Small-Town Exam-Ace Malaise

I. Exam-Ace Malaise
(1) Elitism

1. Superiority–inferiority, linked to conceit–low self-esteem
   The earlier article “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise” discussed this systematically: a sense of superiority necessarily precludes compassion and empathy.
   Elitism cuts people off from the people, society, and history, plunging them into terrifying loneliness.
   Admiration for the powerful and timidity can easily develop into fawning over those above and bullying those below.
   An inability to accept limitation, ignorance, ordinariness, and mediocrity intensifies existential and midlife crises. This is why Zhuangzi speaks of abandoning cleverness and renouncing sagehood. See “Zhuangzi’s Eight Forms of Letting Go.”
   Elitism backfires when one suffers setbacks. See “You Cannot Be a Social Darwinist or an Elitist Only When Luck and Power Are on Your Side.”
   Meritocracy assigns rank and meaning according to achievement. See “How University and High School Students Can Respond to Meritocracy.”
   “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise”
2. Intellectual elitism
   Identifying with the intellectual elite; belief in IQ as the determining factor; the idea that high cognitive ability means omniscience and omnipotence; worship of books and theory; geek identity.
   See the earlier article “The Cult of Genius and IQ Among East Asian Mathematics and Physics Students Is a Form of Ignorance and Immaturity.”
3. Worship of reading + reading fatigue
   On the one hand, there is the worship of books and the fetishization of knowledge, with knowledge serving as social currency and a barrier to entry into professions.
   On the other hand, there is the feeling that “reading is useless” and fatigue with books, without having explored genuine general education or genuinely advanced thought such as that of Marx and Zhuangzi. Exam aces’ claims that “reading is useless” naturally influence more people, because they have “the authority to speak.”
   (2) Compulsive Striving
4. Compulsive striving
   Attributing achievement to effort (and IQ), and a lack of achievement to insufficient effort. Habitually driving oneself is, in reality, self-attack and self-flagellation.
   Earlier articles: “A Special Discussion of Effort: Stop Striving,” “How to Address a Harsh Superego and Self-Attack,” “Zhuangzi: Following the Natural Course,” and “Spiritual Cultivation Is a False Concept.”
5. Compulsive involution
   A long-standing habit of treating peers as competitors leaves little practice in understanding and empathizing with others, or in caring for others and helping them flourish. This differs from mutual assistance among proletarian coworkers. Prolonged tournament-style involution cultivates petty-bourgeois thinking.
   “The Fundamental Contradictions Facing University Students”; “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise”
6. Compulsive seclusion
   A prolonged focus on exams, shutting oneself away for intensive preparation, leads to fear of mistakes, uncertainty, and the unexpected.
   Unable to embrace uncertainty, one may pay a high price for certainty, stability, and a secure position.
   Fear of thugs, tantrum-throwers, shameless troublemakers, and unruly people leads, on the one hand, to rejection of people at the bottom of society and, on the other, allows thugs and bureaucrats to exploit this weakness.

(3) Linear Values

1. A thin, mechanical, linear understanding of life
   A life organized around exams, advancement, and certificates makes it difficult to face the complex social environment after entering society, without a pluralistic set of values to help one adjust. One has grown accustomed to the “single-plank bridge of exams,” but life is an “open wilderness.”
2. Exam-solving thinking
   Excessive worship of “methodology,” with the belief that every problem in the world—including emotions, happiness, and meaning—has an “optimal solution” and a method for solving it.
   Mechanically and rigidly applying problem-solving formulas—for example, the many men who study online techniques for pursuing women or navigating matchmaking dates—instead of truly facing, understanding, and responding to life’s questions: how to truly be oneself and develop personal appeal.
3. Compulsive narrowing of focus
   Thinking becomes excessively narrow and singular, lacking general knowledge and the breadth, perspective, and depth needed to understand the world, all living beings, and oneself.
4. Dependence on external feedback
   Using quantifiable, comparable external indicators to measure all value. Examples include salary, job title, home size, school rankings, and social media likes.
   Depending on external, immediate, quantified positive feedback—such as praise, bonuses, and rankings—for motivation, while lacking genuine intrinsic motivation.
5. Trying to counter uncertainty and complexity rather than embrace them
   For example, trying to use “financial freedom” to guard against downward class mobility and unexpected expenses.
   Using meticulous, instrumental management of others to counter their “complexity and uncertainty,” while lacking humanistic thinking.
   This often manifests as anxiety about children’s education.
   (4) Problems of the Self
   A sense of inner emptiness; an underdeveloped worldview, outlook on life, value system, and inner core; a lack of meaning, a sense of existence, and agency.
   (5) Problems in Social Relationships
   Issues involving children. Exam-ace thinking is carried over into children’s education, while the children develop various problems and forms of resistance because of a lack of love and humanism, intensifying the tension.
   (6) The Body
   Alienation and instrumentalization of the body.
   A shallow understanding of sporting culture, with little exercise or little variety in exercise.
   An obsession with “fitness” and “exercise,” and worship of endurance sports centered on suffering, such as marathons and triathlons.
   Habitually equating exercise with effort, forcing oneself to run, and disparaging oneself as “lazy.” Being unable to choose recreational sports such as badminton or basketball.
   “Lazy” is often an inaccurate, toxic attack, rather than an understanding grounded in loving, caring for, and nourishing oneself and the natural flow of libido.
   A weak sense of connection with the body, making one prone to dealing with it through approaches such as solving problems or taking medication.
   Not understanding the importance of rest, recreation, and relaxation.

II. Small-Town Exam-Ace Malaise
Compared with exam aces from medium-sized and large cities, small-town exam aces face some additional, distinctive circumstances.
(1) Entanglement of Personal Issues and Karma (Object-Relations Problems)

1. A rescuer personality
   Rescuing one’s parents, rescuing the extended family and clan, bringing honor to one’s ancestors.
2. Karmic entanglement
   Bearing the entangled personal issues of too many people, with the attention, encouragement, material support, and so on that one receives carrying exorbitant moral interest. This creates a heavy burden and substantial inner conflict. It also makes it easier to instrumentalize oneself and others.
   It also means that if one’s studies or career do not go well, there will be more complex projections of personal issues and attacks.
3. External judgment, self-objectification, and self-instrumentalization
   This also makes it easier to see others as tools and lack empathy, while aggravating the malaise of linear values.
   Dependence on external judgment: caring about what “the people around you” think, and how relatives, neighbors, fellow villagers, classmates, teachers, and society judge you.
   Issues of vanity: setbacks deal a greater blow to self-esteem and cause a more severe collapse of the self, resulting in a more complicated and conflicted system of psychological defenses.
4. Rejection of the countryside and people at the bottom of society
   The complaints and stigmatization from “people around you” all along the way; one’s own fear of disruption and of issues within one’s family of origin; and a lack of self-acceptance and fear of oneself. See “How to Connect with the Simple Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of People at the Bottom of Society” and “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness.”
   Small-town exam aces’ aversion to people at the bottom of society influences many more people, just as East Asian mathematics and physics students’ worship of IQ influences students across the country in their understanding of IQ, mathematics, and physics. Exam aces’ claims that reading is useless also influence many people. This is because they seem to have the authority to speak.
   (2) Success Malaise
   Placing greater importance on worldly success and craving sudden wealth more intensely. Becoming more prone to losing one’s emotional balance.
   (3) More Severe Exam-Ace Malaise
   A. More severe elitism
   More intense admiration for the powerful and elitism, extending even to social Darwinism and feudal attitudes.
   B. More severe compulsive striving
5. Compulsive suffering: centering life on hardship, finding security in suffering, and sitting endlessly at one’s desk in competitive overwork
   Habitually whipping oneself into a frenzy and driving oneself to study through exhaustion, like the ancients who tied their hair to a roof beam or pricked their thighs with an awl to stay awake.
   Ritualized suffering, being moved by one’s own sacrifices, and moral blackmail.
   Stigmatizing enjoyment. Being unable to enjoy comfort, peaceful leisure, or the usefulness of the useless; severe anxiety about time, and a tendency to reject activities that offer no immediate return, such as daydreaming. This leads one even further away from genuine philosophies of the inner life and existence, such as those of Zhuangzi and Epicurus.
   It can even lead one to squeeze out time for sleep, rest, relaxation, leisure, and entertainment, intensifying psychological “dissociation.”
6. More severe compulsive seclusion and narrowing of focus;
7. More severe self-attack
   Excessive summing up and reviewing, self-reproach, and regret. These involve issues of a harsh superego.
   One root cause is the limited room for trial and error and the intensity of negative feedback.
   Life is “walking a tightrope,” rather than “crossing a single-plank bridge.” Any misstep—choosing the wrong major, doing badly on an exam, a serious illness, or an industry downturn—can mean downward class mobility and the collapse of a family’s hopes. This magnifies compulsive seclusion and narrowing of focus, making one extremely conservative in decision-making and fearful of risk.
   C. More severe linear-value malaise
8. Path dependence
   Because all the “people around you” are “shortsighted,” and everyone pins their hopes on your own limited view, it is easy to become dependent on a fixed path. For example, getting into a particular major, taking postgraduate entrance exams, joining a major tech company, buying a home, and so on.
9. Greater susceptibility to a single set of values, emphasizing material wealth, fame, and status over intrinsic value and a long-term outlook
   D. More severe problems of the self
   More severe inner emptiness and problems with one’s inner core.
   E. More severe problems in social relationships
   Obstacles to intimate relationships and connection with peers.
   Emotional expression often serves narcissism and practical purposes—such as maintaining useful contacts or displaying personal appeal—rather than arising naturally and creating deep connection.
   F. More severe issues involving the body
   Even less awareness of caring for the body, exercise, dance, and leisure.
   Habitual self-punishment and habituation to a depleted physical state, suboptimal health, and even somatic manifestations of depression.
   (4) Nature and the People
   One advantage of small-town exam aces is their greater proximity to nature and the people, if they can connect deeply with both. In turning toward Marx and Zhuangzi, reshaping their worldview, outlook on life, and values, and healing their inner core, they have distinctive advantages over children from cities.
   Conversely, if their aversion to the environment they came from leads them away from the people and nature, and they also embrace the belief that “barren mountains and foul waters breed unruly people,” they sever a crucial lifeline.