High School Masterpiece: Nonsense

Today I finally decided to attend Cao Jdong’s class. Cao Jdong, this person is indeed very good at organic chemistry, but this is still related to his study time, just like the phrase “only hand familiarity” in the story of Selling Oil. If I were to learn from him, I would definitely achieve more than him. I used to think that he, Yan Xuan Shen, and Wu Guo Qing were just a trio of swindlers, and my sister and I even jokingly referred to them as the “Three Swindlers.” However, I have recently changed my opinion. It is said that during the Cultural Revolution, Cao Jdong and others were moving radioactive elements, which led to a leak. He evacuated everyone else and went to clean up the mess alone, resulting in his optic nerve atrophy and hair loss, and to this day, one of his eyes is still blind. From this incident, it can be seen that he is indeed great, just not smart enough. But sometimes people don’t need to be that smart. During the class, he also shared his thoughts with us, saying: “People, sometimes you just have to bow your head. When I was young, I suffered because I didn’t know how to bow my head.” In my opinion, this statement is extremely correct.

Nowadays, education always emphasizes that we should not bow our heads like enemies, and we should learn from Liu Hulan. But what is an enemy, and what constitutes bowing our heads? We should distinguish between these concepts and not act impulsively. A while ago, I could always hear reports from XX magazine about XX fighting against nature and finally conquering it… This is extremely foolish. Imagine an ant climbing onto an elephant’s back and saying, “I have conquered this elephant.” We are the same. This is called overestimating one’s abilities. But from another perspective, this is also because we cannot distinguish between what is and is not our enemy. Nature should be humanity’s mother, not our enemy. We always say that nature nurtures us, so why do we want to conquer our own mother?! Recently, I discovered that human development and our own growth are similar. Now, humans are in the late stages of adolescence, with some rebellious mentality, but as we grow up, we will naturally understand.

Another thing is how to deal with enemies without bowing our heads. We are always taught to have backbone, but this doesn’t mean we should be foolish enough to sacrifice ourselves. We should learn to bow our heads to preserve our strength, especially when the opponent is stronger than us. The final boss in FF6 was initially just a minor character with very weak strength, but this guy persisted to the end with a cockroach-like strong life force. The prince of Troy in the movie “Troy” is the same, with absolutely no exceptional martial arts skills, but he persisted to the end. Many people who watched the movie thought that his sneak attack on others was very dishonorable, but I think that to defeat someone stronger than you, you must learn to seize their weaknesses and strike with all your might when they reveal their soft spot. For example, that Alxx was too focused on emotions and was trapped in a woman’s feelings, unable to extricate himself, and was eventually killed when he was indulging in his emotions. This was also inevitable. Therefore, sneak attacks are a good thing, and “a good general does not despise cunning.” It’s just that those damn formalities make us have to stand up straight and fight, which is also due to the deep constraints of traditional morality on our thinking. However, if the Japanese asked you to be a traitor, that would be absolutely unacceptable. Of course, you can also agree and infiltrate the Japanese army, and you might even be able to kill a few more Japanese people, which would be clever. If you just died like that, wouldn’t it be a waste of life? As the saying goes, “as long as the green hills remain, there will be no lack of firewood.”

So, we need to learn to bow our heads to others, but we must never forget our ultimate goal. Chiang Kai-shek’s idea of “withdrawing to advance” is precisely this principle.