If one day you encounter an alien and the alien wants you to show it an item from your daily life to help it understand the current situation and level of civilization of Earth humans, what would you choose?
At first, I was undecided between two items, which are a house and a mobile phone. A house is something we have obtained through a lifetime of struggle and hard work, emptying six wallets of our family, while a mobile phone is the highest technological item that everyone can own. However, what confuses and puzzles me is that a house is extremely expensive, requiring a family's lifetime wages to buy, but its technological value is very low. In the countryside, a few uneducated bricklayers and workers can build a house in a month, while a mobile phone is cheap, costing only one month's salary, yet it represents the highest wisdom of generations of humans, including those who have passed away and those who are still alive. Just think about Maxwell's electromagnetic wave equation and Turing's computational model. How many people throughout history could come up with such ideas? In short, the value of a house is far lower than its price, while the value of a mobile phone is far higher than its price. This is the extremely absurd aspect of our society, where things without value are the most expensive, and things with the most value are very cheap.
So, where does the wealth that exceeds the value of a mobile phone and the wealth that exceeds the value of a house go in the end? Is it like this: the value created by scientists in human history who did not receive patent fees, such as Maxwell and Turing, flows to and benefits every person who owns a mobile phone today. And this value, along with the value created by previous inventors like Maxwell and Turing, is ultimately harvested by real estate, which is the part of wealth where the price of a house exceeds its value, and it is collected in the form of taxes or land fees.
Therefore, forgive me for speaking frankly, human society has already entered a path of abnormal development, it is already critically ill, and real estate is the tumor and cancer cells of the social organism, endlessly sucking the energy of every social cell (family).
What is despairing is that I haven't seen many people around me who have a clear understanding of this absurd and terrifying phenomenon. What I have seen in recent years is that so many people, or even the majority, are rushing to pawn their entire lives in exchange for cement shells that have little value. It is so tragic, the degree of tragedy is no less than that of a certain foreign aid war. My classmate said that he also realized this, but there was nothing he could do because he had a girlfriend at the time, they wanted to get married, have children in the future, and the children needed to go to school, so they had to buy a house. Yes, this is the sad part, because people have love in their hearts, so they are being held hostage.
Therefore, in the end, I decided to show both a house and a mobile phone to the alien. They respectively represent the ignorance that humans should not have in this era and the different wisdom of each era. They represent the selfishness and greed of a small group of people who harvest human wealth through houses, as well as the selfless contributions and dedication of inventors throughout history who contributed to the invention of mobile phones. Therefore, in these two things, I see the sorrow and hope of humanity, as well as two different futures of darkness and light, leading to hell and heaven.
So, which kind of people should dominate our society? And what is the reality like?
As an individual, what choices should I make and how should I respond?
I have thought of several options: "Run", "Join the system", "Roll", and "Lying flat". "Run", I have already missed the opportunity and do not have the conditions. Even if I run away, although the housing prices may be lower, I will still face the same problems. This is something we cannot avoid in this era, and there may even be other more troublesome problems. "Join the system", firstly, it does not suit my personality. Secondly, even if I want to join, the system does not welcome someone like me. Thirdly, I simply cannot compete with those who are good at taking exams and cannot pass the exam. "Roll", I think this is the choice of most people, but not mine. The reasons are not only the ones mentioned above, but also many others that I don't want to go into detail about here. In the end, I chose to "lie flat". Before the concept of lying flat became popular and unknown to me, I had already decided to rot together with this society. Fortunately, after lying flat, I unintentionally experienced the joy and beauty of creation. It was the desire to create that pulled me out of depression and decadence.
So, how can lying flat maximize the avoidance of being harvested and exploited? Obviously, the more developed a big city is, the higher the housing prices and consumption. Therefore, I turned my gaze to small cities and even remote rural areas. Therefore, I have already made a decision to spend the second half of my life in my hometown in the countryside, farming a bit of land, just enough to eat and wear. I don't plan to get married or have children, and I won't buy a house or a car. I will save as much as I can. I cannot sacrifice my entire life to earn money to buy a house, exchanging a lifetime of hard work and effort for a cement shell. It is not worth it, and I cannot accept it. I want my life to be worthwhile, and I want to exchange it for something real and valuable. My mom asked, "What will you do when you get old?" I said, "Don't worry, I have already planned it. If I get a terminal illness, I will smoke a lot and commit suicide. My grandfather did the same. When he ran out of money, he stole an electric bike and ended up in jail, letting the country take care of him in his old age."
(Music: "Buying a House", Artist: Zhou Yunpeng)