As a friend pointed out in my other article on the Swiss depression, the Swiss education system is not designed to nurture academia solely, which I might have implied there. That is a valuable suggestion to me, and he was correct, although that wasn’t what I meant, I wrote it insufficiently that there was indeed this implicature. But instead of editing it to make it clearer, I think that topic deserves another article on the specific subtopic of morality and legislation.

What I wanted to say then, instead of the problem of education, is actually the situation where a society sets the bar of morality too high as if it were legislation. This is something that I used to think would be good to the human soul: when the bare-minimum legislation is guaranteed, a higher collective morality is a sign of a progressive (a modifier that I used to think was positive, now neutral, if not frowned upon) and better society, because then the morality is motivated by a sense of voluntary integrety. I still think highly about morality, but only when it is followed voluntarily on the microcosmic scale. If people actually think of morality as if it were set in stone, then the de facto effect is that the moral rules are kept with the same standard of legislation, and it can backfire – people can be depressed when they don’t achieve the high moral standard as what the society expects.

The problem is not morality, but the scale of its rigidity. A trite but sufficient metapher is eating fruit – a good amount of it is good for heath, but way too much or way too prescriptive would cause other problems. The question to be asked is then: how much is good enough?

A higher moral standard can also trigger a high standard on mannerism, and thus hinder social interaction, because socializing causes awkwardness, faux pas, and slips of the tongue. A dynamic socializing process is to socialize, err, and reflect. But if the standard is high enough, then quitting the process once for all is the safest bet.

Again, my opinion on Switzerland doesn’t mean I don’t approve of this society. On the contrary, I repect it very much. But I see there are some problems in the society that are causing it harm, namely the mental well-being issue that isn’t caused by material scarcity, and thus cannot be solved by material abundance.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the angels are “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall,” and this is what I think a society should tolerant. Above the bar of legislation, everybody has the freedom to fall, albeit the choice of not falling is what makes people grow.

On the other extreme, if the morality is not only considered legislation, but also made as legislation, then it produces a corrupted society, which has many examples in the history worldwide.

I am very happy to have talked to a friend yesterday who brought up to me the “chà bù duō (CBD)” concept in Chinese. This is something I often think about as well. Though most of the time the word being mentioned is used to make fun of the Chinese nonchalance with a negative tone, this is one of the central concepts that make up of the Chinese spirit. It is one of the mental instruments that the Chinese use in either good or bad ways. 

If you think about CBD, it shares some meanings with the Taoist philosophy of qí wù (齐物), the equality of things. Zhuangzi advocates the identicalness of all being, either material or spiritual. Much like the monism in western philosophy, but with a big difference that Zhuangzi doesn’t establish a hierarchy among beings despite that they are identical in nature, but promotes the essential equality on all fronts. This by no way means equality in a social distribution manner (social status, wealth – the superficial equality), but epistemologically. This means, for example, a corrupted environment can be identical to a paradisal one from a Taoist perspective, so that a Taoist is able to live in it without being currupted, and takes action in it. (Many interpretations believe Zhuangzi doesn’t promote action-taking, as in “wú wéi”, but I take on the school of thought that argues wú wéi doesn’t avoid action.)

Zhuangzi believes a truely free spirit is xiāo yáo – which doesn’t have a counterpart in English. It is a status of being, living with the disturbance of life but happy and carefree at the same time. As opposed to the buddhist carefree, which is achieved by reclusion and meditaion, xiāo yáo encourage the spirits to face the complexity of the social reality and take action, but remaining a wholesome mind at the same time. A person who achieves xiāo yáo can then live and act in any environment with a noble heart that is incorruptable. 

But Taoism is also an ‘academic’ philosphy, which means its multilayered meaning is only taught at institutions, grabbed by even fewer who are interested in this school of thought and make their efforts. The classical written system is historically removed from the common people, leaving them unable to read with the knowledge of spoken language. The written system is not only ideographic, but also with different syntax and lexicon from the spoken one, which means one cannot understand classical texts at all without a formal education. But after the emergence of Taoist religion based on the philosophy, many of its concepts start to spread out of the elite circle and be adopted into the common spoken language but with lesser meanings. 

Here I don’t mean CBD comes from Taoism, because I am in no way an expert in Chinese linguistics nor philosophy, nor have I done my research with historical evidence. But as a Chinese, the concept of qí wù, which I learned from school as a classical concept, and CBD, which is a prevalent mentality among the daily Chinese conversations, bear a lot of similarity. It is also possible that these two concepts cement each other bottem-up and top-down. 

The common usage of CBD in daily Chinese has nothing ontological but almost always about practicality. The Chinese society, through out its history, has almost always been an authoritarian one with clear social hierarchy and structures. With a huge population, the typical pyramid shape of classes, and the argrarian economy, a large part of the society consists of common people with predictable income and career paths (this doesn not mean stablility in any sense, but they are mostly aware of what at best they can receive and achieve; it is not strict immobility either, but upward mobility through imperial exams is extremely chancy compared to the population). It means they have to be ecnomical with their resources and use them with priorities in mind. CBD is often used in situations where the events in discussion are not important enough in their priority list, such as the color of their wall, which is the example that my friend shared with me. White and pink can be CBD, because the family might have more problems on their plate, and too little time and resources to spend. 

But CBD can also be about situations that seem very important to most people. The difference of life and death can also be said to be CBD, and in this case it is much more similar to qí wù in Taoism. The typical Chinese would take death as factual, and the emotion around it is more considered bēi (悲) than sadness. bēi is sadness in a much less performative manner but considered a human status that is throughout their course of lives. I often discuss death with my aging grandpa, who was not educated in his youth due to the revolutions. He would frequently tell me life and death are CBD. 

Admittedly, CBD is also abused in many professional settings. With the rapid modernisation of the Chinese society, a lot of work require accuracy instead of flexibility. CBD could also be used as excuses for subpar performance, which is one of the reasons for CBD’s bad reputation. 

I often think about why human suffer. I understand it concerning disasters: flood, famine, oppression, earthquake, born-disabilities. But in Switzerland I used to have no clue. I see suffering at a disproportionate level over social wealth and stability. People are taken care of by a well-designed society; they have rights and opportunities; there are high-quality materials for almost every hobby known in civilization. It seems to not make sense. Till this moment, I still don’t fully understand, but I have some thoughts.

John Adam once said that the purpose of their generation studying politics is for the next one flourish in art, science and truth*, though I probably paraphrased it considerably badly. From what I observed, Switzerland is indeed a place that has realized those visions. The education system is meticulously orchastrated to facilitate all kinds of talents and dreams. It’s not an exaggeration here that no matter what a kid wants to become, there is an established path to achieve that. There aren’t too many political complexities to disturb their minds, and when there are, there are also outlets for the grievances.

At this point, I’ve already unfolded one of my hypotheses: as a counter reality to what that famous person said in the beginning of this paragraph, the young in Switzerland is left only with the possibility of pursuing art, science and truth. But the problem is, not everybody is talented in this way. Just to be clear, firstly, I don’t mean metaphysics, science, and art are higher than other human pursuits; and secondly, I don’t think a world overloaded with pursuits is a good society. What I think is, however, in a complex society, there are positions for all forces, and this condition somehow is better for individual mental health. Imagine in a well-fledge film, there are many different ideologies, and some are inexcusably evil, but there are counter forces that hold the balance. Those dark sides are not some abstract mysterious force from the universe, they are just misplaced human pursuits. The bottom line in this kind of society is the law, which guarantees that these pursuits don’t cause disasters. Above that, the chaos is to some extent tolerated. This kind of society is dynamic, because there are frequent side-flipping, and that is also tolerated. But in a highly conditioned society, there are far higher constraints above the law that regulates human behavior, and those that fail to meet the bar gets dismissed easily. In other words, human pursuits are judged with a high standard, and human traits as well. This is not to say there are punishment for these subpar pursuits and traits, but they are commonly regarded as not good enough. In contrast, in a complex society, as long as the bare minimum is met, there isn’t a lot of competition in behaving and living in a perfect manner.

Besides, people here don’t have a lot to fight for compared to the rest of the world. Of course, there are universal ones like environmental causes, but that aside. Bad news for this good news is people here watch the world burn but can not do much about it. Imagine living in an enclave of a warring state, the fear is the horror. When people here industriously recycle every piece of aluminum on a yoghurt package, the rest of the world is mass producing consumer products which are only turned into garbadge weeks after purchase. Or even worse, weapons. Of course, people can still do something here, for example, keep reducing the already tiny amount of unrecyclable garbage, but the hulk is outside of the room. This fear is unsolvable.

Another hypothesis is individual dormancy caused by how well-established the society is. In a complex society, one has to actively seek uncommon resources and alternative methods to get thing done; while here getting things done is a process of following formalities. The latter gradually moulds a passive psychology, since the essence of getting things done is in waiting instead of acting. I myself have noticed a significant change in my action-taking style ever since I moved here. As every minutiae is already thought of and prescribed a solution from an authority, I became a lot more passive both physically and mentally. It caused a lot of disturbance at first, so I channelled almost all my energy into academia, which seems to be the only realm for active problem-solving.

All things said, I still believe this is a good society. But I don’t see it as a perfect society, like what most mantra says. The thing is, one has to realize that even a good society is not good for everyone. It is good if one wants to channel their energy into pensive pursuits, which needs concerntration more than anything else. But if one has other talents that don’t fit into this society, they don’t need to persuade themselves into believing that it must be their fault, which does no good to their already self-doubting mental state. Besides that, one often feel guilty being born into a good society as if they owe something to people who are not lucky enough. It is an angelic mindset, but not necessary. Good people’s guilt don’t do anyone any good. Kindness is out of kindness. Offering doesn’t need to be driven by a delusional guilt, and human suffering, no matter their material condition, is all painful.

*I did some quick research on John Adam’s exact quote, and it goes: I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

I’ve been playing around with AI in academia for a while, and there are bunch of things that I think it can do and bunch of things it sucks.

• It spits good terminologies. Sometimes we don’t know how to dive into a topic because we don’t know there are vocabularies that describe the phenomenon or pattern, with which we can easily search and learn, and AI is handy in collating all those fancy terms that you wouldn’t easily know. Taking from here, one can find peer-reviewed resources to dig deeper.
• Caveat: not reliable for direct answers. I used it to answer my questions every now and then, and its answers even contradict themselves. Silver lining is that when reading them carefully, the incorrectness is obvious, but it can be time-consuming so not worth it.
• It can collate college course schedules for one to know in what sequence to learn a subject. Self-study sometimes get tricky when one follows a flexible schedule and at some point they cannot go forward because there are something they don’t know which is not a google-click away. Thus using college schedules is an easy method. Most colleges have their course schedules open for public so AI can rarely make huge mistakes. Even it make mistakes it’s not a big deal.
• Caveat: from here it’s better to seek for other resources (e.g. MIT OpenCourseWare etc).
• It gives good sentence parsing. For philosophical, mathematical texts, or generally any texts that are peer-reviewed and is meant to be understood (which excludes anything poetic), I use AI to help me parse them whenever I don’t understand. For a language model I guess that’s what it was meant to do at the first place.
• Caveat: It mansplains. But good thing is one can shut it up anytime they feel like.