Zhuangzi’s “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” and Marx: Returning from Surface-Level Language and Thought to the Deeper Mind

I. The Clamor of Human Voices

Language itself is imprecise, full of metaphor and suggestion.
The world itself is complex and full of contradictions.
The information used to describe the world is confused, contradictory, and dissembling—contradictory.
Our views of the world, life, and values are themselves unstable, neither scientific nor fully developed nor mature, and contradictory.
The psyche itself is confused, complex, full of karmic obstructions, and contradictory.
Thought itself is confused, without a center, without awareness, and contradictory.
So people cannot blindly “depend” on language and thought.
The “clamor of human voices” in Zhuangzi’s “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” means that everyone clings to the world of their own little ego, uttering words that are meaningless to others and arguing with them.
“Overthinking” is a malfunctioning state of the brain.
This is also why practice matters. Neither bookworms nor slick social operators are close to the actual realities of society and history. Practice -> understanding -> further practice.

II. People cannot merely go through the motions of thinking by following surface-level language and thought; they need to return to the deeper mind and feel.

A person’s authentic self, their innate wholeness, their higher mind: free and present, the authentic self at peace. Unconditionally well and at ease. Without ego or attachment, without desire or demands, without worry or anxiety.
The authentic self has sufficient judgment, aesthetic discernment, and a sense of truth, goodness, and beauty. It knows everything, and it knows the direction to take. It can grasp the principal contradictions in the external world and within, grasp the underlying patterns, and act in accordance with them, in unity with nature.
This is the “silence of heaven’s piping” in Zhuangzi’s “Discussion on Making All Things Equal.”
Innate wholeness is a basic axiom of personal philosophy and the core of humanism. This axiom is extremely useful. The familiar saying “Stop seeking outside yourself; look within” means returning to the deeper mind, returning to innate wholeness.
So it is a matter of quieting the mind, feeling, and acting without forcing, rather than thinking, exerting effort, and calculating. This is where the power of Zhuangzi’s philosophy lies in practice.
More concretely, in practice, the five elements of life—studies, career, social relationships, body, and mind—all require us to feel through the deeper mind. The earlier article “Choosing Social Relationships” shows how deep feeling can be used to choose relationships. “Follow your heart.”
In psychotherapy, humanistic therapies, centered on Rogers, all draw on the therapist’s innate wholeness to attract and awaken the client’s innate wholeness. In hypnosis-based approaches, the hypnotist’s innate wholeness interacts deeply with the client’s innate wholeness.

III. The Basic Contradiction Between Thought and Mind

Why do people become lost in the confusion of thought and the psyche, far from the mind’s innate wholeness?
This basic contradiction brings us to Marxism.
The alienation of humanity, the alienation of labor, the alienation of society, the alienation of education, and the alienation of relationships between people.
Psychology discusses the elephant and the rider, consciousness and the unconscious; spiritual approaches discuss mindfulness, presence, and the unity of body and mind. Teachings on spiritual practice are especially fond of emphasizing that we should stop depending on the brain and overthinking, and return to the inner life.
The capitalist only wants to hire a pair of hands, but those hands come with a brain, so the capitalist also has to hoodwink that brain. Yet these hands and this brain also come with a deeper mind endowed with innate wholeness. This is the worker’s basic contradiction.

IV. Every Ordinary Individual Is an Entanglement of Countless Complex Contradictions

For the atomized individual of cyberpunk, the basic contradiction between brain and mind condenses the contradictions brought about by the three great mountains of capitalism, feudalism, and bureaucracy in today’s world.
Workers need to work and live, yet they have no choice but to adapt to the confusion and alienation of the outside world and become embroiled in all kinds of contradictions.
There is a contradiction between treating atomized individuals as statistics, symbols, tools, and objects, and the innate wholeness of individuals themselves and their need to develop their own subjectivity. This is the basic contradiction between the self and society.
The self not only fails to receive healthy “selfobject experiences,” but is also disrupted by harmful “selfobject experiences” and remains caught in the basic contradiction “between the self and the object.” This runs counter to developmental psychology at every turn. Like the diseased plum trees described by Gong Zizhen, people are made pathological and deformed to suit society. Existential crises therefore grow ever more severe.
(Earlier article: “Psychological Growth in East Asia: Selfobject Relations Theory and Task Relations Theory”)
The popularity of expressions such as “decluttering, minimalism, and cutting off karmic entanglements” also sums up contemporary people’s lived experience.

V. Capitalism Forces Mental Workers to Awaken

Earlier article: “Capitalism Has No Choice but to Enlighten the People”
Contemporary capitalists want to hire more than a pair of hands; they also want to hire a brain. This brings new challenges for workers.
Yet the contradictions described above are precisely what give mental workers splitting headaches. A single head contains more than its own personal issues: it holds humanity’s predicaments, karmic obstructions, and ideological conflicts, while also having to provide society with instrumentalized service with a smile.
Just as occupational injuries among manual workers bring crises in physical health, occupational injuries among mental workers bring crises in mental health. This forces the development of the sciences of mind and brain.
When the pressures of the predicament of thought reach their limit, people choose an uprising of the mind. Cutting off friendships, severing family ties, and quitting without another job lined up are all forms of spontaneous struggle.
To resolve psychological problems, mental workers must overcome petty-bourgeois karmic obstructions and psychological issues. They must return to and awaken the authentic self with its innate wholeness to deal with the confusion and suffering of mental labor.
“Marx and Zhuangzi Are Philosophies for Ordinary People and Those Who Lie Flat”