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人生哲学成长
Defeating Inner Turmoil - What I Did Right
How I conquered existential dread twice and found a life goal that's infinite and unbreakable.
I've conquered "death" twice.
Not the kind of near-death experience where you narrowly escape danger—I mean conquering the concept of death on a spiritual level.
## The First Time: Fear at Ten
The first time was when I was ten, still in elementary school. I wasn't into studying back then, finding new ways to play every day. Without a phone or computer, I ended up reading my dad's bootleg collection of Jin Yong novels. When A'Zhu died, when Cheng Lingsu died, I suddenly realized something: I'm going to die too.
Not abstractly knowing that everyone dies, but truly realizing for the first time that one day I would disappear forever, perceiving nothing, returning to complete nothingness. As someone once said, when you close your left eye and see the world only through your right, what your left eye sees is "nothingness." Death is nothingness. I will cease to exist.
It took months for the fear to fade. Not because I figured it out, but because I passively got used to it. Just like humans can get used to any pain.
## The Second Time: Nihilism in College
The second time was in college.
This time it wasn't fear—it was emptiness. Sitting through meaningless classes, going back to play video games after class, and when I got tired of gaming, I'd start thinking: if we're all going to die anyway, what's the point of any of this? Making money, achieving success, being remembered—doesn't it all amount to nothing in the end?
I started pondering the three great philosophical questions, searching online for how others thought and what they did. Over those years, I heard plenty of wisdom: keep learning, investigate things to extend knowledge, live in the present. I understood the logic, but none of it helped. It all felt like commands, warnings, condescension—an invasion of my self.
I couldn't find any logically defensible "meaning."
This state lasted until I was twenty-six or twenty-seven.
## The Turning Point
I've always been someone with intense but fleeting interests—call it a short attention span. New things always catch my attention. Even after I started working, I loved poking around at this and that every day. During a vacation when I finally had time to think, I asked myself: why does something new spark my interest? Why does it become boring once I dig deeper?
After a few days of thinking, it hit me: learning about something completely unfamiliar is the most joyful. You can casually browse and feel like the day wasn't wasted. But as you understand more about what you're studying, the resistance grows—concepts get more complex, today's reading doesn't connect with yesterday's, countless details need to be understood and mastered... The difficulty rises, but the rate of satisfaction drops.
So I thought: since deep-diving into one field causes me pain, why not stop drilling? Just follow the path of least resistance, do whatever I feel like, learn casually, stay happy every day, and along the way pick up surface knowledge of everything. That should be pretty impressive, right?
After figuring this out, I happened to come across an introduction to the history of philosophy and its major thinkers. While feeling like I understood a bit more, I seemed to receive some "enlightenment" that transcended time and the internet, suddenly crystallizing my thoughts into a more visual model.
## The Two-Layer World Model
A two-layer world model. As the name suggests, in this model, the world has two layers.
**The first layer is the real world.** Objectively existing, infinitely complex, impossible to fully understand in a lifetime.
**The second layer is my cognitive world.** The projection, model, and understanding of reality in my mind.
There's a gap between these two layers. The cognitive world is always smaller, rougher, and more biased than the real world.
**My life's goal is to make the second layer infinitely approach the first layer.**
That simple.
The moment I clarified this model, the nihilism that had plagued me for years instantly vanished.
I know what you're thinking—isn't this just another way of saying "keep learning"? How many people have preached this to death?
But this goal actually has two core elements.
## Element One: Turn the Finite into Infinite
Pursuing money, status, achievement—these are all finite. When people set goals, they don't think "I want to earn infinite money by 30." They set targets like ten million, thirty million, a hundred million.
Two problems here. First, the goal itself is hard to justify. Why ten million? Maybe you break it down: 5 million for a house, 1 million for a car, 3 million for investments, 1 million as backup. But what about a 10 million house? A 3 million car? Once housing and transportation are covered, what about the extras? Custom clothes? A Vacheron Constantin watch? Shall we bump it to a hundred million? What about a Beverly Hills mansion? Some goals simply can't withstand scrutiny—how can they support a lifetime's worth of gains and losses?
Second problem: once you have a specific number, there's the possibility of reaching it. What happens when you actually make that hundred million? Even when you're still far from the goal, lying in bed at night letting your mind wander, you start thinking: in five years, ten years, when you have the car, the watch, the house, the partner—all first-class—what's next?
So I believe a good life goal should be non-specific, non-quantifiable, and unattainable. Aim for the stars and the sea—however far you get is how far you get.
## Element Two: Find a Goal That Can't Be Defeated
If you set goals based on savings or job rank, you'll easily get frustrated—you couldn't resist buying a new phone and your savings took a hit; you stumbled through a work presentation and your boss's eyebrows twisted into mountain ranges. Damn, you're now who-knows-how-many steps further from your life goal.
But my goal—learning is earning—doesn't have this problem.
Once you've learned something, you've learned it. No one's actually used Dumbledore's memory extraction spell on me yet. And I don't care what I learn—as long as it's something I don't know that helps me better understand the real world, that's enough. Even learning how to slaughter a pig for Chinese New Year or the ending of Black Myth: Wukong... doesn't matter. Even scrolling through short videos fulfills my life's purpose.
This goal doesn't need external validation. No one needs to test me daily on how much I learned or mastered—I know, and that's enough. This goal doesn't depend on external evaluation, so it's naturally unaffected by external factors, like AI replacing my job or the company cutting salaries due to poor performance.
**This is an antifragile foundation for existence.**
## About Forgetting
Of course, you might have noticed a problem with what I just said—you forget what you learn, so how is it defeat-proof? If it can be defeated, doesn't that contradict the second element?
Indeed.
But allow me a bit of "sophistry" here:
People extract subconscious thinking patterns from what they learn. Just like how engineering students, after a lifetime of "because, therefore, syllogism," naturally prefer finding causes and reasoning logically. Facts get forgotten, but patterns don't. You learn something, forget it, but when you encounter something similar, you'll have a rough sense of it—because while learning, a new pathway was built in your mental world. Even if you forget the beginning, the middle, and the end, the next time you reach that crossroads, you'll see a path that was already there.
Take Elon Musk as an example. He manages so many companies—honestly, if he remembered everything and thought through everything from scratch, he would've collapsed long ago. The only thing that saves him is past experience. Maybe he's forgotten who did what, who reported what, even how things were handled specifically—but the processing patterns from the past step up and quickly provide solutions.
## Final Thoughts
Of course, I can't say the two-layer world model will definitely work for you, because I came up with it myself. With humans, concepts and views heard from others always feel a bit off—things you figure out yourself are always easier to believe and stick to. I recommend you think it over first: do you have any goals of your own that meet the criteria I mentioned—infinite and defeat-proof?
If you really don't, you can try mine. Maybe it'll help.
Not the kind of near-death experience where you narrowly escape danger—I mean conquering the concept of death on a spiritual level.
## The First Time: Fear at Ten
The first time was when I was ten, still in elementary school. I wasn't into studying back then, finding new ways to play every day. Without a phone or computer, I ended up reading my dad's bootleg collection of Jin Yong novels. When A'Zhu died, when Cheng Lingsu died, I suddenly realized something: I'm going to die too.
Not abstractly knowing that everyone dies, but truly realizing for the first time that one day I would disappear forever, perceiving nothing, returning to complete nothingness. As someone once said, when you close your left eye and see the world only through your right, what your left eye sees is "nothingness." Death is nothingness. I will cease to exist.
It took months for the fear to fade. Not because I figured it out, but because I passively got used to it. Just like humans can get used to any pain.
## The Second Time: Nihilism in College
The second time was in college.
This time it wasn't fear—it was emptiness. Sitting through meaningless classes, going back to play video games after class, and when I got tired of gaming, I'd start thinking: if we're all going to die anyway, what's the point of any of this? Making money, achieving success, being remembered—doesn't it all amount to nothing in the end?
I started pondering the three great philosophical questions, searching online for how others thought and what they did. Over those years, I heard plenty of wisdom: keep learning, investigate things to extend knowledge, live in the present. I understood the logic, but none of it helped. It all felt like commands, warnings, condescension—an invasion of my self.
I couldn't find any logically defensible "meaning."
This state lasted until I was twenty-six or twenty-seven.
## The Turning Point
I've always been someone with intense but fleeting interests—call it a short attention span. New things always catch my attention. Even after I started working, I loved poking around at this and that every day. During a vacation when I finally had time to think, I asked myself: why does something new spark my interest? Why does it become boring once I dig deeper?
After a few days of thinking, it hit me: learning about something completely unfamiliar is the most joyful. You can casually browse and feel like the day wasn't wasted. But as you understand more about what you're studying, the resistance grows—concepts get more complex, today's reading doesn't connect with yesterday's, countless details need to be understood and mastered... The difficulty rises, but the rate of satisfaction drops.
So I thought: since deep-diving into one field causes me pain, why not stop drilling? Just follow the path of least resistance, do whatever I feel like, learn casually, stay happy every day, and along the way pick up surface knowledge of everything. That should be pretty impressive, right?
After figuring this out, I happened to come across an introduction to the history of philosophy and its major thinkers. While feeling like I understood a bit more, I seemed to receive some "enlightenment" that transcended time and the internet, suddenly crystallizing my thoughts into a more visual model.
## The Two-Layer World Model
A two-layer world model. As the name suggests, in this model, the world has two layers.
**The first layer is the real world.** Objectively existing, infinitely complex, impossible to fully understand in a lifetime.
**The second layer is my cognitive world.** The projection, model, and understanding of reality in my mind.
There's a gap between these two layers. The cognitive world is always smaller, rougher, and more biased than the real world.
**My life's goal is to make the second layer infinitely approach the first layer.**
That simple.
The moment I clarified this model, the nihilism that had plagued me for years instantly vanished.
I know what you're thinking—isn't this just another way of saying "keep learning"? How many people have preached this to death?
But this goal actually has two core elements.
## Element One: Turn the Finite into Infinite
Pursuing money, status, achievement—these are all finite. When people set goals, they don't think "I want to earn infinite money by 30." They set targets like ten million, thirty million, a hundred million.
Two problems here. First, the goal itself is hard to justify. Why ten million? Maybe you break it down: 5 million for a house, 1 million for a car, 3 million for investments, 1 million as backup. But what about a 10 million house? A 3 million car? Once housing and transportation are covered, what about the extras? Custom clothes? A Vacheron Constantin watch? Shall we bump it to a hundred million? What about a Beverly Hills mansion? Some goals simply can't withstand scrutiny—how can they support a lifetime's worth of gains and losses?
Second problem: once you have a specific number, there's the possibility of reaching it. What happens when you actually make that hundred million? Even when you're still far from the goal, lying in bed at night letting your mind wander, you start thinking: in five years, ten years, when you have the car, the watch, the house, the partner—all first-class—what's next?
So I believe a good life goal should be non-specific, non-quantifiable, and unattainable. Aim for the stars and the sea—however far you get is how far you get.
## Element Two: Find a Goal That Can't Be Defeated
If you set goals based on savings or job rank, you'll easily get frustrated—you couldn't resist buying a new phone and your savings took a hit; you stumbled through a work presentation and your boss's eyebrows twisted into mountain ranges. Damn, you're now who-knows-how-many steps further from your life goal.
But my goal—learning is earning—doesn't have this problem.
Once you've learned something, you've learned it. No one's actually used Dumbledore's memory extraction spell on me yet. And I don't care what I learn—as long as it's something I don't know that helps me better understand the real world, that's enough. Even learning how to slaughter a pig for Chinese New Year or the ending of Black Myth: Wukong... doesn't matter. Even scrolling through short videos fulfills my life's purpose.
This goal doesn't need external validation. No one needs to test me daily on how much I learned or mastered—I know, and that's enough. This goal doesn't depend on external evaluation, so it's naturally unaffected by external factors, like AI replacing my job or the company cutting salaries due to poor performance.
**This is an antifragile foundation for existence.**
## About Forgetting
Of course, you might have noticed a problem with what I just said—you forget what you learn, so how is it defeat-proof? If it can be defeated, doesn't that contradict the second element?
Indeed.
But allow me a bit of "sophistry" here:
People extract subconscious thinking patterns from what they learn. Just like how engineering students, after a lifetime of "because, therefore, syllogism," naturally prefer finding causes and reasoning logically. Facts get forgotten, but patterns don't. You learn something, forget it, but when you encounter something similar, you'll have a rough sense of it—because while learning, a new pathway was built in your mental world. Even if you forget the beginning, the middle, and the end, the next time you reach that crossroads, you'll see a path that was already there.
Take Elon Musk as an example. He manages so many companies—honestly, if he remembered everything and thought through everything from scratch, he would've collapsed long ago. The only thing that saves him is past experience. Maybe he's forgotten who did what, who reported what, even how things were handled specifically—but the processing patterns from the past step up and quickly provide solutions.
## Final Thoughts
Of course, I can't say the two-layer world model will definitely work for you, because I came up with it myself. With humans, concepts and views heard from others always feel a bit off—things you figure out yourself are always easier to believe and stick to. I recommend you think it over first: do you have any goals of your own that meet the criteria I mentioned—infinite and defeat-proof?
If you really don't, you can try mine. Maybe it'll help.