Chapter 3 2.Inner strength is a person who has a psychological advantage that cannot be destroyed in front of others

These names are lined up in the psychologically powerful celebrity museum: Socrates, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Jing Ke, Tang Sui, Wen Tianxiang, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu, Mao Zedong, Che Guevara... Buddhist hermits who jumped out of the Three Realms, philosophers who think in the highest hall of human wisdom, revolutionaries who have endured torture, religious believers full of fanatical beliefs, cold-blooded killers who kill like hemp, indomitable business tycoons...they all Belongs to the psychologically strong species. These people have one characteristic in common: they are extremely tough psychologically.He can be poor, he can endure the exclusion and persecution of everyone, he can be imprisoned, he can endure severe physical pain, and he can face the threat of death, but he always maintains a psychological advantage that cannot be destroyed.

The degree of psychological strength is often directly proportional to the degree of excellence or cruelty of a person, and the degree of contribution or destruction to mankind.Because the stronger the mind, the more courageous a person is to save the common people, or to kill the world. Please note that when I say "mentally strong," I don't say it is good or bad, because a mentally strong person can also be a perpetrator.To use the terminology of the social sciences, it is "value-neutral."Whether one is mentally strong or not is not a moral issue in itself, and cannot be said to be good or bad.But one thing is very clear: what is wrong is never that we want to be a psychologically strong person, but that we want to be a bad person!

In view of the ambiguity of "psychologically strong", in order to let everyone understand this concept more clearly, I will provide several versions with different explanations: If a person can smash others with money and oppress others with power, isn't he very powerful? An American thinker told a story in a radio interview in the 1960s: One afternoon, a customer walked into a post office to handle a courier.At this time, it happened to be off-duty time, and the post office employee told the customer to come back tomorrow.No matter how much the customer begged, the post office staff ignored him.After the customer walked away in despair and anger, looking at his back, the thinker described the post office employee with a smile, a "sadistic smile".

This thinker is called Erich Fromm, a Jew, a master of psychoanalysis, a pacifist, and a good man. Now the question is: Are post office employees mentally strong in front of customers? Fromm categorically replied: Not at all!A man who abuses power is a coward.Precisely because their ego is impotent, they need to feel powerful by exercising power "legitimately", capturing and abusing prey that can be dominated by their power.The same goes for people who throw money at other people. In other words, their power is merely a psychological illusion created by their power.If you also think that these people are powerful, then I want to point out grimly: You only see the appearance of things, the world shows you what it looks like, and it seems to you that the world really is like this.

We are often deceived by many superficial phenomena.At this time, instead of blaming liars, it is better to reflect on whether there is something wrong with your brain and psychology?When a person is disappointed in another person, he often says: "It's all my fault" or "It's all my fault."In fact, this is not the case at all. The real reason is that his heart is "blind". In fact, he sees others as a certain way according to his own wishes and imagination, but it is a pity that others are not. Of course, saying that the strength of post office employees is just an illusion is in essence.As an objective phenomenon, we still need to admit that they still feel good in front of people who are weaker than them.This is psychological strength on a mundane level, which is a counterfeit of real psychological strength.

Mental strength at the secular level has a characteristic: a person's mind is like a shrinking bag, which expands vigorously when encountering weaker people, and shrinks sharply when encountering stronger people. Indeed, there is nothing that prevents a rich man from suddenly appearing psychologically tough in the presence of little people and poor people.But, by the same psychological logic, there is nothing that prevents the "psychological strength" he built up from the small and the poor to collapse before a richer man.Because the awesome-looking "self" he piled up with money will quickly depreciate to zero.

Psychological strength in the secular sense is just a sneaky change of concept.When a person possesses "strong" things in society, such as money, power, and status, he mentally regards these things as his ego, and turns their "strength" into the strength of his ego. The reason why a smart person has a psychological advantage over a stupid person is that the deeply rooted social game of "smart can play with others, but stupid can only be played by others" is beneficial to him. But a man who knows a great deal about the world is mentally strong because he can see that things will or won't happen, thus strengthening his psychological defenses against the dangers posed by the strangeness of the world.Knowing that it will rain tomorrow, the rain tomorrow is something objectively uncontrollable for him, but psychologically controllable.

Severing the psychological connection with this society can make a person transcendent.But this kind of psychological strength in the sense of philosophy and religion can only be obtained by a few people in this world, such as religious hermits and classical philosophers. In front of these masters, all the disturbances in the world are resolved one by one by his rational ability or ultimate belief.Even death is not a threat but a natural continuation of life in the world.Perhaps it is also the entrance to heaven. The vast majority of people living in society will never be able to reach the heights of these masters in terms of psychological cultivation.

Psychologically they are no different from another creature, but they are an ideal witness.The significance of utopia is not to realize it, but to let people see: if there is unbearable suffering in this world, then what people can and should pursue. Not many people can live like the masters of religion and philosophy, and it is a misunderstanding of thinking to live like them.But that never prevents us from thinking like they can and should. Two kinds of people are also psychologically powerful: religious extremists and cold-blooded killers.For religious extremists, the following points must be met in order to be psychologically strong.

For example, according to the rules of the game, people in rich provinces always look down on people in poor provinces. We can even see such a funny scene: the poor in a rich province can show off their sense of superiority in front of the rich in a poor province.According to the rules of strength, this is very puzzling: you don't have other people's money, so why are you arrogant in front of others?The secret lies in such a social psychological mechanism: Although I am poor and looked down upon by people in this province, but because this province is rich, it is equivalent to me being rich; although you are richer than me, you belong to a poor province , so it is equivalent to you being poor.

In summary, I am richer than you, so I can look down on you. This means: Although I am just a worm in this province, because I am a part of it, I am a dragon in front of you. I want to say that the poor like to hitch a ride with the rich psychologically. Because they are in the same place as the rich, they get the illusion that they are also awesome. This habit is useless. Do you see it?These three points give religious extremists a sense of power, anger, and contempt for life, respectively.Each of them is stronger than the other. Cold-blooded killers are slightly different, but do not part ways with religious extremists psychologically.While he doesn't have a single omnipotent object of faith to give him a sense of power, he also has two formidable weapons: anger and contempt for life.He is full of hatred for society and full of aggressiveness, like a hungry wolf lurking in the depths of darkness, ready to pounce on defenseless prey at any time. The more angry a person appears, the less fear will assail him.So anger is sometimes a way for people to get rid of fear, because when you experience anger, you don't experience fear anymore. Anger can not only dispel fear, but also can make people feel powerful.Any anger seeks to be directed at an object, it intends to destroy that object.In the presence of this object, a person, however impotent he may have been, can become an active agent in one leap.The force is directed from him to the external object, and the external object is the recipient of his force, which is relatively weak.If he has enough anger and hatred, the greater the strength of this force, the weaker the outside world, he is psychologically strong enough.