The first person who put this question before me was my primary school principal. There are several figurines in his study, which are placed on the high cabinet behind the desk. The statue is a woman. She was naked except for a bath towel. She seems to be frozen in permanent fear, for fear that the bath towel will slide down again; Because she has no arms, it is impossible to pull up the bath towel, so she is particularly embarrassed. There is a statue of a leopard next to her, and she will jump down to the top drawer of the filing cabinet at any time. Behind the leopard is a muscular statue of a naked man, sitting there with his eyes down, his fist resting on his cheek and his elbow resting on his knee. An expression of pain.
I didn't know what these statues were all about until later. The principal put them there and pointed them at the children who made mistakes because these statues symbolize the whole of life to him. This naked woman is the goddess Venus. She is the embodiment of love. She is not worried about the bath towel that may slip at any time. She is just busy showing her beauty. That leopard represents nature. It is busy showing its natural elegance. Muscle man is not miserable either. He is Rodin's The Thinker and a symbol of pure thinking.
I have to explain to you here that I became a frequent visitor to the principal's office because I either did something I shouldn't have done or did something I should have done. In our current words, I am out of step with my surroundings. In fact, on the contrary, I should say that I am an exceptionally naughty child. Therefore, whenever I stand at the principal's desk and prepare to be punished, I will bend my head and rub one shoe on the other uneasily.
Then the principal will look at me and say:
"What shall we do with you?"
Yeah, what are they going to do with me? Then I rubbed my shoes harder and stared down at the worn carpet.
"Look up, little one! Won't you look up? "
So, I looked up at the cupboard, at Venus, who was always in fear, and at the muscular man who always looked at the leopard's ass gloomily. I have nothing to say to the headmaster. His glasses are reflective, so I can't see anything human behind them. I feel that communication is impossible.
"haven't you thought about it?"
No, I don't usually think about it, and I didn't think about it at that time. I don't think about it at all-I just wait painfully for the lecture to end.
"Well, you'd better learn, ok?"
Once, the headmaster jumped up and reached for Rodin's masterpiece and put it on the table in front of me.
"When a person really thinks, it is like this."
Obviously, I'm missing something. Nature gives others a sixth sense, but only misses me. So, like a person who was born deaf but determined to explore the sound, I began to observe the teacher's words and deeds and wanted to find the true meaning of thinking.
There is a Mr. Horton who always teaches me to think. He often tells me with a little satisfaction that he is often self-righteous. I wonder, then why does he spend so much time drinking? Does drinking have an invisible meaning? If not, if drinking is really harmful to health-there is no doubt that Horton's health has been damaged-then why does he always talk about the benefits of simple and simple life and fresh air?
Sometimes, his preaching excites him, and he will jump off the platform and drive us into the biting cold wind.
"Now, children! Take a deep breath and feel the air flowing into your body-take a deep breath of the beautiful air God has given us! "
He will stand in front of us with his hands akimbo and take a deep breath. At this time, you can hear the wind entering his chest and fighting with all kinds of very normal restraint. His body will tremble because of this impact, and his face will turn pale because of this unaccustomed situation. Then, he stumbled back to the lecture table and sat there, unable to recover all morning.
Mr. Horton likes to sing high-profile songs alone, and often talks about a good life, abstinence and conscientious work. However, if a girl happened to pass by the window in Tan Xing high school, her neck would turn involuntarily until the girl disappeared from sight. At this time, it seems to me that he is not dominated by thoughts, but by an invisible but irresistible spring in his neck.
I am interested in his neck. Usually it protrudes a little from the collar. Mr. Horton took part in the First World War and fought alongside American and French soldiers, but he had an unchangeable hatred for these two countries. If one of them happens to be the focus of the news, no matter how you argue with him, Mr. Horton can't have a good impression on this country. He will strike the table, blush and shout with thick neck. "Whatever you say, I've thought it over-I know exactly what I'm thinking!"
Mr Horton is thinking with his neck.
This is my first experience of what people usually call the essence of thinking. Through Mr. Horton, I found that thinking is often full of unconscious prejudice, ignorance and hypocrisy. Such a thinker will talk about the purity of abstinence, and his neck will twist to the short skirt outside. Strictly speaking, his neck movements are as skillful as most businessmen playing golf, as honest as most politicians' intentions and as clear as most books. I call it three-level thinking, however, feeling is more accurate than thinking.
Admittedly, prejudice often contains a kind of naivety, but at that time I treated triple jump thinking with a contemptuous and mocking attitude. I am pleased to point out to a pious lady who hates Germans that the Bible advocates that we should love our enemies. She made me understand the truth of dealing with a third-level thinker; Because of her, I no longer give up the third-level thinking process easily, which is the closest thing they can get. They are surprisingly United. We'd better respect them, because they outnumber us and we are surrounded by them. Many third-level thinkers have the same slogan, just like baking their hands on fire. They are happy and satisfied because they share the same prejudice, but they won't thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Humans like to identify with each other, just like cows grazing on a hillside.
The second level of thinking is to find contradictions. Although secondary thinkers often fall into the other extreme and fall behind others, they will not be rash. The second-level thinker is a retreat or indifference, but the second-level thinker can see clearly and understand clearly. It can throw away wrong ideas, but it can't establish correct ones. This made me look at the cheering crowd and ask myself what all this confusion and noise was for. There seems to be no other reason to explain it except that fanatical patriotism. But I got something in return. In other words, I have heard people defend their habit of hunting foxes, claiming that foxes like to be hunted. I heard our Prime Minister talk about the great benefits we have brought to India by imprisoning people like Nehru and Gandhi. I heard that American politicians refused to join the League of Nations while talking about peace. Yes, there are happy moments.
However, when I entered adolescence, I had to admit that Mr. Horton was not the only one whose neck was controlled by an irresistible spring. I also felt the irresistible force of nature and began to find it interesting to point out contradictions, but at the same time I had to pay a price. For example, the serious and charming girl Ruth. I was an atheist then. She is a Methodist. Unfortunately, instead of relying on the Holy Spirit to persuade me to convert to religion, I opened my beautiful mouth and argued with me. She is really stupid. She claimed that the Bible was indeed inspired by the Holy Spirit. I retorted that Catholics believed that Hieronymus's Latin Bible was inspired by the gods, and the two books were different. The argument suddenly became dull.
Finally, she said that the number of Methodists is considerable, and they can't be wrong, even if they may be wrong-are millions of people wrong? That's possible, I said impatiently (because the closer you get to Ruth, the cuter she is), because there are more Roman Catholics than Methodists anyway: therefore, these Roman Catholics can't be wrong, they can be wrong-are hundreds of millions of people wrong? There was a flicker of doubt in her eyes. I put my arm around her waist and muttered, if you count the number, I'm afraid the number of Buddhists will be the largest. She ran away from my arm in a hurry, and she couldn't accept the intimate gesture and the words about countless Buddhists.
That night, Ruth's father came to see my father and left with a red face and resentment. So they asked me what had happened. In this way, I lost Ruth and gave me a false name that I might be a prodigal son in the future.
Although secondary thinking makes people's lives full of fun and excitement, it is not satisfactory. Finding out the shortcomings of elders satisfies young people's self-desire, but does not give people a sense of security. It's like taking a swimmer away from the shore and making him struggle in the deep water beyond his height and unable to land. A typical second-level thinker will ask, "What is truth?" And high-level thinkers will ask the same question: "What is truth?" And began to explore the truth.
But there are too few first-class thinkers. Although they can be seen in books, they have never been to my school. I am eager to be one of them, because I think my current hobby will be unsatisfactory if it can't be further developed. It's like starting to climb a mountain. No matter how high you climb, as long as you can't reach the top, you are a loser.
Therefore, I am determined to be a first-class thinker. Even at the best of times, I didn't show enough respect. Political and religious systems, social customs, loyalties and traditions all roll down like rotten apples on a tree. Finally realized the true meaning of how to keep the first-level thinking. I have designed a complete and unified life system, which is a logically complete moral system. Of course, I am willing to admit that it may be difficult to change the world according to my thinking, because the system I designed abandoned many trivial things, such as large enterprises, centralized government, army, marriage and so on.
What happened to Ruth happened again. I have some very good friends who supported me in the past and still support me now. But all my acquaintances left me with their girlfriends. Strange to say, young people seem to be satisfied with the world at that time. When I suggested that there should be a world without warships, I thought young naval officers were as angry as Mr. Horton.
Am I going too far? In those days before the war, I lost a lot of things because of my hobbies.
Now you expect me to describe how I look at my stupid behavior and how I return to a warm family where prejudice is called loyalty and meaningless behavior is repeated and becomes a custom; What we do is follow our feelings, but we still comfortably claim that we are thinking.
However, if you think so, you are all wet. I stopped thinking as a hobby and became a professional thinker.