Chapter 58 Appendix Quality is Destiny

Destiny, the explanation of "Modern Chinese Dictionary" is: "refers to life and death, rich and poor, and all encounters (superstitious people believe that they are destined to be born)".It is unrealistic to deny the existence of fate; but it is unscientific to regard fate as fate, doomed from birth, and people can do nothing about it. Factors that affect a person's fate can be divided into two categories: one is internal factors, and the other is external factors.External factors can be divided into two categories: one is that individuals cannot choose or control at all, including congenital heredity, encounters before adulthood when they are incapable of acting (such as divorced parents), and encounters that have nothing to do with personal behavior after adulthood (such as Meteor strike) - this kind of external cause is meaningless to our discussion, let's leave it alone; the other kind seems to be unchoiceable, uncontrollable, with a large degree of chance, but somewhat related to individual behavior (like winning the lottery).

When it comes to the impact of the latter type of external factors on people's fate, many people will think of the adage: "Opportunity favors the prepared mind." As long as the mind is prepared, it will be favored by opportunities; rather, only the minds that are prepared can be favored by opportunities.It can be seen from this that opportunities are not completely unselectable and uncontrollable. If you do not make corresponding efforts, opportunities will not come.Because opportunities are largely contingency, even if you make efforts, you may not be able to catch them; but compared with not making efforts and waiting for a rabbit, hard work will undoubtedly increase the probability of opportunities coming.Take lottery tickets as an example. If you buy a lot, coupled with the necessary investigation and research, the probability of winning will undoubtedly increase.In this sense, the latter type of external factors can also be included in our discussion of internal factors below.

As early as around 500 BC, when our ancestors were in the chaos of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and believed in Confucius's saying that "death and life are fate, wealth and honor depend on heaven", an ancient Greek philosopher named Heraclitus wrote There is such a motto: "Character is destiny". For 2,500 years, this adage has been used as a philosophy of life to decipher human destiny.Zhang Xian, a writer who passed away a few years ago, wished to have a stele erected in his cemetery after his death, with "Tomb of Writer Zhang Xian" written on the front and "Character is destiny" on the back—this sentence is not only his life experience, It is also his creative creed.

Personality is a relatively stable psychological characteristic of a person in his attitude and behavior towards people and things, such as frivolity, calmness, carelessness, and meticulousness.Character does affect a person's destiny, but it is by no means all the factors that determine destiny, but one of them; therefore, the adage "character is destiny" is incomplete and inaccurate.If we put aside those external factors that cannot be chosen or controlled at all, and therefore have no meaning for our discussion, and use one word to summarize the factors that affect a person's destiny, it is "quality", that is, the quality of a person.When we emphasize product quality, we often say that "quality is the lifeline of the product"; the same is true for the "product" of people.

Quality, according to the stage of formation, can be divided into innate quality and acquired quality; according to category, it can be divided into eight kinds of qualities, such as personality, spirit, morality, culture, science, occupation, health and aesthetics. for several items.Personality, which is acquired from nature and acquired from the day after tomorrow, is formed on the basis of a person's innate temperament through acquired cultivation; among the above-mentioned qualities, it is mainly manifested in the psychological aspect of healthy qualities (also called "Psychological quality"), and is closely related to personality, spiritual, moral, cultural and other qualities.Since the character is included in the quality and only related to part of the quality, it not only cannot determine the fate, but also has no significant influence on the fate.

The reason why the adage "Character is destiny" has been circulated for a long time and is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people has its social and historical reasons.Under natural economic conditions, even in feudal society, people rely on the exchange of natural conditions such as land, forests, rivers, sunlight and rain to obtain limited means of living, and are pitifully attached to gods, chiefs, slave owners, feudal lords, etc. , patriarchs, and parents are forced to live along roughly the same trajectory.The personality, spirit, culture, science, etc. of each individual are also roughly the same, as described by Marx-"It is formed by the addition of some numbers with the same name, just like a bag of potatoes is formed by the number of potatoes in the bag. Like the integration of individual potatoes”; thus, to a large extent, due to innate character, the influence on a person’s fate will often be highlighted.

With the development and progress of society, especially under the conditions of the current market economy system, people's subjective initiative can be brought into full play more and more. Personality, spirit, morality, culture, science and other acquired qualities have a great impact on people. At the same time, the influence of character on people's fate is getting weaker and weaker-this can also be understood as the more advanced society is, the more tolerant it is to people's innate and personality.Therefore, if a person wants to improve his destiny, if he only focuses on changing his character, especially the innate temperament in his character, it is often futile; only by working hard to improve his overall quality, including changing his character through self-cultivation, can he be effective improve one's own destiny.

In recent years, American academic circles have put forward a theory of "IQ determinism".American scholars C. Erz@Murray and R. Richard Hernstein expressed it as: "IQ is destiny".This theory holds that IQ determines a person's social status, determines how much wealth a person owns, and also determines a person's influence on society.IQ, that is, the intelligence quotient, marks the degree of a person's smartness or stupidity, and it can indeed affect a person's fate to a large extent; but like character, it is not the only factor.A person with a high IQ may be an unsuccessful person who runs into walls everywhere, and may even become a criminal.A group of people with similar IQs have different destinies, some even very different.Moreover, IQ is not static; diligent study and good thinking can increase IQ, and laziness and impetuousness can reduce IQ.

While proposing "IQ determinism", some people in American academic circles also proposed "Emotional Quotient Determinism".This theory holds that IQ only contributes about 20% to a person's success, and the rest is mainly determined by EQ.Corresponding to IQ, the new concept of emotional quotient is interpreted as "emotional quotient", which marks a person's ability to control his emotions and grasp himself.In fact, the so-called emotional intelligence is very similar to personality, mainly manifested in people's psychological quality, and is also closely related to personality, spiritual, moral, cultural and other qualities.

Regardless of IQ or EQ, they are all included in a person's quality.It is unscientific to separate a person's overall quality and one-sidedly emphasize only one aspect of quality, and it should be based on the improvement of the overall quality.There is a "barrel theory": the water holding capacity of a wooden barrel depends on the shortest piece of wood; to quickly and effectively increase the water holding capacity of a wooden barrel, there is no better way to make up for the shortest piece of wood first.From this theory, we can realize a truth - in order to be successful, the quality of the relevant aspects must be improved at the same time; if only the quality of some aspects is improved while ignoring the relevant qualities of other aspects, it is like only increasing the height of the barrel. A few planks are the same, and the result can only be a failure.We can often encounter such examples in our life-some people are very good in many aspects, but there is a small defect, which not only makes it difficult to give full play to their strengths in other aspects, but also causes him to suffer repeated setbacks, and even All bets are off.

Before the advent of the 21st century, human beings had different opinions and debates about many things in the future, but they only reached a consensus on one issue-the future international competition is essentially the competition of national quality; without modernization of people, there will be no society modernization.Lelio Pesci, president of the Club of Rome, who is extremely authoritative on future research, also pointed out in his report "The Next Hundred Years": "No matter from which angle to prompt the future, one thing must be agreed-the future is based on personal qualities. A society based on all-round development." This is true for social development, and so is personal development.We are facing the establishment of a market economy system, the most drastic and profound change in contemporary Chinese society; with the transformation from a planned economy to a market economy, everyone, whether active or passive, will become the main body who dominates their own destiny.Only by working hard to improve our own quality can we have a foothold in the future society. The process of consciously improving one's own quality is also a process of self-improvement.The reason why human beings have been able to evolve from animals that drink blood and walk on four limbs to what they are now depends on self-improvement; the only way for human beings to continue to evolve instead of degenerating in the direction of animals is to rely on self-improvement.The life we ​​have is full of traps and temptations. If we slack off and indulge a little, we will fall; if we want to realize an ideal, noble and happy life, we can only rely on self-improvement.The era we live in is an era pushed forward by the tide of modernization; if we want to realize our own modernization and not be eliminated by the times, we can only rely on self-improvement.Therefore, in any sense, self-improvement should be an eternal theme for each of us, and even for the entire human race. The contemporary sculptor Pan He completed his sculpture masterpiece "Self-improvement" in 1989: on a piece of marble standing on the wall, the exquisite statue of the upper body of a girl has been chiseled out, and the lower body is still integrated with the uncarved marble; He is holding a hammer in his right hand and a chisel in his left hand, and continues to carve his own body... If we regard ourselves as a statue, then, as long as we examine ourselves, we will find that it has too many defects. It is like a rough, even incomplete rough; only by persevering in carving it can it be perfected.Although the ancients said that "gold is never pure, and no one is perfect", as long as you continue to improve yourself, you can approach the goal of self-realization step by step; since self-realization is an endless process, self-realization Perfection is also a never-ending process.