Our Generation's Battlefield Is Within: Each Person's Most Important Friend and Enemy Is Themselves

I. Our Generation’s Battlefield Is Within

The principal contradiction of the present era is that atomized individuals must survive in an age of cyberpunk and Cthulhu. For each individual, it is the contradiction between exercising agency and being yourself, on the one hand, and objectification and alienation, on the other; the contradiction of being unable to balance work and life; the contradiction of being unable either to lie flat in peace or to keep up with the rat race.

Our generation’s shared and urgent enemies are abstract ones: capitalism, the system, the big Other.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is the foremost question of revolution.

Everyone’s most important friend and enemy is themselves.

The former is our authentic self, innate wholeness, the Buddha-nature, divinity, and spirituality everyone possesses. Humanism, Zen Buddhism, and spiritual approaches are good at this part. The latter consists of karmic obstructions, such as the ego, a harsh superego, social discipline, the big Other, and misguided views of the world, life, and values. Psychology, Buddhism, and existentialism are good at this part. Marx and Zhuangzi are good at both; systematic and dialectical, theirs is a philosophy through which ordinary people can save themselves.

The small and micro bourgeoisie have deep karmic obstructions and often cannot distinguish friend from foe or right from wrong. They do not know how to be their own friends or love themselves, nor do they know which parts of themselves are hurting them. For example, people often treat themselves only as enemies, calling themselves useless, procrastinators, or insufficiently hardworking. This harsh overseer, who treats the self as an enemy rather than a friend, is precisely the great enemy of the moment, the big Other’s tax farmer. Your relationship with yourself sets the upper limit on your relationships with others. If you are not your own friend, naturally you have no friends. The proletariat are much stronger in this respect: they are the big Other’s slave laborers, not its obedient subjects.

Recognize that your authentic self is a powerful ally, that it is the foundation of your being. Trust in your own nature and its innate wholeness, live in the deeper mind, and notice when you fall under a spell, when the ego’s karmic obstructions stir up turmoil, and when thoughts of inner conflict come and go. Maintain a connection with your past self, persist in being yourself, and do not stab yourself in the back.

Each of us is a guerrilla fighting behind enemy lines, surrounded by the small and micro bourgeoisie, with varying degrees of connection to the proletariat. A united front requires both strong principles and considerable flexibility.

Our generation’s battlefield is within. Every day, in our inner worlds, workplaces, and surroundings, we must fight the big Other and Cthulhu at close quarters, waging battles within ourselves. Our Long March is Nora walking out, escaping our own Shawshank prison, an odyssey of the soul. Everyone has their own particular realm of demons. The signal fires, white doves, and ringing bells we send out give those holding out on other isolated islands the courage to persevere. For our generation, the Jinggang Mountains to which we can retreat are our own chests; the Nanniwan we can cultivate deeply is our own work; the flag we can raise is ourselves. Sparks of fire shine together, each illuminating the others.

Our generation has no external revolution to look forward to. What we must undergo is an internal revolution, a revolution of the soul. It is even harder than what the generations of Marx, Lenin, and Mao faced. Our generation cannot see any great mountains being overthrown. The only thing we can do is topple the great mountains within.

II. Be Yourself, Find Joy and Make Money in Your Own Life Story

Individual problems are all social problems. When someone finds a way through their personal predicament, they embody part of the world’s great Way and set an example of that Way for countless people in the same situation.

The theme of aligning with the Way without deliberate intent and fulfilling yourself is to become a winner in life. In practical terms, this means playing and being happy inwardly, and having capital, money, and influence outwardly. Happiness comes first: if you are unhappy, you have lost. Being poor but happy is fine too. Being unhappy for the sake of making money makes you a typical loser. While enjoying yourself, earn a living: make money through play, going beyond merely making money while standing tall. Why do Yu Donglai, Fan Zhendong, and Liang Wenfeng inspire such fervent admiration?

If you cannot change other people or history, can you at least become a winner in life? The answer I have found through studying Marx and Zhuangzi is to let go of the urge to save others and focus on developing yourself. Bring money into a virtuous cycle of your own agency and freedom.
III. The Task of This Generation of Marxists Is to Make Money Through Play
For Lenin’s and Mao’s generation, political power grew out of the barrel of a gun. Does that make guns good things? Are they not dirty? Yet survival and development required taking hold of them. The Marx-Zhuangzi framework is a philosophy for ordinary people. Being an ordinary person without a gun is no fault; your existence is unconditional, and you are no less worthy than anyone else. But as a Marxist, if circumstances allow, you should acquire guns. Guns, power, and capital should be in the right hands.
Today, political power grows out of the moneybag. Without money, you cannot survive or develop, and all theories, ideals, and charity become empty talk. The theme for this generation of Marxists is making money. Money must be in the right hands. That generation acquired guns, occupied mountains, and established armed bases of workers and peasants. This generation must acquire money and establish strongholds behind economic moats.
The theme of this era is money. Those who call themselves Marxists have even more reason to discuss it, rather than cosplay as loyalists and descendants of a fallen dynasty, still talking about the Qing. Turning pale at the mention of money, holding your nose when you smell it, and refusing to touch it like an ascetic monk does not demonstrate lofty integrity.
Master money without being mastered by it. Just as with Leninism: acquire guns without being mastered by them. It is precisely a level of understanding and breadth of vision that transcends the playing field that allows you to master guns and money more effectively. Their generation’s task was to avoid being corrupted by guns and power. This generation’s task is to master money without being corrupted by it.
Make money and study how money works. The first rule is that miserable toil will not make you rich; it also brings suffering and a shorter life. The second is value investing and rigorous selection.
Money is congealed labor, a way the world is organized, and the whip at everyone’s back. Wherever people work and live together, things revolve around money. No organization can do without it. Money is part of the reality of the world. To seek truth from facts, we must study money seriously.
What distinguishes a Marxist who controls the moneybag from an ordinary elitist or wealthy person?
That is easy to answer:

1. What distinguishes a Marxist who controls the gun from an ordinary warlord or bandit?
2. What distinguishes a Marxist who wants to become a winner in life from ordinary people who want the same thing? When those people seek to win, they want to beat their peers and win outside recognition.
3. What distinguishes Yu Donglai’s control of the moneybag from that of other business owners?
   IV. Making Hardship the Measure of Everything Is Falling Under a Spell
   Miserable toil is not necessarily wrong or unacceptable. But do not make hardship the measure of everything. The small-town exam ace, the Hengshui High School model, the engineering mindset, the middling-student mindset, the bureaucratic mindset—all make hardship the measure of everything. Suffering has no meaning in itself. My ability to endure hardship does not mean I should take pleasure in it or endure it for a lifetime.
   The Marx-Zhuangzi framework, psychology, and value investing are all great Ways; IT and AI are also major fields of expertise. But these are meant to give me wings, not confine me and make me miserable. The benefits of studying Marx, Zhuangzi, and psychology go without saying, but their subtle influence on me, and the limitations they have imposed, have also been considerable. I have studied suffering, karmic obstructions, trauma, crisis, and sinking into despair too much. I have spent too much time studying and getting entangled in the suffering of all beings. The puritanical rules and aversion to money associated with Lenin and Commander Peng have influenced my thinking, yet they held power and lived with tremendous vigor and fulfillment. Marx and Engels, too, ate and drank as they pleased.
   In 2018 and 2019, I moved from value investing toward Daoism, encountered Marx and psychology, and let go of my urge to save others. I had actually already found my way to the great Way; it was a very good combination. After I embraced Marxism-Leninism in 2020, the impact and the transformation were too great, including my work on the Complete Works of Marx and Engels. In fact, I lost the balanced rhythm of my personal philosophy. At the time, I was still troubled by the conflicts among Marxism-Leninism, value investing, and Zhuangzi. I gradually worked through them and discovered that there was no contradiction at all. Zhuangzi is, at its heart, the study of happiness and connection.
   Whether other people recognize the Marx-Zhuangzi framework, psychology, or value investing, I cannot be bothered to prove myself. With IT and AI, never get drawn into proving yourself. The pain of interviewing for me now lies precisely in having to prove myself.
   The more trapped you are by making a living, the more trapped you become by making a living. The vicious cycle of poverty.
   V. It Is Fine Not to Make Money; Start Playing First. Do Not Toil Miserably. Start Playing
   Zhuangzi speaks of the exemplary person remaining steadfast in poverty and seeing through poverty and success alike. This does not mean being poor for poverty’s sake or taking pride in deprivation and hardship. Zhuangzi accepts everything, including disability. That does not mean disabling yourself in order to accept disability.
   Writing articles is not painful, nor are coding, learning mathematics, consulting, creating independent media, investing, or working on the Complete Works of Marx and Engels. They are all forms of play.
   As soon as you start expecting results, forcing things, proving yourself, getting tangled up with the wrong people and exhausting yourself, kneeling to beg for judgment, it becomes painful.
   Is Liang Wenfeng suffering?
   VI. Entrepreneurship and Hardship
   Talent is what makes you enjoy things that others find difficult and painful. Some people find reading unbearable; I have read 2,200 books. Some people get sleepy reading financial statements; Buffett is addicted to them. A world-class team consists of world-class people working together, doing what they enjoy—things that others find agonizing and cannot accomplish at all. The ones toiling miserably are not the entrepreneurs, but the workers hired on 996 schedules after the business succeeds.