Chapter Six · The Cracks in Heavenly Authority

ike when heavenly authority splits open along a crack. He had lived too long on only one side of fear, only on the side of fear, or else only on the side of greed. Once that goes on long enough, he loses the ability to move back and forth. A normal person ought to be contradictory. He ought to be both confident and insecure, both brave and cowardly, both wanting to live and afraid of death. That contradiction is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it shows that the bridge of heavenly authority is still there. Greed can walk over and look at fear. Fear can also walk over and look at greed. He can move back and forth, and so he can still adjust. But if a person is left with only one side, then the problem begins. Only confidence, without insecurity That person will become wildly arrogant without limit and not even know it. By the time he destroys himself, the realization comes too late. Only insecurity, without confidence That person will keep deceiving himself, keep self-justifying, and the accumulation of that self-justification will eventually collapse. Only greed, without fear That person will keep raising the stakes, and keep turning more and more manic. Only fear, without greed That person will keep retreating until, however vast the world may be, there is no place left where he can live inside it. At that point, it is not that he cannot think. It is that the bridge of heavenly authority has broken. He cannot cross over anymore. He cannot go from one side to the other and see his whole self. Why the bridge breaks Why does the bridge break? Not because a person suddenly loses reason. Very often it is because he wants comfort too badly. Human beings are born with a powerful instinct to let themselves off the hook: to explain a complex world through one simple reason. Because complexity is painful. Complexity means uncertainty, and uncertainty makes people afraid. So people go looking for the most comfortable explanation and use it to soothe themselves. That explanation is not for truth, and not for understanding. It is only because once the explanation seems to make sense, he can tell himself: It is not that I am inadequate. It is that the world is the one with the problem. At that moment, the heart feels balanced again. But that is also where the trouble begins. Because the explanation a person uses to comfort himself will eventually become the logic by which he acts. This sentence matters. Today, for the sake of comfort, you explain the world wrongly. Tomorrow you will act according to that wrong world. That is what is truly terrifying about a broken bridge. It is not that you deceived yourself once today. It is that later on you will live your whole life according to the logic produced by that deception. My own bridge I myself have had times like this too, and at the time it was serious. I made money very young. By the time I was twenty-two, I had already earned ten million. At that time I was arrogant. Instinctively, I felt that among people my own age, as long as they were not relying on family, nobody had more money than I did, nobody was more successful than I was, and nobody was smarter than I was. You can see it: at that time I was already in a state where the bridge was close to breaking. That was completely different from the earlier period when I lost money buying stones and still felt that losing money was only natural. Because at that later moment, I was standing only on the side of greed. I was not looking at the world. I was using the world to prove myself. Then, when I was twenty-three, I saw someone: Yu Jiawen from Super Class Schedule. At the time his label was loud. The strongest post-90s founder. The king of post-90s entrepreneurship. He had even loudly declared that he would give everyone a bonus of one hundred million. His company's valuation was very high, tens of billions, and the media were all saying how impressive he was. But inside me, I felt uncomfortable. It was not ordinary jealousy. It was that one corner of my world had been knocked open. Because the explanation I had previously given myself was: among people my age who did not rely on family, nobody was stronger than I was. And now suddenly there was someone who seemed to stand higher and stronger than I did. It made me miserable. Unable to bear that misery, I called the people in my company into a meeting. I asked them, "What do you think of this person?" The people following me were simple inside. They said, "He's very impressive." At that moment I could not take it. What I was really asking in my heart was not "What is he like?" What I was really asking was: Is he impressive, or am I impressive? That is greed. It is the wish to prove oneself. But behind that greed, fear follows immediately. I was afraid that I was not the strongest, afraid that my self-narrative would be shattered, afraid that the set of things I had believed about myself would no longer hold. So I began to search for explanations. I said: that is capital's money, not his own cash. I said: that is valuation, not money he has really earned. I said: he has investors, packaging, media. He is not like me. Could all those explanations have been entirely false? Of course not. But the issue was not whether they were true or false. The issue was why I was in such a hurry to explain. Because I needed comfort. I needed to explain away the thing that stabbed me and cracked my world open. I needed to tell myself: it is not that he is truly stronger than I am, only that his strength and my strength are different. That is where the bridge begins to have trouble. If at that moment I had been able to walk from greed over to the side of fear, what I should have seen was this: Why am I so afraid that someone else may be stronger than I am? Why do I have to be the strongest among people my own age? Why can I not accept that someone in the world may have taken another road? Why can I not admit that some people are willing to bear costs that I myself am unwilling to bear? Many, many years later, when I livestream, people often ask me about the success rate of AI entrepreneurship. I only want to tell them this: right now, the probability of succeeding in AI may be only one in a million, but if ten million people are willing to try, someone will definitely succeed. And me? I am too unwilling to do a one-in-a-million thing. I would rather do something whose success probability is above sixty percent. Because I have been deeply shaped by The Art of War . I understand the principle of securing the win before the battle. This is not a matter of who is higher or lower. It is only a matter of different choices. I trade a lower ceiling and a greater price for a higher certainty. Other people trade greater risk for greater possibility. That is the complete way of looking at the world and at entrepreneurship. That is what one should be able to see when the bridge still stands. But at the time, I did not think that way. I only wanted to explain away his strength. Once I had explained it away, I felt comfortable. Negation can make a person feel very comfortable. But that comfort comes with a price, because it will make me continue to look at the world through faulty logic afterward. I will become more and more likely to explain other people's success by saying: He has capital. He has resources. He has connections. He has packaging. All of those may indeed be factors. But if I see only those, then I cannot see other things. I cannot see the risks he dared to bear. I cannot see the probabilities he was willing to gamble on. I cannot see the price of the path he chose. I cannot see what he had to withstand while standing in that place. The person inside the painting That is what is terrifying about the thinking of the person inside the painting. It makes you comfortable, but it also blinds you while you do not even realize it. So you see many people like this. You see a girl, a beautiful girl, and one of her classmates becomes a huge star. Inside, this girl feels uncomfortable. She does not want to admit that the other girl may really be prettier, may really work harder, may really express herself better, may really dare to gamble more, or may simply have run into an opportunity. All of that is too complicated. So she gives herself one explanation: Didn't she just sleep with the director? The moment that explanation appears, she feels comfortable. Because then she no longer has to face the gap between them. When he sees someone become the president of the student union, he says: didn't he just know how to flatter the teachers? When he sees someone get promoted, he says: didn't he just know how to flatter the boss? When he sees someone make money, he says: didn't his father just have money? Didn't he just have connections? Do you see it? He never wants to search for the true laws of the world. He is searching for an explanation that makes him feel comfortable. But that explanation does not remain only an explanation. It becomes the guide for how he acts afterward. It becomes the compass that points his direction. If he thinks other people succeed by giving gifts, then later he will go give gifts. If he thinks other people rise by pleasing others, then later he will go please others. If he thinks other people make money through relationships, then later he will only go looking for relationships. By the very end, perhaps he truly lowers his head, truly gives gifts, truly flatters others, perhaps even sleeps with someone. He truly places himself low enough. But he still does not get the result he wanted. Why? Because the cause-and-effect pattern he saw in the beginning, the one he summarized by deceiving himself, was wrong from the start. He used it to comfort himself, but he never truly saw the world. That is the thinking of the person inside the painting. It is not stupidity. It is a choice to abandon becoming someone outside the painting in exchange for temporary comfort. It numbs you by lowering the dimension, and in numbing you, it also controls you. So the cracking of heavenly authority is not some abstract concept. It is when you can look at the world through only one explanation. You can stand only on the side of greed, or only on the side of fear. You can no longer move back and forth. You can no longer move between "I want" and "I am afraid" to verify each side against the other. At that point, a person begins moving toward extremes. Those who are extreme in greed become wilder and wilder. They see only what they want and cannot see the cost. Those who are extreme in fear keep shrinking smaller and smaller. They see only risk and cannot see all the things they still want. These two kinds of people look opposite on the surface. One charges forward. One retreats. But underneath, they are the same. In both, the bridge of heavenly authority has collapsed. Explanation is only temporary After many, many years, I have increasingly felt that of course human beings need to explain the world. Without explanation, a person cannot live. But you must know that your explanation is only temporary. It is not the ultimate truth. The only truth in the world is that there is no final truth. Every explanation is only a tiny part of movement and change themselves. Of course, that includes