One of China's greatest literary works, "A Dream of Red Mansions", explores this issue: when false is true, true is also false, and inaction sometimes exists and then nothing.

Many of our modern and contemporary works have been entangled with such problems. For example, the question explored in the movie "Inception" is: How true or false is the world we think we know? Is it something or nothing?

When you are in a scene, you must struggle, make judgments, and make changes. However, you must not forget one premise: is your current body in a dream or in reality? What about it? If you are in a dream, which level of the dream are you in?

Otherwise, all your actions are actions of forgetting the major premise. When you forget the major premise, it does not matter whether it is right or wrong.

If you live in a completely false world, all your cognitions, as well as your actions, are false.

Zhuangzi was the first person to raise this issue in the history of Chinese thought and literature.

Speaking of Zhuangzi, we think of dreams - "Zhuang Zhou dreamed of butterflies". Zhuangzi had a dream about a butterfly. His first reaction was: Did the butterfly dream about me, or did I dream about the butterfly? Did I see the butterfly in a dream, or was I just an illusory existence in the butterfly's dream?

There is a concept in Hinduism: this real world is just a dream of Shiva. We have been exposed to this concept after watching "The Life of Pi".

Therefore, the discussion of dreams is a very serious and important philosophical issue.

Anderson, the protagonist in "The Matrix", also has a name called Neo. The key figure who elevated Neo from the illusory world, that is, from the matrix world, to a real world is Mr. Morpheus. Of course, there is also a character named Trinity, and her Chinese translation is "Trinity". Trinity is a Christian concept called "Trinity." What is said here is that Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are one.

What is Mr. Morpheus? Friends who have read some Greek mythology should know that Morpheus is the god of dreams in Greek mythology, the god in charge of the dream world.

The Dream God lives in a world that is isolated from reality. This world is a relatively safe world. In the world of the Dream God, there are two giant beasts guarding the gate of his territory. In front of the gate is a river called "Wangchuan". On the other side of Wangchuan River is the real world. If you go from the real world to the dream world, you have to cross this river, and as long as you cross this river, you will forget about reality.

There is a very key plot in the movie "The Matrix": Morpheus holds pills, one red and one blue, and asks Neo to make a choice.

He said to Neo: "If you swallow the blue pill, you will forget all the vague things you feel, and you will fall asleep and return to the mother's body again. Live a happy life comfortably; if you choose the red pill, you will enter the real world."

The choice Morpheus gives Neo is: Are you willing to live in the river. On this side of the river, or on that side of the river?

——The world itself has two sides, or in other words, behind the real world is an illusory world. We often don’t know whether we are in the real world or the illusory world.

"A Dream of Red Mansions" says, "Recognize a foreign country as your hometown." There is also a Chinese poem, "In a dream, you don't know that you are a guest." When we are a wanderer or a drifter, when we are in a dream, we are not aware that we are a wanderer or a drifter.

There is a detail in "The Matrix". Neo goes to see Oracle (Prophet), and Oracle points to a few words on the door, which means "Know thyself" in Latin. This sentence also has an origin. It is related to Socrates.

Athenians all said that Socrates was the smartest man in Athens and he knew everything.

Socrates said, "The only thing I know is that I don't know, and you don't know either, but you don't know that you don't know."

This is actually a Dream metaphor: Although my body is in an illusory world, I know that this is an illusory world - this is a sign that your cognition is one dimension higher than others. But we ordinary people are in an illusory world without knowing it. Instead, we think that this illusory world is a real world.

If you live in a fake world and think that the "busy land of flowers and willows, gentle and wealthy land" in front of you is a real world, then you are wrong.

It can be said that whether it is Chinese philosophy or European or Indian philosophy, one problem must be solved first: is the world we live in real or illusory.

The so-called "cognition" means first of all to recognize the reality and illusion of this world, otherwise you will be wasting your time!

1. "Only when you know where you are can you truly understand."

We often say, "To fight, you must first understand what kind of escalator you are standing on." ”: If the escalator goes down, your struggle will be miserable. You should choose an escalator that goes up. If you say you want to struggle indiscriminately and just step on an escalator, it may be a very tragic thing.

When it comes to cognition, it is related to dreams. Just like a person in "Inception", before taking action, he has to carefully identify the carpet or top - he needs to know where he is now, and then Only then can you make judgments and make decisions.

Drucker said, "The most inefficient thing in the world is to do something with the highest efficiency that is not worth doing at all." This sentence implies the importance of cognition.

We say that cognition is very important, and the most important cognition is to go back to what Socrates told the Athenians. That sentence was not said by Socrates, but someone went to a temple called Delphi to ask for the lot. The literal translation of this sentence from the Temple of Delphi is "Know yourself", and the free translation is "Those who know themselves understand. Only when you know where you are can you truly understand."

2. “Fighting for first class on the Titanic”

IBM’s former CEO Gerstner said when recalling how to bring IBM back from the brink of bankruptcy, he did We have done several correct things, one of which is very critical, which is to boldly end yesterday's war. He found that what IBM was doing was fighting yesterday's war, or in other words, it was fighting a war that was already over.

What is "yesterday's war"? It's just that this trend has already happened and changed quietly, but you haven't realized it yet, and you are still trying to gain an advantage in an outdated industry. This situation, as I call it, is "fighting for first class on the Titanic."

This is a very tragic thing, and it is also an easy mistake to make. The reason is that when we are already on the Titanic, our goal is only on the ship and we do not know that the ship is sinking.

When Gerstner said "to end yesterday's war boldly", he actually saw that the industry he was in and what IBM was doing was a false thing, so he did not Valuable resources were wasted on an industry that was gradually becoming illusory and disappearing, or his insight allowed him to avoid "fighting for first class on the Titanic."

I remember Mu Xin’s famous saying, “I look sadly at you people who don’t know sorrow.” This may contain a high-dimensional and low-dimensional problem—what we call the dream world. The world of Hefei Meng is actually a world of different dimensions.

You can think about it, am I or is there anyone around me who is doing something vigorously and down-to-earth that may not be worth doing?