Recently, a netizen asked me:
“Zhang Xiangqian, I’ve seen online that some people describe you as a highly wise and enigmatic figure, but far more call you an idiot—going from one extreme to the other. One thing’s for sure, though: you’re someone with a complex inner world. I want to ask—do you usually feel a lot of mental anguish?”
In my daily life, I do indeed experience significant mental pain, and it’s been ongoing for a long time. I think there are three reasons for this.
First, the artificial field scanning technology I’ve been promoting has gone unrecognized by society for years, and recently, there seems to be little hope of it gaining attention anytime soon.
Second, it’s family-related. My wife constantly berates me. These past few days, with the pandemic, a sore throat, physical weakness, and a bad mood, her endless scolding and accusations haven’t let up one bit—they’re as intense as ever.
Third, I have no confidants in life. It feels like society is full of dimwits I can’t communicate with normally. Explaining even the simplest truths to them is exhausting—it’s harder than teaching a cat to solve a math problem. And these dimwits don’t even realize they’re dim; they’re brimming with enthusiasm to “teach” you instead.
People like this are everywhere—around me, on TikTok, on my phone, online. A world full of dimwits—what good fruit can it bear? When you’re smart and wise, seeing through all the ugliness and schemes of the world but feeling powerless to change it, that’s when the pain sets in.
But that’s not even the worst of it. The deepest pain comes when you’re not only smart and wise but also kind, with a strong sense of justice and responsibility. When you see a few exploiting the many, causing suffering, you want to use your intelligence to help those in pain. Yet not only do the exploiters resent you, but the suffering masses hate and despise you too. Their minds have been poisoned by the few, turning them into zombies.
In the end, you find yourself in the most awkward position. Those zombies desperately try to assimilate you, demanding you think like them and parrot their words. Being forcibly violated by their savagery isn’t the worst part—the worst is having to pretend you enjoy it and play along.
The more you understand, the more you realize your own ignorance. The wiser you are, the more you see how useless that wisdom is. For thousands of years, human society has been shaped by people tormenting, manipulating, and controlling each other—they’re addicted to it and want to keep playing the game. A handful of high-IQ individuals can’t easily change that.
You tell yourself:
“I just want to use my extraordinary wisdom to make some modest contribution to society, so my life on this earth isn’t wasted.”
Over time, you realize that whether you achieve anything depends on whether a few people are willing to let you succeed. And there’s no clear standard for their willingness. If your achievements don’t align with their interests, they’ll reject you. Even if they do align, they’ll still reject you—because they don’t even know what their interests are, especially the hidden ones.
Plus, they care about face and are arrogant. They share a trait with the zombie masses: ignorance. The difference is they can control the fate of those masses, which makes them feel incredibly superior—and that’s why their arrogance persists. This leaves you unable to realize your ideas or achieve anything.
Doesn’t that feel hopeless? Feeling hopeless is normal. In the end, you discover your only value lies in helping the few keep the many dosed with “zombie medicine,” ensuring they stay stably zombified. If you do it cleverly, you’re a talent. In any other way, you’re not allowed to be one.
So, having high intelligence isn’t scary—what’s terrifying is being a highly intelligent good person who wants to benefit all humanity. That can truly drive you to despair.
It’s the same in family life. You come up with a brilliant way to easily make big money, but your wife unleashes a torrent of abuse, opposing every idea or suggestion. She demands you work silently, don’t think, don’t spend. In extreme cases, she wants you to become a thoughtless, non-consuming work machine. When you feel indignant and try repeatedly to reason with her, she either ignores you or throws a single word at you: “Pathetic!”
The reason families and societies stagnate, circling endlessly at the same level, is the same. A smart person who sees through it all faces a tragic life—powerless to change anything, the pain is immense.
I often seem to hear a voice in my ear, spoken in the tone of the Buddha from Journey to the West:
“Zhang Xiangqian, you were just an ordinary farmer, yet you did things far beyond your station. All your pain and troubles—you brought them upon yourself…”