Many of our modern and contemporary works have also struggled with such problems. For example, the question being discussed in the movie Inception is: How real is the world we think we know? Is there one or not?
When you are in a scene, you must struggle, make judgments and make changes, but don't forget a premise: is your body in a dream or in reality? If you are in a dream, which level are you at?
Otherwise, all your actions have forgotten the major premise. When you forget the major premise, there is no right or wrong.
If you live in a completely false world, all your perceptions, along with your actions, are false.
Zhuangzi is the first person who raised this question in the history of China's thought and literature.
When we talk about Zhuangzi, we think of dreams-"Zhuang Zhou Meng Die". Zhuangzi had a dream about butterflies. His first reaction was: Did the butterfly dream about me or did I dream about the butterfly? Did I see a butterfly in my dream, or was I just an illusory existence in my butterfly dream?
Hinduism believes that the real world is just a dream of Shiva. We have seen this concept in The Fantasy Drifting of Pi.
Therefore, the discussion about dreams is a very serious and significant philosophical issue.
Anderson, the hero of The Matrix, also has a name called Neo. Mr. Morpheus is the key figure to push Neo from the illusory world, that is, from the maternal world to the real world. Of course, there is another character called Trinity, and Chinese translation is Trinity. Trinity is a Christian concept called Trinity. This is Neo, Morpheus, the Trinity.
What is Mr. Morpheus? Friends who have read a little Greek mythology should know that Morpheus is the dream god in Greek mythology and the god in charge of the dream world.
The dream god lives in a world isolated from reality, which is a relatively safe world. In the dream god's world, at the gate of his territory, there are two behemoths guarding the gate. In front of the gate is a river called Wangchuan. The other side of Wangchuan is the real world. If you go from the real world to the dream world, you have to cross this river. As long as you cross this river, you will forget the real things.
There is a key plot in The Matrix: Morpheus takes pills, one is red and the other is blue, and Giniot makes a choice.
He said to neo: "if you swallow the blue pill, you will forget all the vague feelings, you will fall asleep, go back to your mother's body and live a happy life comfortably;" If you choose the red pill, you will enter the real world. "
Murphy gave Neo a choice: Would you rather be on this side of the river or on the other side?
-The world itself is two-sided, or on the back of the real world is an illusory world. We often don't know whether we are in the real world or the imaginary world.
In A Dream of Red Mansions, it is said that "recognize other countries as their hometown", and China also wrote a poem "I don't know the guest in my dream". When we are wanderers, we don't realize that we are wanderers and wanderers when we dream.
There is a detail in the matrix. Neo went to see Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and Oracle Bone Inscriptions pointed to the words on the door, which means "know yourself" in Latin. This sentence is also well founded. This is related to Socrates.
The Athenians said that Socrates was the cleverest man in Athens, and he knew everything.
Socrates said, "The only thing I know is that I don't know, and neither do you, but you don't know."
This is actually a metaphor of a dream: although my body is in an illusory world, I know it 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, but think that this illusory world is a real world.
You live in a false world, and you think that the "prosperous land of flowers and willows, gentle and rich country" in front of you is a real world, then you are wrong.
It can be said that both China's philosophy and European and Indian philosophy must first solve one question: Is the world we live in real or illusory?
The so-called "cognition", first of all, is to recognize the authenticity and illusion of this world, otherwise you are not wasting your time!
1. "When you know where you are, you really understand."
We often say that "the first thing to struggle is to find out what kind of escalator you are standing on": if the escalator goes down, your struggle will be very sad, so you should choose an escalator that goes up. If you talk about 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 man in Inception, before taking action, he should carefully identify the carpet or gyro-he should know where he is now, and then he can make a judgment and make a decision.
Drucker said that "the most inefficient thing in the world is to do something that is not worth doing at all with the highest efficiency", which implies the importance of cognition.
We say that cognition is very important, and the most important cognition is to go back to what Socrates said to the Athenians. Socrates didn't say that, but someone went to a temple called Delphi and asked for a sign. The literal translation of this sentence in Delphi Temple is "Know yourself", and the free translation is "People who know themselves know where they are, and they really understand".
2. The Battle for First Class on Titanic
Guo Shina, the former CEO of IBM, recalled how to pull IBM back from the brink of bankruptcy, saying that he did several right things, one of which was crucial, and that was to boldly end yesterday's war. He found that what IBM was doing at that time was fighting a war yesterday, or a war that had ended.
What is "Yesterday's Battle"? It is this trend that has happened and quietly changed. You still have to gain an advantage in an outdated industry before you realize it. In this case, I said "fight for first class on the Titanic".
This is a very tragic thing and an easy mistake. The reason is that when we were already on the Titanic, our goal was just to be on the ship without knowing that it was sinking.
When Guo Shina said "to boldly end yesterday's war", he actually saw that his industry and what IBM was doing was a false thing, so he didn't waste precious resources on an industry that was gradually illusory and disappearing, or his insight made him avoid "competing for first class on Titanic".
I remember Mu Xin's famous saying, "I look at you people sadly." There may be a high-dimensional and low-dimensional problem here-the dream world and the non-dream world we are talking about are actually worlds of different dimensions.
You can think about it, is there anyone around me or myself doing something that may not be worth doing?