Upon arriving in the Netherlands, there was a moment when I felt disoriented.
Living in the free world, I could write political commentary again, but I found no interest in it.
You opponents are too insignificant.
True, they reign supreme, wielding immense power. In terms of the authority to give life and death, no one in the world can match them.
But what of it?
They are too small. Their character is despicable and shameless, their insight crude and shallow, their actions perverse and stubborn. They are even inferior to shoolchildren, yet they hold the reins of a nation.
Tangling with them seems pointless to me.
And this realization of the opponent’s insignificance is not new to me.
Around the Spring Festival, I read Inoue Takehiko’s manga “Vagabond”.
A line in it reminded me:
Without me, you would have no one to rebel against.
It’s about Musashi’s father, who appears in his dreams as a childhood nightmare, saying this to him.
Insignificant as they are, these things have entangled with us for half our lives.
Your life’s rebellion has been a struggle against them.
Without them, who are you? What should you do?
When the day comes that you cast all worries behind and are truly unbound, where will you go?
The weight of freedom is the weight of morality.
Since finishing “Vagabond” over the new year, a concept has lingered in my mind, refusing to leave.
Not because it’s novel, but because it encapsulates my part thirty-plus years of life—a pursuit of the sublime.
Inoue’s depth of thought naturally doesn’t compare to philosophers like Kant, but he uses the art form of manga to concretely depict this pursuit of the sublime.
Invincible under the sun.
Invincible…it’s merely a word.
All martial arts in the world ultimately boil down to philosophy.
This isn’t because philosophy has some magical effect that can manipulate physical laws.
Rather, it’s that the authors, whether Inoue’s swordsmanship or Jin Yong’s martial arts, are writing their own life philosophies.
And it’s not just them, but all thinkers and literary figures throughout history.
Recently, I asked ChatGPT who the most profound Chinese thinker of the past century was.
It told me Lu Xun, which greatly disappointed and dissaftisfied me.
Because, in my view, compared to the greats of all time, Lu Xun is really insignificant.
If we were to compare the realms of thought to martial arts:
Thinkers like Kant and Dostoevsky, who transcend their era, could be considered the “Five Greats”;
A wise figure of an era like Fukuzawa Yukichi could be likened to the “Seven Masters of Quanzhen”;
Those like Lu Xun, whose vision is limited and unclear even within their era, are only on par with the “Seven Freaks of Jiangnan”;
And those like Jin Yong and Liu Cixin, whose works are fanciful but lack depth of thought, could just barely be considered the “Four Ghosts of the Yellow River”.
What strikes me is that the West had great thinkers like Rousseau and Kant three hundred years ago; yet three hundred years later, when it comes to profound and influential thinkers, China only has Lu Xun.
Quite boring.
Go study philosophy in your free time, the path of wisdom.
It reminds me of a passage I randomly read in “The Legend of the Condor Heroes”, where the Old Naughty discusses martial arts:
There are many things to play with in this world, but after a while, they lose their taste. Only martial arts becomes more interesting the more you play with it.
Philosophy is the same.
The pursuit of truth is endless.