Reading Notes
读书笔记
In an era where algorithms and generative models are constantly reshaping the landscape, this feeling is becoming increasingly profound for computer researchers. LLMs are getting better and better at completing language tasks, capable of generating fluent, complete, and even touching text in an instant - as if expression itself no longer requires the accumulation of experience, time, and suffering. It seems that words are gradually detaching from the human body and existing independently. But does it truly understand those themes that recur in the present and throughout human history - the tension between idealism and reality, the entanglement of love and loss, the loneliness and struggle of the individual in the world? When a model writes about "pain", has it ever experienced pain? When it describes "meaning", has it truly questioned meaning? No, it merely highly fits the expression patterns in vast amounts of text, possessing the form of language but not necessarily touching the essence of the words themselves.
I have always been deeply impressed by the fact that words serve as a link that transcends time and creates a resonance between people. Especially in recent years, I have been trapped in a certain sense of emptiness - meaning has loosened, many things that were once firmly believed have begun to lose their support, problems keep emerging, but it is difficult to point to clear answers. In this situation, as an individual, I am forced to confront a more fundamental truth: the world itself does not provide meaning. When the former philosophy of existence collapsed, new meaning needed to be constructed. But "construction" is not easy; it means making choices, and making choices inherently involves uncertainty and costs. However, reading presents a different dimension: the predicament, anxiety, and pain I have experienced are not isolated exceptions. Over the past several thousand years, countless people have also stood at similar boundaries, thinking, struggling, and making choices. They wrote these experiences into books, allowing later generations to recognize their own reflections in others' words. Reading is when one throws pain into the void, and those most outstanding humans respond to you through thousands of books: I hear you, your pain is valid. This is different from "为赋新词强说愁" (expressing sorrow artificially). Perhaps my shallow life experience is insufficient to support my acceptance of the universal sorrow of humanity， but this is not the trap of nihilism. Maybe the words themselves have no meaning， or perhaps there was no fluctuation when reading initially， but as experience accumulates gradually， those once silent words will reveal their original weight at a certain moment.
But love has always been an exception. Idealism, realism, heroism, existentialism, absurdity, cynicism, pessimism, happiness, romanticism, materialism, idealism... All these grand propositions can find echoes in the history of thought. From Nietzsche, I can see a revaluation of value; from Camus, I can read about resistance beneath the absurd; and from Sartre, I can understand the weight of freedom and choice. Countless people are called thinkers, philosophers, politicians and writers. Their viewpoints may conflict with each other, but they still form a system that can be discussed, inherited and even revised, and have gained the recognition and even support of some people.
But there has never been such a title as "Lover". It is not because love is not worth studying, but precisely because it cannot be summarized as some kind of universal knowledge. Everyone is trying to understand it with their limited experience, personality and circumstances. As a result, every kind of understanding is inherently biased, yet it cannot be corrected. If there really exists some unified standard that can tell people what "correct love" is, then love itself might instead become a pseudo-proposition that has been overly simplified. Therefore, love appears particularly cruel and honest, not allowing me to rely entirely on abstract ideas, nor allowing me to hide in grand narratives. I have to make choices based on my limited experience, understanding, and even with misunderstandings and deviations. And the outcome after making a choice - whether it's getting closer or losing - cannot be "explained" as right or wrong; it just happened. If philosophy deals with "how people get along with the world", then love deals with "how people meet another specific person". And the "specific person" itself is an irreplaceable and irreplicable existence. This also means that there is no truly "previous experience" in love that can be directly borrowed. I can read countless poems, novels and theories about love, but that doesn't prevent me from being foolish until now...
The words of "Dangnian Mingyue" have, to some extent, influenced my writing style. As a result, in my current writings, serious narratives often have to be interspersed with a touch of jest. However, it is precisely under this seemingly relaxed and even slightly casual writing style that I unexpectedly touched upon a long-lost idealistic light. From Wang Yangming's philosophy of the mind and the unity of knowledge and action, to Hai Rui's straightness and integrity, and then to Zhang Juzheng's weighing and reform, countless people have never bowed their heads, each following a different path, trudging alone in the crevices of power, morality and history, yet always holding fast to that beam of ideal light in their hearts.
Nalan Xingde's poems were successively compiled into "Side Hat" and "Drinking Water", and later generations mostly referred to them as Nalan's poems. Looking at Nalan Xingde's poetic style, it is fresh and elegant, with a touch of melancholy and playful beauty, quite similar to that of the last Emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty. He himself also greatly admired Li Yu. He once said, "Words spoken among flowers are like ancient jade wares, precious but not applicable." The lyrics of the Song Dynasty are practical yet rare and precious, while Li Houzhu combines them and has its own beauty, and is even more steeped in the misty and enigmatic charm.
Nietzsche’s words feel less like arguments and more like detonations. “God is dead” is not a celebration, but a diagnosis — and what follows is a silence we are still learning how to endure. In that silence, the question is no longer what is true, but whether we can still create meaning.
After “God is dead,” Nietzsche does not leave us in silence — he demands a response. Zarathustra speaks not to explain the world, but to ask whether we can become something beyond what we are. The question is no longer about truth, but about creation.
Wang Yangming’s philosophy begins with a reversal: what if principle is not something to be sought in the world, but something that already resides within the mind? “The mind is principle” does not expand the world — it removes all distance. The question is no longer where truth lies, but whether we are willing to recognize it in ourselves.