Respect Gods, Rely on None

Today’s hyper-information society stands precariously upon a massive, fatal defect, obscuring any clear view of the future. It is a civilizational error that attempts to measure human strength, happiness, and even existential value exclusively through quantitative specs—economic indicators and the abundance of social resources. We have become all too accustomed to calibrating ourselves and others through a myriad of numerical metrics: annual income, GDP, follower counts, and academic pedigrees.

Admittedly, numbers are extremely convenient. They are obvious to all, function as a common language, and possess a universality that allows specific national or ethnic values to be exported. At a glance, they appear to offer a fair hierarchy, possessing utility as a national goal for joining the global community. However, this fruit of “fair hierarchy” is the very cause of the troublesome issue transplanted into our foundation; it is a highly addictive fruit we can no longer quit. In this process, the algorithms of capitalism, pursuing efficiency and visualization to the extreme, have intentionally excluded the most critical, most sacred parameter that makes a human human from the equation, covering it up as if it never existed.

That parameter is “Will.” Will cannot be quantified, nor can it be calculated. In the modern age, while the majority of individual discretion has been transferred to something other, the Will retains full discretion over the act of one’s own decision-making. There is nothing more beautiful than the human Will.

Speaking of humans solely in terms of specs has become common sense, imprinted over generations through education and media as a fixed idea. The result is that modern people have fallen into a fatal functional dysfunction. The loss of the function of the “Sovereign”—the one who takes full responsibility for their own life and makes decisions without a compass in an uncertain world—is the most extreme example of this.
What has this produced? The external world has been affirmatively evaluated as materially richer, safer, and cleaner than ever before; yet spiritually, humanity has metastasized into a massive, grave herd of “Dependents,” mouths agape, waiting for someone else to decide for them. Importantly, the definition of “humanity” has no universality; it shifts with the times. If we continue as this modern herd of Dependents, there is no destination but a future of decline.

Observing their behavior, one sees they are trapped in the delusion that a “correct answer” exists somewhere, looking for it only externally, never internally. Believing the answer is lying on the ground somewhere, they unconsciously crave for influencers, AI recommendations, or the government to “do something about me” day and night. They may speak in high-minded terms to keep up appearances, but they remain Dependents. The colossal penetration of social media has enforced this tendency—where approval from others is the sole basis for proof of existence—at a terrifying speed. It is no exaggeration to say we now live in a “Civilization of Hollow Shells,” having outsourced our Will to algorithms via influencers, entrusting our souls to servers in the cloud. Influencers are merely capture devices used to reclaim people for the algorithm.

The essence of the pathology of Victimhood that once infested modern society also stems from this structural defect. Modern welfare and human rights systems have adjudicated people as “weak beings who must be protected,” and by arbitrarily categorizing them, have skillfully stripped them of the burden of decision. The soothing whispers of “You are not at fault, society is,” or “ The environment is to blame,” echo 24/7 in social media spaces. At first glance, this looks like salvation or kindness toward the weak, but in reality, it is nothing but a cruel deprivation of autonomy, castrating individual dignity to keep them under eternal management. Lamenting that “the times are bad,” “politics are bad,” or “parents are bad” is far easier than disciplining oneself.

I make no secret of the fact that I myself, having never had things go smoothly, could only lament and blame everything on others, as described above. However, after living for some 34 years, life-altering turning points do occur. In the midst of repeated trials, I began to sense that perhaps I was in this predicament precisely because I was shifting responsibility for my own life. I decided to stop running and face the trials thoroughly. In short, as I continued to hand over the steering wheel of my life to others while relentlessly pursuing the true nature of the problem, I eventually realized that the entity polluting me was “generalized common sense”—the very thing everyone believes without doubt.

Is this not the greatest barrier hindering human happiness? When I thought this, I saw a breakthrough in deconstructing, redefining, reinterpreting, and destroying generalized concepts. Currently, I am thoroughly enforcing a “displacement” of the ground from which that underlying thinking arises. As a result, those lamentations of responsibility-transfer have ceased entirely, and a path has opened up for me to push forward in the direction I must go.

What I understand painfully from these 34 years of experience is that the act of complaining is, in fact, a powerful consent to the status quo and the flip side of dependency. In other words, our social system is maintained because people complain. Defining oneself as a victim is synonymous with declaring, “I have no power to change the situation.” The system becomes sustainable by acquiring a large denominator of such Dependents, violently reclaiming them through the power of democracy, which has metastasized into a logic of numbers bereft of essence. The global spread of the pathology of Victimhood is the ultimate form of abandoning one’s potential. It promises the sweet relief of “not having to bear responsibility when things fail,” and as long as one plays the victim, it is possible to substantiate the perpetrator as a virtual enemy. For a Dependent, nothing is more attractive.

In short, despite having made the decision to abandon responsibility for their own life, they ignore this entirely and shift all blame onto the responsibility of a materialized virtual perpetrator. Remaining within this safe cage is the greatest disease corroding the survival instinct of modern man.

If we call this state “Autonomy Paralysis,” this is the true poverty of the modern age. We must invert the definition here. Regardless of social status, a human who is frightened by market trends or the expressions of others, unable to decide their own path, is an unmistakable “weakling.” Conversely, even those who possess no money, status, or honor, if they resolve to stand in the wilderness on their own feet and make solitary decisions one after another without anyone’s permission, are absolute “strongs.” For me, the boundary line between the strong and the weak is simply the presence or absence of the “resolve to live by oneself.” Everything else is nonsense, mere excuses.
The abundance of resources is merely a situational description; it has no influence whatsoever on the resolve to live one’s life. Having been brainwashed to believe it does have influence is how hegemony has been maintained since the modern era began; there is no fruit more easy and delicious than this lie. The presence or absence of the “resolve to accept total responsibility for one’s life” is the only absolute boundary separating humans. If one has time to worry about those who voluntarily choose the path of the Dependent, one should instead do what one must do for oneself. Time is the greatest asset; it is not the occasion to squander it.