Why Do You Read or Not Read My Articles?

Those who do not read my blog out of contempt or disdain are people I respect quite a lot. Indeed, there are so many things worth reading, in China and abroad, past and present, that one lifetime would not be enough to get through them all—so why insist on reading my blog? Although I believe that one day my writing may well become a classic, it is certainly not now. So the people who look down on me are right.

If my blog is worth reading right now, that is only on the basis of the following fact—I am alive! And I am right here within your reach, opening my arms and welcoming dialogue and exchange with you. In other words, what you see is not a mind that has already been completed and is beyond your reach, but a mind that is still far from mature, yet possesses tremendous vitality and possibility (so I hope). You can not only witness my growth, but also take part in it, creating the future together with me, opening up our new world, going on adventures together, roaming the four seas—wouldn’t that be splendid? Even if you do not travel along with me, but merely happen to encounter me, we can still exchange what we have seen and heard, or spar a few rounds, or even fight it out to the death before anything else. In short, on the premise that you can exchange and converse with me, reading Suixuan is meaningful; otherwise, what are you reading for? Don’t read it! Don’t waste your time here; go home and gnaw on a few classics instead! Of course, if you have no utilitarian considerations at all and are reading merely because you find it interesting, that is still fine. But in that case, I hope that out of respect, you can also give a bit of a response where you genuinely find it interesting—and it would be even better if you also gave a response where it fails to interest you.

In short, unless you are willing to, or will, exchange with me (and of course this need not be directly by leaving a comment on the blog; it also includes ordinary face-to-face or various other forms of communication), then why read my blog at all? Why? Why?

On the other hand, many people are scared off before they truly begin reading my blog. Some are scared off by hearing about my “specialty” — “philosophy of science,” oh dear, impressive, better keep a respectful distance. Or else, they dismiss it as superficial and ignore it. The latter reaction is still understandable, but the former reaction is especially frustrating—first, the vast majority of my articles are not philosophy of science, and second, I am first and foremost doing philosophy, and there is only one philosophy; second, does philosophy of science sound that terrifying? Why do you judge the thing I do to be profound and hard to understand just from that name? That kind of cavalier attitude is on par with the racism of spitting when you hear “Chinese” (Japanese/Jewish), isn’t it?

Perhaps the philosophy you have seen elsewhere is obscure and difficult to understand, and perhaps philosophy of science is highly technical stuff. But that is not my philosophical style; my philosophy will be approachable. So long as you are willing to read, willing to understand, willing to exchange with me, and you are a culturally literate person with normal intelligence who can use modern Chinese proficiently, then I will guarantee that I will ultimately explain my thoughts to you in a way that you can at least “get through.” If I cannot explain my thoughts to a first-year undergraduate student, then that means I still do not understand them very well myself.

Of course, understanding requires prerequisites, but that prerequisite does not lie in your knowledge background (aside from some of the most basic background one ought to possess as an ordinary university student in modern China); rather, it lies in your willingness—whether you truly are willing to read, to understand, to exchange. If you are simply not willing to listen or to understand, and are just—say—trying to catch me out or casually skimming a couple of lines to kill time, then if you do not understand it, that is of course none of my business. No matter how clearly I explain myself, if your mind is elsewhere and you are deaf to it, then of course you won’t understand, and you can’t blame me for that.

Many people feel that my articles are too many, too long, and contain far too much text. I am helpless about that too. But what must be made clear is this: a large volume of text in itself is not the reason you cannot understand; it is only the reason you have no mind or patience to read. As I just said, no matter how clearly I explain myself, if you are not in the mood to listen, then of course you cannot understand it; there is nothing to be done.

Why are my articles always so long, with so much text? Of course, first there is a matter of temperament—writing flows like a torrent, and I cannot stop. But on the other hand, the reason I have to write them so long is precisely in order to make my writing more colloquial, more approachable, and easier to read. I could write many problems in a very condensed way, gloss over many places in one stroke, and omit a lot of context anyway—as long as I myself understand my own train of thought—then the same set of ideas would be much shorter to express. But would that make my articles easier to read? Not necessarily, right? I am precisely trying to present each of my thoughts as thoroughly, comprehensively, and plainly as possible, which is why I have to write so much.

Of course, many people’s problem is that your purpose in reading is simply wrong. When many people read, what they care about most is the “answer,” the definite conclusion. So the moment they see my long, unsummarized exposition, they lose their bearings and wish I would just lay out conclusions one, two, three, four clearly, so that it would be easier to look at. If that is the purpose of reading, then indeed the shorter the article, the easier it is to read. But the problem is that what reading ought to pursue is not only conclusions! Those conclusions are mine, not yours—what use are they to you? What reading seeks first and foremost is “understanding”; what matters is my perspective, my train of thought, my point of entry, my threads, and my mode of inference, not my conclusions. I want to show you all these truly important things as much as possible! Sometimes I deliberately do not lay out the “conclusion” clearly, precisely so that my perspective, my train of thought, and my inference—the truly important things—can stand out more. To use an inappropriate analogy, when you listen to a storyteller, what is interesting—the conclusion or the process? If I tell you the conclusion: “Liu Bei won, Cao Cao lost, Zhou Yu died, done.” —of course you understand it perfectly, but is that interesting? Obviously what is interesting is not those results, but the course of the story’s unfolding and development; as for the final result, it is perfectly fine to leave it as suspense rather than state it outright. And this is not only true of listening to storytelling or reading my articles; reading philosophical thought from history should be like this too—what is most enjoyable in reading such thought is to feel the vibrant process by which thought generates itself, to experience and reflect on their train of thought and inference, to probe their problem-consciousness and personality; that is what is most meaningful and most interesting. What is there to read in those dead, rigid conclusions alone?

In addition, philosophy is an organic whole, and no matter how long an article is, it ultimately can only discuss a small topic. Yet there may also be much background knowledge involved that cannot be sufficiently clarified within that article itself. If that background is lacking, then it may still be possible not to read it through. It is like a storyteller telling a long serialized tale, with dozens of installments in all; if you have never heard the earlier ones and go straight to the middle installment, then no matter how colloquial the storyteller is, you may still end up completely baffled. That is because you lack the relevant background knowledge. But that is not a problem—you can interact and exchange with the storyteller, and ask him to introduce the background again. Such an introduction does not need to retell the first dozen or several dozen installments from scratch; a skilled storyteller will naturally have a way to briefly introduce the key background in the most economical manner. After you understand it, you come back to listen to this installment, and even if you do not fully understand it, at least you may still find it fascinating. But the background each person lacks is not the same, and philosophy is such a vast story that if you do not interact with the storyteller, he does not know how to tell it. He cannot start from the beginning every time, because without interaction he can only keep telling installment after installment according to his own logic. He is quite helpless about it. So if you say you are reading some article and it leaves you utterly lost, you absolutely need not attribute that to your own problem; it may very well be that I have not explained it well, or that some necessary foreshadowing has slipped past you. In that case you can exchange with me, tell me where you started to lose the thread, and tell me roughly what you do and do not understand. Then I will naturally think of a way to fill in the missing information for you; if the background and foreshadowing needed to understand this article are truly too much, then I would suggest that you first listen to the earlier installments, and of course I will try to make you interested enough to keep listening.

So in the end, the one prerequisite is that you are willing to step into my teahouse, willing to sit down and listen to me tell stories, willing at least to give me some chance to face you, willing at least to exchange with me. If you feel this passage is boring, I can change to another one; if you truly cannot bear it and have lost confidence in me, then it is not too late to leave. Don’t even come through the shop door, and just look through the window: “Oh dear, that storyteller talks too much, says too much, it must be impossible to understand.” And then run off. If that is the case, then I am really very innocent…

January 4, 2009
Wu Zheng Baobao

2009-01-05 00:15:52 

A digression: the reason I haven’t read it for the moment is because you posted too much all at once. Hmm, to be honest, I definitely plan to read it one article at a time.

mist

2009-01-05 01:53:43 Anonymous 219.234.81.62 

If the number of reads is not zero, then that is already a response——don’t expect every listener of a storyteller to speak to the storyteller~~~~
Not replying may mostly be because they feel what you say is too profound; at most they can reply “very good,” and cannot carry out a constructive dialogue—and you do not need praise like “very good,” if I remember correctly you said as much before.
Perhaps it would be better if you posted the articles on xiaonei, where everyone is a student and may have fewer reservations. But one prerequisite is that you add enough friends~~ Also, the number of reply characters is generally best kept no more than the number of characters in the other person’s comment~~
Ps, to the upstairs person, to be honest, if you do not read a single article, that is also fine~~

Gu Chu

2009-01-05 02:10:20 

So then, if you feel I am saying things too profoundly, then either don’t look—there’s no use in looking, better go home and gnaw on the classics; or else throw a brick at me and say you didn’t understand what I said, and I will give you a plain explanation. If it still feels profound, then that means I have failed. “Too profound” is not “very good” at all, but a negation of me. If you feel that something comes across as too profound, then saying so is a very good criticism, and I will certainly try to make it plain and simple for you to hear.
Of course, if the moment you see the number of characters and say “too profound,” then there is nothing to be done; by that logic, Guo Degang’s crosstalk, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, One Piece, and so on are all “too profound” too.

Gu Chu

2009-01-05 02:20:55 

In addition, I do not completely reject cries of approval. What I do not like to hear are vague, sweeping compliments—saying, “Ah, you’re really amazing,” and so on. That is no use to me. But if you specifically see a certain article or a certain passage and give a targeted shout of approval, then I still welcome that. That is a form of exchange, because such praise contains a certain amount of information; at the very least I can know what it is you are paying attention to.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.