The Highest Level of Human Need is Labor

@Auntie Ximen: There is an idiom called "nine out of ten deaf people are mute," which means that deaf people are basically mute. This isn't because having ear problems necessarily means having mouth problems; many hearing-impaired people have nothing wrong with their vocal organs. However, because they cannot hear others speak, they are unable to correct their own speech, causing it to deviate further and further. To outsiders, it just sounds like random shouting, and over time, they simply don't want to speak anymore.

This is actually the external feedback and correction mechanism. As long as a person can continuously receive real-time external feedback, whether good or bad, as long as they haven't completely rotted away and given up on themselves, they will self-correct inappropriate behaviors. When children do something wrong, adults criticize them; when they do something right, adults praise them—this is just an amplified version of that feedback mechanism. In adulthood, society certainly provides various forms of feedback as well. Although everyone's personality, conditions, and preferences differ, and the paths they choose vary, it is undeniable that every path still has its own evaluation standards, and society also has universal standards for major issues.

We do live in a diverse society now, but diversity does not mean there are no standards at all. Diversity means you can score 95 in the 99th subject and only 60 in all the others; even though your total score isn't high, we still think you are an outstanding person. However, this doesn't mean that if you score 30 in every subject, you can use "diversity" to explain away your failure. Therefore, a diverse society simply has a more complex and pluralistic feedback mechanism, not an absence of feedback.

Once a person stops receiving this feedback, their behavior will deviate further and further, just like the pronunciation of a hearing-impaired person, until it becomes completely impossible to correct. The better outcome is becoming an eccentric, lying flat and waiting to die, making no contribution to society—and even that is tolerable. The worse outcome is becoming a despised outcast that everyone wants to beat up, which is huge trouble. Most crucially, there is no clear boundary between the two. A person might start off just lying flat, then become a shut-in who never leaves the house, and later start acting completely recklessly….

Therefore, the key to self-correction for most people actually lies in continuously maintaining the reception of this feedback to constantly correct their behavior. And for ordinary people with average abilities, the best way to maintain this feedback mechanism is:

Going to work

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone has to work a regular job. If you have the ability to fight it out in the business world, the feedback there will be much more intense than working a regular job. But if you don't have that capability and boldness, going to work really is the best way to get this mechanism and prevent yourself from going off track.

"Going to work" here refers to a relationship where you have pure mutual business interests and work deliverables; freelancers who don't work fixed hours in an office also fall into this category.

So people always ask me, why do I still keep a day job even though I'm a blogger? Because I don't want to lose this feedback mechanism. In a blogger's world, many things are unrealistically beautiful. PR people speak ever so politely, calling me 'teacher' this and 'teacher' that. Except for occasionally cracking the whip, my assistant won't scold me for doing a bad job. Interactions with other bloggers are mostly about collaborating on reposts and chatting/sharing naughty memes (scratch that), and they'd never say, 'Cao Bao, help me put together this product and have it to me by next Tuesday after work, or I'm cc'ing the CEO and you're dead meat!'

Therefore, I never consider being a blogger—at least at my level of influence—as a work experience comparable to the workplace. Maybe mega-influencers can, but I wouldn't know about that. For me, Weibo is more about having fun~

In the past, when directors, screenwriters, and actors wanted to play a role well, they often had to experience the character's life. For example, if playing a worker, they had to actually be a worker; if playing a housewife, they had to actually take care of kids. Only then could they polish their work. It's the same for me. Going to work is experiencing life, except my way of experiencing life is more cost-effective than theirs. To experience life, they have to find connections, pay out of their own pockets, and can only experience it for a limited time. I not only make money from experiencing life, but I also keep pace with the times—I couldn't fall behind even if I wanted to, because my boss wouldn't allow it…

I think this is also why my dad strictly requires me to hold down a job, and it can't be too easygoing. To put it bluntly, it can't be one of those jobs where people are too embarrassed to evaluate your performance, like volunteering or a nepotism position… You have to actually go out into society and fight real battles in the workplace, so that you at least know what society is really like~

After all, once you've accumulated a certain amount of wealth, a moment of carelessness can make it all go up in smoke…

Now, every time I complain, 'This is too damn hard to deal with, I'm going to quit and just lie at home! It's not like I can't afford to lie flat!' and then I scroll through Weibo and see the situations of those bloggers who have been isolated from society for so long that they feel like they're living in a parallel universe…

Help me up, I can still work overtime!