Logic & Methods · Cognition & Learning

Thought: the highest realm

One thought arises: myriad rivers and mountains, prosperity through countless ages

One thought ceases: seas become fields, loss through eternity

In this world, a person’s birth has already determined their level in society. These barriers between levels were formed by the long operation of human social order. Thus the level into which the individual self is born cannot be crossed, but a breakthrough between levels can be made through thought: using logical thinking to contemplate the worldly order of the “human realm” and the great natural law of “Heaven’s Way.” From the perspective of the unity of “humanity” and “heaven,” the universe, heaven and earth, and all things exist full of value and meaning. Through logical thought, we can not only discover this value and meaning through our own effort and gain powerful resources of spiritual motivation; more importantly, we must realize this value and meaning in human society, seeking to construct a reasonable political and cultural order consistent with the great law of “Heaven’s Way.” Thus, whether grounded in the essence of “Heaven’s Way” or the order of “human relationships,” there is every reason to encourage people living in the secular world to “learn below and reach above,” hoping they will devote themselves to moral practices of “benevolence” and “righteousness,” to realize the life’s charge and ultimate value necessarily entrusted to human life as “Heaven’s mandate” flows down into it.

Contemplate through thought the worldly order of the “human realm” and the great natural law of “Heaven’s Way.” From the perspective of the unity of “humanity” and “heaven,” the universe, heaven and earth, and all things exist full of value and meaning. Through logical thought, we can not only discover this value and meaning through our own effort and gain powerful resources of spiritual motivation; more importantly, we must realize this value and meaning in human society, seeking to construct a reasonable political and cultural order consistent with the great law of “Heaven’s Way.” Thus, whether grounded in the essence of “Heaven’s Way” or the order of “human relationships,” there is every reason to encourage people living in the secular world to “learn below and reach above,” hoping they will devote themselves to moral practices of “benevolence” and “righteousness,” to realize the life’s charge and ultimate value necessarily entrusted to human life as “Heaven’s mandate” flows down into it.

Heaven’s Way and Sagely Virtue

Heaven gives birth to all things through yang and brings them to completion through yin. Giving birth is benevolence; completion is righteousness. Thus the sage in a position of authority nurtures all things with benevolence and sets all people right with righteousness. When Heaven’s Way operates, all things follow it; when sagely virtue is cultivated, all people are transformed. Such great harmony and transformation, whose traces cannot be seen and whose workings no one knows, are called divine. Thus the multitudes under heaven have their root in one person. Can the Way be far away? Can its methods be numerous?

Tongshu, Chapter 11, “Following and Transformation”—Zhou Dunyi

Worldly rules

Money, a tool of the mortal world, is a tool for cooperation that you neither bring at birth nor take at death

Power, a tool of rule, is a management tool affecting the strength and scope of control

Reputation, a tool of word of mouth, is a calling card that lets you move through society’s various strata

As Zhou Dunyi writes in Tongshu, Chapter 11, “Following and Transformation”: “Thus the multitudes under heaven have their root in one person.” From this we can realize that the secular world is not complicated; it all comes down to human nature. Human nature is “power and status, money, material things,” which ordinary worldly people find difficult to escape. We therefore need to understand and accommodate human nature fully.

Concentration Can Give Rise to Insight

● Know where to stop, then you can be settled; settled, you can be still; still, you can be at ease; at ease, you can deliberate; deliberating, you can attain.

● Stillness gives rise to concentration, concentration to insight, insight to wisdom.

● Preserve, break, establish: the steadiest upward spiral

Four things in life

Love family, build a career, establish yourself, build alliances

● Love family

○ Quietly give your all to family; in return, they share your pressure. Within family, speak only of love, with no need to argue reason.

● Build a career

○ Whether the career goes smoothly or not, changes or not, simply invest persistently with the fullest confidence. Success and failure are both results; do not fear failure, and do not give up.

● Establish yourself

○ Persist in improving yourself. In family or career, simply keep a pure heart, maintain a progressive, optimistic attitude, and continually improve yourself.

● Build alliances

○ Set aside interests while using interests to build relationships. Seek resonance of values and union. Setting aside interests allows alliances to develop longer without being disrupted by interests; using interests to build relationships is also a requirement for results, an expression of the alliance’s value.

Everyone’s birth is accidental; death is inevitable. Whether the worldly experience of an entire life is rich depends on one’s worldview and values. People differ tremendously: different cultures, customs, and values shape each person’s social attributes. In the collisions these differences produce, only great love brings unity. These small records, cultivating oneself and guiding others, should be meritorious work. At least they can influence those nearby. This, too, is a kind of love—not giving, not tolerance, not pity, but guidance toward the light.

Perhaps these contents can be regarded as a kind of overarching design for being human.

Logic

Aspiration, Way, framework, technique, tools, momentum, presentation, operation

Aspiration

Aspiration is original intention, the first stirring of the heart: choosing something to do for a lifetime and using all one’s energy to realize it. I think finding such a goal myself would certainly be fortunate. As the title suggests, choosing what kind of person to be matters more than choosing what kind of thing to do. Once chosen, it can calm my restlessness and let me devote myself in the right direction. I may have different experiences along this road, but if my ultimate goal is certain, I know what I should not do. I think knowing what not to do matters more than knowing what to do, because external factors force certain choices. The ultimate goal becomes my standard of judgment: what accords with it can be done; what does not cannot.

The Way

The Way is patterns and natural laws. In one’s industry, grasp the entire sector’s connections and understand its development history, to master its patterns, discover trends, and find present opportunities.

Framework

Framework is guiding principles, rules, institutions, and ideas. After grasping an industry’s structure, gaps and opportunities call for one’s own logic to seize opportunities, establish a system, increase competitiveness, and make achievements in the industry.

Technique

Technique is methods and practical operation. Within one’s system, seek efficiency and low cost in methods and practice, continually improving them, focusing not only on results but on how to keep improving.

Tools

Tools provide assistance. Draw more on tools’ power to accomplish more with less effort. Also cultivate an outsourcing mindset: use professionals for professional work, take responsibility for target results, and achieve them quickly.

Momentum

Momentum is trends and direction. With aspiration and an understanding of Way, framework, technique, and tools, the most important thing is continually watching industry trends develop.

Presentation

Presentation is appearance, the external. It involves five-senses marketing, packaging oneself and one’s company. Whether addressing customers or partners, attend to presentation to increase trust and dispel doubts.

Operation

Operation means operations, luck, opportunities, and a helpful person’s small act of assistance. This requires accumulating connections and resources.

Differences between people,

Appear to be differences in wealth, but are actually differences in blessings;

Appear to be differences in connections, but are actually differences in conduct;

Appear to be differences in bearing, but are actually differences in refinement;

Appear to be differences in looks, but are actually differences in cultivation;

People appear much alike, yet their inner realms differ greatly.

Cultivating the heart exceeds everything! Cultivation wins everything!

Humanity’s most important mode of thought is logic. Today’s rapid technological development results from human logical thinking being executable by computers. Giving human logical thinking to computers to execute involves logic completed jointly by many programmers. Programmers write logical thinking; computers carry and execute it. Artificial intelligence is composed of vast logical systems. Human values also form through viewpoints argued by different logical ways of thinking. Thus the era of strong artificial intelligence should mean the sum of humanity’s systems of viewpoint logic allowing computers to judge the relative prevalence of different viewpoints.

The Franklin effect: companionship, care, and longing—the sum of what one gives to a person

The halo effect: a distinctive personality is more charming than Mr. Perfect

The Romeo and Juliet effect: difficult love is stronger than smooth-sailing love

The Barnum effect: opposition is more likely than praise to earn someone the name of confidant

The suspension bridge effect

The Rosenthal effect

A work manual can be thick while actual users still cannot find a method. Purpose, principles, and requirements exist, but a specific problem still has no starting point. Such material describes how we want work to look without clarifying how it gets done.

I prefer putting actual tasks first. Run one task through, see where judgment is needed, where it stalls, and what material must be prepared. Retain the process and result, then organize reusable steps. The manual becomes clearer with work; work need not wait for the entire manual.

Useful records distinguish fixed steps from judgment points. Under which conditions can one follow directly, when should one ask again, and who confirms exceptions? These often help newcomers more than elegant principles. Reuse depends on knowing which problems a method fits, not merely remembering actions.

A new role or process may need a brief explanation first; that is fine. After use, add omissions and changes, updating material with work. A manual need not prove the author knows much; it needs to spare the next person guesswork and enable checkable results.

An explanation whose layers fit together without obvious flaws easily creates certainty. It connects phenomena, lays out the future, and may even answer most follow-up questions. Yet however orderly its logical connections, we still need to know whether the initial material is true and key conditions exist.

I value explaining things clearly, and want to ask myself: am I proving a judgment or organizing an account people can easily believe? They can look similar. Making it hard to find faults quickly may show well-prepared expression; a judgment that must bear real consequences needs more kinds of testing.

When data is lacking, more explanation may not fill the gap. A more valuable action may be stating exactly what is missing and separating what provisionally holds from what remains to be confirmed. Being clear about what we do not know lets discussion continue without covering it with a stronger tone.

For a method to go far, it should allow reality to adjust it. When results differ from expectations, I need first to check the original conditions and inferences, rather than immediately adding another explanatory layer that makes every outcome appear anticipated. Logic deserves respect; accepting correction by facts is also a requirement of logic.

When news comes from someone familiar or was once confirmed, we easily carry it into new judgments. Yet circumstances and people change. Resources that really existed before may no longer be available; arrangements viable then may now have different conditions. The message has not changed, but what it refers to has.

Besides a source, information should therefore have a date and status. Who confirmed it directly, how far confirmation went, and which changed conditions require asking again all affect its present usefulness. Secondhand information is not inherently worthless, but every layer of transmission adds distance needing explanation.

Sometimes communication yields no result for a long time not because people are unwilling, but because everyone holds a version from a different time. Someone still discusses the original intention, someone has changed plans, and someone does not know about the change. Aligning information first gets closer to the problem than hastily judging who lacks initiative.

I hope the information I value can update with facts, rather than remain valid forever because it was once confirmed. Rechecking takes time, but may prevent greater misjudgment. Seriously asking “Is it still this way now?” returns familiar information to the present and leaves experience an opening for renewal.

Making complex things clear is valuable work. A diagram or sentence can quickly reveal structure and focus scattered discussion. But the more concise the expression, the more we must know what was omitted. The omitted parts may be details, or precisely the conditions on which the result depends.

I like laying out material first, then gradually classifying, compressing, and distilling it. This path matters because simplicity has passed through an understanding of complexity. Rushing to seek an essence before fully unfolding the material may produce merely a memorable saying. It helps memory, but not necessarily judgment.

Good simplification should show where further expansion is needed. Confirmed facts, provisional conditions for discussion, and changes requiring recalculation can all have openings beside the concise structure. After understanding the main thread, others can still find questions, rather than merely accept an answer.

I want to treat a diagram as the beginning of understanding, not the end of discussion. If a structure cannot accommodate exceptions, it may simply have hidden them. The more concise an expression, the more it deserves the question: does it still hold in another setting? Simplicity that withstands being unfolded again comes closer to the ease of understanding.

Writing a theory with complete concepts and structure does not yet mean knowing how to perform each step. Who takes a theoretical role in concrete matters, and what conditions a seemingly smooth theoretical connection requires in practice—these questions need unfolding again.

While writing books, adjusting systems, and drawing interfaces, I repeatedly worked on these together. What deserves keeping is their ability to return to one another. If a concrete arrangement reveals an overly broad concept, return to subdivide it; if a step will not connect, reexamine the original relationship. Application raises questions, and theory should allow those questions in.

This differs from diligently following a set account. Sometimes failure to accomplish something reflects missing abilities or resources; sometimes the difficulty exposes conditions the method did not explain. A finished theory cannot justify attributing every obstacle to implementers. Theory must keep answering what help it offers within what scope.

After practice, summaries should retain more than successful examples. Revised definitions, unexplained phenomena, and parts requiring separate judgment also deserve recording. Keeping a system open to modification connects it continually to concrete matters, instead of preserving an appearance of completeness by leaving problems to its users.

First define the problem, then unpack variables, causality, and verifiable steps.

Methods should be reusable in different situations and open to revision by new facts.

If a judgment has no conditions for change, more facts may serve only to defend it.

When things go well, I say I foresaw it; when blocked, that more waiting is needed. Support proves direction correct; no support proves others failed to understand. If every outcome confirms the original judgment, what I say may no longer be testable.

Before action, I want to write one more thing: what I currently believe, why, and what is missing; what outcome would make me narrow, pause, or change the conclusion. Conditions need specificity and enough time for verification. If external circumstances genuinely change, conditions may be adjusted, but retain the reasons.

This exposes where I may be wrong and tells others how to discuss matters with me. Willingness to change cannot be assessed only by professed humility, but by whether someone can identify a new fact that would truly change them.