Chapter 7164 The Curse of Knowledge

Chapter 7164 The Curse of Knowledge

Otherwise, if Liu Bei doesn't go, and the people at the front lose the battle and Balayaka is lost, even if Chen Xi is respected and according to the historical precedent of the Han Dynasty, it would be quite difficult to receive a pension and have his affairs settled after his death.

After all, this was a feudal imperial system. They had lost the war, so it was already quite an achievement that they could do this much.

It could be said that Liu Bei was completely using his prestige and popular support to give this group of people one last push, which Chen Xi vaguely felt was not worthwhile.

In other words, Liu Bei made it clear that even if he lost his trip to the Ganges, it wouldn't damage his reputation. On the contrary, everyone with eyes could see that he had done his best. As a result, even if the Han aristocratic families were unscrupulous, as long as they still had some humanity, they wouldn't be able to do anything more underhanded.

Of course, more importantly, Liu Bei indicated that even though he had lost, he remained the lord among his officers and soldiers, and would not lose their respect and loyalty because of his defeat.

Unlike other rulers who gained power through authority and force, Liu Bei truly achieved the following of the people. Even though Liu Bei was defeated by the fire at Yiling in official history, most people in later generations only felt regret and sorrow for his failure.

Therefore, Chen Xi eventually gave up on obstructing Liu Bei, allowing Liu Bei to choose to use his own methods to save all the generals and officers who could still be saved.

Although Liu Tong didn't fully understand this point, he roughly grasped the situation, so he naturally changed the subject and stopped dwelling on the situation on the other side of the Ganges.

"May I leave the palace after the New Year?" Liu Tong asked, taking the opportunity to ask his question.

"There shouldn't be anything going on after the New Year, so leaving the palace for a short time shouldn't be a problem," Chen Xi said after thinking for a moment. "As long as there are no safety issues and we don't have a repeat of the last disappearance, it should be fine."

"I plan to travel to various places, partly to show the common people under this prosperous age on behalf of my ancestors. Is this really a prosperous age?" Liu Tong said with great enthusiasm.

"Yes!" Chen Xi answered decisively.

“Very good, I will also help to clean up those parasites like the bureaucrats of Yanmen.” Liu Tong smiled when he heard Chen Xi’s answer, and then pointed to the vacant position of Bi Gui, the governor of Yanmen.

Bi Gui has already been taken away by Man Chong for investigation, and he definitely won't be able to come back. As for the outcome, it won't be good. Don't expect things to go as smoothly as Zang Hong said.

Chen Xi nodded upon hearing this. Liu Tong went to the local area to conduct on-site investigations. Given Liu Tong's situation, if he was willing to contribute in this area, he could actually do some things.

As for whether he was genuinely there to investigate and understand the true situation, Chen Xi didn't really care. Helping was the best thing, and going out to have fun was fine too. Chen Xi didn't expect anything from Liu Tong in this kind of matter; it was something that supervisors should do.

"Lord Chen, actually, I've always wanted to ask you this: the current situation is countless times better than when I was young. Whether it's the common people, the officials, or the standard of living, everything is countless times better." Liu Tong said with a serious tone.

"Well, it might be a bit much for me to say this, but I'm doing better now than I have for the past few decades." Chen Xi nodded, vaguely guessing what Liu Tong wanted to ask.

“This is a prosperous era, and I specifically asked you about it. Even with your modesty, you gave a resolute answer,” Liu Tong said with a touch of emotion. “However, in such a prosperous era, why are there still so many inferior bureaucrats and so many corrupt officials?”

Chen Xi paused for a moment upon hearing this. He couldn't answer the question, but Liu Tong was right about one thing: we have clearly entered a golden age, and an unprecedented one at that. So why are there still so many lawbreakers and so many corrupt officials?

"It can only be said that even a prosperous era cannot solve certain problems," Chen Xi said with a sigh. "Even in a prosperous era, the desires of people's hearts cannot be filled. There will always be people who are immersed in the world they have created, dissatisfied with themselves and their current situation, and thus take another path."

"Therefore, the saying 'When the granaries are full, people know etiquette' is not entirely correct. Desires do not disappear because of a prosperous era; in fact, they may even increase." Liu Tong said calmly, but with a hint of dejection he could not hide. "In that case, the road ahead was easier, but the road ahead will probably be more difficult. You have confidence in Zhuge Liang, but the shadows under the prosperous era make me lose some confidence."

Liu Tong was corrupted by knowledge; the more he learned, the more he thought, and the more he saw, the more disappointed he became. Even though there were countless loyalists to the Han Dynasty, as the prosperous era continued, when everyone took it all for granted, everything gained through that prosperity would gradually disappear.

The new generation will not acknowledge the suffering of the past; they will only think that everyone in that era was useless and that everything now is taken for granted.

“That’s how people are. The current awareness of burning everything for the country is more because they have crawled out of the mud and seen a completely different era. But for the new generation, these are things they were born with.” Chen Xi said with a bit of calmness. “So they won’t be moved by these things, they will only take them for granted.”

"Just as I predicted," Liu Tong said with a hint of weariness at the passing of time. "So even though everything was shaped, in the end, it still ended like this, defeated by the hearts of the people. It's truly lamentable, and truly hateful."

"Don't be so dejected. I didn't even react this strongly." Chen Xi glanced at Liu Tong, understanding why Liu Tong was so upset.

It's like when you first enter junior high school, learn some knowledge, start to see the world from your own perspective, and then boast that you have seen the darkness and have a little understanding of society, and then feel that the world is beyond saving. In a sense, this can be considered the curse of knowledge.

Liu Tong is now in a state where he has absorbed the knowledge passed down by Chen Xi and has a completely different perspective on the world than before. He has seen through the essence of the world in a different way and has come to the conclusion that everything is just an illusion. Even if a prosperous world is built with painstaking efforts, it will eventually fall under the influence of people's hearts. So what is the use of hard work?
“It’s not that my reaction is strong, but that you have no reaction at all. You see through everything and understand everything, yet you are not swayed by the inevitable ending.” Liu Tong stared at Chen Xi. “Lord Chen, this is not the mentality that humans should have. Humans suffer, they retreat, and they shrink back because of reality. You are like a god, without such emotions.”

"You're talking nonsense again. I've been acting crazy today and I'll be acting crazy tomorrow. You've seen it before. Besides, you know about even more outrageous situations." Chen Xi glanced at Liu Tong. "Your current state is purely because you've absorbed some new knowledge and then been cursed by that knowledge."

"Cursed by knowledge?" Liu Tong was taken aback, somewhat bewildered.

“You didn’t have this knowledge before, and it wasn’t something you summarized and refined on your own. You learned it from me, so the way you use it after acquiring it is bound to be problematic,” Chen Xi said matter-of-factly. “There’s a very long way to go between learning and applying knowledge. You’ve only learned it, but you don’t know how to use it, so all you see is the darkness of this world. Or rather, I shouldn’t have used that kind of thinking to explain power and profit to you.”

Liu Tong frowned upon hearing this. She didn't think she had any problems right now. After Chen Xi told her to combine morality, law, resources, and power to look at everything in this world, Liu Tong was in a daze for a whole afternoon and realized what was going on with many things that she couldn't see through before.

More importantly, by applying this way of thinking, many things that were completely incomprehensible become readily understandable, meaning that the correctness of this knowledge is beyond doubt.

Therefore, Liu Tong did not think there was anything wrong with this knowledge; it was extreme, but at least it was correct.

"First of all, you need to understand that mastering certain knowledge requires you to possess other knowledge and corresponding thinking. Moreover, the relevant knowledge cannot be something you learn and then piece together from what you've seen and heard, and the related thinking cannot be a continuation based on that knowledge." Chen Xi looked at the eccentric girl with a hint of helplessness; Liu Tong was simply carried away.

"When learning, you can't be extreme or get carried away. This is the mindset that every learner must maintain. Once you feel excited or indignant because of certain knowledge, you are no longer learning, but being controlled by the emotions of the writer," Chen Xi earnestly warned.

“But what you said before wasn’t wrong,” Liu Tong countered.

“The content is fine, but that doesn’t mean the understanding is not one-sided.” Chen Xi said with a hint of helplessness, “I told you before just so that you could understand it quickly, so I only told you that part. Moreover, that was the result of simplifying the overall situation and eliminating many influencing factors, rather than the facts. In reality, that situation is impossible to achieve.”

Chen Xi laughed at the idea of ​​perfect capitalism, because that was absolutely unattainable. Human desires would never allow perfect capitalism to exist, and those who use capitalism would never accept perfect capitalism.

Since the very existence of capital is about expansion, perfect capitalism must expand itself. However, those who control capital may not be able to accept this expansion, which is a paradox.

Therefore, those who embrace capitalism will never accept the emergence of perfect capitalism, because if that time truly comes, how can the concept of equality for all be maintained under the guise of self? That's just human nature. For true capitalists, so-called capitalism is merely a tool, not an ideology.

Therefore, from the very beginning, there was no expectation that Chen Xi would combine resources, power, and wealth into one for Liu Tong and make similar common considerations. In fact, it's like when taking an exam, you assume that something is equal. In reality, they are not completely equal, but it's just that it's simple to calculate.

Liu Tong is actually quite smart, so when Chen Xi made a few analogies, Liu Tong realized that there were problems with the knowledge he had learned before. It was just that new problems had emerged. Since such problems existed, why couldn't he have detected them before, and even regarded them as gospel?

"This is what I said before, I actually can't find my own mistakes." After Liu Tong asked this question, Chen Xi quickly repeated what he had said before, "You should have the corresponding understanding now, and it is very difficult for people to break out of their own perceptions."

Upon hearing this, Liu Tong glanced at Chen Xi. She understood what Chen Xi meant, but she still felt that what she said before was correct: if you can't even find the error, is it really an error?
And given your situation, even if everything you've built collapses, the foundation you've left behind is far stronger than anyone else's, so why worry about so-called mistakes? Just elevate it as much as possible.

"So you still have to read the books yourself and learn the knowledge yourself. If I don't remove my own opinions and emotions from what I teach, it's easy to pollute the people who are learning this knowledge. And people can't be neutral and objective in their understanding of reality," Chen Xi said to Liu Tong with a hint of warning.

"Add to that extreme knowledge and extreme emotions, which can attract others, and pure knowledge becomes extremely rare," Chen Xi said earnestly. "And removing emotions and extremes is also very difficult; most people's self-proclaimed neutral stance is actually not neutral at all!"

Liu Tong seemed to be deep in thought upon hearing this, and Chen Xi, seeing this, didn't say much, letting Liu Tong ponder. As always, it was very meaningful to think more.

“To put it simply, under that previous mindset, betrayal was inevitable. You could say that as long as the price was high enough, you would definitely betray. But that’s not the case.” Chen Xi said very seriously, “Pure capitalist thinking. Capitalism can buy anything you want, but in reality, there are some things in this world that capital cannot shake.”

Liu Tong nodded slowly and looked in the direction of the Han family. According to the previous theory, this group of people should be able to sell everything, even their own souls. Moreover, many things that have happened in the past four hundred years have proven this point. But if you think about it carefully, even when these bastards are not human, they at least still retain the most basic conscience and morality.

"People are very complex. They might burn themselves out because of a single word or action, or they might go to extremes because of a single word or action. This has nothing to do with capital or capital. It is purely a matter of self and morality. One of the highest and most profound things in the world, the things that can most shake the soul, is the moral code of the human heart," Chen Xi said with a touch of emotion.

"That's true." Liu Tong's mind was filled with images of heroes who, when the Han dynasty collapsed, went one after another, doing everything they could to lift it up.

"Therefore, degeneration is inevitable, and rising from degeneration is also inevitable. This is the rise and fall of the times and the growth of humanity as a whole. For an individual, it may represent a complete end, but for humanity as a whole, it is just a wave." Chen Xi said this with unwavering determination, because this is the foundation of what makes us human.

"But the thought that everything we've created is taken for granted by those who come after, and then collapses in that sense of entitlement, while these people grieve for this collapse without realizing that each and every one of them contributed to it, makes me laugh." Liu Tong frowned, speaking with a hint of displeasure.

Even though Liu Tong understood what Chen Xi was saying at this moment and managed to pull himself out of his chuunibyou state, he still felt a surge of anger when he thought about how many people would take this prosperous era for granted and would involuntarily try to overthrow it all.

"There's nothing we can do about it, but some things are only missed when they disappear, and only then will countless people try to recreate them." Chen Xi said calmly, showing no sense of loss at the collapse of everything he had created, because he had already been aware of this future when he created it all.

Sometimes, knowing the future is not a good thing, especially knowing the distant future and knowing that your efforts are just a ripple in the long river of history. The sense of loss and sense of belonging is uncontrollable.

However, Chen Xi's true strength lies in the fact that he knows the outcome, but he still does it anyway.

Some things, you shouldn't give up on just because you might fail.

Any traces left behind, remaining in the past, serve as a guide for those who come after. History progresses in a spiral, and the achievements created by our predecessors will surely be pursued by those who still have ambition. And what Chen Xi wants is this pursuit. Even if this golden age is fleeting, those born in and living in a golden age will feel some gratitude. Even if they lose that gratitude, there will still be something for those who come after.

"Being able to see your entire future and the ending, isn't that painful?" Liu Tong suddenly asked. She was now completely certain that Chen Xi could actually see the final outcome. This wasn't some kind of futuristic vision; it was simply relying on his own experience and understanding to know the final result when he started doing something.

"It's nothing. Even if you know the outcome of some things, would you stop doing them just because the outcome is bad?" Chen Xi did not refute Liu Tong's words, but simply explained why she was the way she was. Facing that pain and cruelty head-on, and still continuing to move forward, was the true understanding of her own heart.

"As expected." Liu Tong said with a complicated expression, "If a gentleman won't save them, then a saint will certainly step forward!"

"Get out of here," Chen Xi said, somewhat annoyed. He hated that phrase. He glared at Liu Tong, somewhat unwilling to communicate with him anymore. This guy's thinking was also very jumpy, though it seemed to be a direct result of his own thinking.

　So tired (ó﹏ò)
　　(End of this chapter)