The Adventure of Rudder and Wind
Could this be my 2025 summary?
If a person is like a ship, then reason is its rudder and sails, determining direction and adjusting posture; while desire is more like the engine, or the wind: it doesn’t guarantee which harbor you’ll reach, but it determines whether you can still leave port.
Wind cannot push a ship without sails, nor can a ship move forward by rudder alone.
From the end of May 2025, I fell into a certain state, leaving my ship becalmed in the vast ocean, unable to move. No direction, no wind. It wasn’t the slowed pace of “taking a break,” but a strange, complete stagnation—tasks piled up, schedules kept turning, yet I felt like my propulsion had been removed, making even “getting started” an effort, leading to a complete shutdown.
This is my description and reflection on that state at the time. I didn’t reach any conclusions then, only wanting to understand what was wrong with me, trying to analyze my own mind.
The Symptom
Starting from late May 2025. I was somewhat lost, sinking into a state of “unwillingness to do anything.” The reason for this state wasn’t clear to me at the time. Looking back later, I could only retroactively construct the cause from some scattered clues. In other words, based on different present circumstances, these explanations might also be vastly different.
Thinking became vigorous, action became sparse. I could deduce many possibilities, write many analyses, compare many “optimal solutions”; but actual decisions and commitments became fewer. During that time, I had many metaphysical conversations with CZ, and he expressed considerable bewilderment and dissatisfaction, as did I.
An Imbalance of Two Driving Forces
To explain all this, I need to divide the sources of motivation into two types: one more driven by external order, and one more pulled by internal interest. For convenience, I’ll call them Duty-Driven and Interest-Driven.
Borrowing a bit of psychoanalytic language, they roughly correspond to two common subjective stances: one more reliant on “being driven by external order,” the other more reliant on “being pulled by internal interest.” But I won’t strictly equate them here, only using them to illustrate the difference.
For me, duty-driven means: meaning lies outside the subject. I act to complete an existing order, to make it more stable, more complete. Interest-driven is the opposite: meaning is largely bestowed by the subject. I act to create a new order, to make the world change a little because of my intervention.
These two driving forces, I believe, should occupy a person’s time and energy in a balanced way. The scale tipping too far to either side causes trouble. Excessive duty leads to being constantly busy, eventually looking back and not knowing what one was busy with, and most seriously, losing a sense of meaning. Excessive interest leads to easily working behind closed doors, becoming isolated from the external world without realizing it, ignoring many external signals while focusing only on one’s inner world, ultimately still having to deal with the relationship with the order of the external world.
The problem was: during that period, these two driving forces were imbalanced in me, and the imbalance was subtle.
For the past few years, I had long been accustomed to playing a role in teams that leaned towards logistics and infrastructure: building, completing, maintaining, providing a safety net. Such work is very important, but it has an inherent structure: it depends on a main narrative. When the main narrative is clear, the meaning of logistics is lasting and stable—feature progress, team operation, risk reduction, controllable progress, one link after another, with a clear path of return.
But when the team’s main task was reset to an “initial state”—old goals zeroed out, old priorities invalidated—my accustomed duty circuit suddenly lost its anchor: tasks were still plentiful, but each seemed like a side quest; I could still do them, but doing or not doing them didn’t seem to change the fact that the “main narrative wasn’t established yet.” Thus, the external order no longer gave me feedback, the meaning of duty-driven motivation was dissolved, interest-driven motivation hadn’t taken over yet, and so the entire ship entered the doldrums.
I thought at the time it was because I “hadn’t figured it out,” but now I’m more willing to admit: it was a consequence of having a single source of motivation and a feedback mechanism overly reliant on an external harbor. My wind came from one place; when that place disappeared, the vast ocean immediately became a stagnant pond.
Unfinished Thoughts
This section contains my thoughts at the time. I originally expected a concrete action plan but got stuck on it.
Why Thinking is Needed
A temporary slowdown in pace isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it can lead to some results in thinking, helping to re-establish order.
This thinking must be systematic, to distinguish fantasy from genuine thought. I describe the thinking process like this: a person, based on various favorable and unfavorable conditions in their current situation, arrives at a conclusion about how to act—an action plan. This action plan must withstand scrutiny from various angles to judge if it’s reasonable, if it holds up. If reasonable, then action should follow naturally; otherwise, a new conclusion will replace the previous incomplete, immature one. This process can be repeated until reaching an absolute, unchanging state.
This action plan is the inevitable result of the subject bearing the weight of life. Scarcity produces desire, and desire drives the subject to constantly try to symbolize the real world. However, a person cannot integrate themselves into a “perfect” symbolic order and become static matter, because the world cannot be static. A person can never definitively state what their symbolic essence is. Since God died (or people finally realized God never existed), humans can no longer grasp their own essence (or rather, the essence that once existed was an illusion). Only the subject exists, needing to notice every moment that the real world has changed, accept and understand it, then re-register it into the symbolic system—just like an oil film on flowing water constantly changing its color, trying to completely cover the water’s surface. This action plan points to a future. As this future pulls the subject towards itself, the subject is constantly reborn, not decaying, not dying.
Abandoning Thought?
We need to consider a possibility: Is it possible for a person to abandon thought?
First, complete abandonment means giving up on formulating any action plan. But from the moment of birth, a person can no longer return to the mythical state of desirelessness before birth. Scarcities from the physiological to the psychological drive a person to do something to fill them. So, completely abandoning thought is impossible.
Thinking Forever?
Is it possible for this thinking to forever oscillate in a state of swaying?
Of course, this possibility exists. Behind this recursive behavior of constantly overturning previous thought is the subject’s refusal to finally designate an action plan, refusal to acknowledge a future exists. Then time becomes meaningless for the subject. This cycle—it’s essentially a cyclical form of escape, escaping the responsibility of being an existent, finding enjoyment in this cycle. Admittedly, this enjoyment is quite attractive, otherwise why would there be so many people addicted to scrolling through TikTok?
My Critique
Being lost is shameful, because there is no person who lives off the air. If a person is not being kept, then based on their own situation, they are first forced to act, otherwise they will starve.
Looking Back
Back then, I left a critique and got stuck. The original next chapter was “Action Plan,” which should have described a goal I could be loyal to after the deep thinking described above, and using this goal to deduce how to act at every moment. But I never wrote it, at least didn’t arrive at such an action plan at that time. So, after leaving that critique, this article was shelved. I believe the root cause wasn’t that I lost reason, nor that there was something wrong with the performance of my ship itself. It was that I lost the wind, lost the drive.
I tried to anchor myself through absolute thinking, seeking a “perfect” action plan to end all uncertainty. But this precisely plunged me into the “enjoyment of thinking”—constantly deducing and overturning, replacing real choices with the oscillation of speculation. I only realized later that this itself was part of the symptom: when the external guarantee of meaning failed, I fantasized about replacing it by building a complete symbolic order through introspection. This was destined to be futile, because the endpoint of thinking is not a perfect answer, but the resolve to take responsibility.
I now believe all philosophy must move towards practice. Zarathustra must descend the mountain, the person who leaves the cave must return to the cave—not to repeat the enlightenment narrative, but because it is only in the friction of the human world that thought is realized. Therefore, what I need to end is not thinking itself, but that oscillation which finds pleasure in overturning and safety in hesitation: it made me seem to be approaching truth, while actually avoiding commitment. I want to adopt another posture towards life: first implement a phased direction into action, then use the results of action to correct the direction; let reality be the judge, let contradictions drive progress, not let me spin in place.
And now I am already moving forward at full capacity again, and need to further optimize efficiency on the rational level, so I’m picking up this previous article to complete it.
Diagnosis
This is how I think about the problem: the wind or engine as motivation was the crux of my previous condition.
I realize that a person’s motivation is like a provisioning system needed for sailing. We invest time, attention, and emotion like fresh water and fuel, expecting to get three things in return: meaning (charts and celestial markers), echo (lighthouses or echoes from the shore), and sensation (the state of the ship itself). When this income and expenditure become unbalanced… my ship’s provisioning cycle was interrupted.
For me, its essence is a Lacanian desire economy that can cycle, and this economy went bankrupt before, the chain of meaning broke.
For example, I once chatted with a friend who made a year’s salary by trading stocks. I said I don’t think you really like money, because if that were the case you should quit your job, or at least spend more effort on stocks, but he was still working hard. So clearly for him, his chain of meaning wasn’t:
Stock trading -> Wealth -> Security -> Freedom -> Satisfaction
Analyzing carefully, there’s much to ponder here: on one hand, making money from stocks doesn’t mean stock trading can always create wealth, or wealth that guarantees a life free from want. On the other hand, the freedom brought by money doesn’t necessarily mean satisfaction; it’s very possible that for him, being recognized by others, being acknowledged by society, brings satisfaction. I don’t intend to psychoanalyze him here, so we can stop.
Human motivation is often not driven by a certain “fact,” but by a string of “narratives.” One word leads to another, one explanation leads to another: success leads to recognition, recognition leads to value, value leads to security. Meaning links backward like a chain; we think we’re chasing a goal, but actually we’re constantly moving backward on this chain. The chain makes life understandable, but when it loses places to “pause temporarily,” a person enters a state of interpretive overload: the more one thinks, the faster one overturns, yet the harder it is to act.
But there’s something even more hidden: what keeps this chain running is often not the goal itself, but that little bit of ineffable lure behind the goal—a look of recognition, a stable position, a gap of “almost getting it.” A person can change projects, cities, relationships; the surface things pursued will change, but that little lure often reappears. Understanding it isn’t for self-blame, but to see clearly: what exactly is pulling me, where am I overdrawing, where do I need to rearrange my sources of feedback.
With this illustrative example, I can now diagnose: for the previous me, the chain of meaning was:
Logistics work -> System stability -> Team runs smoothly -> Being acknowledged -> Sense of value
This chain was my ship’s invisible anchor chain, one end tied to my work, the other cast into the harbor of external acknowledgment. It made me willing to invest long hours because I believed the return path existed: as long as the system is stable, the team runs smoothly; as long as the team runs smoothly, I am needed, acknowledged; as long as I am acknowledged, I have a sense of value.
And when the main narrative was reset, the fixed point of the harbor disappeared, the anchor chain clattered and sank into nothingness. Tasks were still many, but the middle two links of the chain lost their guarantee: my continued investment didn’t necessarily lead to the visible result of “the team running smoothly,” much less necessarily to “being acknowledged.” So, I began to withdraw investment; withdrawal made the system harder to advance; harder advancement further weakened meaning; the cycle ultimately went bankrupt.
If I borrow a psychoanalytic formula:
Desire = Demand - Need, it is a surplus.
For me, the “surplus” isn’t on the material level, but on the feedback level: what I need isn’t just completing tasks (need), nor just responding to demands (demand), but that little surplus of “being placed on this chain”—being acknowledged, witnessed, incorporated into a sustainable circuit of meaning. When this surplus disappeared, motivation dried up.
This isn’t a moral problem, nor an intellectual one, but a rupture in an economic cycle: I had handed over the issuance rights of my desire economy to the external order. Once the external order malfunctioned, I could only go bankrupt.
Reconstruction
Just as in the real world, debt restructuring can be a good opportunity for an economy to recover. When the belief in my mind that “the external will inevitably guarantee meaning for me” collapsed, pain was unavoidable, but following the pain came the opportunity for change, the possibility of truly taking charge of my own desire economy, forging my own chain of meaning, thereby becoming a politically mature person.
Like this quote from Calvino:
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
I now understand this quote like this: the inferno is the human world. When you open your eyes and find your entire life has lost an anchor, you discover the inferno, and this inferno is your life itself. At this point you have two choices:
The first option: You acknowledge this inferno exists and surrender, then slide into nihilism: nothing a person does is worthwhile, start living for the moment because life is short; or worse, simply become a cynical misanthrope; or not acknowledge the inferno exists, find a more solid external order for yourself, let this external order give you a strong guarantee, then issue commands to you, thus pretending this inferno doesn’t exist.
Or there’s the second option: You acknowledge this inferno exists, but do not surrender. With a mature attitude, using the order mechanism that previously drove you forward, while recognizing it is man-made, revisable, and requires bearing consequences, create a new order, load the aforementioned chain of meaning and economic system into it, and then act.
The second option is almost the action plan I mentioned above, but what was missing in the previous thinking was a new chain of meaning that could carry the economic cycle of desire, one that could be revised, accumulated, and adjusted with my own subjective participation. One could say, I expected a correct result, but didn’t know at the time how to get there.
The previously stuck “absolute action plan” was generally correct in direction, but sounded very intimidating, seemingly requiring a thorough transformation. Looking at it now, this posture itself isn’t problematic, but there was some inversion in it: the goal shifted from pursuing a guideline descending from metaphysical contemplation into daily life to guide daily life (which can be incomplete, and necessarily is incomplete) to pursuing a closed, complete symbolic order to avoid uncertainty. The difference is that if you pursue completeness, this process never ends, so thinking becomes a means of procrastination, falling into the eternal oscillating thought I previously criticized.
My current solution is, the key to reconstruction isn’t “finding a perfect answer,” but adopting a simpler, more actionable posture:
I choose a desired future, make a promise to myself, and bear its cost; the Other can only be a witness and collaborator, no longer the absolute guarantor.
This sounds like a slogan, but when implemented it’s actually very concrete: it means I must allow uncertainty to continue to exist, allow a plan to go live at seventy percent, allow correction through action; it also means I have to pay the price for my choices, not use “let me think more” to postpone the cost indefinitely.
After all, pessimists are right, optimists succeed.
Summary
Combining all the key concerns of this article, specifically:
Recognize that the promised land—that is, stable life, anchors of thought, or the stability guaranteed by grand external narratives and large-scale orders—does not exist. In other words: external orders are not self-consistent, nor will they forever guarantee for me.
At this point, you can consider yourself “dead”: your position in the symbolic order is dead—old identity, old titles, old meanings, the old “who I am” has collapsed (expelled, canceled, negated by oneself). This process is usually accompanied by fear and anxiety.
But, don’t retreat into old fantasies, don’t seek a new absolute and a new guarantee, don’t stagnate, and don’t use some self-destructive action to end everything.
What to do is: take risks yourself, calculate risks yourself, thereby plan an action plan, faithfully execute its principles. The person is still acting; the difference is bearing the cost oneself. Action itself is meaning.
It’s like your ship has set sail, and suddenly you realize the ship isn’t as perfect as the pre-departure inspection report described, but has some flaws—like sudden weather changes, like some engine trouble. What should be done is still to adjust operations to move towards the set goal, while being prepared for death. Panicking and becoming numb doing nothing, or despairingly seeking death directly, are both wrong.
Therefore, a truly commendable solution can be a bit rough. It should give clear answers to problems already understood, make arbitrary cuts on some still unclear issues. It can be easily overturned and revised in details and implementation, but it will never waver on issues already clarified. But this solution must be able to answer most questions according to local conditions and the times. Its overturning and restarting isn’t hitting a wall and turning back, but constantly encountering the friction of reality, realizing some things might be wrong, then correcting direction through iteration.
I like a line from “The ‘Mary Gloster’”:
They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind,
And I left ’em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind.
This line seems to say: others can copy what you do, but they can’t copy how you think, how you reignite yourself.
Continue as a ship, keep sailing, keep thinking, keep acting.