Classifying People by Level
I. The Marxist Level, the Level of Harmony with the Way
Marxism and deep professional expertise complement each other; fulfilling oneself and helping others fulfill themselves complement each other.
Enlightenment:
Simplicity -> enlightenment -> stillness -> fulfilling oneself—helping others fulfill themselves; effortless harmony with the Way.
True Marxists are rarer than enlightened Buddhas. Not even XX, let alone anything beyond that.
Anyone truly enlightened must understand everyone’s innate wholeness + the suffering of all people +, especially, the already existing history of the international communist movement and the Marxist theoretical system. They will inevitably move toward Marxism. Half-Marxists are separated from it by only a paper-thin barrier; see the earlier essay “The Similarities and Affinities Between Zhuangzi and Marx.” Müntzer is one example.
Examples:
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Commander Peng Dehuai, Luo Ronghuan, Norman Bethune, Zeng Peihong, Fromm, and others.
“How to Recognize a True Marxist-Leninist: The Mandel–Fromm Type,” 2023.6
II. The Level of Simplicity
Most proletarian workers and peasants. A large proportion of proletarian workers and peasants are in a state of partial enlightenment or enlightenment: unassuming and grounded; the ordinary mind is the Way. The advanced character of the proletariat. In their everyday work and lives, simple, unassuming workers and peasants connect with labor, mutual aid, kindness, common sense, and flow. They feel themselves and others, and everyone’s innate wholeness; they feel their unity with nature and the land, while also clearly seeing the karmic obstructions of alienation.
A tiny minority of the petty and small bourgeoisie. For example, Van Gogh and Chaplin.
This is why Zhuangzi’s philosophy rejects cleverness and renounces sagehood, opposes elitism, and has workers and peasants teach Confucius and Yan Hui. Great scientists are often simple and unassuming; social scientists often lose that simplicity—the karmic obstructions of the petty and small bourgeoisie in non-Marxist social scholarship.
What is simplicity?
Being unassuming; truth, goodness, and beauty; sincerity and connection; practical action and labor; common sense and instinct; striving toward goodness and growth. Supporting and nourishing people.
Simplicity comes from the innate wholeness of everyone’s own nature. Simplicity is humanism, the Way. Marxism, Daoism, and value investing all involve returning to simplicity and common sense.
The root and expression of confidence is everyone’s innate wholeness: not “only I can do it,” but “everyone can do it.” Why, then, have others not done it? This must be explained through Marxism and Zhuangzi.
Simplicity prevents the encroachment of vulgarity and toxicity. Whether the petty and small bourgeoisie retain or lose their simplicity is the key to their growth or degeneration.
Change
Sound ability and sound character -> great ability and great character -> outstanding ability and outstanding character
People are dynamic: they either improve or deteriorate; there is no standing still. Those with simplicity move upward and leftward; those below simplicity move downward and rightward. Changes in people are material, not idealist. Only select; do not try to change people or hold expectations. The dialectic of individual personality is the fundamental contradiction between one’s own nature and karmic obstructions.
Friends
Below the level of simplicity, there are no true friends. People lack sound ability and also lack a correct understanding of “character.”
A person’s relationship with themselves sets the upper limit of their relationship with the world. Without the ability to be themselves, love themselves, and fulfill themselves, they cannot love others or help others fulfill themselves.
III. The Level of Petty-Bourgeois Humanism
The upper limit of this level: partial agency, partial simplicity, false enlightenment, false humanism.
- Sensing some of the light of one’s own nature, agency, and strength.
- Believing oneself enlightened, but not understanding everyone’s innate wholeness; believing oneself superior and unique, through either innate qualities or acquired ones, and difficult for ordinary people to emulate. Spiritual elitism. Spirituality is simplicity; elitism is the loss of simplicity.
- Petty-bourgeois socialists and leftists. Placing importance on publicity, education, and charity. Even Lu Xun’s path toward Marxism was long and arduous, let alone anyone else’s.
- Often socially anxious, regarding those at the mediocre and toxic levels as “the people,” and consequently feeling superior. Lacking a correct understanding of the proletariat and Marxism.
- Instinctively humanistic, but without enough insight into karmic obstructions or the ability to address them; defensive toward the world and other people, unable to connect with true humanism. True humanists must recognize everyone’s innate wholeness and move toward Marxism and Zhuangzi.
Petty-bourgeois karmic obstructions
Not yet having left behind the karmic obstructions of petty-bourgeois identity, the small ego, inferiority–conceit, and elitism. “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise”
Lacking connection with the people, society, and history, and therefore lacking strength and a sense of reality; finding it difficult to face the big Other and seek truth from facts.
Attachment to doctrine
Often attached to doctrine, fixated on their own path, which gives them a sense of belonging, worth, conviction, superiority, existence, and so on. This itself reflects a loss of simplicity and common sense. People at this level seem sophisticated and perceptive on the surface, but in reality find it very difficult to break through any further. This also shows how formidable petty-bourgeois karmic obstructions are.
For example, even someone as capable and perceptive as Yu Donglai is fixated on spreading his ideas to other supermarkets, losing touch with common sense. Can he really be unaware of the actual reason his ideas cannot be implemented everywhere?
Many Marxism enthusiasts pursue Marxism for a sense of existence and superiority. That is where they go wrong.
Examples:
Robert Owen, Su Shi, Rogers, Michael Jackson, Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Einstein, and others.
The lower limit of this level: some simplicity, not mediocre, possessing vitality, treating oneself as human and treating others as human. Neither harming oneself nor harming others.
What is good about *Soldiers Sortie*? Its return to simplicity and common sense, its refusal to settle for mediocrity.
IV. The Level of Mediocrity
Mediocrity, harming oneself and others, without sucking others dry. Loss of simplicity. Little connection with one’s own nature, much entanglement in karmic obstructions.
Existential crisis. From lying flat to wasting one’s life, or driving oneself through competitive striving until one becomes like Zhang Xuefeng. Mediocrity is a measure of the degree of alienation.
Most of the petty and small bourgeoisie. Starting with schooling, discipline and socialization are a process of alienation. “Petty-Bourgeois Malaise,” “The Malaise of Small-Town Exam Takers,” “The Fundamental Contradiction of University Students,” “Our Generation’s Battlefield Is Within: Our Most Important Friend and Enemy Are Both Ourselves”
The karmic obstructions of mediocrity
Inevitably, one also loses the ability to recognize the extraordinary and the simple, and inevitably becomes unable to understand the advanced character of the proletariat or Marxism.
Most people who describe themselves as engaging in spiritual practice or cultivating their character are also at this level. “The Elitism of Spiritual-Practice Malaise”
Most Marxism enthusiasts are also at this level; they do not even reach the level of petty-bourgeois humanism. (“Common Karmic Obstructions Among Marxism Enthusiasts”)
The pathology of mainland Chinese film and television lies in the karmic obstructions of petty- and small-bourgeois mediocrity. Despite once having an advanced working-class culture, they foreground those rotten, backward elements of feudal banditry. (“Shanghai’s Glory Has Never Belonged to the Petty Bourgeoisie”)
Misconceptions
I used to get the direction wrong, as people generally do. What we seek—the direction of being ourselves, cultivating our character, and resolving existential crises—is a return to simplicity, humanism, freedom from mediocrity and vulgarity, and common sense; not excellence, superiority, exceptional achievement, uniqueness, or the elitism misleadingly suggested by individuality. Elitism makes people vulgar and devoid of wisdom and compassion. In pursuing excellence and success, they lose their way and become vulgar.
The outstanding stratum within the level of mediocrity
All kinds of outstanding talents, elites, and wealthy entrepreneurs across every profession often have not broken out of this paradigm either.
Vulgar success literature keeps circling within this category.
Geek
Their personalities are not well developed; they are merely geeks in different fields—sales, marketing, technology, arts and sports, and so on.
It also depends on whether their field happens to benefit from the opportunities of the era: for example, people trained in biology, chemistry, environmental science, materials science, and civil engineering versus those in computing.
Often, flaws in their personality traits may happen to fit the karmic obstructions of the era, as with Trump.
The rules of the industry; business is business.
Representative figures
Buffett and Zeng Guofan are typical figures at this level. Where exactly do they fall short of Su Shi, Van Gogh, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Bethune in the level and appeal of their personalities, learning, wisdom, personal ability, and social and historical influence?
Compared with Zuo Zongtang, Zeng Guofan was more bureaucratic and mediocre; the former had somewhat more idealism.
Munger was less principled than Buffett and came to grief in his later years. Meanwhile, Buffett’s friend of several decades, Bill Gates, divorced and became embroiled in the Epstein case, bringing disgrace upon him. Would Marx or Su Shi have had such a longtime friend? Even Buffett, Munger, and Bill Gates are like this, which tells us something.
If even Buffett can do it, the way of value investing cannot be that difficult; we do not need to reach Su Shi’s level. Yet only a tiny number of people worldwide can do it, showing how difficult the way of value investing is for the petty and small bourgeoisie. Throughout financial markets, people lose logic, independent thought, and common sense. The way of value investing is the greatest irony for the petty and small bourgeoisie who have lost their simplicity.
Even Buffett and Munger cannot break through: stand in awe of karmic obstructions. Does Buffett, Munger, and Bill Gates’s failure to understand Marxism mean Marxism is incorrect? Was Bill Gates close to Epstein because Epstein was close to the truth?
The steady decline and worsening inner states of Jiang Wen and Stephen Chow, two filmmakers I once liked very much, show the harm caused by petty- and small-bourgeois karmic obstructions and the karmic obstructions of mediocrity. Even Jiang Wen and Stephen Chow cannot withstand them: stand in awe of karmic obstructions. And where, exactly, are Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki ahead of them?
“Stand in Awe of Karmic Obstructions”
An age of mediocrity
These generations of the petty and small bourgeoisie are generally mediocre. This still counts as some progress compared with the constant emergence of all kinds of viciousness and vicious people during the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century.
These are the karmic obstructions of the era. See the earlier essay “Spiritual Death at 35, Social Death at 55.”
V. The Toxic Level
Toxicity, sucking others dry. Feudalism, bureaucratization. Becoming zombies.
Pornography, gambling, and drugs.
People at the toxic level also have opportunities afforded by their era: people suited to being warlords in an age of warlords, people suited to being bandits in an age of bandits.
The temptation to suck others dry
There are too many sheep without boundaries who do not know how to protect themselves, and too many opportunities to suck others dry. When mediocre people find it hard to resist sucking others dry, their degeneration begins. “Wolves and Sheep, Ginseng Children and Ginseng Demons: Simple, Kind People Must Stay Clearheaded and Protect Themselves,” “Addiction to Cheap Emotional Gratification”
Sucking others dry, covert NPD
Destroying oneself and others
Bad people, NPD
Harming others and oneself
Appendix:
Silicon Valley–style geek republicanism and democracy
People often think the Silicon Valley or Harvard model is first-rate or beyond first-rate. This is a misunderstanding. The leading entrepreneurial companies in Silicon Valley fall into two types.
Google: geeks banding together in business, with a natural republicanism and democracy. But it can deteriorate: bureaucracy, infiltration by second-rate people.
Pixar: humanists and geeks banding together in business; it can also deteriorate.
Most geeks are at the level of mediocrity, a minority at the level of petty-bourgeois humanism, and a tiny minority at the level of simplicity.
Large business organizations depend on commercial monopolies, rather than on the advanced character of their organizations, as with tobacco and alcohol.
Value investing also examines whether the business model and profits can be maintained after an organization declines, whether the parts prone to corruption have natural mechanisms that prevent it, and whether internal corruption is easy to audit and check. For example, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola separate out operations and bottling respectively.
Assessing and selecting people
The baseline, the lower limit of the level of petty-bourgeois humanism: some simplicity, not mediocre, possessing vitality, treating oneself as human and treating others as human. Neither harming oneself nor harming others. Sound ability and sound character.
Appendix:
This essay is more complete and mature than “A New Model of Psychological Growth Levels and Needs—A Revision of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, 2025.11.” That essay focuses more on psychological growth; this one focuses on the inner life. The development in this essay lies in three key points: simplicity, mediocrity, and enlightenment. Over these past two years, especially these past six months, I have gained a deeper understanding of how people improve or deteriorate, how connection heals existential crises, how petty- and small-bourgeois karmic obstructions cause people to lose connection, how I myself have been mediocre, and how to return to simplicity.
Appendix:
8.10
To gain the recognition of others, one must let go of all selfish thoughts. A person lives in this world for more than happiness alone. They must not only become simple and honest, but also recognize the greatness of humanity, thereby acquiring noble sentiments and rising above the vulgarity that weighs everyone down. Pursue light and freedom; do not let yourself sink too deeply into the mire of worldly life.
--Van Gogh, 1875, aged 22, in London and Paris