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 obtain by emptying six wallets of a family through a lifetime of struggle and hard work, 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 and requires 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 just one month. On the other hand, a mobile phone is cheap, costing only one month's salary, yet it represents the highest wisdom of humanity, 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 have been able to come up with such ideas? In short, the value of a house is much lower than its price, while the value of a mobile phone is much 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, such as Maxwell and Turing, who do not receive patent fees, flows to every person who owns a mobile phone. And all the value created by these people, along with the value created by previous scientists like Maxwell and Turing, is ultimately harvested by real estate. That is, the wealth that exceeds the value of a house is collected in the form of taxes or land fees.
Therefore, to be frank, human society has 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 he had no choice because he had a girlfriend at the time. They wanted to get married, have children, and send their children to school, so they had to buy a house. Yes, this is the sad part, because people have love in their hearts, they are being held hostage.
Therefore, in the end, I decided to show both a house and a mobile phone to the alien. They 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 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?
I have thought about several options: "Run", "Join the system", "Struggle", and "Lying flat". "Run" is something I have missed the opportunity for and do not have the conditions for. Even if I run away, although the housing prices may be lower, I would 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" is not suitable for my personality. Even if I want to join, the system does not welcome someone like me. Furthermore, I cannot compete with those who are good at exams and cannot pass the exam hurdle. "Struggle" may be the choice for most people, but not for me. Besides the reasons mentioned above, there are many others that I don't want to elaborate on here. In the end, I chose to "lie flat". Before the concept of lying flatism became popular and unknown to me, I decided to decay 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 decline.
So, how can lying flat maximize the avoidance of being harvested and exploited? Obviously, the more developed the big cities are, the higher the housing prices and consumption. Therefore, I turned my attention 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 and efforts just to earn money and buy a house. 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 mother asked me, "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 his old age."
(Music: "Buying a House", Artist: Zhou Yunpeng)