Common Misconceptions About Socialization Among College Students, and Some Suggestions

Fantasies and misunderstandings about society, misunderstandings about being “high-functioning,” misunderstandings about “socialization” itself, misunderstandings about “doing well in life,” and an obsession with fame, money, and vanity.

I. False, Misunderstood, and Taken-for-Granted Ideas of “Socialization”
(1) Emotional Intelligence = Being Slick and Knowing How to Charm Everyone
There is no such thing as being liked by everyone. Even Andy Lau and Jay Chou have plenty of people who dislike them. As long as you have your own style, someone is bound to dislike it.
Drinking-table culture is not that important.
Being slick does not make you likable. Talking a lot and saying polished or flattering things does not necessarily make people like you.
Being calculating is different from having insight. Understand worldly ways without becoming worldly.
Being adept at dealing with people simply means responding naturally, with due regard for both feelings and reason.
Emotional intelligence is not about making things up. It is the ability to take care of yourself. Only those who can love and nourish themselves have the capacity to love and nourish others.
(2) Unwritten Rules
Unwritten rules are there to help you avoid pitfalls, not to provide shortcuts.
(3) Making Money and Getting Rich
Loving money and hustling for it does not mean you will have money. The overlap between people who “love talking about money and making money” or preach “success formulas” and “the wealthy people around you” or “the luxury-car crowd” is simply an effect of seeing the lucky ones, or a matter of a cultivated persona.
Wealth does not come to those in a frantic hurry. People who are too eager to make money often end up paying for one costly lesson after another. The money they earn through luck or sweat and toil, they lose through their own “skill.”
How much money you make in life is 100% a matter of fate. That does not mean it is predetermined; it means it is unknown.
Broadly speaking, first comes the economic cycle, second the industry, and third your role. Most of these are not things you can freely choose; they depend on circumstances and opportunities.
Everyone works hard; what you get depends on fate. We have all done what we can, yet have not learned to be at peace with what fate brings.
(4) Twisting Yourself Out of Shape, Cutting Your Feet to Fit the Shoes
As children and students, we have become accustomed to pleasing, obeying, accommodating, following rules, and meeting standards.
People who twist themselves out of shape cannot go far. A sense of agency matters.

II. Common Reasons for Misunderstanding “Socialization”

1. Alienation in Society and the Alienation of Labor
   Previous articles: “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise” and “The Malaise of Small-Town Exam Aces”
   Universities are often too far removed from work and career planning, with ivory-tower teaching systems disconnected from the world outside.
   Many students suffer from severe petty-bourgeois malaise. They have a strong opportunistic bent.
2. Profound Loneliness and Confusion Among Students: Everyone Longs for Friends Yet Lacks Them
   This combination of “loneliness + confusion” can lead students to develop unrealistic, manic fantasies about “socialization.”
   There are many factors behind this. See the previous articles “The Fundamental Contradictions Facing College Students” and “A Common Form of Confusion Among College Students: Existential Crisis”
   “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise” and “The Malaise of Small-Town Exam Aces”
3. Confusion About Love, Dating, Marriage, and Family
   This is related to the existential crisis mentioned above, as well as various psychological traumas and psychological issues to work through.
   A compulsion to save one’s family of origin, a superhuman elite complex, and so on all intensify an orientation toward vanity and personal gain.

III. Healthy Socialization
(1) Growth and Maturation at the Core of One’s Personality
Previous articles: “Psychological Growth for Ordinary People,” “Psychology: Recommended Books and Independent Media,” and “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness”
“An Overview of My Marx + Zhuangzi + Psychology Framework”
“Mental Energy/Libido Determines Your Fate” and “My Structure: The Real Self Accompanies Libido”
(2) General Education
Develop healthy, well-rounded values, an outlook on life and the world, and a framework for understanding, rather than biased and narrow ones. Develop a healthy attitude toward money.
“A General Education Reading List for Workers”
“How to Build a Connection with the Simple Goodness, Truth, and Beauty of Working People at the Bottom of Society” and “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness”
(3) Explore the Five Elements of Life
Studies, career, social life, body, and mind.
Take an upright path in your studies and career, and walk it directly. Ultimately, a person’s “socialization” comes down to their ability to create positive value for society.
Programmers generally earn far more than their peers, yet their peers often describe them as “poorly socialized.” In fact, they are often very well socialized: they have abilities in scholarship, engineering, communication, and coordination; insight into technology, industries, and future prospects; and social connections across class and regional boundaries, among other things.
(4) Suggestions for Students

1. Plan your career, continually revising your plans and keeping organized records. In the early stages, there will inevitably be plenty of daydreaming; recording it also documents your growth and the changes in your inner journey.
2. Get practical experience, make friends, and explore.
   Through interactions with others, observe human nature as it really is and develop new experiences of object relations.
   Class orientation: get to know ordinary people. “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness” and “How to Build a Connection with the Simple Goodness, Truth, and Beauty of Working People at the Bottom of Society”
3. Put effort into “loving yourself and being yourself.”
4. “Marx + Zhuangzi: A Philosophy for Ordinary People and Those Who Lie Flat” and “Marx + Zhuangzi + Psychology: Marxism from the Bottom Up”—live and develop as an atomized individual in a cyberpunk world. One day, you will come to realize that, for ordinary people, the philosophy of lying flat matters more than success formulas.
   “Striving Is a False Concept: Forcing Things Takes You Off Course; Let Things Follow Their Natural Course”