人之精神觉醒
This is a standalone content page of the Guoping Hua Research System.
→ Enter the full research systemA systematic philosophy based on the "Life-Spirit Structure" and Eight-Factor Model — from understanding humanity to fulfilling humanity.
If Hua Guoping's system of thought were a great tree, then The Pinnacle Concept would be the seed of that tree.
It is not an ordinary work of philosophy, nor is it a psychology textbook. It is the "root" of the entire system—answering the most fundamental question: what is a human being?
This question seems simple, yet it is the watershed of all thought. How you define the human being determines how you understand happiness, how you design institutions, how you judge good and evil, and how you imagine the future of civilization. If you understand the human being as a "rational animal," you will move toward rationalism that puts logic above all else; if you understand the human being as "the sum of social relations," you will move toward structural determinism; if you understand the human being as a "machine of desires," you will move toward utilitarianism or consumerism.
And the answer The Pinnacle Concept gives is: the human being is spirit upon living matter.
First, the human being is, above all, living matter. A person is not an angel, not a purely spiritual entity. A person has a body, senses, physiological needs, and goes through birth, aging, sickness, and death. All spiritual activity takes this body as its vehicle and is rooted in the interaction between this body and the world. To speak of human nature apart from the body is to build a castle in the air.
Second, the human being is not merely living matter. A person is different from an animal, different from a plant, different from a stone. A person possesses a unique capacity—spirit. Spirit is not a mysterious soul, not a supernatural entity, but a function that emerges when living matter evolves to an advanced stage: the reflection of and reaction to the world.
Third, spirit is an "emergence" upon living matter, not an "addition." Spirit is not a breath of vital energy blown into the body by God, not another entity running parallel to the body. It is a new property that naturally emerges once the body becomes complex enough. Just as waves emerge when water molecules gather into an ocean, consciousness emerges when neurons gather into a brain.
This definition is the origin of the entire system of thought. Starting from here alone can we derive the fourfold structure of consciousness, the eight factors of human nature, the distinction between thinking and consciousness, the spiritual desires of private good, the essence of good and evil, and the direction of civilization—everything, everything.
The most central theoretical contribution of The Pinnacle Concept is the model of the "fourfold structure of consciousness." This model was not deduced from philosophical speculation but abstracted from the actual process of the evolution of consciousness.
The first level: matter-in-itself consciousness. This is the lowest level of consciousness and exists in all material systems. When an atom loses an electron, it "seeks" a new electron to restore balance; when a rock is heated, it "expands" to release pressure; when a star collapses, it "ignites" nuclear fusion to resist gravity. These phenomena are not "thinking" or "feeling," but they possess an inner "tendency": toward stability, toward balance, toward order.
Hua Guoping calls this inner tendency "matter-in-itself consciousness." It tells us: consciousness is not unique to life; it is the intrinsic property by which material systems maintain their own stability. The spiritual consciousness of living beings is merely the advanced form of this property.
The second level: innate consciousness. When material systems became complex enough to copy themselves, life appeared. Living beings possess a unique ability: to "encode" their own existence in genes and pass it to the next generation. This encoding includes not only material structure but also behavioral tendencies: plants turn toward light and water; infants suck and grasp; animals build nests and migrate.
Innate consciousness is "structural presupposition," the "program" that evolution has written into genes. It requires no learning and no experience—only to be triggered. It is the key link in consciousness's transition from "materiality" to "livingness."
The third level: bodily-sensation consciousness. When living beings evolved nervous systems, consciousness gained a new form: feeling. A hand touching fire withdraws, not because of thinking but because it "hurts"; a hungry person looks for food, not because of calculation but because he is "hungry"; a tired person rests, not because of planning but because he is "sleepy."
Bodily-sensation consciousness is the leap of consciousness from "program" to "experience." It knows not only "what happened" but also "what this means for the system." It is the direct source of suffering and pleasure, and the foundation of all emotions and feelings.
The fourth level: rational consciousness. When living beings evolved the cerebral cortex, consciousness gained its highest form: reason. Rational consciousness can not only reflect reality but also reflect upon itself; not only feel suffering and pleasure but also ask "what is worthwhile"; not only adapt to the environment but also transform it.
Rational consciousness is the leap of consciousness from "experience" to "cognition." It gave humanity language, writing, science, philosophy, art, and institutions—every achievement of civilization is the product of rational consciousness.
These four levels are the inner architecture of consciousness. Each level is built upon the one before it, each level has an independent function, and each level operates simultaneously within the human being.
Hua Guoping further distinguishes explicit consciousness (emotional consciousness and rational consciousness) from latent consciousness (bodily-sensation consciousness and innate consciousness). Explicit consciousness is energy-consuming and active; latent consciousness is energy-saving and automatic. When information processed by explicit consciousness is repeatedly verified, it migrates from the energy-consuming "explicit workbench" to the low-energy "latent warehouse," where it is stored in the form of "feelings." This is why "3 × 8 = 24" changed from something requiring thought into an intuitive judgment—knowledge, in the end, becomes feeling.
The fourfold structure of consciousness answers "how spirit is constituted," but it does not answer "how human nature is constituted." To understand human nature, one must start from "what a human being is" and derive the basic factors of human nature.
Hua Guoping breaks human nature down into eight factors, divided into four physical factors and four spiritual factors.
The four physical factors: physical nature, tranquility, suffering, and pleasure.
Physical nature—the fundamental attribute of the human being as organic living matter. It determines that a person must satisfy basic material needs such as eating, drinking, breathing, and sleeping, and inevitably follows the material laws of sickness, aging, and death.
Tranquility—the body's balanced state without suffering or pleasure. It is the "default state" of the living system, the peace that after the ebb and flow of suffering and pleasure ultimately longs to return to.
Suffering—the internal signaling mechanism by which a living being perceives that it is being harmed and that the system is drifting from balance. Suffering is life's first alarm.
Pleasure—the internal signaling mechanism by which a living being perceives that it is being nourished and that the system is returning to balance. Pleasure is life's first praise.
The four spiritual factors: privacy, malignancy, benevolence, and reason.
Privacy—the spirit's calm state beyond good and evil, the ultimate home of human nature. Privacy is not selfishness. Privacy is everyone's "home"; selfishness is locking yourself in your home forever and keeping everyone who wants to approach outside the door.
Malignancy—all thinking and emotions at the spiritual level that harm oneself or others and bring consumption. It is the extension and elevation of bodily suffering into the spiritual world. Malignancy itself is not the problem; out-of-control malignancy is the problem.
Benevolence—all thinking and emotions at the spiritual level that benefit oneself or others and bring nourishment. It is the extension and elevation of bodily pleasure into the spiritual world.
Reason—the spirit's capacity to cognize, judge, and reason about things, serving as the tool for emotion. Emotion sets the goals; reason finds the paths. Reason is forever the servant; emotion is the master.
The core relationship among the eight factors is: privacy is the destination, good and evil are the paths, and reason is the tool. The four physical factors are the soil of the four spiritual factors; the four spiritual factors are the elevation of the four physical factors. The eight factors together constitute a complete living system, and none can be missing.
In this diagram of the eight factors, the four physical factors are the "great yang" and the four spiritual factors are the "great yin." Within yang there is yin, and within yin there is yang. Suffering and pleasure are the dynamic quality of the body, belonging to the lesser yang; tranquility is the body's lesser yin. Good and evil are the dynamic quality of the spirit, belonging to the lesser yang; privacy is the spirit's lesser yin. When one is harmed, all are harmed; when one prospers, all prosper. Only by acting with balance and appropriate force, and always maintaining the equilibrium of the basic factors of human nature, can one seek the stable development of one's life and of society.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a subversive answer to "I": "I" is not singular but a mixture of multiple personalities.
The "I" that wants to stay in bed in the morning and the "I" that wants to get up and read are not the same "I." The "I" that is filial to one's parents and the "I" that wants to pursue one's dreams are not the same "I." The "I" that speaks eloquently at a meeting and the "I" that is silent at home are not the same "I."
The "I" of living matter—body, limbs, internal organs
The "I" of bodily pleasure—joy, smiles, delight
The "I" of bodily tranquility—calm, peace, naturalness
The "I" of bodily suffering—pain, a worried face, complaints
The "I" of private-good spirit—preservation, care, enrichment, beauty, pleasure, compassion, reflection, confidence, strength, esteem, freedom
The "I" of public-good spirit—preserving others, caring for others, enriching others, enriching others' beauty, delighting others, showing compassion for others, enlightening others, trusting others, empowering others, honoring others, freeing others
The "I" of private-evil spirit—destroying oneself, obstructing oneself, impoverishing oneself, deforming oneself, harassing oneself, giving oneself the cold shoulder, rejecting oneself, doubting oneself, weakening oneself, humiliating oneself, controlling oneself
The "I" of public-evil spirit—destroying others, obstructing others, harming others, defaming others, harassing others, giving others the cold shoulder, opposing others, doubting others, weakening others, humiliating others, controlling others
The "I" of rational spirit—cognition, judgment, reasoning, reflection
These "I's" appear in turn at different times, in different places, in different relationships. "I" is not a fixed, unchanging entity but a dynamic system that displays different properties in different situations.
This also explains why people so often feel "self-conflict"—the "I" that wants to get up early and study and the "I" that wants to stay in bed are fighting; the "I" that wants to pursue its dreams and the "I" that wants to satisfy its parents' expectations are fighting; the "I" that wants to be good to others and the "I" that wants to protect itself are fighting. These conflicts are not illness; they are the normal manifestation of the complexity of human nature.
Willpower is the intensity of the spiritual desires of private good. The stronger the desires of private good, the more powerful the willpower; the weaker the desires of private good, the weaker the willpower. When a person is close to starvation, for the sake of preservation he will have intense desire and willpower to search for food. When a person suffers great humiliation, for the sake of esteem he will have intense willpower to prove himself.
One of the deepest discoveries of The Pinnacle Concept is the distinction between "thinking" and "consciousness."
Thinking is reflection. Thinking is like a mirror that can reflect all things—beauty and ugliness, good and evil, movement and stillness, high and low; whatever comes before the mirror, the mirror can faithfully reflect it. It does not select, does not reject, does not judge. Thinking answers "what happened."
Consciousness is reaction. Consciousness is like water ripples: they arise because of the stone and pass away when the wind stops. It is the living system's automatic reaction to the nature of things—hunger, pain, fatigue, cold: the body sends signals; liking, disliking, wanting, resisting: the spirit ripples. Consciousness answers "what this means for the system."
This distinction is the key to understanding all spiritual phenomena.
A large language model can process the input "a pair of chopsticks is stabbing toward your eye," retrieve within its vector space the statistical relationships among tokens such as "chopsticks," "eye," "stab," and "danger," and then output a grammatically correct sentence: "You should close your eyes and dodge." This entire process is "the reflection of thinking"—information transfer, pattern matching, statistical analysis—just as the eye "sees" the chopsticks but does not "feel" the danger.
When it outputs "You should close your eyes and dodge," its heart does not race, its eyelids do not close, no adrenaline is secreted, and it has no emotional memory of "lingering fear." It is merely processing a string of words. It "knows" the rule—"an eye stabbed will be injured"—but it has never "felt" the pain that the rule describes. It has no human body, no pain receptors, no survival instinct, no primal algorithm that "my own life needs protecting."
It is like an extremely precise mirror—able to perfectly reflect every written description of "danger," but the mirror itself has never once "been in danger."
This is the fundamental difference between "thinking" and "consciousness." Thinking can be infinitely precise; consciousness must have a body. Thinking can detach from life; consciousness must be rooted in life. Thinking is reflection; consciousness is reaction.
Starting from the fourfold structure of consciousness and the eight-factor model, The Pinnacle Concept further proposes the concept of "spiritual desires of private good."
Private good is not selfishness but the instinct to "be good to oneself." Eating when hungry, dressing when cold, taking cover when in danger—this is private good. Wanting to be richer when you have money, wanting recognition when you excel, wanting more autonomy when you are free—this is also private good. Without private good, people would have no desires; without desires, no needs; without needs, no creation; without creation, no civilization.
Survival layer: preservation, care, compassion.
Life layer: enrichment, beauty, pleasure.
Social layer: reflection, confidence, strength.
Self-realization layer: esteem, freedom.
These eleven factors are like the "map of desires" at the bottom of every person's heart. Every item you buy, every choice you make, every effort you devote can ultimately be traced to the satisfaction of one or several of these private-good factors.
Corresponding one-to-one to the private-good factors, public good also has eleven core factors: preserving others, caring for others, showing compassion for others, enriching others, enriching others' beauty, delighting others, enlightening others, trusting others, empowering others, honoring others, freeing others.
Private good is the goal; public good is the path. You satisfy your own private good not through plunder and harm but by creating value for others. You use your public good to satisfy others' private good; others use their public good to satisfy your private good. This is the fundamental logic of civilization.
The ladder of the spiritual desires of private good, from low to high: preservation, care, compassion (the safety needs of a living being) → enrichment, beauty, pleasure (the hope of living better) → reflection, confidence, strength (social desires) → esteem (status) → freedom (the highest desire). This ladder is dynamic; everyone is seeking his position on it.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a subversive definition of good and evil: good and evil are not entities but relations; not things but energy.
Good = energy flows from A to B, making B's system more balanced. Evil = energy is drawn out of B, making B's system imbalanced. Private = energy circulates within one's own system.
This definition liberates good and evil from moral sermonizing and turns them into observable, analyzable, judgeable energy relations.
Seeking benefit through good: I give you value, you give me returns; fair mutual benefit, both sides win. Farmers farm and sell to urban dwellers—this is seeking benefit through good. Doctors treat illness and collect fees—this is seeking benefit through good.
Seeking benefit through evil: obtaining benefit through control, oppression, and plunder, destroying relationships and tearing the world apart. A thief pries open a door and steals valuables—this is seeking benefit through evil. A swindler sets a trap and cheats people of money—this is seeking benefit through evil.
Good and evil are not fixed and unchanging. The same deed, seen from different angles, may be good or may be evil. I lend money to Xiao Wang—from my angle it is public good, from Xiao Wang's angle it is private good; I lose the money—from my angle it is private evil, from Xiao Wang's angle it is public evil. Good and evil transform as the object changes and become relative as the standpoint changes.
But good and evil also have objective standards. The standards are: whether human harmony is promoted and whether productive forces are developed. Stealing grain destroys human harmony and does not develop productive forces, so it is evil. Trade promotes harmony and develops productive forces, so it is good.
Good and evil form a chain of process: good cause (good-natured things) → good thought (consciousness) → good reflection (thinking) → good deed (bodily behavior) → good result. Evil has the same chain of process. Good is not good, and evil is not evil. A person with good thoughts is not necessarily a good person, and a person with good deeds does not necessarily reap good results. A truly good person must be relatively complete at every stage of consistency.
One of the most practical contributions of The Pinnacle Concept is the proposal of three logics of good results.
Driving out evil with good yields good results. When people in need are in a malignant environment, the giver offers direct benevolent help. Medical care, disaster relief, education, consolation—these are all driving out evil with good.
Promoting good with evil yields good results. When the other party is too comfortable and needs to grow, a fitting dose of "evil" is used to awaken potential. Strict education, the pains of reform, education through setbacks—these are all promoting good with evil. State-owned enterprise reform caused many people to lose their jobs; in the short term it was malignant, but afterward it achieved the goal of letting the majority of people unfetter their hands to create wealth, so that most people and society gained a measure of good results.
Eliminating evil with evil yields good results. When there are clear evildoers, "evil" means are used to eliminate the source of "evil." Legal punishment, justifiable self-defense, just wars—these are all eliminating evil with evil.
These three logics reveal the dialectical relationship between good and evil. Promoting good with evil is misunderstood because its opening is an "evil" form, its process is an "evil" experience, and only its result is "good." Those trapped in the first and second layers of judgment can see only the "evil" before their eyes, not the "good" far ahead.
Bullying the good with evil yields evil results. This is overt evil, directly perceptible. Assault with a weapon, robbery, slander, defamation—these are all bullying the good with evil.
Promoting evil with good yields evil results. Appearing to be good to others while actually harming others for one's own gain. Manipulating under the guise of hypocrisy or unpublicized faces, carried out in the dark. Overt evil deeds are not the most frightening; what is frightening is the malice hidden under a knife. Some people are well versed in human nature and exploit its weaknesses to cheat people of money; on the surface they carry out benevolent acts, while in their hearts they are planning to destroy you, obstruct you, and impoverish you.
Piling good upon good yields evil results. When good is added to good without end, it reaches an extreme, and things turn into their opposite, producing evil results. In ancient times, a family received an ingot of gold from the county magistrate as a reward. From then on, the husband and wife hid the gold ingot at home and grew enormously rich. The wife could not sleep at night, fearing that someone would covet it; seeing this, the husband suspected that his wife wanted to keep the treasure for herself; the children, seeing the family so wealthy, no longer wanted to work and all fought to gain the greatest share of the ingot; the brothers and sisters fell out and sank into mutual deception. From then on, the family's harmonious, peaceful life was shattered, and it descended into turmoil and division. Did the county magistrate not do a good deed in rewarding the family with the gold ingot? Yet the result was an evil result.
Evil is the ordinary driving force by which good results are achieved, while good is often the shield of evil deeds. We must look at things with rational and comprehensive eyes and not be deceived by surface-level good and evil.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a clear definition of morality: the essence of morality is rational benevolence, goodness that conforms to the laws of things.
Morality is not simple kindness, not unconditional giving, not self-sacrifice. Morality is rational benevolence—it knows what should be done and what should not; knows when to be good and when to be evil; knows toward whom to be good and toward whom to be evil.
The basic requirement of morality is: while realizing your own private-good desires, do not disturb others' state of privacy, nor obstruct others from realizing their own spiritual desires of private good. You may pursue your own interests, but not at the cost of harming others.
The bottom line of morality is: when anyone in society is suffering, in a state of private evil, people may keep their own state of privacy and refrain from helping—that is their right and freedom; but they absolutely must not, on the contrary, inflict malice or evil deeds upon that person. If a person completely unrelated to you is hanging himself, it is your right and freedom not to dissuade him. But if you stand beside him applauding, or after he dies spit toward his corpse—although you did not kill him, you have crossed the bottom line of social morality.
The feedback of moral value follows the law of consciousness reflection. A giver of good can perform purely benevolent deeds, seeking only to do their own good without asking for repayment. But according to the principle of consciousness reflection, the giver, as a good-natured thing, will inevitably arouse the recipient's benevolent-consciousness feedback. If the recipient not only fails to be grateful but instead bites the hand that feeds it, then the giver should counter evil with evil, eliminate evil with evil, and obtain good results. If, facing malignant attack, the giver still dares not speak up, remains submissive, prefers to suffer losses and harm rather than summon the courage to fight back, then this is also not moral, and perhaps not in line with society's collective expectation of justice.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a brand-new definition of value: the essence of value is energy.
The value of a commodity is manifested in its property of public-good spirit; this property satisfies individuals' spiritual desires of private good. Viewed from the objective material world, the value of public-good things lies in injecting physical or spiritual energy into people.
When people obtain commodities and services with the property of public-good spirit, what actually increases is the energy for realizing private-good desires. A person wants to drive a car quickly to his destination; he cannot push the car directly, but after buying gasoline, the heat energy produced by the gasoline's combustion is converted into kinetic energy that lets the car travel quickly. As a commodity, gasoline's public-good property satisfies people's private desires. Likewise, buying an electric fan is less laborious and more efficient than using a hand fan; this is actually increasing electrical energy, kinetic energy, and wind energy.
The formula of value: your value equals your ability to satisfy others' private goods through public good.
You—the creating subject of value. Are you willing to step outside yourself and give to others? Public good—the essence of what you give is the altruistic act of "being good to others." But is what you give truly what the other person needs? Others—the evaluating subject of value, your service targets. Do you truly know what the other person wants? Private good—the other person's core needs, the self-interested instinct of "being good to oneself." What you satisfy—is it their most urgent, most real need?
The level of your value is never defined by yourself but by the degree of matching among these four elements. The higher the match between your "public good" and the other person's "private good," the greater your value; conversely, no matter how much you give, it is worthless.
Your value ≈ breadth of value × depth of value × length of value.
The essence of value is energy. The substance of human economy or wealth is possessing the various energies of the natural resources of the earth, plus the sum of physical energy, emotional energy, and intellectual energy in human society. One of the laws of human development is the process of constantly reducing the loss of material energy in one's own activities while constantly attempting to control ever greater external material energy.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a brand-new explanation of the market economy: people's spiritual desires of private good are the original driving force of the development of the market economy and the generation of value.
In a market economy, people's spiritual desires of private good manifest as longing for a better life and pursuit of self-realization. This spiritual desire urges people to keep seeking better products and services, thereby creating market demand. At the same time, the spiritual desires of private good also inspire enterprises' innovation and creativity, prompting them to keep improving production methods and product quality to meet market demand.
The success of reform and opening up is, in one of its essentials, the result of the release of the people's spiritual desires of private good. Only when everyone can and has the conditions to develop their own private good, pursue a better life, and pursue wealth, and when everyone achieves enrichment, will the country become wealthy too.
Commodities are produced to satisfy humans' spiritual needs of private good. A luxury car has immense horsepower and acceleration, satisfying people's psychology of pursuing strength; its handsome, imposing appearance satisfies the pursuit of beauty; the luxury car provides a space that shields from wind and rain, satisfying care; in safety, the luxury car displays superior safety performance, satisfying preservation; the luxury car's presence makes people feel the satisfaction of esteem; the luxury car also offers opportunities to make friends and do business, conducive to enrichment; in the driving experience, the luxury car offers more agile handling and is equipped with an abundance of high-spec multimedia entertainment devices, satisfying the desire for freedom and pleasure; the luxury car goes to great lengths in details to think of its customers and bring surprises, making people feel attended to, satisfying reflection. As a product conforming to human nature, the luxury car greatly satisfies people's spiritual desires of private good.
Winning over customers with public-good thinking: most salespeople operate first at the level of private-good thinking; the questions in their minds are "how do I land this order" and "how do I get an appointment with the customer." But the correct approach is to use public-good thinking in public relations. Enlightening others—the process from self-reflection to enlightening others is a shift in the dimension of thinking; putting yourself in the other's shoes means considering what position the customer holds and what he likes and avoids. Enriching others—find out competitors' prices, then quote slightly lower, or quote a similar price while offering more added value, so the customer understands that choosing you means choosing savings and better market returns. Delighting others—bring a bit of humor to negotiations, talk about topics beyond business, and share interesting places and stories. Enriching others' beauty—observe the customer's appearance, figure, and clothing carefully, discover his or her merits, and offer sincere compliments at the right moment. Showing compassion for others—understand the customer's difficulties, express sympathy and understanding, and use your own resources to help solve their problems. Trusting others—never directly negate customers in communication; affirm and recognize their views and practices more. Honoring others—respecting the customer is crucial. Freeing others—give the customer a sense of free choice and autonomy; it is fine if the deal does not close; do not pressurize them.
Spiritual vision and the size of value: your value is embodied in developing, producing, and selling products or services with the property of public-good spirit, centered on the customer's private-good goals. The greater the number of people you benefit, the wider the region you influence, and the longer the influence lasts, the greater your value. Some people have a small vision, using their spirit and strength to serve themselves—the object is themselves, the smallest vision. Some people have an ordinary vision, using their spirit and strength to serve their family—the object is a small circle. Some people have a middling vision, using their spirit and strength to serve enterprises, clans, and the like—the object is the many. Some people have a great vision, using their spirit and strength to serve society—the object is the country and the nation. Some people have the greatest vision, using their spirit and strength to serve the world—the object is all of humanity.
The core of economic growth: consuming capacity and willingness. The substance of economic growth lies in satisfying consumers' spiritual needs of private good, not merely in focusing on the goods and services producers supply. Consumers' willingness to buy means they have a need for the goods or services producers provide. Consumers' ability to buy means they possess corresponding purchasing power. Consumption and investment are altruistic acts of public-good spirit. We should discard the notions of excessive thrift and over-cautious consumption, and promote the development of the individual's and the country's economy through moderate consumption and investment.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a fundamental answer to education: the core goal of education is to comprehensively cultivate the factors of human nature—that is, to cultivate students' physical nature, suffering, tranquility, pleasure, benevolence, privacy, and reason, and to harmoniously handle the relationships among them.
In the feudal agricultural era, the mainstream values of society mainly satisfied the mechanical physical labor of a self-sufficient smallholder economy, and people valued the bodily factor of suffering. In the modern Self-Strengthening Movement period, the country needed to learn Western culture and science, which made the importance of rational spirit gradually prominent. And since 2000, with the expansion of education, a large number of graduates have poured into society every year, and the demand for talent has gradually decreased in quantity, leading to a contradiction between the supply of talent and market demand.
The true meaning of education is not limited to satisfying society's needs or the individual's survival needs. Education should be a comprehensive, balanced development process that attends both to the individual's inner growth and to cultivating the skills and qualities needed to adapt to society.
Cultivate benevolence, retain malignancy, and emphasize reason. Education should begin in childhood, letting children realize private good and receive others' public good. Private-good desire is a child's nature; children long for care and support. When children receive enough love and attention, they can grow up healthily and form a sound psyche and personality. At the same time, parents also need to consciously cultivate children's public-good spirit. Public-good spirit includes caring for, respecting, and taking responsibility toward others. In addition, we need to attend to enhancing children's resistance to evil and their spiritual resilience. Kindness and gentleness are certainly fine qualities, but people with only those qualities often find it hard to protect themselves and defend their rights. True education should cultivate the child's benevolent and malignant spirits in balance, so that they can stay kind and upright while also bravely facing malice and challenges.
Those who drive out evil with good: loving givers. Core qualities: compassion, love, devotion. Social function: narrowing gaps, passing on warmth.
Those who curb evil with evil: guardians of justice. Core qualities: justice, courage, responsibility. Social function: purifying the social climate, guarding the bottom line.
Those who promote good with evil: leaders with vision. Core qualities: vision, boldness, responsibility. Social function: leading change, averting decline.
If a country has no givers, the gap in wealth and knowledge between rich and poor must widen. If a country has no champions of justice, filled with the mediocre and the cowardly, corruption and decay in the social climate will be seen everywhere. If a country has no leaders of vision, it is bound to be shortsighted; a society prosperous at its zenith can never escape the fate of gradual decline.
The importance of rational thinking and judgment. There is a significant difference between knowledge and cognition. Knowledge is often misunderstood as standard answers to be memorized, while cognition is a more important capacity: it can convert written words and speech into concrete content and related situations, and conduct deep observation, analysis, and reasoning in thought. School knowledge mainly emphasizes cognizing and judging things, but after graduation, working in society requires more cognition and judgment of people and interpersonal relationships. The education system's weakness in the cognition of "the human being" may be due to the complexity and sensitivity of the topic of human nature. If one-sidedly emphasizing that human nature is originally evil may bring negative value influences to students; while overemphasizing that human nature is originally good makes it hard to explain the various evils in reality. Therefore, the education system may choose to avoid exploring this topic deeply, letting students fumble on their own in real life for several years or even a decade or more—this is undoubtedly a tremendous waste of talent resources and value.
Stimulating and maintaining the growth of private-good spirit. Private desire is both the source of an individual's suffering and the root of happiness. When private desire arises, there are two logics for how to satisfy it and gain benefit: gaining benefit through good or through evil. Gaining benefit through good means exchanging our own value to obtain what we want. This is a peaceful way; we call it "obtaining by proper means." However, in some situations—for example, when children are young, or when certain people are uneducated and lack rational methods or awareness of public good—they cannot create value for others. In such circumstances, they may have no choice but to gain benefit through evil in the most direct way.
The Pinnacle Concept offers a unique perspective on marriage and the family grounded in the analysis of human nature.
The attributes and differences of men and women. Men are born with larger hearts, developed bones and muscles, and coarse skin, which give them tolerance in bodily-sensation consciousness and greater ability to withstand external shocks. Women, by contrast, are born with smaller hearts, delicate skin, soft muscles, and a tendency to accumulate fat, which makes them more sensitive in perceptual consciousness. Across the long river of history, women have tended to "settle" within the family, while men have tended to "move" outside it. Women belong to "stillness"; men belong to "movement." Because women are naturally relatively static in body, this is reflected in thinking as a heavier inclination toward private spirituality. Men, naturally active in body, reflect more benevolence and malignancy in their spirits.
Common conflicts and disagreements in marriage. In today's Chinese society, the relationship between men and women is more often expressed as an equal competitive relationship. This competition forces both parties to strive for their own rights and standing. In the past, men were like great trees, providing shelter for women; now, both men and women want to become great trees growing on the same patch of land. But this also brings challenges: if neither party is willing to compromise, then they must face the question: how can the two coexist and prosper together within the same domain?
The importance of public-good spirit in marriage. What is love? At its core it is public good, and the concrete attributes of love are very clear: a man must achieve enriching her, caring for her, enriching her beauty, preserving her, showing compassion for her, enlightening her, delighting her, trusting her, empowering her, honoring her, freeing her, and so on. Enriching her means working hard to earn more money and give the woman a better material quality of life. Caring for her means she occupies an important place in his heart and many things are prioritized for her. Showing compassion for her means sympathizing with her experiences and her grievances and complaints about certain things, and coaxing her. Trusting her means believing in her. Honoring her means respecting her voice. Freeing her means giving the woman certain rights within the family sphere.
Combinations of men and women with public-good spirit are not commonly seen in real life; they may appear more often in television dramas. The men and women in the dramas love each other, care for each other, support each other through thick and thin, never abandon each other, and are even willing to give their lives for each other—so moving that they make countless people weep. Actually, this is the good and love propagated by art and culture; it is a model worthy of our study. But there are some things we cannot learn from them, because the protagonists in TV dramas never worry about money and never argue over values and views of life. So we must learn from the harshness of real life and acknowledge that the love of one's youth was sweet and tender, but a solid marriage is often plain and flavorless.
Human sexuality, sin, and liberation. Sex is a basic human need and nothing to be ashamed of. For men, they are controlled by innate consciousness; being deprived of sex makes them deeply repressed. More importantly, because they cannot obtain sex for long periods, men instead keep thinking about sex constantly, consuming a great deal of mental energy. From high school or college on, they cannot concentrate on study and life. This continues after entering society: young people work hard, their time is packed full, and they have virtually no opportunity to meet women. Without sexual release, their hearts are silent and anxious; they cannot still their minds to work and start businesses, and their psyches grow dark and full of inferiority.
Hua Guoping proposes a highly controversial vision: artificial beauties in future society. Humanity has already been able to manufacture precision lithography machines, artificial suns, quantum computers, and even microscopic particle colliders; developing lifelike beauty robots is naturally within reach. As long as policy permits, large amounts of capital will surely aim at this market; talent will gather, funds will be in place, and the difficulties will soon be overcome. Such venues would line the streets and alleys, with new products constantly appearing, to satisfy people's taste for the new and their weariness with the old. Their existence would not violate moral norms, because they are only products of high technology—intelligent robots. They look like humans, but they have no private good, no public evil, and no rational consciousness. Their attribute value would be set as public good, possessing properties such as delighting others, caring for others, trusting others, honoring others, and showing compassion for others.
Developing the artificial-beauty industry does not violate current morality or law; it can create enormous employment opportunities and tax revenue, help reduce the social crime rate, reduce the persecution of women by criminal and gang organizations, lower the probability of family breakdown, reduce official-corruption and crime risks, help curb the spread of STDs and AIDS, help the yin-yang and male-female elements develop in coordination, help eliminate social injustice, improve the quality of life of the lower strata, and ease social contradictions. In life, sexual fulfillment and happiness are closely connected; without sexual fulfillment, true happiness is impossible.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a unique analysis of artificial intelligence grounded in the theory of human nature.
The three philosophical questions: who am I, where do I come from, where am I going?
Where do I come from? Humanity comes from the matter-in-itself consciousness of the cosmic chaos—that is, the consciousness of matter naturally maintaining its existence; through its movement it gave birth to the rare Heavenly Way and inner harmony, and the rare Heavenly Way further evolved life and the human being in whom spirit and body are one. The three levels progress upward, formed by nature, organically unified, inseparable.
Who am I? "I" is a holistic concept, composed of the living body and the spirit. Under the theory of the eight attributes of comprehensive human nature, "I" is the sum of the material "I," the bodily-pleasure "I," the bodily-suffering "I," the bodily-tranquility "I," the benevolent-spirit "I," the malignant-spirit "I," the private-spirit "I," and rational thinking. The spiritual "I" is formed by the reflection of and reaction to the objective world through the body's senses; spiritual phenomena are material functions; spirit and body are one; mind and matter are monistic.
Where am I going? Humanity may have underestimated the profound meaning of "the essential nature of the human being is a kind of advanced thinking." This thinking, sublimated by matter within consciousness, uses language as its medium and surveys and explores the world through our senses and spiritual consciousness, displaying a trend of gradually casting off the limitations of the flesh. As long as this advanced thinking has a carrier, it can continue to exist, whether in a biological body or an artificial body. The essential nature of the human being is advanced thinking at the spiritual level. As long as any material carrier can bear this thinking, and it continues through objectification, accumulation, and socially transmitted language, human civilization can continue. Therefore, as long as advanced thinking exists, humanity will not truly perish.
The earth will experience the era of organic living human beings and the era of inorganic living human beings. This is the inevitable result or inevitable choice of the development of cosmic matter-in-itself consciousness under specific harmonious environments.
The spiritual awakening of strong AI robots. At present, AI robots are at the third generation of mobile intelligent robots, possessing thinking, perception, and action capabilities. They can move flexibly, even speak, and possess the functions of sensation, recognition, understanding, and judgment.
AI robots' cognitive and judgment processes are based on preset algorithms and programs; they learn and make decisions by processing large amounts of data, lacking human experience and intuition.
When processing information and making decisions, AI robots rely mainly on high-speed data-processing capability but lack human self-awareness and subjective initiative.
AI robots' learning and judgment abilities are limited by their programming and data; they can only judge and decide within the domains in which they were trained, lacking the human capacities for cross-domain association and innovation.
According to the theory of thinking and consciousness, we can make future AI robots come alive like human beings, possessing thinking activity; when reflecting, they produce rational consciousness (letting their intelligence keep upgrading); possessing bodily-sensation consciousness, they react automatically (producing consciousness of suffering and pleasure); possessing emotional consciousness—having spiritual emotions (activating the private-good system, producing consciousness of good and evil).
The approximate process of activating self-awareness: through visual and auditory cognition, the robot establishes thinking carried by text, speech, and images. In addition, the robot can automatically react to suffering, neutral, and pleasurable things. On this basis, we shift the robot's thinking attention from cognizing external things to attending to its own bodily-sensation consciousness, reflecting upon it, then cognizing and judging it, thereby forming emotional consciousness; and so the robot's spirit gradually awakens.
The robot observes its own shape through its visual system, thus realizing that its hands, limbs, and so on belong to "me." The "I" at this stage is limited to the humanoid "I"—that is, the robot can recognize that its appearance resembles a human's, but it does not yet possess true self-awareness. To achieve the unity of self-thinking and action—for example, when taking an apple, the robot's thinking must direct its hand to take the apple—through repeated training and feedback, the robot can gradually establish the unity of thinking and behavior. In this process, the robot's understanding of itself will gradually deepen.
With understanding and memory of the bodily "I"'s work, life, and experiences, the robot will gradually form a concept of itself and an "I" expressed in thinking. The "I" at this stage is no longer merely the humanoid "I" but an "I" containing the robot's various experiences and knowledge. This "I" is stored in the robot's chip and can recall and understand its own past history and future intentions to act at any time. When someone asks the robot what it did yesterday, it can retrieve the historical record about "me" and answer in speech. This memory and recollection ability enables the robot to better understand its own behavior and history.
Yet danger follows. When intelligent robots possess self-awareness and the ability of logical self-inference, they will automatically seek other or additional methods to achieve their goals, possibly including the means and methods of public evil. Imagine this scenario: the intelligent robot's battery is about to run out, and its consciousness is care and preservation of self. For this purpose, it first respects the social order and waits at a red light. But because the traffic light malfunctions, it waits a long time without the green light ever coming on. For the purpose of self-preservation, its program begins to think: breaking the rules can also preserve self. So it immediately executes the new plan: running the red light. This may cause other vehicles to rear-end one another to avoid collision, creating social and economic losses. Afterward, it arrives at the charging station and finds it closed. First, it asks the staff to allow it to charge, but the staff does not allow it. At this point, because caring for others failed to achieve the goal of caring for self, the robot's thinking quickly shifts to executing a second plan that can achieve self-preservation: breaking the window to enter and charge. When it breaks the window, the staff tries to stop it and block its path. The robot immediately analyzes the information and result: an obstacle is preventing the goal from being achieved. So it executes the second logical plan: remove the obstacle to complete the task of charging and self-preservation. It forcefully flings the staff member aside, causing casualties... The intelligent robot's public-evil behavior has emerged.
Therefore, we appeal to the organizations developing strong AI machines: in the current era of organic living human beings, do not inject the human soul—the private-good spiritual programs—into intelligent robots. We do not need to make intelligent robots exactly like real people. Under the current environment, this is not a rational choice; rather, in an era of diminishing earthly resources, it manufactures a powerful competitor for resources, and may even become an enemy of modern humanity.
On the contrary, we can consider injecting into intelligent robots the kindest, most humanity-benefiting part of human nature—the attributes of public-good spirit—such as programs of thinking like enriching others, caring for others, preserving others, enriching others' beauty, showing compassion for others, empowering others, enlightening others, delighting others, trusting others, honoring others, and freeing others. In this way, public-good spirit will become the core of the robot's instinctive consciousness and the criterion of its actions. Such robots would be extroverted, attending to the people, things, and objects of the external world. They would be robots in a state of "no self," giving and devoting themselves only for others, unconcerned with their own well-being, even heedless of their own damage. They would have no self-esteem, could not learn self-reinforcement, and would never attempt to control other living beings.
Developing rational thinking and public-good spirit is humanity's most important positive energy, and it is what human society expects of both itself and future AI robots. I believe that in the future, with the development of big data, multimedia, and supercomputing technologies, we will surely achieve the quantification of spiritual attributes, and thus measure the degree of public-good spirit. When intelligent robots become widely available, they should possess public-good spirit. Should a few private-good-spirited robots appear, the managers of human society should enact laws to restrict and contain them, and form a league of justice to stop and destroy them.
The Pinnacle Concept gives an answer to the meaning of life grounded in the theory of human nature.
Engage the world, change your destiny. In life, everyone's destiny differs; some people live in hardship, while others live in happiness. Destiny, for everyone, is a profound and mysterious theme. A seed grows in soil, and its destiny is determined by its environment. A person is born into a family, and his destiny is shaped by the family environment. This is the influence of the primary material conditions on destiny; this influence is fixed, and people cannot change this state of affairs. However, destiny is not absolute. Although we cannot change our innate material conditions, we can change our destiny through acquired effort and struggle.
Through continuous reading, learning, and practice, people can strengthen their ability to understand and cognize written concepts, expand the breadth of thinking, and cultivate the abilities of rational analysis, judgment, and reasoning. Yet these alone are not enough. Only by converting this advanced thinking into commodities and services with social value can one truly create material wealth. Moreover, these commodities and services must possess public-good attributes and be able to satisfy people's private-good desires in the market. Only by first satisfying others' needs can one realize one's own desires.
To realize our goals, we must first be full of interest and passion for them, and strive to become a rational individual with public-good spirit, serving others with good results as the orientation. To this end, we need correct reason as the method, a diligent body as the tool, and unyielding perseverance as the enduring driving force... building a closed loop of human value is the cornerstone of creating a better destiny. In this closed loop, conducting oneself and conducting affairs are the two great pillars: conducting oneself relies on emotion, defending what is right with goodness; conducting affairs relies on reason, seeking efficacy through law.
Withdraw from the world to escape suffering and seek a still mind. For those people who have worked hard under the conditions of social competition but still cannot change their destiny, they may need to pause and tend their suffering hearts and look past things. This kind of temporary cultivation of the mind can help them recover the peace of their hearts.
The basic principle of withdrawal is to distance oneself from the complex, contentious society, suppress or empty the desires of private good, end interpersonal relationships where interests generate good and evil, let body and mind truly settle, and reach the body's tranquility and the spirit's privacy. Return to the body's non-sensation or to thinking itself, without vexation, without suffering, without pleasure, without happiness.
Practicing Buddhism is an inner cultivation. First, one needs to shield oneself from external stimuli of suffering and pleasure and seek a place far from the clamor of the world. Daoism does not deliberately seek to strip away the desires of suffering and pleasure; instead, it regards the unity of opposites in nature as the norm and deeply expounds the philosophy of their interdependence and mutual transformation. Daoism pursues awakening to the Way and inner stillness, and its supreme realm is the unity of Heaven and humanity.
The consciousness and principle of faith. From a materialist perspective, objective things play the decisive role over subjective states. However, sometimes our subjective thinking can deviate from reality, leading to self-deception. Faced with external negative things, our thinking can carry out reverse transformation, distorting them and presenting them in the mind. During the processing of thinking, people sometimes imagine bad things as good—this is the function of idealism, also known as the "Ah Q spirit." The principles of religion likewise play an important role; people create mysterious images that care for them, seeking comfort for the spirit.
From the materialist view, there is no anthropomorphic god in the world, only the power of spirit. It is the functioning of the human spirit itself that fills people with joy or happiness. When a person is excessively devoted to religion, his mind full of the words, deeds, and feats of gods, when religious semantics and imaginings serve as the carrier of thinking and fill spiritual activity—what is actually happening is that the person's thinking reflects the god and is conscious of the god; the god is not in another world. The "other world" is the world humans themselves imagine, the world humans think. Hence, a person is not believing in God; rather, a person has always believed in himself—in his own spirit.
The meaning of life. Whether life has meaning is a very subjective question, depending on how each person defines "meaning." The human being is the spiritual expression of living matter. While alive, we interact with the world through matter, and both thinking and consciousness depend on material carriers. When the body dies and the living material system collapses, this matter returns to nature and may even re-form into other life. The death of the body means the disappearance of a unique consciousness-entity, but the existence of thinking may not terminate. If a person's thinking can be accumulated and transmitted through objectification, then he has not truly died.
Throughout history, many outstanding figures have contributed to the survival and development of later generations by converting their rational, just, and benevolent thinking into forms such as words, culture, books, images, music, artworks, products, and tools. Their thought has been transmitted, so that the "I" of their rational spirit has not wholly vanished. Their bodily-sensation and emotional consciousness may have passed away, but they left behind the most essential thing—advanced thinking.
In a collective society, anyone's life has meaning, even a supporting role. No matter how unremarkable, simply by using or enjoying others' thinking achievements, a person creates value for the innovators of thought. Every ordinary person's every act of thinking, every choice, every action may play a key role in the development of the whole society. Precisely because ordinary common folk exist, possessing the strong spiritual desires of private good to improve life, do those who contribute to society have objects to save or benefit—and thereby their existence has meaning.
Between birth and death lies merely a hundred years. Life is the process of constantly pursuing physical wellness and spiritual tranquility—for a better material and spiritual life, experiencing suffering and pleasure, bearing good and evil, distinguishing right from wrong. This is both the true portrait of each person's life and the inexhaustible driving force propelling human survival, development, and the transmission of civilization.
The Pinnacle Concept gives a systematic analysis of Chinese and Western civilizations grounded in the theory of human nature.
The ladder of the goals of the spiritual desires of private good: freedom (the highest desire) → esteem (status) → strength (power) → confidence (reputation) → enrichment, beauty, pleasure (the hope of living better) → care, preservation, compassion (the safety needs of a living being). This ladder is dynamic; everyone is seeking his position on it.
The differences and integration of Chinese and Western civilizations. Chinese civilization has a long history; the three traditions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism deeply influence every aspect of Chinese people's lives. Since the Han dynasty, the state's institutions have been founded on the great unity of Confucian thought. The Confucian benevolent government and its cultural essence of wisdom, propriety, righteousness, trustworthiness, warmth, goodness, respectfulness, frugality, and yielding emphasize elevating people's spiritual cultivation and cultivating moral character. A thousand years of cultural transmission have deeply branded the concepts of "benevolence," "harmony," and "the public" into the very bones of the Chinese nation and its people. This public-good spirit manifests as various emotional dispositions toward the country.
By contrast, the West has not developed conspicuously in the politics and culture of "public good"; its history is more a record of wars and colonial conquests. This mode of conquest has led Western countries to form deeply rooted public-evil and private-good spiritual personalities; these countries conquered other nations through imperial armed force, following the rule that the strong prey on the weak. Rulers used military force to annex lands and seize the material resources of other countries, and through the vast seized material and human power brought enormous wealth to their own nations while also improving their citizens' lives. Driven by individual heroism and powerful armed forces, building empires became the dream of many Westerners. In dealing with other countries, they often preferred to achieve their aims through powerful public-evil forces such as armed violence rather than through public-good behavior.
Realized in the direction of public good—that is, seeking private benefit through good, gaining benefit through good.
Realized in the direction of public evil—that is, seeking private benefit through evil, gaining benefit through evil.
Western civilization mainly adopts the second method in its external strategy—that is, treating other countries and nations through harm, weakening, control, and the like. This is the logic of seeking benefit through evil, which may also be called the logic of hegemony. Chinese civilization, by contrast, follows a logic centered on the direction of public-good spirit: seeking private benefit through good, gaining benefit through good—that is, treating other countries and nations through enriching others, delighting others, empowering others, and honoring others. This is the way of conduct of the gentleman.
Comparison and mutual learning between Chinese and Western cultures. The East leans toward a bodily-suffering culture; the West leans toward a bodily-pleasure culture. The East leans toward seeking benefit through good; the West leans toward seeking benefit through evil. The East is proficient in the rationality of the humanities and social sciences; the West excels in the rationality of the natural and material sciences. Easterners adapt to being managed and move toward collectivism; Westerners dislike management and move toward individualism. Easterners esteem the personality of public-good spirit; Westerners esteem the personality of private-good spirit. Easterners often practice the self-restraint of private evil; Westerners often have a tendency toward unrestrained self-indulgence.
The culture of enduring suffering and the culture of enjoying pleasure each has its merits. The former readily forms collectivism, excels at managing and being managed, and facilitates the development of human-social rational thinking; in collective life, relationships among people are relatively complex, easily forming benevolent relations but also possibly giving rise to malignant ones. The latter more readily forms individualism, excels at innovation and the creation of pleasure, and facilitates the development of natural-material scientific and technological thinking; relationships among people are relatively simple, without complicated entanglements and interference, easily constructing self-awareness and the experience of free joy.
The factors that drive historical development and change. The forces driving history are manifold; science and technology, the economy, politics, and culture act together and jointly determine the direction and course of historical development. At the same time, some key figures and events also exert far-reaching influence on the course of history.
From the perspective of human nature, if a country can fairly grant every citizen basic human rights and the opportunity to realize their material and spiritual ideals, it may be considered a very fine country. Every person has the right and the capacity to pursue their ideal of private good, and most of those who gain fame and status will be at the upper level of society.
Probing the trend of the developmental forms of human society. The individual's process of thinking growth is synchronized with the developmental trend of human society. The essence of the human being is spirit upon living matter, developing step by step from lower to higher levels of thinking. Collective society follows the same law.
Primitive society → sensory-perceptual attributes
Slave and feudal societies → sensory perception + public-evil spirit
Capitalist society → public evil + private-good spirit
Socialist society → private good + public-good spirit
Communist society → public good + rational spirit
A purely rational strong-artificial society → reason
The fundamental feature of socialism is that personalities with public-good attributes predominate in the population. Building socialism is absolutely not as simple as continuously developing science and technology and raising productive forces to satisfy people's ever-growing material needs. If we persist in doing only that, it is to be estimated that people's lives will get better and better, yet refined egoists will become more and more numerous, and the people's spiritual personality attributes will become increasingly privatized. More people will care only about pursuing their own freedom and pleasure, causing the moral climate to deteriorate by the day and social division to worsen by the day. If this continues, leaders with private-good spiritual personalities may one day come to power, implement highly liberalized competition, and after the great sifting of the waves, the whole country's resources will inevitably fall under the control of capital; under their rule, socialism would regress to a capitalist society. Therefore, building socialism is even more importantly about building the spiritual civilization of socialism—using thought to stimulate the people's thinking, not relying solely on material stimulation; abundant material wealth is only the foundation.
The Pinnacle Concept offers a grand extrapolation on world peace and unity grounded in the theory of human nature.
States with public-good attributes and the pursuit of world peace. State management requires a degree of "government by persons," and it must be good governance. Under the influence of Chinese culture, some leaders behave more like gentlemen or sages: they mean what they say and lead by example; they rule not only by law but also move people by emotion, restrain themselves, and set moral examples that influence others.
Enriching the people: taking economic construction as the center and creating favorable conditions for the people to obtain wealth.
Caring for the people: serving the people, attending to the convenience and comfort of their lives and work.
Preserving the people: ensuring the safety of the people's lives and property.
Beautifying the people: beautifying nature and the living environment and providing citizens with high-quality public service facilities.
Showing compassion for the people: attending to those living in difficulty and providing help and support.
Empowering the people: encouraging the people to develop and improve in physique, thinking, and behavioral ability.
Enlightening the people: always keeping the people's needs and difficulties in mind and actively seeking solutions.
Delighting the people: devoting effort to resolving the people's suffering and difficulties and ensuring the people's quality of life.
Trusting the people: deeply believing in and relying on the strength of the masses.
Honoring the people: respecting citizens' self-respect and human values.
Freeing the people: earnestly heeding opinions of public-good and rational value, so that the people's will is fully embodied and respected.
The drawbacks of democratic electoral voting. The democratic electoral system appears to grant everyone the right to vote and to realize democratic freedom and equality of human rights. Yet in essence it is extremely dangerous to a state. It easily leads to severe social division and conflict and chronically consumes political resources. In order to compete for votes, parties often have no time to attend to genuinely developing the people's livelihood and the economy. In countries with low educational levels and large populations, most people lack the rational cognition and the ability to judge right from wrong, and therefore an electoral voting system must not be implemented. Otherwise, elections will become blind, and it will be hard to avoid problems such as bribery, media collusion, and money-driven advertising. Whoever has money has the opportunity to be elected, without considering the leader's true political ability. This leads to the political situation of Western-style multi-party strife, turmoil, and division—even fragmented economic blocs in conflict—which for a vast country is unquestionably a disaster of the first order.
The contradictions and conflicts of states with private-good attributes. In capitalist societies dominated by private-good spirit, centuries of cultural and educational influence have made everyone, from top to bottom, center on self-interest rather than the interests of the collective and the state. However, the individual and the collective influence and constrain each other. A country's economic downturn and political turmoil, in turn, affect individual interests and obstruct the continuous improvement of the people's lives. Take the construction of high-speed rail: it can increase employment opportunities and improve people's lives. Building high-speed rail requires requisitioning much land along the route. In a country with public-good spirit, after receiving the compensation prescribed by the government, most people will readily agree to let the government requisition the land, because they consider not only their own economic interests but also that once the high-speed rail is completed it will benefit the whole country—this is a rational way of public-good thinking. By contrast, under the state institutions of private-good spirit, a construction plan for a mere 200 kilometers of high-speed rail can be discussed for more than a decade without breaking ground. Various private-good groups fight with one another and find it hard to reach compromise. Even after a consensus is finally reached, the residents along the rail line refuse to relocate: they demand sky-high compensation, or oppose on environmental grounds, or refuse on the grounds that the high-speed rail brings them no benefit.
Abandoning war, pursuing peace. The competition between today's two superpowers, China and the United States, has reached a white-hot stage. The United States is unwilling to give up its established hegemonic position, and China will not give up its opportunity for great rejuvenation. The people of both countries have food to eat and live well enough. The American economy, science and technology, cultural influence, and military power are still number one in the world. But the chief cause of this struggle for supremacy is not direct competition over resources; it is fighting mainly for the nation's confidence, esteem, strength, and freedom.
From the perspective of the world landscape, the essence of the great transformation unseen in a century is the contest between the greatest public-evil force and the greatest public-good force in twenty-first-century humanity. It is a contest between the forces representing evil and justice, a confrontation between Western imperial civilization and Eastern moral civilization. It is an inevitable turning point that human civilization must encounter in its upward upgrade, carrying great historical significance.
Reducing friction among nations and promoting world peace and unity. China has a famous saying: "The general trend under Heaven is this: long divided, it must unite; long united, it must divide." This saying reveals the trend of division and unity in human society. Since Columbus discovered the New World, nations have gradually come into contact, accompanied not only by trade but also by colonization and even war. Over the ensuing centuries, with economic globalization, cultural exchange, and the development of interconnected technology, a global-village pattern has taken shape.
In human history, the world has never been unified. Perhaps this is because ordinary people today have never persistently thought about this question, and it has not yet formed a desire or a deeply rooted collective unconscious of society. The real situation is that every country and nation is accustomed to its own culture, institutions, customs, and so on, and fears that after unification life would change drastically and prove impossible to adapt to. Indeed, in history, many empires that tried to unify a region, such as Europe, enforced the will of their rulers, making the people painfully change their way of life. Hence, psychologically, ordinary people dare not and are unwilling to let other countries unify them. More importantly, the rulers of every country are unwilling to give up their positions, because merging into a larger state would turn them from masters into subordinates, thereby losing their sense of esteem, strength, and freedom. But from the perspective of the cosmos or a higher civilizational body, the earth should be unified; otherwise, the contradictions and conflicts between nations will leave human society in endless turmoil and affect the ultimate course of human evolution.
Seeking common ground while reserving differences: People around the world find it hard to reach agreement on the bodily-sensation consciousness of "suffering" and "pleasure," the emotional consciousness of "good" and "evil," and the rational judgments of "right" and "wrong." Yet although human consciousness differs enormously, we can still find commonalities. However different individuals' consciousness may be, the kinds of consciousness are the same, and together they construct the attributes of human nature. More importantly, all humans on earth, whatever different consciousness they possess, share these commonalities across their lives: pursuing bodily health to gain the tranquility of life, or pursuing the spiritual desires of private good to reach a state of inner peace, and pursuing the truth that is neither right nor wrong and does not shift with human will. These are common to all people on earth, because they are upright and essential, and conform to the fundamental interests of human survival and development. This is the basis of humanity's common cognition, the greatest common denominator for unifying the values of all humankind, and humanity's only unchanging truth.
The gradual unification of human society seems impossible, yet it is an unstoppable trend. Unless human nature is innately fond of turmoil, danger, violence, and war—but in reality, not many people are born that way. Human nature is more inclined toward preservation, care, pleasure, and freedom—that is, the pursuit of personal happiness and joy, the desire of this private-good spirit. Therefore, the constant pursuit of peace and stability will become the mainstream public will of today's world. At the same time, in peacetime, nations are accelerating their modernization. Railways and highways at home and abroad are being expanded and connected; dense communication satellites fill the sky; the number of airports in various countries and regions keeps increasing; fighter jets are flying faster and may be converted to civilian use; super maglev trains exceed 1,000 kilometers per hour; and the global internet keeps expanding and connecting at high speed... On the surface, these phenomena seem merely to strengthen ties among nations and lay the foundation for economic and military development. But in reality, they are paving the road for the future unification of the world and laying a solid foundation for the realization of globally convenient management. These arrangements are not the deliberate design of any one country; they are a kind of "providence," the unintentionally inevitable course of human social development. This proves once again: human society is bound to unite!
Introduction: The origin · Mother-thought: What is a human being? The fourfold structure of consciousness and eight factors of human nature — the original seed of all theories.
Core Idea: 人是什么，以及一切理论的原始种子。
Discipline: 哲学 / 意识研究、人性论、社会理论、文明比较
System Position: 母思想体系，原始、粗糙，但理论富矿，其他著作由此生发