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

Marx Series

Why the AI Era Needs Marx and Zhuangzi

I. Proving Marxism Correct

  1. Disorderly Competition and the Tendency Toward Monopoly

AI is part of humanity’s collective productive power, yet it is being fought over by fragmented, disparate, inefficient, and incompetent capitals—a group of existing monopolists competing once again for monopoly positions in order to exploit the public.

Destructive competition: instead of rejoicing in technological progress, people feel anxious about it. Destructive competition sets everyone against everyone else. Humanity’s productive forces and the products of its labor do not serve humanity; instead, they threaten to annihilate it. This is alienation. This is a social problem that needs to be resolved.

  1. Technology, Machines, AI, Capital, and So On Cannot Create Profit

“Capitalism Cannot Exploit Machines; Ultimately, It Still Has to Exploit Humans.”

Value is undifferentiated human labor congealed in commodities. Profit originates in the exploitation of human labor.

Technology, machines, and capital do not create profit, however many tangible products and services they may appear to “create.”

The excess profits from technological leadership often come only from the extent to which technology replaces human labor at the industry’s average level. Once the technological level of the entire industry rises, the industry’s overall level of profitability often falls instead. Steel mills and the chemicals and plastics industries are examples.

  1. The Depressive Phase of the Kondratiev Cycle

A new bubble repeats itself over and over in the same classic, timeworn way. This, too, is historical materialism.

  1. An Irony of Freedom

The internet’s thirty-year spirit of freedom, openness, and open source, along with humanity’s shared knowledge—two thousand years of accumulated writing, forums, questions and answers, code, and more—has all ended up serving closed black boxes.

  1. Humanism and Alienation

AI cannot watch the sunset for us, and infinite tranquility, beauty, and innate wholeness are all there in quietly watching the sunset. Many people ask: but if AI replaces us at work, we will lose our jobs and starve. —This is precisely the problem of capitalism that Marx studied. If AI replaces us at work, shouldn’t we have more time to watch the sunset?

Objectification, turning things into problems to be solved, and the problem of alienation:

AI leaves many workers worrying: what will I do if I can no longer be a tool? As the famous saying goes: “I only wanted to hire a pair of hands, but I had to hire a whole person.”

II. AI Makes Us Confront Humanism and the Meaning of Human Life

  1. AI Can Never Replace Human Beings.

Truly human intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intelligence concerning human nature, and social-scientific intelligence.

Human truth, goodness, and beauty; aesthetic appreciation; love; emotions; feelings and sensibility.

  1. AI Cannot Replace Therapists, Friends, Loved Ones, or Nature.
  1. AI Is an Alien Intelligence, a Logical Intelligence; It Will Never Be Human Intelligence
  1. Humanists Do Not Fear AI

Many people in education and psychology are very afraid of AI, believing that it will “lead astray” many people, especially children. Humanists, however, are not. They firmly believe in the depths of the human mind, in profound human intelligence, and in people’s simple, natural instincts to grow, to do good, and to seek truth, goodness, and beauty. They trust people’s ability to bring their own metacognition into balance.

From the earlier article “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness”:

Television, the internet, video arcades, internet cafés, short videos, mobile games, online fiction, and countless other things have been called terrifying scourges that would ruin a generation. Yet in reality, generation after generation has not been ruined. Instead, people have grown into capable adults, drawing on the modest energy these things offer to withstand the pressures of reality. This is also the conflict between elitism’s condescending arrogance and ordinary people’s innate wholeness. Many people have forgotten how they themselves got through childhood.

III. Zhuangzi

  1. The Unpredictability of Fate
  1. The Ethics of Knowledge

If technology and knowledge do not benefit the majority of humanity, can they still be called knowledge and wisdom? They are a curse, an accomplice.

  1. The Misdirected, Excessive Pursuit of Information and Knowledge Takes Us Away from Our True Nature and Life Itself. “Our Lives Have Limits, but Knowledge Has None. To Pursue the Limitless with the Limited Is Perilous.” Abandon Cleverness and Renounce Sagehood.
  1. What AI Cannot Imitate Is Precisely Human Finitude: the Limits of Ability, Intelligence, and Energy. It Cannot Understand Human Predicaments, Helplessness, Acceptance, or Adaptation.
  1. Reexamining Our Obsession with Ability and Elites

A lifetime’s obsession with ability dissolves into nothing in the face of AI. Accepting our inability and enjoying the usefulness of the useless are what it means to be true to our humanity. We see the anxiety, bewilderment, and frenzy of many programmers—an unhealthy state. Meritocracy and elitism are still tormenting them. (See the earlier article “You Cannot Be a Social Darwinist and an Elitist Only When Luck and Circumstances Favor You.”)

  1. Reexamining Useless Work

The well-known book *Bullshit Jobs* describes how a large proportion of work in modern society is meaningless. This is precisely the kind of work AI is best at replacing: embroidering PowerPoint slides, carving flourishes into A4 paper, and organizational infighting.

  1. The Usefulness of the Useless

The meaning of human life does not lie in being useful. Usefulness is merely something survival forces upon us; everyone is forced into an escalating competitive rat race.

  1. Returning to Nature

Machines were invented for humans; humans were not invented for machines. We have spent too much time serving machines and too long away from nature.

  1. Seeking Outward vs. Searching Within

How, ultimately, can humanity resolve its existential crises: loneliness, meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, and death? It is not through having the programming skills to develop large models, annual incomes of several million dollars, glittering résumés, and stock-exchange bell-ringing ceremonies. Psychological problems and existential afflictions are often prevalent among these groups. We must still search within and return to innate wholeness itself.