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Some Thoughts on Structure

Here are the clues I have gathered so far:

  • I have begun to realize that everyone has their own merits; others are not idiots.
  • Therefore, when a person racks their brains to do something, they often gain something from it. This could perhaps be called an individual’s momentum.
  • When a group of people operates within a system under its rules, although various internal frictions may arise—such as two people striving in opposite directions, or communication and collaboration between people becoming problematic—the momentum of each individual aggregates to form the total momentum within that system.
  • So, how are the rules of a system established? The only ways I can think of are top-down or bottom-up, which correspond to the so-called will of the masses and the will of the elite. This likely holds true in any organization: a family, a school class, a company, or even a nation.
  • How do the elite and the masses within a system emerge? I believe this stems from the fundamental inequality between people, which in this framework can be considered a self-evident axiom. Consider an extreme example: the international society composed of the world’s nations is a truly anarchic society because there is no true governing body to manage interactions between states. Yet, we still observe that nations have distinctions between strong and weak. Within this anarchic societal framework, their relative strength evolves and shifts according to certain fundamental patterns. Delving deeper, endless principles can be discussed: the development and transformation of human social systems, cultural development determined by geography, similarities and differences in the nature of cultures, the evolution of economic laws. But ultimately, from the highest level of abstraction, the observable phenomenon is that there is always a distinction between the strong and the weak. The strong set the rules, and the weak survive under the rules of the strong. There is also mutual transformation between the strong and the weak. Thus, we call the strong the elite and the weak the masses. The number of the strong is far smaller than that of the weak, and the strong extract benefits from the weak.
  • The international society formed by nations is a system, and a system formed by elementary school students together is also a system. Larger systems can contain smaller ones. There are distinctions of strength even among the strong, and among the weak. The absolute strong design systems for the weak, within which the relatively weak also have their own distinctions and interactions. The relatively weak living within a system often perceive that system as the entire world, unaware that they are surviving under a system designed by others, or even if aware, feel powerless to change it.
  • People (specifically the strong among them) actively construct systems, and people also unconsciously form systems. However, the interaction between people and systems is not one-sided; systems in turn influence people. When people join this absurd game, they have an initial position and state, constituting various additional inequalities beyond physiological inequality. These layered inequalities together form a person’s overall inequality.
  • But people have momentum; they are subjectively active. In the process of interaction between people, and between people and systems, the relative strength between people can transform, and systems can also rise, decline, and be replaced. This manifests as a game gaining popularity and everyone starting to play it, or a game reaching its end and being abandoned by people.
  • A person’s momentum originates from their inner desires, released through their position and state within a system (intellectual level, era, country, family, influences from other people and systems encountered). The existence of inner desires within a person is also a self-evident axiom in this framework—the essence of human nature, not easily summarized, but broadly meaning that people will strive with all their might to pursue immediate and long-term happiness and satisfaction.
  • A person is a collection of desires. Desires are also divided into long-term and short-term. Some desires may detract from others. For example, a person may want to lose weight and get fit but also wants to eat delicious food in the moment; these two are somewhat contradictory. Under different systems, a person will have some desires suitable for interaction within that system and others not. The judgments we commonly make about whether desires are good or bad are often based on a system’s worldview. However, outside of a system, desires cannot be judged as good/bad or high/low.
  • But a person’s time and energy are limited; only a small subset of desires can be satisfied at any given time. For an individual, this is an operations research problem.
  • Thus, we have sketched a dynamic worldview. Expanding it, we can apply perspectives from the theory of contradictions for further explanation.
  • Considering that I am working a job, many annoying things follow one after another. This is especially evident in so-called “big tech companies.” A big company is also a system. Within this system, there are many roles interacting under the system’s rules. From the system’s perspective, it looks like this:
    • Workers work hard, strive to complete tasks, hoping for better performance to get promotions and raises. Here, the system sets rules dictating how workers should achieve their desires. Thus, momentum aggregates to form the system’s total momentum, enabling the big company to interact within the system formed by big companies.
    • The workers are the weak within this system. The system also has bosses and senior leaders as the strong. The weak hope to become strong, while the strong hope to remain strong and continue extracting benefits from the weak.
    • So, who sets the rules? This stems from the unconscious actions of the workers (the weak) and the conscious actions of the bosses and senior leaders (the strong). The unconscious actions of workers and the conscious actions of bosses can be understood as outlets for venting the anomalous total momentum (akin to a reduction of the normal total momentum, similar to an individual’s “low-level” desires) that aggregates under the system’s rules. For example, bosses may want workers to sell their physical and intellectual labor without limit, exerting themselves to provide momentum for the system (the company). Workers may not be able to bear this, leading to movements against 996 work culture. Then, bosses realize that perhaps prohibiting overtime is a better rule.
    • Workers rarely realize that the rules of this system may not effectively satisfy their desires. After all, desires are often artificially created.
    • And the company is just one among countless systems. Interactions within this system may not benefit interactions in other systems (like society or family), although bosses tend to make you believe a different story.
  • Therefore, as individuals, we have an obligation to be responsible for our own well-being, thus carefully and prudently choosing the systems we interact with and the games we want to play. At the same time, we must also recognize that some systems and games are imposed upon us. For such systems, we should understand their rules, the meaning behind those rules, and the connection between the system and ourselves. So, as a worker, my purpose in choosing to work at a big company is:
    • To have enough money to interact better within the compulsory system of society.
    • To hone my skills to interact better within broader, longer-lifecycle systems like the industry or even society.
    • The recognition of peers I respect.
    • The joy of solving problems.
    • A very ultimate goal is to reshape these systems to some extent according to my desires through my efforts, or even to create entirely new systems.
  • Ultimately, we want to have the ability and freedom to satisfy as many of our desires as possible under the rules of these compulsory systemic frameworks.
  • Therefore, I need to start from my own needs, recognize the rules of the systems imposed upon us, recognize the rules of the systems we are interested in, and judge to what extent interacting with these systems will satisfy our desires.