人选天选论 Preface
《人选天选论》 Preface
姜蓝 著
Many years ago, I wanted to package this book as an “ancient fragment” I had happened to find. I did not believe people would take seriously the reflections of a green kid on “choice” and “cost.” Even the phrase “人选祸天选福” was coined so the idea would spread more easily, and the cost followed. Our story begins with me choosing misfortune as fortune for the sake of spreading it.
My father was a man of letters, and under his influence I read widely from a young age. When I was fifteen, I was already thinking about writing a book. I wondered why so many people were willing to study the Heart Sutra, the Diamond Sutra, and the Dao De Jing, yet so few were willing to read Zhuangzi or the Nirvana Sutra. In the end I concluded that “ease of transmission” is the core factor in whether an idea is accepted by the public. The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra are short, easy to memorize, and easy to copy; the Dao De Jing opens with “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao,” which is rhythmic and memorable. Zhuangzi, though — even now, there are passages where I cannot read many characters. In order to make the idea spread, I coined the catchy slogan “人选祸天选福.” It led to widespread misunderstanding, and it also led me to write 《人选天选论》 early. I owe an apology to those I misled.
For this reason, I will not present the book in the form of classical Chinese quotations, nor will I rush to show you the “value.” We begin by understanding my subjective world, and I invite you to step into it.
Subjectively, I believe the world runs on laws, and the universe is deterministic. The leap of electrons, the structure of crystals, the movement of planets, chemical reactions, human evolution — none of these are the result of choice, but the necessary outcome of laws. From the origin of the universe, everything is already a book; time is only the order in which we turn its pages, a ruler for measuring change. Human thought is the same: neural responses and genes are merely manifestations of laws.
Strictly speaking, in a materialist world, humans have no free will. The fact that I am writing the preface to 《人选天选论》 right now, and that you are reading these difficult lines, is also predetermined.
And yet, after deep reflection, humans must “pretend” we have the right to choose. If everything is fixed, why strive, why give up, why choose? So we must live in a simpler state: even if everything may already be decided, we still act as “choosers.” We are born to die, yet we do not abandon living.
Many people misunderstand “人选祸天选福” as fortune-telling. I do not believe the future can be predicted or interfered with. Here I mention my “broken-painting principle”: no matter how strong the figures inside the painting are, they cannot tear the canvas. In scientific terms, observation itself is part of the variable.
This is the front side of my coin: the material world.
Now let us look at the reverse: the world of mind.
In my view, nothing truly exists in this world as an object in itself; it is a projection in the mind. For example, you are reading 《人选天选论》. You roughly know I am still alive, what I look like, and that I will livestream tonight. All of this exists in your mind, not in the world itself. If I were to die in a car accident before the livestream, no one would update anymore, and you would slowly forget me; but if, at some moment, you remember me, you might guess I have gone into seclusion or become disillusioned with the world — then I live in your mind. The day you see the news “Famous shipbuilding blogger Luffy dies in car crash,” I die in your mind. Of course, it could all be my own story: I might be in Antarctica watching penguins. When you see my skiing video from Antarctica, I live again in your mind; when you notice the label “video suspected AI,” I die again in your mind — perhaps the AI label was even Photoshopped by me.
The idealist world is vast. The material world and the mind-world are two sides of the same coin: they coexist, but cannot be observed at the same time. This is mind-bending, but necessary. Later chapters will go into the details; for a preface, I only need to make clear what this book is about.
From these two subjective worlds arises a subjective idea, and this is the purpose of “人选祸天选福”: life cannot decide the outcome, but it can choose what cost to bear. We cannot avoid pain, and we cannot guarantee what we want. Life is not about gaining or losing; what we truly need is a structure that can survive over the long term — something like my own pursuit of a good ending.
A makes a lot of money, but is anxious, fearful, and sleepless; his “gains” are many, yet his structure is unstable. B earns an ordinary income, but lives with clear order and stable relationships; his “gains” are few, yet his structure is stable. It is a clumsy example, but the point is this: a stable structure comes before all else.
Over the years I have met many people who are lost or in pain. Some are poor, some are financially free; some have read many books, some have done many things; some are beautiful, some are not. But all of them suffer. Observation has convinced me: suffering is not the property of any single type — it is a universal condition.
The core causes of suffering fall into two categories: “not getting what you want,” and “losing what you failed to cherish.”
When I was sixteen, Wenjie and I stole money from our parents and ran off to Shennongjia. Muyu Village was beautiful, and we walked by a small stream. The water was clear; the stones looked special. But when I crouched down, I could see the water, yet not the stone. The current was fast; water rolled over the stone, the surface rising, refracting, twisting. The water looked shallow. I reached down to grab a stone on the riverbed, but halfway I pulled back — the water was freezing; in that moment even my thoughts felt frozen.
The next day we returned. Wenjie saw I was afraid of the cold, so he went in and fetched the stone for me. The instant he lifted it, it was nothing like the beauty I had imagined.
Greed — wanting the beautiful stone. Fear — recoiling from the cold. Loss — the mysterious beauty of the stone. Not getting — the stone I wanted in my heart.
Thoughts began to whirl. I asked Wenjie not to disturb me, and I started writing it down in my diary. That entry was long: it spoke of the river and knowledge, of the speed of thought and the efficiency of thinking, of how to observe the greed and fear within, of excuses and self-justification.
I compared greed and fear in the human heart to two stones on the riverbed, one white and one black. I compared excuses and self-control to the surface water churned into chaos by those stones. Greed makes you reach out; fear makes you withdraw. Wanting is greed; fear of loss is fear. Many decisions in life are made between these two stones.
But the problem is never greed or fear. The problem is this: between them, is there a structure that still allows choice? That is tianquan. If greed and fear restrain each other, you can still remain steady; if one completely overwhelms the other, you will go to extremes and fall into pathological depression or anxiety. Very few people are left with only greed or only fear. Most of us swing between the two.
So I subjectively divide human states into five realms:
- Lost — tianquan collapses; you keep doubling down and shrinking back.
- Seeking fortune — tianquan wavers; you chase gain and avoid harm.
- Seeing the mechanism — tianquan is visible; you clearly see your choice, your cost, your outcome.
- Holding balance — tianquan is controllable; you know life cannot avoid cost, and you choose to bear misfortune.
- Two-forgettings — tianquan dissolves; there is no greed, no fear; thus both are forgotten, and tianquan is no longer needed.
But no one remains in a single realm forever. The heart is like water, moving with circumstance. Someone can be clear today and confused tomorrow; see through things this moment and be dragged by desire in the next. These realms are only momentary states.
I know you are already trying to place yourself in one of these realms, and also wondering where I, Jiang Lan, stand. The main text will discuss this. For now I can only say that I neither dare nor deserve to enter Two-forgettings. I even doubt whether anyone can truly reach it. It relates to what I have long said: use the largest hook, the largest bait, to catch the largest fish.
Most people seek fortune. Where there is benefit, they go; where there is risk, they retreat. They look clever. But in my subjective world, the world never rewards anyone. The world only charges a cost. Every choice demands a price — some paid immediately, some settled years later.
Many believe there is a ledger between misfortune and fortune. Endure now, and you will be rewarded later; take a loss, and fate will compensate you. But the world is not a bank. Between misfortune and fortune, there is no ledger you can return to and reconcile.
So later I distilled many things into three words:
人选。
祸。
天选。
Human choosing (人选) is your choice in the present. In the world of human choosing there are only “human” and “heaven”: human is yourself; heaven is every variable beyond you. Misfortune (祸) is not disaster; misfortune is cost. Heaven’s choosing (天选) is the outcome. You can decide your choice, but the outcome never belongs to you alone.
Where, then, is fortune? Fortune is a stable structure — the main text will explain.
Many people like to explain all this with one word: “luck.” But “luck” makes it too easy to stop thinking, to stop restraining oneself. In my view, most “luck” is simply the stacking of choices you cannot see. You can decide your choice; everything beyond you is heaven’s choosing, and heaven’s choosing cannot be measured. Countless choices interweave and form the result. You cannot see every path, so you call it luck.
That is why, in this book, I will repeatedly say a very subjective sentence: there is no luck in this world, only choices.
Of course, if we go deeper, we meet an even larger question. If everything in the universe is governed by laws, if consciousness is itself part of those rules, then what is choice? I do not avoid this; I am even willing to admit that perhaps we really are only people inside a painting.
This is also where “breaking the painting” comes in. You cannot step outside destiny, yet you must still be responsible for your life. Many spend their whole lives trying to avoid pain, but they do not realize pain is unavoidable; joy and pain are, absolutely, half and half. The only thing you can decide is how you will bear them.
So this book is not here to teach success, nor to teach how to obtain “fortune.” It is not for gaining or for avoiding loss. It is for building a structure — a structure that will not wither even as the world keeps changing.
Human beings cannot pursue eternity, because eternity itself is an illusion. What is truly stable is never the unchanging, but the capacity to bear change.
If this book has any value at all, I hope it is not to help you win over anyone, but that when you stand by that river again, you will see more clearly: why you reach, why you retreat, why you choose, why you bear.
If one day you can finally see those two stones on your own riverbed, then perhaps this book will not have been written in vain.
All right, dear reader. The collision of our inner worlds begins here.
姜蓝
Aside
《人选天选论》
The full original text of this book will be released online. It mainly explains the author’s own cosmology, worldview, and values.
人选天选人
This part describes how, by learning the symbols of greed, desire, and cost in people’s choices, one can establish tianji (an insight into the hidden mechanism) and probabilistically judge and predict the inner world of a person or a matter — at an immense cost. By using tianji to observe tianquan, you will find that tianquan cycles between opposition and division, and between unity and return. The true opportunities to change our environment and structure lie at the critical nodes where tianquan unifies or splits; at those points, the feedback efficiency of human choosing and heaven’s choosing becomes especially high. When the tianquan structure is stable, no one can change the structure through personal effort, and the feedback efficiency is low. But remember: the improvement of feedback efficiency, and the opportunities we expect, can only be used to build a more stable structure and to regulate tianquan; otherwise, the cost in the final outcome will be enormous.
人选天选天
This part explores the search for a causal ledger, the illusion of the observer, the imagined path toward Two-forgettings, and the idealist hypothesis behind it.
@姜蓝 · 人选天选论
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