Final Statements:
—Do you have to be hard on yourself to be a good creator?
Is it really better, to be hard, to work hard, to develop yourself through adversity? I mean, can’t we just go drinking together? Hang out and talk and make beautiful things together?
—Well, all work and no play make Jack a dull boy.
—Yeah but all play and no work makes Jack an alcoholic!
—when we were discussing woman A or woman b being more virtuous, I was thinking one thing, the chairman of Foxcomm, Guo Taiming, he once said, I just told my daughter how to spend my money wisely, and then also, spending my money to help society, to help the community. So his daughter doesn’t need to work, but it’s better for…I mean she is just so lucky, but at least, during her childhood, her father was working very hard. Because this guy, the chairman of Foxcomm, did not really have rich parents himself, but he works hard, but his daughter, the next generation can deserve, can enjoy the achievement that he brought to them. So how do you say about that.
—it’s a good fate!
—and also she was very well behaved, she doesn’t spend the money crazily on luxury goods.
—maybe she will…
—but we speak good of her, so well respected. So yeah, she deserves to be his daughter!
—because she’s morally correct?
—I say this, about my friends or my sister, when they compare their children, they don’t study or work, I say okay, if you complain about them, maybe they will complain about you! Why my parent is not the chairman of Foxcomm!
—I just want to say, maybe she will invest her father’s money into a profitable company, and maybe create a new company for herself.
—So there was this guy, MacArthur, and he was so stingy that he never spent any money on himself or on his family. But he worked very hard and developed this company, and so he was actually super rich. Kind of like Bill Gates. When he died, his son put all of his money into a foundation that gives away grants. You can’t apply for these grants. They research you, and if they like what you’re doing, they give you money. They have helped a lot of creative people establish themselves. So this guy worked so hard to assemble this money, and his son is now giving it all away, to support the kind of people his father would have said were worthless. It’s quite funny. Also, I wish one I could get one of those grants.
—Wang Yongching, worked very hard, spend no money on himself, when he died, his sons argued with the other family about the money. He just left too much money for them!
—Sometimes I think about this, if you are so successful, you’ve got the fancy car, drive it to work to relax, you don’t really have the chance to walk, by yourself. I have a car, but now on the weekend, I like to just walk around to spend my time. But if you say a guy with out a car, who has no money to buy the car, is that a bad thing, or a good thing? You can take bus, subway, then you’re more healthy. Farmers are strong because they’re hardworking in the field, they maybe live longer. Also we have the health care system. So how do you judge success? More money, or less money. So you have to enjoy even when you have no money! You have to find a way to enjoy yourself. Sometimes drinking water is boring, no sweetness, unlike coffee or alcohol.
—I think times have changed, what I mean is generations have changed a lot. What we valued before, like diligence, that will compensate for your weakness, that’s not necessarily true right now. So we more and more encourage young generation to look for their strength instead of their weakness. Because it’s easy for us to know our strength and use it to work and improve our weakness to work. So. I think right now we can see a lot of young workers who can find working is a fun thing. They already started to know that they will find what interests them and then they create their own work, not just like us, we accept us what the market provides for us.
—I feel like what you said is kind of the exit to the ‘hard work is virtue’ paradigm. Because if you’re working because you enjoy it, it’s not actually ‘hard work’
—right because even though you spend a lot of time, working on it is still fun
—the idea of play-work, plurk, playing through work, or working through playing
—at first I want to share one thing. From Einstein. He said, if you ask the average person to find a needle in a haystack, the person will stop when he or she found the needle. But he, Einstein, would tear through the haystack looking for all the possible needles. The second thing is no offence about sex difference. The story…you started with the story about two men’s’ background, but maybe if the first is a man and the second is woman, we might think about it differently. A lot of my friends are girls, when they are working very hard, working overtime, their father will tell her, you don’t need a job, I can take care of you. Maybe this is...
—[laughing] I wish my father would do that!
—I met a lot of friends who this happened to
—[laughing] it’s not their husbands!
—[laughing] my father never told me that!! X2
—[laughing] we have such bad luck!!! X2
—my aunt once told my that her father told her not to work that hard. When her father was on his deathbed. At that moment her father told his daughter that…
—easy for him to say!
—because at that moment, people will realize, you don’t have to work so hard in your life. But when your father is in his 60s, I’m not sure he would say that. Once my daughter told me that her friends’ father said not to work so hard.
—[laughing] I wanna go ask my dad
—[laughing] I wanna know what he says
—[laughing] he will kill me
—[laughing] I don’t dare ask this
—they will say you don’t have to work overtime, but you have to work hard
—we also have this saying that women without intelligence or talent is virtuous
—[laughing] that’s total bullshit!!!
—that’s what the culture says
—[laughing] I don’t care, that’s bullshit!!!
—[laughing] Also, that’s 2000 years ago!!!
—I have three separate ideas, so I’ll keep it short. One time, I had a conversation with my brother, I can’t remember too clearly, I was telling him that sometimes doing good may not have some good returns, your efforts may not get the same rewards. But my brother recalled a sentence to me “cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice”. So. He said doing good or being kind is your own choice. So it’s more respected to be kind. So for me, the virtue of working hard is not about working hard itself, it comes from the determination and devoting oneself into something. Or a very sincere, concentrated care about something that you want to pursue. And the second idea, actually I just suddenly thought of that, even though most of our education and paradigm is to encourage working hard, but in history there are many other beautiful paradigms about creating something without working hard, just like Buddha just understand the things behind the Dao and newton just invented his theory of gravity, just when he took a rest under a tree. Or like Wangxizhi, the calligraphy master, the create the most dramatic work after he’s drinking. So actually intuition plays a critical part of creation, and that cannot substituted by working hard. And last idea, very short. I want to answer the question in the Story of B, why God only cares about human beings, because the bible was written by human beings
—omg high five!!
—okay, it’s my turn, the person I want to respond to is input that…I totally agree what St——— said, that we need to encourage children the part they ... on. Because we tend to say study smart, work smart, not really just mean spend time on playing but not on working. Smart means know where your strengths are, and your objectives are and then to put your effort and time into your goals. So, because the times have changed. In ancient times, you just needed to put all your efforts to plant vegetables and rice. But recently you need to think a new way, to earn more profits than others. So that’s the first one. And the second one, I want to respond to what S——— said, like Newton or Buddha or Wangxizhi, sitting under the tree, or seems like they do nothing and create the new idea, but actually they spent their life to experience a lot of things, and maybe read a lot of books, travelling around, so they have absorbed a lot of energy in their minds, and thoughts, and when the chance come to their mind, just like Newton took a break, and in a moment, the idea came in. So I want to give a new definition to the so-called hard-working. It’s not physically working, it’s to fully dedicate yourself to what you like, or what you’re interested in, or what your strengths are in.
—because I’m just entered university, so I want to share some experience about my learning experience. When I was in senior high school, we all study very hard, when we are seniors. But every time we stay in a class and reading, sometimes we’ll ask, why, what we should do in this time. And finally we will find that we didn’t know what we really want. We just being supposed to do these things. And during this like meeting or something, I learned that, what we’re really interested in, and I found that the world has really changed, that in the world, there is not that many people that have to work very hard. Because if 600million people are all working hard, there must be some people who have no job to do.
—smart!! X3
—so we have to jump out of the frame, we have to do something that we really want to do, not forced to do. Like travel, explore the world, from the outside is more important than what we see in the narrow space.
Notes from the discussion:
Working hard = making something pay off
= sweating
= 10,000 hours principle —> the idea that you have to work 10,000 hours to be an expert on anything
= a student at a desk studying hard
= sb who do whatever it takes to get something done, make every effort
= a successful person
—it’s morally better, morally correct
—yes, if you’re really hard working
—you have to work hard and work smart
—is the hard worker not smart? Maybe it’s just about luck
Is working smart harder than working hard?
1% inspiration and 99% perspiration
—do we expect a reward when we work hard?
—there’s no direct relationship, no correlation between working hard and getting rewarded.
—But if you don’t work hard, you don’t even have a chance
Poll: Which woman is more virtuous?
Woman A 4
Woman B 0
Neither 2
Both 1
—Why neither?
—The key point is when we’re working hard, we have to find what the target we’re working on. A physical skill or a creative goal.
Poll: Who deserves getting what she wants more?
Hard working woman A 2
Lucky woman B 0
Neither 1
Both 4
—'Deserves' always includes judgment
—Virtuous is about moral
—Moral is a kind of acceptable standard, easy to define
—But deserve is personal and harder to define
—Are morals kind of like a common judgment in our society?
—Yes
—Is personal judgment different than common judgment?
—Personal judgment can be equal to common judgment, but sometimes not, it depends on the individual
—Virtuous is full of judgment by others
—What’s the difference between being virtuous and deserving something?
—As kids, teachers, parents and ancestors say: everything is about working hard is better. Diligence can compensate for shortcomings, “one effort put in gets one reward back”
—That’s the baseline of how the world works. If they don’t teach us this, we won’t work hard.
—But when you grow up, the real world doesn’t work like this. Being nice to others, you don’t necessarily get a good outcome.
—If you insist on deserving equals virtue, your life will be a disaster.
—How?
—Because you’ll say everything did not come to a good outcome! Your judgment will be out of order. Because you don’t get rewarded according to your hard work. Virtually, you still believe that, but in reality, other factors influence the outcome, so you cannot say who deserves it.
According to these guys in the fb thread, contributing to others is virtue, and virtue is rare
Modern America is like: the more experiences you have the better a person you are.
A virtuous American is healthy, well-travelled, smart-working
A virtuous Taiwanese person is:
Good-hearted
Kind
Thinks of other people
Thinks of other people’s convenience
Contributes to society
Hard-working
Studies hard
No cheating
Honest
Be humble
Follow the crowd
Low-key
Simplicity, a simple life
Being quiet
Speak up when appropriate, and shut up when appropriate
Stay in your lane 知分寸
Respect elders
To really develop your creativity, you have to be in communication with others. Creativity also needs time for reflection, not just production. Like how salons in Paris in the 19th century created a lot of new ideas
