Marx, Zhuangzi & Psychology Marx + Zhuangzi · Everyone is inherently whole

Connection Series

Social Relationships: First-Rate People and Better Focus You Toward the Dao; Second-Rate and Lesser People Scatter You Away from It

Socializing: The First-Rate and the Exceptional Converge Toward the Way; the Second-Rate and Those Outside the Stream Dissipate Energy and Stray from the Way

I. Communicating with second-rate people and those outside the stream takes more effort, drains more energy, and yields poor, toxic feedback.

  1. It dulls your intelligence, creates internal friction, incurs enormous losses, dissipates energy, and takes you farther from the Way.
  2. Communicating with first-rate and exceptional people is simple: a knowing smile, a step closer to the Way.

II. The Misconception and Arrogance of “Lowering Dimensions” and “Downward Compatibility”

  1. Thinking that communicating with second-rate people and those outside the stream means lowering dimensions or offering downward compatibility underestimates the complexity of the world and of karmic obstructions.
  2. First-rate people are focused and minimalist, with relatively clear karmic obstructions, so their dimensions and principal axes of energy are more tightly aligned and closer to the Way. People who have entered the stream retrieve similar vectors in one another and resonate with the great Way.

People outside the stream have more complex dimensions, unsettled minds, and dissipated mental energy. Communicating with them actually means moving into higher dimensions. They introduce different dimensions of karmic obstructions orthogonal to your own nature, increase your rank, draw you into the dimensions of their karmic obstructions, and easily dissipate your energy with their extensive experience in increasing entropy.

III. The Line Between Nourishment and Depletion

After communicating and interacting with someone, you can clearly feel whether you have been nourished or depleted, loosened or tightened, expanded or diminished. Between first-rate and second-rate people, there is a clear line between nourishment and depletion, between gain and loss.

IV. Entering the Gate, Entering the Way

One reason to attend an elite school is that you have a greater chance of encountering first-rate people who have entered the Way—teachers and fellow students.

This makes it easier to enter the gate and enter the Way: in academic taste, approaches to work, ways of being in the world, and so on. The Stanford community in Silicon Valley is one example.

The value of reading widely for ordinary people is similar: first-rate people are scarce in everyday life, while good books offer more first-rate people and more of the Way. (This also depends on the reader’s own nature and karmic obstructions.)

V. Emergence Through a High Density of Exceptional Talent

Silicon Valley entrepreneurship has already clearly articulated a theory of “emergence through talent density”: bring exceptional people together, and new entrepreneurial opportunities will emerge naturally. They do not need so-called incentives, management, or psychological manipulation. Their own motivation and desire to seek the Way are enough. The story of Silicon Valley’s “traitorous eight” is another example.

DeepSeek’s move from quantitative trading to large models is also a typical example of emergence through talent. This is also one factor behind Google’s longstanding reverence for academic credentials and genius. It is less that people truly differ in IQ than that they differ in how close they are to, or far they are from, the Way.

In entrepreneurship, investment, and management, decisions about how to make decisions are crucial. Tactical diligence and exhausting, ever-escalating competition cannot make up for strategic failure.

Modern and contemporary Chinese history, and the history of the international communist movement, are histories of exceptional comrades drawing close to and aligning with the Way. Duan Dechang, Commander Peng Dehuai, Huang Gonglüe, and others.

VI. Value Investing and Winning Without Effort

For a first-rate person, recognizing and following exceptional people and the Way, and understanding that choices matter more than effort, are hallmarks of being first-rate. Only select; do not expect or try to change others.

This is also the true meaning of choosing exceptional businesses through value investing and winning without effort. An investor invests, first and foremost, in “people.”

All of the above also expresses, in social life, education, and careers, the Daoist principles that applying force already takes you off course, that order comes through nonaction, that one should let things follow their natural course, and that one can align with the Way without deliberate intent.