlyMail> --password=<FlyPassword> --otp=<any letter>

Launch an app:

flyctl launch --image=Decokerfile --name=<AppName> -r hkg --no-deploy

Follow the prompts and press y to continue.

Create a volume:

flyctl volumes create data -r hkg --no-encryption --size 1

Deploy.

flyctl deploy

NOTE: If you have installed Ghost in the standard way, you should simply deploy.

Initialize Ghost

Refer to previous post.

Backup

1.Verify the github connection

ssh git@github.com

Get the successfully prompt, that’s it.

2.Initialize Git, run

cd /var/lib/ghost/content
git init
git config --global user.name "<GithubUsername>"
git config --global user.email <GithubMail>
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/lib/ghost/content
git remote add origin git@github.com:<GithubUsername>/<YourRepo>.git
git add .
git commit -m "auto backup"
git push -u origin master --force

Check for changes to the contents of the Github repository.

If there is an error, then run

cd /var/lib/ghost/
rm -rf content

It will prompt its BUSY, don’t worry about it, it’s already cleared.

After that, try to initialize Git again.

Restore

Assuming you have a fresh install of Ghost, you need to restore an existing backup in Github.

Unlike a backup, we need to pull rather than push the contents from Github.

rm -rf /var/lib/ghost/content
cd /var/lib/ghost/content
git init
git config --global user.name "<GithubUsername>"
git config --global user.email <GithubMail>
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/lib/ghost/content
git pull --force git@github.com:<GithubUsername>/<YourRepo>.git

If the repository is brand new, i.e. you copied your files directly into it but haven’t connected to the remote repository yet, you may be prompted to run

git push --set-upstream origin master

Just execute the action.

Daily back up

First, give the automatic backup script execution privileges to, in ssh console run

chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/auto_backup.sh

Then, in local machine, run the following command

flyctl auth login --email=<FlyMail> --password=<FlyPassword> --otp=<any letter>
flyctl ssh console
sh /usr/local/bin/auto_backup.sh

You can write a script to automatically log into console and run it from local machine terminal

nano fly.sh

Paste the following code into it

cd blog
flyctl auth login --email=<FlyMail> --password=<FlyPassword> --otp=<any letter>
flyctl ssh console

Save and exit, then run

chmod a+x fly.sh

Put it into an aspect, like the desktop. To use it, drag it to the terminal, press enter, and it will go directly to the console.

Pre-requisites

1. To register for a fly.io account,install flyctl command line, you need a credit card. (required)
2. be familiar with basic git commands. (not required)
3. Understand fly.io’s pricing. (not required)
4. Understand Mailgun. (not required)

Install the command line

curl -L https://fly.io/install.sh | sh

For Windows，run

iwr https://fly.io/install.ps1 -useb | iex

Install Ghost

The following command is common on Linux and Mac.

Open a terminal and execute.

mkdir blog #Create a directory
cd blog #Enter this directory
flyctl auth login #Log in, then the browser will pop up the login session
flyctl launch --image=ghost:5 -r hkg --name=<AppName> --no-deploy

An explanation of the last command:

• The docker image used is ghost:5, indicating that the 5.x major version will be updated automatically on every deployment, and if you intend to check a specific version, such as 5.36.0, then replace 5 with it. The official image is here.

• - r hkg means that the node of the selected server is Hong Kong (the node closest to us). The region code of fly.io is here.

• --name=<AppName> means the name of the created app, replace <AppName> with your own, and note that the default URL generated in the future is <AppName>.fly.dev, so please take a unique name.

• --no-deploy means don’t deploy for now.

This will create a fly.toml file in the blog directory. Open it with a text editor and overwrite it with the following code.

app = "<AppName>"
kill_signal = "SIGINT"
kill_timeout = 5
processes = []

[build]
  image = "ghost:5"

[env]
  url = "https://<AppName>.fly.dev"
  database__client = "sqlite3"
  database__connection__filename = "content/data/ghost.db"
  database__debug = "false"
  database__useNullAsDefault = "true"
  mail__from = "noreply@example.com"
  mail__options__auth__pass = "<YourMailgunPassword>"
  mail__options__auth__user = "postmaster@example.com"
  mail__options__host = "smtp.mailgun.org"
  mail__options__port = "465"
  mail__transport = "SMTP"

[experimental]
  auto_rollback = true

[mounts]
  destination = "/var/lib/ghost/content"
  source = "data"

[[services]]
  http_checks = []
  internal_port = 2368
  processes = ["app"]
  protocol = "tcp"
  script_checks = []
  [services.concurrency]
    hard_limit = 25
    soft_limit = 20
    type = "connections"

  [[services.ports]]
    force_https = true
    handlers = ["http"]
    port = 80

  [[services.ports]]
    handlers = ["tls", "http"]
    port = 443

    [services.ports.http_options.response.headers]
      Referrer-Policy = "strict-origin"
      Strict-Transport-Security = "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload"
      X-Content-Type-Options = "nosniff"
      X-Frame-Options = "SAMEORIGIN"
      x-xss-protection = "1; mode=block"
      Permissions-Policy = "camera=(), microphone=(), geolocation=(), browsing-topics=()"

  [[services.tcp_checks]]
    grace_period = "1s"
    interval = "15s"
    restart_limit = 0
    timeout = "2s"

Please replace <AppName> with your own, and, if you don’t use Mailgun, please remove all code starting with mail__ below [env].

The [services.ports.http_options.response.headers] section is optional and is used to set the http header. You can search item by item, Strict-Transport-Security, for example, to determine if you want to add them. After the deployment, you may go to the http header test site.

When you are done checking, save and close the fly.toml file. Then go back to the terminal and continue executing.

  flyctl volumes create data -r hkg --no-encryption --size 1 # Create a volume of size 1Gb with region hkg and no encryption (helps improve performance). The free amount is 3GB in total.
  flyctl deploy #deploy

Wait a few moments, the deployment is successful! It will show successful.

Initialize Ghost

Visit

https://<AppName>.fly.dev/ghost/

to initialize ghost. After this, you are free to use ghost to publish content. Binding domain names, backing up and restoring data are optional operations.

Bind the domain name

Run

  flyctl ips list

to see the IP address of your app. Then create A records for ipv4 and AAAA records for ipv6 on your DNS server, pointing to your domain name example.com (required). Create CNAME, <AppName>.fly.dev, pointing to your www.example.com (not required). Also known as

Note: Before binding the domain name, make sure to create the DNS records correctly.

Then run

flyctl certs create example.com
flyctl certs create www.example.com

wait a moment and run

flyctl certs check example.com
flyctl certs check www.example.com

to check the certificate enactment, which usually takes about a minute or two as long as the DNS advance configuration is correct. Run

flyctl ips list

to check the certificate issuance status.

Note: Don’t install certificates repeatedly because there is a limit, only 5 certificates can be issued every 7 days. It is recommended to bind them after debugging the app.

Redeploy

Notice that in the fly.toml,

[env]
  url = "https://<AppName>.fly.dev"

is the address assigned by fly.io, and if you click on the home page title of the ghost site, it will redirect to this address, so when you bind your own domain, change it to

[env]
  url = "https://example.com"

Save and close, then run flyctl deploy.

Back up and restore

Every time in the future you need to go into your local configuration directory to use flyctl correctly.

Method 1: Use SFTP to bacup Ghost

The advantage is that no complicated configuration is needed, but the copy speed is slow.

Back up

First login (assuming you need to back up later).

cd blog
flyctl auth login

Then run

flyctl ssh sftp shell -r -a <AppName>

When it succeeds, it will show >> (red), then run

get /var/lib/ghost/content/

This will backup the whole site data, including themes, images, videos, articles, etc. It’s very slow, please be patient.

You can also backup only images and videos by running

get /var/lib/ghost/content/images/
get /var/lib/ghost/content/media/

This will generate a content.zip, or, images.zip and media.zip in the blog directory. back them up elsewhere, or name them content-YYYY-MM-DD.zip.

Restore

Now suppose you reinstall a new ghost, assuming it is still on fly.io, then the installation directory will remain as /var/lib/ghost/content/. If you install ghost somewhere else in the future, like on AWS, make sure you create this directory instead of the usual tutorial /var/www/ghost/content/, otherwise you will have trouble recovering your data by first method.

Still run

cd blog
flyctl auth login
flyctl ssh sftp shell -r -a <AppName>

Then run

put content.zip /var/lib/ghost/content.zip

After success, create a new tab in the terminal and run

flyctl ssh console

again, in ssh, run

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install unzip

to install unzip. Then run

cd /var/lib/ghost/
unzip content.zip

It will overwrite the content folder directly.

To verify that the unzip was successful, run

cd /var/lib/ghost/content/images/
ls #List all the files in the current folder

to see if there is any new data.

To fix permissions, run

chown -R node:node /var/lib/ghost/content/

Note: Possible scenario, can’t overwrite the content folder correctly, then try to backup only /var/lib/ghost/content/images/ and /var/lib/ghost/content/media/ instead. At this point run

put images.zip /var/lib/ghost/content/images.zip
put media.zip /var/lib/ghost/content/media.zip

rm -rf /var/lib/ghost/content/images/
rm -rf var/lib/ghost/content/media/

unzip /var/lib/ghost/content/images.zip
unzip /var/lib/ghost/content/media.zip

this may break the permissions of the content folder, so run

ls -l /var/lib/ghost/content/

to check the user and permissions of the images and media folders, if their permissions belong to root, then you can’t upload images and videos anymore, then run

chown -R node:node /var/lib/ghost/content/
chown -R node:node /var/lib/ghost/content/images/
chown -R node:node /var/lib/ghost/content/media/

to fix it, note that node is the ghost user in the fly.io case, depending on the result of the ls -l /var/lib/ghost/content/ command,, in any case make sure that the user of the images and media folders is the same as the user of the other files under /content/.

Method 2: Use Github to backup Ghost

The advantage is that it is fast to replicate data, but the disadvantage is that the installation and configuration is relatively complicated.

Back up

1. Login and enter ssh

cd blog
flyctl auth login
flyctl ssh console

2. Install git

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install git

3. Create a private (recommended) repository on the github web side , assuming it is called <YourRepository>.

4. Generate the key

ssh-keygen -t rsa -C "<GithubEmail>" # Press the Enter key continuously

5. Terminal new tab, run

flyctl ssh sftp shell -r -a <AppName>
get /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Go back to the blog folder and find the id_rsa.pub file, open it with a text editor, and copy the key from it. Add it to setting→SSH and GPG keys→SSH keys in github and save it.

Test the connection with github

ssh git@github.com

Pay attention to the word successful.

6. Initialize the content git

cd /var/lib/ghost/content/
git init
git config --global user.name "<GithubUsername>"
git config --global user.email <GithubEmail>
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/lib/ghost/content
git remote add origin git@github.com:<GithubUsername>/<YourRepository>.git
git add .
git commit -m "auto backup"
git push -u origin master --force

Make sure you successfully push to github.

7. Create a new script

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install nano
cd /var/lib/ghost/content/
nano auto_run.sh

Copy the following code into auto_run.sh

#! /bin/sh

cd /var/lib/ghost/content # Switch to the directory
git config --global init.defaultBranch master
git config --global --add safe.directory /var/lib/ghost/content
git pull # Pull the repository
git add . # Add a staging
git commit -m "auto backup" # Commit
git push --force

Press ctrl+O followed by enter to write; press ctrl+x to exit nano.

Give the file permission to run

chmod a+x auto_run.sh

Later, after logging into ssh, you can directly run

sh /var/lib/ghost/content/auto_run.sh

to execute a new push.

Restore

1. Log in to shh, reinstall git and add the key without further ado.

2. Empty the content folder

cd /var/lib/ghost/
rm -rf content

It will return that the folder can’t be deleted because its busy, it doesn’t matter, it has been emptied, but not deleted.

3. Initialize the git in the content file and force a pull

cd /var/lib/ghost/content/
git init
git config --global user.name "<GithubUsername>"
git config --global user.email <GithubEmail>
git pull --force git@github.com:<GithubUsername>/<YourRepository>.git

4. Verify that the pull was successful

ls

5. Make sure the data is successfully pulled, then restart the app

fly apps restart <AppName>

As of now, restarting or redeploying will clear the installed environment and software, but will not delete the ghost data.

6. It is really difficult to run cron in docker, so don’t try it. In a normal virtual machine, you can set up cron to run at regular intervals

sh /var/lib/ghost/content/auto_run.sh