After Nora Leaves, Part 3: Van Gogh Syndrome
Van Gogh’s life is so paradigmatic, so clear: it represents the range of situations faced by Noras from the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie after they leave.
Through Van Gogh, we can see the challenges Nora faces after leaving across the five elements of life: education, career, social life, body, and mind.
“What Happens After Nora Leaves?” “Brave Nora”
I. Van Gogh’s Predicaments of Origin
The predicaments of one’s family of origin, formative schooling, first workplaces, and original social environment.
Trauma from one’s family of origin, CPTSD, lack of love and anxious attachment, a savior complex, a compulsion to prove oneself, the discipline imposed by traditional culture and religion, the exam-grinder’s malaise, pressure from the social clock; existential questions of loneliness, meaning, freedom and responsibility, death, and anxiety.
Nora’s departure is, from the outset, an exploration of how to escape these predicaments.
II. Van Gogh’s Career Predicaments
(1) The Nora–Van Gogh Business Model
How can we reconcile doing what we love, serving the people, and earning a living? This is the central question of what happens after Nora leaves.
The proletariat lacks purchasing power, and earning money means inevitably encountering the world and karmic obstructions of the lower petty bourgeoisie. How can one’s products draw income from the lower petty bourgeoisie while serving proletarians and the people, allowing art and products to appeal to both “refined” and “popular” tastes? This is one component of Brave Nora’s business model. This is also why it is important to use the psychology of the Marx-Zhuangzi framework to study the psychology and sociology of the lower petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Being selective in social relationships and choosing the right direction for united-front work are important.
“Tan Talks Traffic” is an excellent example: the progressive qualities of proletarians heal the lower petty bourgeoisie, who constitute the audience and the paying consumers, while the work also reaches a broad proletarian public free of charge. This is a space for practice in the internet age. In fact, this model also accounts for part of Xiaohongshu’s success. But neither Officer Tan, ByteDance, nor Xiaohongshu can clearly understand and carry it out.
(2) The Van Gogh–Gauguin Conflict: The Moon Versus Sixpence, Passion Versus Making Money, the Useless Versus the Useful
What if the thing you love fails to earn money over a long period? Beyond that, what if it consumes tremendous energy, involves struggling against the big Other, Cthulhu, and interferes with your day job?
Even Marx and Engels could not contend with this very well. It is a central question for Nora’s departure and the psychology of the Marx-Zhuangzi framework.
(3) Poverty: The Gap Between One Harvest and the Next
Social connections, money, resources, mental energy, and so on. Walking through the Gobi at night, with nothing but your own will.
The kill threshold: a question the lower petty bourgeoisie avoid and dare not face directly.
There are both material and spiritual kill thresholds: bankruptcy in money and mental energy, and bankruptcy in social relationships.
The spiritual kill threshold: an ongoing descent into vulgarity. “Spiritual Death at 35, Social Death at 55.”
The lower petty bourgeoisie avoid it and dare not face it. One glance leaves them terrified; they run frantically, surrender, and attach themselves to others. The Cthulhu effect.
Nora leaves and walks through the desert and Gobi at night precisely to avoid the spiritual kill threshold, willingly facing the material kill threshold and spiritual loneliness.
Van Gogh lived alongside the kill threshold throughout, painting serene pictures beneath it: yellow flowers on the battlefield. This is “Brave Nora.”
Marx himself also lived alongside the kill threshold. “1863: Marx and Engels’s First Dispute and Estrangement.”
III. Van Gogh’s Social Predicaments
(1) Misunderstanding the Lower Petty Bourgeoisie and Misguided United-Front Work
Policy and strategy are a person’s lifeblood. Misguided efforts to draw the lower petty bourgeoisie into a united front squander mental energy. Because the “people around you,” “people in the industry, upstream and downstream,” and “clients” are all lower petty bourgeois, you mistakenly make them your spiritual axis. That is entirely different from making them the focus of your work. You mistakenly treat the lower petty bourgeoisie as “the people” and the people as the lower petty bourgeoisie.
United-front work with the lower petty bourgeoisie does not rely on words or persuasion. It relies on boundaries drawn by the powerful and by the barrel of a gun. The lower petty bourgeoisie have no friends. They do not distinguish right from wrong, good from bad, or friend from foe; they merely attach themselves to the powerful and flee from freedom. Whoever wins, they follow. When the Manchu Eight Banners arrive, they attach themselves to the Manchus; when the Japanese arrive, they attach themselves to the Japanese; when Li Zicheng arrives, they attach themselves to Li Zicheng; when the Bolsheviks arrive, they attach themselves to the Bolsheviks. Just look at the adulation of celebrities on Zhihu: there will always be great Confucian scholars ready to argue their case.
Although intellectuals constitute only a small portion of the lower petty bourgeoisie, the strategies used by ancient Chinese dynasties toward Confucians and intellectuals followed a similar logic. The Xianbei actively adopted Han culture and esteemed intellectuals; the Yuan dynasty placed little importance on intellectuals; the Song dynasty treated them too generously; the Qing dynasty combined massacres and compulsory head-shaving with united-front work. When Emperor Xuan of Han, Liu Xun, criticized the crown prince’s veneration of Confucianism, he said: “The House of Han has its own institutions, founded on a mixture of hegemonic rule and kingly rule. Why should we rely exclusively on moral instruction?”
Van Gogh had already made his choice in his unconscious: to stand with the people, to stand down in the mines. He had strong connections among the people and the proletariat. The people never attacked him as a madman. Those who attacked him were the lower petty bourgeoisie, the rich-peasant class, and the Parisian petty bourgeoisie. Van Gogh had excellent social skills. Among left-wing intellectuals and painters, and among ordinary people, he formed simple, natural, effortless connections. For example, the sex worker Sien and her daughter, and the peasant woman Gordina, gave him meaningful companionship and strength in the present, and helped his art advance. Yet the world of the lower petty bourgeoisie and his family of origin misunderstood and slandered these relationships.
Van Gogh simply had not yet fully completed his transformation into a Marxist.
(2) The Theo Predicament
Trauma and karmic obstructions from his upbringing, existential suffering, collapse of the self, depleted mental energy, misunderstanding the lower petty bourgeoisie and misguided united-front work, and so on trapped Van Gogh in efforts to bring Theo into a united front, in a strained relationship distorted by excessive effort.
Select people; do not try to cultivate them. Especially when choosing partners.
In fact, Van Gogh had excellent, effortless connections with ordinary people and left-wing intellectuals and painters.
The same was true throughout Lu Xun’s life. Only ordinary people and the left understood and supported him. Lu Xun’s relationship with his younger brother Zhou Zuoren is a classic Theo predicament. Early on, they too were close partners in literary and artistic work. Lu Xun’s career succeeded; he was physically and mentally healthy, earned a very good income, and supported his brother. Yet even he could not truly bring his brother into a united front, and Zhou Zuoren instead became a collaborator with the Japanese. Relationships between people ultimately come down to their worldviews, values, outlooks on life, and positions. People cannot change others. Do you really think your personal charisma or eloquence could surpass Lu Xun’s?
Earlier pieces: “Van Gogh Should Stop Trying to Bring His Brother Theo into a United Front,” “Better None Than the Wrong Ones Is the Right Principle,” “The Last Little Essay of My Life.”
(3) The Dividing Line for Brave Nora, the Dividing Line for the Awakened
There is clearly a gulf, a dividing line, between the level of simple authenticity and the level of petty-bourgeois humanism. One evolves upward; the other sinks downward.
The dividing line for Brave Nora, the dividing line for the awakened.
Social relationships and organizing should be structured around this distinction.
III. Van Gogh’s Inner Predicaments
(1) The Predicament of Balancing Work and Rest: Low Mental Energy Syndrome
Balancing work and rest is difficult. “Rest Requires Great Wisdom, Great Courage, and Great Steadfastness.” Before this balance is achieved, even “everyday life” is filled with self-torment. This makes self-attack more complicated, because what was originally self-attack arising purely from karmic obstructions now also includes resistance against the harsh inner taskmaster itself. Infighting within the libido. The internal depletion of so-called “procrastination” is precisely this kind of infighting. And people like Van Gogh, who are on the right path and find it so “easy” to have meaningful work and enter a state of flow, are even more likely to disparage procrastination, exalt “action,” treat “action” as “relaxation,” or fixate on the “relaxation” they experience when functioning well and full of energy, without having a healthy connection with their mental energy.
“Low Mental Energy Syndrome”: mental energy runs out; it is too low even to rest. Unable to rest properly, one’s mental energy cannot recover. Prolonged physical and mental depletion.
The gap between one replenishment of mental energy and the next is harder to endure than the gap between one influx of money and the next.
“Abundant Mental Energy Is the Buddha; Rest Is the Dharma.”
(2) Van Gogh’s Existential Crisis
Existential crises primarily concern anxiety, loneliness, meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, and death.
For Brave Nora, meaninglessness is clearly not an issue. Nora’s departure and Van Gogh’s revolution are undertaken precisely to resolve the alienation and meaninglessness of white-collar work and art dealing. Naturally, Van Gogh would not question the meaning of his art and life. Likewise, anxiety and death anxiety are not the issue. Van Gogh displayed astonishing composure and serenity.
Van Gogh’s principal existential questions were two:
- Loneliness
He was primarily trapped by the karmic obstructions of his upbringing, his savior complex, and his efforts to bring Theo into a united front, as well as the associated karmic obstructions of socializing and united-front work with the lower petty bourgeoisie. I will not elaborate further. “Van Gogh Needs Marx and Zhuangzi”: he should have connected earlier with the people and with Marxists. In fact, Van Gogh had already connected with ordinary people, the French Revolution, Zola, and so on. It is a great pity that he did not connect with genuinely left-wing circles through people such as Pissarro and Signac. Had Van Gogh lived another 3–5 years, he would surely have made a qualitative breakthrough on this question. This was also a predicament of the times: world revolution was then at a low ebb. Marx and Engels themselves were also quite powerless in the face of revisionism within the Social Democratic Party.
- Freedom and Responsibility
Van Gogh was trapped by the Protestant ethic and exam-grinder mentality of his upbringing, a harsh superego, and so on, with severe self-doubt and relentless self-discipline. This further affected his social relationships and his entanglement with Theo. He exerted himself excessively, could not rest, and remained physically and mentally overdrawn for long periods, his mental energy struggling for breath. “Compulsive Striving.”
So Van Gogh needed the Daoist philosophy of Zhuangzi: to understand inability and non-action, the limits of his own responsibility and abilities, and how to love himself. Had Van Gogh lived another 3–5 years, he would surely have moved toward loving himself and balancing work with rest.
Van Gogh attained mastery in the way of art, but died on the eve of attaining fulfillment across his life. What a pity. A Nora who died just outside the oasis.
These are also challenges frequently faced by leftists and enthusiasts of Marxism.
(3) Van Gogh’s Libidinal Tension
The tension between profound foundations and artistry, enormous potential for spiritual and material returns, and the deprivation of the present; the tension between being a great master of the Way and living in poverty and distress. Waiting quietly.
Oscillation between inferiority and confidence:
Not the ordinary, familiar pattern of inferiority, conceit, and self-hatred, but an oscillation between inferiority and confidence. Healthy confidence and feelings of inferiority that are difficult to contain, fluctuating with one’s state and circumstances.
Oscillation between hope and despair.
Oscillation between breakdown and serenity:
Before, I was in extreme pain, distressed, lost, muddled, frantic. But I have recovered. In this moment I am serene, working serenely. I am with the Way.
The Siren Moment:
The Cthulhu siren is singing. It is a moment of severed connection in an existential crisis: already disconnected from myself, I cannot trust my own senses or judgment, much less the so-called people around me. I can trust only the Way and metacognition. Bind me to the mast. A diary is the ordinary person’s mast, the only means of communing with the spirit.
Madness:
Sometimes I do not know whether I have gone mad or the world has gone mad. Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary.”
IV. Van Gogh’s Spirit
Living in the present.
Breaking down along the way, serene along the way.
Despairing along the way, advancing along the way.
Fulfillment at every step. In what year, at what moment, did Van Gogh attain fulfillment?
Strength and Vigor
Only when you truly set foot on this path do you realize how resilient, strong, and healthy Van Gogh was. (Van Gogh himself wrote in his letters that he benefited from his strong constitution.) Van Gogh appears weak and mad only because ordinary people have never stepped into this raging storm.
Appendix:
“Nora Leaves, Part 4: Sing for Nora, Siren”:
Siren, beautiful enchantress, sing out. I will not lose my way; there is no need to bind me to the mast. I am the mast now, and people bind themselves to me to keep from losing their way. Only I can keep my eyes open and enjoy the Siren’s beauty and the grandeur of the strait. Siren, sing for me; I will sing aloud with you.
Brave Nora, sing out. Walking through the Gobi at night, entering the open sea in the depths of night, meeting great waves in the prime of life. How magnificent the full moon is, how vast heaven and earth, how real the human world. My atomic brothers and my heart are forever in motion: metabolism, the turning of the stars. The universe is forever in motion.
I have already connected with the Marx-Zhuangzi framework’s innate wholeness in everyone, the unity of humanity and nature, and following the natural course of things. The east is growing light; the morning sun will come, over the horizon on the other side. Leave the kill threshold to frighten the lower petty bourgeoisie. Let them and their own evil god, the big Other, Cthulhu, create one another. Death does not belong to the proletariat.
The Way lies beneath our feet. Those who are grounded stand on solid ground.