As the world splinters, we must hold ourselves together by embracing the ultimate truth of the universe: Love is the unifying force of the universe, and our imagination is the animating force.
I appreciate the vulnerability along with this one. I'm still going through my own growth as you did/still are and owe it all to my wife as well. The focus of mine has been shedding ego and putting effort to the things that matter in my life: family, strangers, extra time for the homeless, making an effort to be in nature. When I slow down and appreciate every moment it is exactly when I learn the most. The more I buck the trends of self-improvement, accumulating as much money as I could, and generally following society; the kinder the entire world gets around me.
I realized most of the things I used to enjoy were simply ways I was disconnecting from reality. Watching sports, playing video games, binge watching TV. These things I used to call hobbies were me disassociating from the things I cared about most. Now I spend most of my time reading about anything I can get my hands on, spending time with family and friends, being outside and just existing with my thoughts. It's changed my relationship with money, other people, and nature. I finally have found purpose (or at least what is pulling my soul towards) and am very happy.
Thank you for being apart of my journey, I've learned much about myself as I listened to your videos and journaled about life. Even if we're wrong about the monad, higher powers, interconnectedness of humans, our tendencies for fulfilling prophecies, and our misunderstanding of the universe around us, it's still lead me to a happier, more content place. A place that I'm understanding myself better.
I am with you Professor! I think empathy, reducing our unecessary consumption, being creative without expecting monetary reward (creativity as healing) and sharing our creativity as gifts with each other is the greatest act of subversion and rebellion we can undertake in a neoliberal world. Like you, I owe so much of the lifting of the veil to my wife, in the spirit of Lorna Byrne perhaps the Angels conspired... I also followed up on your book reccomendation of the Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black - thank you sir! I began as a skeptic and by the end had my (third eye) well and truly opened. Thanks again.
The most important part of this brilliant piece is the sub heading about love and imagination, and that everyone reading this can and should start NOW - love yourself, deeply, with all your warts, and then you can turn around and start spreading that love to all the people in your life who need it, whether in the form of apologizing first for pain you may have caused (and probably forgot! but they didn’t, and that extension of the olive branch is incredibly powerful), or just relaxing your sense of control and letting the universe put in front of you the people who need to feel your love. ❤️
You could always evolve the game, Professor. The vital few already are - because they’ve stopped confusing prediction with transformation. One can model the past, extract probabilities, even simulate futures, but eventually you arrive at the cliff’s edge where “knowing” collapses into Knowing. It is the jump itself that fuses the self into higher frequencies of Being. That’s where the simulation folds, where the Book of Changes reveals its turning hexagram, and where consciousness stops rehearsing and starts becoming. The real initiation is not in prediction, but in surrendering to the leap - because only there does the interface crack open and the player evolve into the game’s designer.
tl;dr "Hope is a fuel we get for free while fear demands security"
Love this take about actual solutions that one could put in practice. What if spending time on the internet could be considered an addiction, just like we do with alcoholism? If we were to start treating it as such, we might just push ourselves into building stronger (physical) communities around ourselves.
Really enjoy listening to you professor. One thing, I believe we are all interested to hear is how do you think the economic landscape will change? Socially, you predict bad outcomes, especially in America, but do you think, it will be creative destruction for the economy?Do you think large corporations will increase or reduce in significance?
Since some comments before have mentioned a lack of Eastern influence, I wanted to mention a couple ideas that point to the same ideals of love and understanding. The Law of Causality is a helpful tool to use when meditating to have more compassion for yourself and others, and to see the interconnectedness of everyone/everything. The Four Beauties of Love (Respect, Appreciation, Wishing Blessings On, and Growth) is also useful to examine and refine one’s love. I believe these come from eastern schools of thought like Buddhism but not 100% sure since I learned them through friends.
I love the lesson of Herakles. I have actually leaned on his story at certain times in my life--sometimes stories can act as your only friend when you feel like you are on an island. There is so much to the story, but the part that I find solace in is Herakles' resilience in the face of unfairness and impossibility. He is given impossible task after impossible task by a king who is weak and jealous of Herakles' strength; so the more Herakles succeeds, the more hate he receives, not adoration. But what ultimately is driving him isn't adoration, it's redemption for his own terrible sins--and that is why Herakles succeeds. And ultimately, he never receives redemption on Earth--his sins were perhaps too many and too great--but he does receive redemption in the afterlife: his sons defeat the sons of the king who punished him and Herakles himself was placed in the stars for eternity. It's a beautiful story of how to work for what is good, even against insurmountable forces, even if you may never win. And in the process you will realize that you can achieve more than you ever expected, and you will also have peace in knowing that you did your best to live your life honorably.
Fabulous article and appreciate the notes. This one made me laugh, "Because he is stupid, Malcolm Gladwell presented the idea of deliberate pratice as the 10,000 hour rule."
This is one of the most powerful and layered reflections I’ve read in a long time. It’s lived, tested, and deeply felt. The way you connect ancient wisdom with modern psychology, and then ground it all in your personal journey, gives the ideas real weight. You’ve shown how love, purpose, and humility aren’t abstract ideals, but tools for survival, transformation, and legacy.
Your honesty about ego, failure, and redemption is rare and refreshing. It’s easy to talk about flourishing when things are going well, but you’ve shown what it means to pursue eudaimonia in the face of rejection, shame, and uncertainty. That shift, from chasing validation to building something for your child, is the kind of quiet revolution that actually changes lives.
This is a call to action. To love deeply, to listen fully, to create bravely. And to trust that even in a world that feels like it’s falling apart, our small acts of courage and compassion still matter.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s the kind of message that stays with you.
I appreciate the vulnerability along with this one. I'm still going through my own growth as you did/still are and owe it all to my wife as well. The focus of mine has been shedding ego and putting effort to the things that matter in my life: family, strangers, extra time for the homeless, making an effort to be in nature. When I slow down and appreciate every moment it is exactly when I learn the most. The more I buck the trends of self-improvement, accumulating as much money as I could, and generally following society; the kinder the entire world gets around me.
I realized most of the things I used to enjoy were simply ways I was disconnecting from reality. Watching sports, playing video games, binge watching TV. These things I used to call hobbies were me disassociating from the things I cared about most. Now I spend most of my time reading about anything I can get my hands on, spending time with family and friends, being outside and just existing with my thoughts. It's changed my relationship with money, other people, and nature. I finally have found purpose (or at least what is pulling my soul towards) and am very happy.
Thank you for being apart of my journey, I've learned much about myself as I listened to your videos and journaled about life. Even if we're wrong about the monad, higher powers, interconnectedness of humans, our tendencies for fulfilling prophecies, and our misunderstanding of the universe around us, it's still lead me to a happier, more content place. A place that I'm understanding myself better.
Truly inspiring words professor!
I am with you Professor! I think empathy, reducing our unecessary consumption, being creative without expecting monetary reward (creativity as healing) and sharing our creativity as gifts with each other is the greatest act of subversion and rebellion we can undertake in a neoliberal world. Like you, I owe so much of the lifting of the veil to my wife, in the spirit of Lorna Byrne perhaps the Angels conspired... I also followed up on your book reccomendation of the Secret History of the World by Jonathan Black - thank you sir! I began as a skeptic and by the end had my (third eye) well and truly opened. Thanks again.
I was expecting a zoom and doom write ups, lol, but it turned out giving me hope instead. I love it!
Spot on.
~I don't write for fame or fortune. I write in hopes that one day my kids will read it~
Birds of a feather.
The most important part of this brilliant piece is the sub heading about love and imagination, and that everyone reading this can and should start NOW - love yourself, deeply, with all your warts, and then you can turn around and start spreading that love to all the people in your life who need it, whether in the form of apologizing first for pain you may have caused (and probably forgot! but they didn’t, and that extension of the olive branch is incredibly powerful), or just relaxing your sense of control and letting the universe put in front of you the people who need to feel your love. ❤️
You could always evolve the game, Professor. The vital few already are - because they’ve stopped confusing prediction with transformation. One can model the past, extract probabilities, even simulate futures, but eventually you arrive at the cliff’s edge where “knowing” collapses into Knowing. It is the jump itself that fuses the self into higher frequencies of Being. That’s where the simulation folds, where the Book of Changes reveals its turning hexagram, and where consciousness stops rehearsing and starts becoming. The real initiation is not in prediction, but in surrendering to the leap - because only there does the interface crack open and the player evolve into the game’s designer.
tl;dr "Hope is a fuel we get for free while fear demands security"
Love this take about actual solutions that one could put in practice. What if spending time on the internet could be considered an addiction, just like we do with alcoholism? If we were to start treating it as such, we might just push ourselves into building stronger (physical) communities around ourselves.
Really enjoy listening to you professor. One thing, I believe we are all interested to hear is how do you think the economic landscape will change? Socially, you predict bad outcomes, especially in America, but do you think, it will be creative destruction for the economy?Do you think large corporations will increase or reduce in significance?
Since some comments before have mentioned a lack of Eastern influence, I wanted to mention a couple ideas that point to the same ideals of love and understanding. The Law of Causality is a helpful tool to use when meditating to have more compassion for yourself and others, and to see the interconnectedness of everyone/everything. The Four Beauties of Love (Respect, Appreciation, Wishing Blessings On, and Growth) is also useful to examine and refine one’s love. I believe these come from eastern schools of thought like Buddhism but not 100% sure since I learned them through friends.
I love the lesson of Herakles. I have actually leaned on his story at certain times in my life--sometimes stories can act as your only friend when you feel like you are on an island. There is so much to the story, but the part that I find solace in is Herakles' resilience in the face of unfairness and impossibility. He is given impossible task after impossible task by a king who is weak and jealous of Herakles' strength; so the more Herakles succeeds, the more hate he receives, not adoration. But what ultimately is driving him isn't adoration, it's redemption for his own terrible sins--and that is why Herakles succeeds. And ultimately, he never receives redemption on Earth--his sins were perhaps too many and too great--but he does receive redemption in the afterlife: his sons defeat the sons of the king who punished him and Herakles himself was placed in the stars for eternity. It's a beautiful story of how to work for what is good, even against insurmountable forces, even if you may never win. And in the process you will realize that you can achieve more than you ever expected, and you will also have peace in knowing that you did your best to live your life honorably.
Fabulous article and appreciate the notes. This one made me laugh, "Because he is stupid, Malcolm Gladwell presented the idea of deliberate pratice as the 10,000 hour rule."
I was surprised that he called him stupid so directly.
This is one of the most powerful and layered reflections I’ve read in a long time. It’s lived, tested, and deeply felt. The way you connect ancient wisdom with modern psychology, and then ground it all in your personal journey, gives the ideas real weight. You’ve shown how love, purpose, and humility aren’t abstract ideals, but tools for survival, transformation, and legacy.
Your honesty about ego, failure, and redemption is rare and refreshing. It’s easy to talk about flourishing when things are going well, but you’ve shown what it means to pursue eudaimonia in the face of rejection, shame, and uncertainty. That shift, from chasing validation to building something for your child, is the kind of quiet revolution that actually changes lives.
This is a call to action. To love deeply, to listen fully, to create bravely. And to trust that even in a world that feels like it’s falling apart, our small acts of courage and compassion still matter.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s the kind of message that stays with you.
The honesty and vulnerability really brought this piece to another level. Thank you for everything that you do, Prof. Jiang!
I'm a new fan to your lectures and substack. I admire your vulnerability in this post, and your journey of sharing truth with your audiences.
Thank you for sharing your story. As a parent. I can understand , it is our kids give us meaning in life , the meaning to go on.