Have you noticed?
Now we are in a ridiculously prosperous era of the internet, and as long as you can think a little, you won't starve to death.
Engaging in e-commerce, creating content, selling through short videos, working in private domains, or even flipping some information disparities can all make a good amount of money.
Yet so many people insist on attending that inhumane class. Waking up early, commuting, clocking in, and working a prison-like job, selling their lives for a wage that barely sustains them.
Many people are not unaware of other paths; they are just afraid to take them.
Why are they afraid?
I pondered for a long time and later realized—it’s because they’ve been conditioned since childhood.
As a child, my family would say: study hard, get into a good university, and find a stable job.
At school, teachers taught standardized answers, not independent thinking. If you obey, follow the rules, and don’t make mistakes, you are a good student.
Once you enter a company, what the boss wants is execution, not creativity. If you follow the process and don’t make mistakes, you are a good employee.
After ten or twenty years, a person becomes a well-trained machine. You become accustomed to being told what to do, following procedures, and staying within your comfort zone.
Then one day, you are asked to make decisions for yourself, bear risks, and handle uncertainty— and you can’t do it.
What you fear is not exhaustion, but the possibility of failure, and losing even the excuse of “I’ve tried my best.”
At least at work, you can comfort yourself: “It’s not that I can’t do it; it’s the environment that’s bad.”
This is like boiling a frog in warm water. The water is heated gradually, and by the time you realize it’s hot, you can’t jump out anymore.
So you will see an absurd reality: many people would rather be slowly squeezed by the system than make a true decision for their own lives.
To say something particularly clichéd, but very heartfelt: what’s inhumane is not making money, but handing your whole life over to someone else to arrange.
The internet age offers ordinary people not guarantees, but opportunities.
But opportunities only reward two kinds of people: those who dare to try and those who have no way out.
And most people are stuck in the middle—neither at a dead end nor daring to break the situation.
The key to breaking the situation is just one: realize that you have been conditioned, and then start little by little to nurture yourself back.
