"Seeing Through the Essence of Things"

This article is Lu Canwei's 81st original piece.

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In the past couple of days, I listened to a book called "Flow," mainly through Fan Deng's book talks. It's different from regular audiobooks; there's no anxiety about needing to take notes. You absorb as much as you can, completely without burden.

The so-called flow describes a state where people become so absorbed that they lose themselves in the activity. For example, boys often say they have a great shooting touch when playing basketball, or in gaming, they might say, "Did you see Dad's moves?" This indicates they have entered a state of flow.

The concept of entering a meditative state in Buddhism is similar. So, you might think I'm going to tell you how to achieve a flow state next, but unfortunately, that's not the case.

On one hand, I haven't actually read this book myself, and on the other hand, I want to discuss the essence of things with you. You can understand that the previous paragraph was just me filling in words.

"When you see the essence behind things clearly, often you won't care too much about the things themselves." This is a sentence I posted on Toutiao yesterday. Why do I have such an insight? Mainly because I read the book "Scarcity," which impacted me as much as when I read "Influence."

We often say we need to learn to think from others' perspectives. I don't know how many people can truly do that; I certainly can't. No matter how much you try to empathize, you cannot experience someone else's life or the environment they are in, and you cannot fully understand the solutions and conclusions they arrive at.

"Why not eat meat porridge?" Each of us is an independent individual.

However, when we reach middle age and see the vigor of young people, we can understand them. Just as elders look at us, many of our troubles are understandable to them.

But for the most part, many of our choices are beyond their comprehension. So let's explore why there are some aspects they can understand. Why can we also understand young people?

Many people will say, "I've been through it; I've eaten more salt than you," but if you haven't developed high blood pressure, then good for you.

After reading "Scarcity," a new way of thinking suddenly opened up for me, which is about the essence of things. There are many terms for it: foundational thinking, frameworks, internalization, etc. When an architect sees an engineer's code, they can immediately understand the potential issues in that code, while the engineer may not notice them. When a top salesperson observes a newcomer interacting with a client, they can quickly identify the shortcomings in the newcomer’s sales approach.

We call these intuitions.

In "Blink," psychologists can predict whether a couple will divorce based on just one hour of their interaction, with an accuracy rate of 95%. They encode certain facial expressions and turn communication into codes, allowing them to quickly assess the adaptability of both parties, which also explains the cognitive deficits in children with autism, as they cannot read people's codes.

When dealing with complex social emotions and considering others' viewpoints, they face obstacles due to a so-called lack of empathy. However, they often exhibit higher talents in certain fields, such as mathematics and engineering.

I remember many years ago when I volunteered for a while. One time, I helped care for a child with autism. I still remember that the child's name was Duo Duo. Before we even got out of the car, he rushed up and bumped into it. He kept pointing to an empty space, saying there was a ghost, and even pushed a girl (I thought he might have taken a liking to her). At that time, I didn't quite understand; to me, they seemed to be locked in their own world.

When I reached this conclusion, I realized it was he who couldn't understand us.

I may never fully grasp the reasons behind perspective-taking, but once I understood the essence of things, I realized my views might not be correct. When we face doubts, our first instinct is to explain and argue. During a quarrel, our immediate concern is often the emotions involved. But once we understand the essence of the situation, such as why the other party behaves in a certain way, our perspectives change.

In psychology, there's a term called reverse rationalization. For example, a few years ago, when P2P lending collapsed, many people suffered significant losses. Many outsiders said, "How could they offer such high annualized returns? What did they do with your money to achieve such high profits?" Even when you say this, when P2P companies are investigated or even arrested, they will tell you, "It's okay; they arrested the wrong people; it's the corrupt police," which is a form of anti-intellectualism.

So why do they choose to be blind? Because they made a "wrong" decision and need to rationalize it. Another more extreme case is Stockholm syndrome, where victims develop feelings for their captors, sympathizing with them and even adopting some of their viewpoints and ideas, sometimes even helping their captors.

They rationalize their victimhood in reverse.

When you are playing a game and cautiously leveling up, and finally get a chance to earn a little money, if you see an enemy hero coming to catch you on the map, you might say, "Watch me, Dad, I'll turn the tables," or blame your teammates for not placing wards.

When you clearly see the significant economic gap between both sides and you get wiped out, you won't say that idiot just got lucky; you'll think, "Look, this guy has entered a flow state."

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