Answering "Is There a Future for Someone Who Has Achieved Nothing by 30?": Marx + Zhuangzi Offer a Philosophical Answer

This is a question of life philosophy, not social experience. It depends on how you understand it.

I. In many people’s eyes, someone who has accomplished nothing by 30 has no future

1. The Matthew effect in capitalist society makes it hard for people at the bottom to move up. For those who are still stuck at the bottom at 30, with neither capital nor technical skills, the probability of moving into another class is clearly relatively low.

1. East Asian society is utilitarian. Relationships between people are rarely based on love; instead, they are based on material resources, power, and dependence. People are objectified and treated as tools.

Young people are treated as “lottery tickets.” The reason people ask questions like “Does someone who has accomplished nothing by 30 still have a future?” is that they have encountered this problem in their own lives: their family, girlfriend, friends, classmates, relatives, and prospective marriage partners already consider them to have “no future”—meaning that “the relationship has no future.” For people strongly motivated by the idea of “raising children to provide for you in old age,” a child is a lottery ticket: buy it, scratch it, and see whether you win. If you do, the second half of your life is secure. By 30, for the reasons outlined above, this ticket has “clearly” failed to win. It is like playing Texas hold’em: the “first three cards” are so poor that they cannot be bothered to see the remaining cards. They fold and abandon the hand. They stop keeping up appearances in the relationship and show their cards. This lottery-ticket effect is common when men reach 29 and women reach 26. When pressured to marry, they are told to “face reality.” There is also the familiar “first swing of the sword after reaching safe shores”—cutting ties as soon as one secures a better position—and opportunism pursued at any cost.

1. A person’s wealth and achievements often have nothing to do with so-called talent and effort. They come down to luck, or, to put it more pleasantly, fortunate circumstances. This is Daoist philosophy. In practice, education and employment operate through crude selection and tournament systems, rather than systems that nurture people. They continually select the “lucky ones” and put them on the track of the Matthew effect. By 30, those who have not been “lucky” enough will have fallen far behind on that track.

For example, one child wins an Olympiad gold medal, attends Tsinghua, Peking University, Fudan, or Shanghai Jiao Tong, goes straight into a PhD program in North America, and graduates into a job at OpenAI in Silicon Valley. They are cheerful, confident, and sociable. Another child gets into a Project 211 university from an underdeveloped province, has an “introverted, sensitive, and insecure” personality, changes majors on their own, teaches themselves front-end development, and works as an outsourced contractor for a major tech company. Clearly, the latter is far behind on the Matthew-effect track. It is not that they lack talent or have not worked hard enough. That is how fate has unfolded.

1. The more than 40 years since reform and opening up have seen the fastest economic development in several thousand years of history. Now, however, the Kondratiev wave is moving from recession into depression, the dividends are dwindling, and class divisions are becoming entrenched. Young people have fewer and fewer opportunities. The advantages once offered by postgraduate study, particular careers, and so on have all diminished.

1. The social clock has a powerful influence on most people. After 30, once people take on the burdens of mortgage servitude and servitude to their children, it really does become difficult to change their circumstances, especially given housing prices in recent years, when buying into the market no longer brings a windfall. People often wither away in spirit.

1. Industrial upgrading has failed, there are too few advanced industries, and management culture is poor. There is insufficient demand for highly skilled people, specialized expertise, and good management. Much of the work is simple and repetitive: grinding away at code and PowerPoint slides, with little need for experience, technical skill, or breadth of vision. Meanwhile, poor management is something only young people’s minds and bodies can endure. China’s internet industry is a typical example. There is little technically demanding work or advanced research and development. All it needs is a continuous supply of engineers under 35, with Project 985 degrees, working 996 schedules and receiving 3.25 performance ratings. It has no need for seasoned professionals. This is even more true of various humanities disciplines.

For nearly 40 years, the system has rewarded “windfalls” rather than sustained cultivation. Even good industries offer only 10 years of windfalls; in less promising industries, the window is even shorter. Banking, finance, civil engineering, telecommunications, and even the internet industry all follow this pattern. Technology stacks become obsolete, making the age crisis surrounding “class mobility” even more severe.

1. Corporate drones are looked down on

The rentier class and the class dependent on it hold working people in contempt. It is like aristocrats growing long fingernails to show that they do not have to work. Corporate drones are the mainstay of society, yet society despises them. And many corporate drones themselves endorse this contempt, even embracing social Darwinism.

II. At 30, life is only just beginning

1. It is a question of life philosophy

Following the normal course of human development, someone raised to excel at exams finishes postgraduate study at 25, has spent three years in an industry by 28, is only getting started at 30, is just reaching maturity at 35, and is in their prime at 40. Someone who enters the working world at 18 only begins to understand how things work at 25, can handle situations confidently at 30, combines outward tact with inner principle at 35, and navigates life with ease at 40. At 30, life is only just beginning. If society has no use for you, that is society’s problem.

Whether you still have a future at 30 is a question of life philosophy. Some people are already dead at 30; others are just beginning a new life.

1. Stop seeking outwardly and seek within. Do not dwell on the past or worry about the future.

For someone who already has “no future,” the central issue in whether they have a future at 30 is to “seek within and stop seeking outwardly.” Stop using external values—fame, wealth, power, indulgence in drink and sex, greed and pride, social judgments, and the social clock—as your standards. Instead, make inner exploration your point of reference. In other words, take the path of spiritual cultivation.

Thirty is often only the beginning of that path. When the heart dies, the Way fades; when the heart dies, the Way is born; or when the heart dies, inner demons arise. This is a crossroads. Only those who have the Way and cultivate it have a path forward.

From the perspective of spiritual cultivation and psychological healing, a person is a seed with innate wholeness. But in an alienating feudal-capitalist society, that seed has not been properly nourished. Their family of origin, earliest workplace, and original cultural environment have left them with too much confusion and trauma: a weakened self, illness and pain, wounds, and the demons of the ego. Yet they still possess innate wholeness. This remains so until the day they decide to fight to defend their own soul. They resolutely leave, persevere on their way, and remain determined to be themselves. They begin to resist and free themselves from every person and force that drags them down, corrodes them, maligns them, obstructs them, or leads them astray.

The goal of Chan Buddhist cultivation is the realization of emptiness through prajna and the wisdom of awakening. The goal of Zhuangzi’s cultivation is freedom from worry and care, tranquility and happiness. A person’s happiness has nothing to do with external things. The mindful tranquility and happiness of living in the present have nothing to do with “the future.” Do not dwell on the past or worry about the future.

Accomplishing things is not a matter of fixation; fixation cannot accomplish things. Follow the right path, let things take their natural course, and wait for good things to happen and good people to draw near.

1. Marx + Zhuangzi is the philosophical answer

Understand social philosophy, political economy, and historical materialism. Understand the philosophy of life, the philosophy of happiness, and the philosophy of death.

III. Are there really no career opportunities left?

Cultivate your field deeply, build lasting substance, think independently, follow the right path, do what is right, and do meaningful things.

1. The situation across different fields

Even from the perspective of petty-bourgeois inspiration, these are not empty words. There are far too many examples of people who seemed “ordinary,” were “outsiders,” or “started from nothing,” yet achieved something through long-term persistence and accumulated experience.

In film and television, there are Guo Fan, Jiaozi, Zhang Songwen, and a whole host of other directors and actors. Music hardly needs mentioning: after years of quiet cultivation, what a sensation Dao Lang caused across the country. Even vocational college graduates who persisted with rap have benefited from its rise. There are many positive examples among independent IT entrepreneurs. On self-media platforms, there are plenty of major and minor influencers who have developed distinctive styles of their own. From *Aixiao Meeting Room* in Northeast China to Beijing’s Mahua FunAge, groups of ordinary actors have reaped rewards through years of sustained work. Zhang Zhilei did not turn professional as a boxer until 31. And look at how much Principal Zhang Guimei has accomplished through decades of persistence. Age has never placed a limit on human development and success.

There are so many examples. Why do people turn a blind eye to them? Again, this is a matter of psychology and spiritual cultivation. To accomplish something, besides having luck, people ultimately have to do the part that falls to them.

1. Marxists offer the clearest examples of persevering over decades and enduring changing cycles

Marx was 31 in 1849. The revolution had failed, he was in exile for the umpteenth time, and he was wanted by the authorities. Under the intense pressure of reaction across Europe, it was difficult for him to earn a living by writing. His mother had long resented his inability to gain rank and wealth and his insistence on going his own way, and she refused to give him his share of the inheritance. His life was extremely difficult. Did he have a future? Moreover, looking back, the economy grew in the 1850s while revolution and the workers’ movement were at a low ebb. The next high tide of “revolution” would not arrive until the 1870s, with the unification of the Social Democratic Party. Marx called these the “unforgettable ten years.” I previously wrote about the hardships of that decade in “1863: The First and Last Dispute Between Marx and Engels.”

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/670977979

But Marx’s great achievements hardly need recounting.

In 1900, Lenin was 30 and had just completed three years of exile in Siberia. He went to Europe, worked with Plekhanov to found *Iskra*, and adopted the pen name “Lenin.” The following year, he wrote *What Is to Be Done?* The revolution of 1917 was still 17 years away.

Commander Peng Dehuai was 30 in 1928, at the height of the White Terror. He was a regimental commander, at a high point in his career. Yet he firmly chose to launch the Pingjiang Uprising and head to the Jinggang Mountains. The comrades who joined him in the uprising were killed one after another over the following years. This is difficult to understand through petty-bourgeois opportunism. Long-term commitment is no joke. Carry on the revolution.