Chapter 21 Difficult Enlightenment - Why K Can Only Deceive Himself Until the End

K's conversation with the priest before he went to the execution ground is tantamount to a summary of his short life.In the church, the priest warned K not to deceive himself any more, saying that he had been deceiving himself, and then the priest told K the fable about the countryman and discussed with him several possible interpretations of this fable.The church sank into darkness, the priest's insinuations were both vague and clear, and K complained in utter despair: "Lies constitute the order of the world." In fact, the priest is also contradictory. He neither says that the gatekeeper has deceived the countryman, nor that he has not deceived the countryman. Throughout the conversation, he is only talking about his own confusion.The priest's analysis is to explain that since deceit is a necessity and the basis for the existence of this world, everything is based on it, so it is not deceitful.It is not uncommon for the gatekeeper to instill so much hope in the countryman by his little gestures and words, and to give him a false sense of comfort till the end; Believe in the possibility of imagination, willing to wait and spend his life in this fantasy, and the relationship between him and Fa was established accordingly.The general order of relations between the spiritual world and the individual has always been thus constituted.But why did the priest admonish K?This only shows that the priest is conflicted, just as the gatekeeper is also conflicted.This kind of contradictory attitude can be called a lie from K's worldly perspective.A lie does not come from the will of any individual, but is merely a transcendental "flaw" of the world. The case of K is the most splendid realization of this fable.

On the morning of K's spiritual awakening, Fa began to liquidate him. The first step in the liquidation was to remove the basis for his survival in the world—his position and status. K naturally wanted to resist out of survival instinct, but unfortunately, in the face of the incomparably cruel law, the only feasible form of resistance was self-deception.Thus, self-deception and self-examination began at the same time. K's attitude of rejecting and accepting the law is also consistent with the priest's request. The priest asked him to be aware of the law, and he was aware of it, but he still couldn't get rid of the strangeness.

On the night of K's arrest there was a wonderful conversation with the landlady which foreshadowed the whole of K's subsequent situation.During their conversation, K., as a respectable tenant, tried his best to erase the important incident of the morning by deceiving himself and confirming by the landlady, from whom he wanted a reassuring answer.Like all the characters in the book except K, the landlady is also an insider. She knows the existence of that special law (but thinks it is unnecessary to find out), and also knows the ambiguity and irreversibility of K's current situation.Out of concern for K, she sympathetically advised K not to worry about her arrest—the advice of a well-informed elderly woman. It was not this kind of advice that K wanted. He wanted the landlady to join him in his self-deception, to forget together the thrilling scene of the morning (when the landlady watched from behind the door). K's request was beyond the reach of the landlady's wife, and the thinking of these two people operated on the opposite logic.No matter how powerful K. thought his explanations were, how upright his character was, and how vile what had happened to him, they still sounded incomprehensible to the landlady, as if her ears had failed her.The secular logic only belongs to K, and all the people around him follow the logical thinking of the law.Not only did the landlady completely disappoint him at this point, but she also told him a lot of inappropriate gossip, confusing K. as the listener, until the sensitive K. lost his temper.The landlady is very interesting, behind her earnestness hides the teasing and mocking of K.What is the use of being a bank officer?Don't you still want to say indecent words and do dirty things? What exactly does K want to insist on? K's first total moral breakdown was that night's poor performance.The performance and the bad behavior after the performance exposed the dirty side of K's nature and made his superiority disappear.Just as the guard reminded him: "You will experience it in the future." Of course K, whose eyes were covered with a cloth, didn't think deeply about all this.

The process of realizing the Fa is the process of further awakening, a long and arduous process.In the development of the case, life and law have an antinomy effect on K. He is in an awkward compromise, and self-deception is the secret weapon to make this compromise continue.Every time K uses his so-called superiority to resist the law, some law enforcement officers will teach him: It is useless to resist, it is useless to shout loudly, and it is impossible to fathom the intention of the court, so it is better to think more Himself (what crimes have you committed in your life).Of course, the law does not encourage self-abandonment. For example, the supervisory judge said to him: "Of course, this does not mean that you should give up hope." I have a deeper understanding of the boundless power of the law, but of course this experience is useless, the judgment of usefulness and uselessness is a secular judgment, you just need to live.” According to the logic of the law, K has long considered such a precious life Meaningless. K fears the Fa, worships the Fa, and can't give up life, so of course he can only live in self-deception for a day.Even if he is determined to reform his mistakes, he doesn't know exactly how to start, and where is the "fault".He can't follow it, and the law "exists only in your (law enforcement) heads."

The liquidation was merciless, and the law, like an invading mob, stripped K of all his clothes and casually called him "the house painter."When K emphasized in court that he was the chief business assistant of a big bank, the people around him laughed wildly and couldn't breathe.Indeed, compared with this iron law, K's weak defense is like a dream!How naive and ridiculous the examples he gave that he considered eloquent were so naive and ridiculous. If he hadn’t been full of blood and lost his mind, how could he have dared to make such a clumsy long defense in court, the kind of defense that would embarrass him and ruin his own future?Who would listen to his senseless insolence?How can a person be so ignorant?The judge was impatiently rubbing his chair back and forth, and the people below were discussing, but K actually felt very good about himself.Until the judge finally reminded him: "Today you give up all the benefits that a trial will definitely bring to the arrested person", he still laughed loudly, completely obsessed with obsession.How stubborn is the inertia left over from human beings for thousands of years!This nature wraps people's bodies so that they will not be directly hurt by the sword-like light of the law because they are exposed, so that life can continue.

Self-deception developed to the point where it turned into a daydream.For example, when the college student robbed his woman, the first time he admitted his unmistakable failure, he immediately imagined the most ridiculous scene in his mind: this college student, this idiot, kneels before his former lover and woos him.In this scene he was a thousand times superior to those who despised him.It's a pity that things develop in the opposite direction of what he envisioned every time.But even if it develops in the opposite direction, it still can't stop his endless daydreams.A contest beyond one's own strength is a contest after all.Perhaps this is exactly what the law requires of K.The law does not intend to destroy individuals, nor does it really embarrass the defendant, but instead protects the defendant and gives the defendant an illusory sense of freedom. Therefore, K can continue to commit fouls (out of instinct, but also out of revenge) with impunity, and after receiving a small punishment, he can think wildly and win in fantasy.The nurse told K that his fault was only that he was too stubborn, which she meant not as a criticism but as an appreciation, or perhaps a combination of both.Was it not K's stubbornness, his ability to dream, that made the nurse fall in love with him?Therein lies the charm of the accused on trial.

Fa finally triumphed, and K and the two thugs formed an inanimate whole and marched towards the slaughterhouse.He also used his last strength to resist, and under the guidance of the last sense of self-deception, he chose the direction where Miss Bistner disappeared as the goal of progress, and then used his body to tell himself the inevitable result.The vague and thin figure that appeared in the distance before dying was the elf released from the soul. The figure gradually rose and dissipated, and merged with the boundless and invisible Dharma. The logic of the law is undoubtedly unshakable, but it cannot resist a man who wants to live.Logic can only be realized in compromise.For K, the experience of inverting logic has a certain heroism to it.