得失心太重的人的特点（审美与功利）

Generally, there are two points of views for us to see the world: aesthetic point of view and utilitarian point of view. When you describe someone as utilitarian, you mean he regards secular fame and gain as important and does everything beneficial to himself, such as study hard for good grades, get good grades to be admitted by a top university, get the diploma to be hired by a big company, and buy everything he wants when he has been paid for his work. Even if the business of making friends, which entails the willingness of the two party and the law of attraction, a utilitarian is bound to embed some aim into it: befriend a pianist to help himself improve piano skills; crawl to dignitaries for the opportunity to use them; try to win a beauty's affection to meet his sexual demand; keep stained people at a distance because they are prone to get him into trouble. As a Chinese saying goes: The gentleman thinks in terms of righteousness, the petty man in terms of gains. An egoist is usually looked down upon and marginalized by people around him. Only when he takes on social responsibility can he be accepted by the mainstream group as a member of them. In spite of all this, utilitarianism is an indispensable means of survival that everybody needs to learn, because evolved from gorilla, everyone of us has animal instincts and needs with us, such as appetite, sexual desire, safety need, love need and esteem need. Like noisy infants, these instincts and needs keep crying for satisfaction. If we failed to meet their demands, they will stir to make us ill at ease and get us as uncomfortable as a fish out of water. To meet their insatiable demands, we have to spend a lifetime competing with one another for scarce resources, such as key school in teenage years, position and salary in our youth, success of career and happiness of family in the autumn of our lives and career and future of our children when we are old enough. To do so, we are like tight-wound clocks rush ahead without a break, grab everything beneficial to make our "inner infants" stop crying. All in all, we have to be utilitarian to lead a better life.

通常来说，有两种我们看待世界的方式：审美的眼光和功利的眼光，当你说某人很功利，你的意思是他看重功名利禄、只做对他自己有利的事，比如努力学习为了考高分、得到高分是为了进名牌大学、拿到文凭是为了被大公司聘用，之后就可以用自己获得的薪水买任何自己想要的东西了。甚至连交朋友这种你情我愿、遵从吸引力法则的事，一个功利主义者都必定能在其中找到某种目的：结交一位钢琴能手是为了帮助自己提高钢琴技能；巴结达官显贵是为了找机会利用他们；追求漂亮的异性是为了满足性欲；对劣迹斑斑的人敬而远之是为了怕对方连累自己。中国有句古话说得好：君子喻于义，小人喻于利，一个自私自利的人常为周围人所不耻，当且仅当他担负起社会责任才能被主流文化群体接纳为其中的一员，尽管如此，功利主义却是每个人必须学会的一种生存的必要手段，因为从大猩猩进化而来的我们每个人身上都带着动物的本能和需求，比如食欲、性欲、安全的需求、爱的需求和受尊重的需求，那些本能和需求就像一个哭闹的婴儿总是吵着要我们去满足它，如果得不到满足，它就会搅得我们心神不宁、让我们感到入鱼离水般的不自在。为了满足它们贪得无厌的需求，我们不得不用一辈子的光景彼此竞争稀有资源，比如青少年时期的重点学校、青年时期的薪水和职位、中年时期的事业有成和家庭美满、老年时期的子女的事业和前途。我们就像一个上紧了发条的时钟一刻不停地往前冲，抓住所有对自己有利的东西去哄我们“内在的婴儿”别哭，总之，为了活得更好我们不得不做功利主义者。

In spite of the fact that secular fame and gain are good for our survival, they not only failed to make us happy, but become the root of our suffering in many ways. In order to achieve fame and wealth, one has to pay the price. The more benefit one wants, the more the price increases exponentially: if you just want to maintain a basic living, you can get the result with the same amount of effort; if you want to lead a privileged life, you need to work overtime to get the same result with double amount of effort; if you are so avaricious to lead an extravagant life, you have to do the best you can to get the same result with triple or quadruple amount of effort. Take smart phone as an example, if you just want a mobile phone with the function of call, answer, photograph and chat, you can buy yourself one without any difficulty; if you want the latest iphone, you have to bite the bullet, take out a large amount of savings and cut daily expenses; if you follow the fashion and intend to keep the latest iphone at hand at all times, you have to empty your pocket and be at the mercy of money, luxuries and desire. Sometimes we are too impotent to abandon our desire. When the latest iphone hits the market and the little thing in my hand is on the way out, I have a desperate urge to get rid of the old one and take possession of the new one. Only with great efforts that I dismissed the idea and persuaded myself to keep that seemingly stale, old and broken thing. Sometimes I feel our mortal beings have no other choice but to be slaves of desire and at the mercy of it. In the meantime, the satisfaction of it is not once and for all. We can get temporary pleasure when it is just satisfied, but it won't be long before it stages a comeback and be a "crying infant" again. So, we can come to the conclusion that utilitarian point of view can by no means bring eternal happiness to us. To achieve it, we have to learn to employ aesthetic view of point. When it comes to aesthetics, the first thing springs to my mind is art, such fine art, music, dance and drama. Definitely, it's an inertial thinking to link art with aesthetic, science with truth and morality with goodness. When we adopt the utilitarian thinking, neither of us can get rid of subject-object dualistic division: we see ourselves as subjects and everything we confront as object. To achieve fame, wealth and get everything beneficial, we have to be well acquainted with laws of myriads of things: the natural law, the law of human society and the law of historical development, and then put everything at the service of us, (to manage all sorts of people, we need even to be acquainted with human nature, and only in this way can we avoid the increment of the cost when situation gets complicated). For the reason that the wide world is too complicated to handle and the wisdom of our human beings is too limited to master the ultimate law, in most cases, subjects, instead of letting objects play the part of a "good boy", are often handicapped by them. Hence the consequence this kind of way of thinking constantly leads to is a feeling of anxiety.

尽管功名利禄有利于我们生存，但是它们不仅没能使我们快乐，反而在很多时候成为我们痛苦的根源，为了得到声望和财富一个人就必须付出代价，他想得到的好处越多，他付出的代价就越是呈指数倍增长：你若仅仅想维持最基本的温饱，你付出就能得到同等的回报；如果你想过上养尊处优的生活，你就必须努力工作加班加点付出原来的两倍才能得到同等的回报；如果你贪婪到了想要穷奢极欲的地步，你就必须拼尽全力付出原来三四倍的努力才能得到同等的回报。就拿智能手机来说吧，如果你仅仅想要一个能够接打电话、拍照聊天的手机，你不费吹灰之力就能为自己买一台；如果你想要一台最新款的苹果手机，你必须忍痛割爱拿出一大笔积蓄同时削减日常开支；如果你赶时髦时时刻刻都想将你手中的苹果手机保持在最新款，那你必须掏空口袋并成为金钱、奢侈品和欲望的奴隶。有时候我们在欲望跟前显得软弱而无力，当最新款的苹果手机上市、同时我手上的小玩意儿即将淘汰的时候，我有一种强烈的冲动想要处理掉旧手机并将新款的据为己有，我需要费很大的劲才能摒除原先的想法并说服自己继续使用那个看上去已经没有任何新鲜感的破玩意儿，有时候我感觉我们凡人别无选择只能成为欲望的奴隶并任由其摆布，与此同时，欲望的满足不是一劳永逸的，当它刚刚被满足之际，我们能产生暂时的愉悦感，但是过不了多久它就会卷土重来并重新成为那个“哭闹的婴儿”。因此我们可以得出结论：功利的眼光不能为我们带来永恒的快乐，为此我们必须学会采用审美的眼光，说到审美，我首先会想到艺术，如美术、音乐、舞蹈和戏剧，确切地说，我们在惯性思维的影响下会将艺术跟美、科学跟真、道德跟善联系在一起，当我们采用功利的思维方式我们就摆脱不掉主客体二元分裂：我们将自己看成是主体、将所有我们面对的事物看作是客体，为了得到声望、财富和所有好处，我们不得不掌握大千世界万事万物的规律：自然律、人类社会的规律和历史发展的规律，之后让万事万物为我们人类所用，（为了管理各式各样的人，我们甚至需要掌握人性，只有这样才不至于在情况变得复杂时增加成本）。因为大千世界太复杂了、我们人类的智慧太有限了以至于不能掌握住那个终极规律，在很多情况下，主体不仅不能让客体扮演一个乖孩子的角色，反而常常受制于它们，所以这种思维方式的结果就是一种焦虑感。

Aesthetic way of thinking is just a good recipe to tackle the problem. As it is super-utilitarian and has nothing to do with desire, it not only bridged that dualistic division, but to some extent dispelled the feeling of anxiety. I can still remember the scene I was playing video games in my early years: I totally submerged into it as if I was that small figure on the screen. His life and death completely lie in my hands. As if possessed by a devil, I was delirious with joy when he defeated the boss and went through the level successfully; I got frustrated when he was given an awful beating up by enemies; My heart was thumping when he is in danger and I wept for joy at the scene he reunited with his lover. I can also remember the first time I brought home the DVD of Rurouni Kenshin—a classic Japanese animation. The whole afternoon passed in a flash and it is already dark outside when I came to myself. As if my spirit left my body and entered another world, I was so absorbed in characters and the vivid story of it that I would not care even if an earthquake happened at my feet. Notwithstanding there were all kinds of intractable people and things pestered me and made my life a complete mess in real life, it seemed as if I had a dream, and having fled into the fantasy world, I broke loose from the annoyance and got the pleasure never experienced before when I was playing games and watching animations, and that is perhaps the so-called aesthetic activity. If video game and animation could only be counted as cheap aesthetic activities which any untrained man is able to lose himself in it, fine art and music is really advanced ones. You may be tired of all kinds of games, find it difficult to be enthusiastic about them anymore and feel all the cartoons of the same pattern and it is a waste of time watching them, but you can always draw pleasure from the "advanced aesthetic activities" when you go a bit deeper into any kind of them and have a fresh feeling when you turn your attention to another genre and school. When you are listening to a symphony or enjoying an oil painting, you can enter a state of "forgetting yourself and the opposing object, blending emotion with scenery". As it is super-utilitarian, we never concern for personal gains and losses when we look into everything for beauty. For the reason that there is no need for us to pay any price for it, the feeling of upset will never rise in our hearts during the process.

审美的思维模式恰恰是解决这个问题的一剂良方，因为它是超功利的、它跟欲望扯不上一毛钱关系，所以它不仅能够弥合主客体二元分裂的鸿沟，而且在一定程度上消除了焦虑感。还记得早年玩游戏时的情景：我完全沉浸在其中，仿佛自己就是银幕上的那个小人，他的生死完全掌握在我手中，我好像被鬼魂附体了一样，当他打败了老怪顺利通关的时候我就欣喜若狂；当他被敌人虐成狗我就感到无比沮丧；当他陷入危险时我的心砰砰直跳；当他跟自己的爱人团聚时我喜极而泣。我也记得第一次将浪客剑心——一部经典的日本动画片的碟片带回家中，整个下午如弹指一挥间，我刚回过神来天已经黑了，似乎我的灵魂离开了身体进入了另一个世界，我完全专注于其中的人物和生动的故事情节，以至于即便是地震在我脚下发生我都管不了，虽然在现实中各种头疼的人和事让我不堪其扰、他们把我的生活搅得一团糟，但是当我打游戏和看动画片时，我好像做了一个梦，遁入幻想世界的我摆脱了烦恼并得到了之前从未经历过的愉悦，这或许就是所谓的审美活动。如果说电子游戏和动画片仅仅算是一种廉价的审美活动，任何没有受过专业训练的人都能沉浸其中，那么美术和音乐则算是一种高级的审美活动，你或许会对各式各样的游戏感到腻味儿，或是对它们再也提不起任何兴趣；你或许会感觉所有的动画片都千篇一律、观看它们简直是浪费时间，但是当你对那些“高级审美活动”中的任何一个艺术门类钻得更深一点你总能从中汲取快乐、当你切换到其他类型和流派时你总能找到一种新鲜感。当你听一部交响乐或是观赏一幅油画时，你能达到一种物我两忘、情景交融的境界，因为它是超功利的，所以我们在挖掘事物美的同时不必考虑个人得失，因为我们不必为此付出任何代价，所以沮丧感从来不会在此过程中油然而生。

Of course, aesthetic point of view is not limited to art, we can also take that attitude toward life. As long as you have an eye for beauty, you can find beautiful things up hill and down dale: beautiful sceneries, delicious food, people with beautiful minds, unusual buildings and colorful flowers. As long as you take the attitude of "admire it in the distance rather than play and possess it rashly", they can always bring pleasure to you. Subsistence and joy are the most important things for our living beings. Hence utilitarian and aesthetic point of view like our two legs. We can't walk without neither of them and we always call somebody a cripple, an unhealthy man if he lacks any one of them. Having integrated into the group of depressed patients, I found not a few of them had been trained to be utilitarians in current educational environment. In the meantime, their modes of thinking hindered them from changing into another angle to see the world, and in this way they fell into a wrong path and got stuck in the mud of depression. As a matter of fact, they can not only grow up healthily, but be healthier than all the normal people around if they learn to "walk with another leg". How important the aesthetic view of point is that it can cure disease! Generally speaking, we mortal beings need first to survival and then to be happy. Having acquired adequate living resource and could thus lead a favorable living, we have to "focus on the aesthetic leg to walk" and derive pleasure from every beautiful triviality in ordinary life, otherwise we will become the slave of desire and never get a thrill of joy even if we keep running day and night like a machine to satisfy it.

当然，审美的眼光并不限于艺术，我们也可以此态度来对待生活，只要你有一双善于发现美的眼睛，你在何处都能发现美的事物：美景、美食、心灵美的人、非同寻常的建筑物和姹紫嫣红的花，只要你抱着“可远观而不可亵玩焉”的态度，它们总能为你带来愉快。生存和愉悦是对于我们活着的人来说最重要的两件事情，因此功利和审美就像我们的两条腿，缺了其中的任何一只我们都不能行走，若某个人缺条腿我们会管他叫瘸子、一个不健全的人，在接触了抑郁症的群体后，我发现很多人就是因为在当前的教育环境中被训练成功利主义者，并且他们的思维定势致使他们不会改换看待世界的角度，因此他们才走入了歧途，陷入抑郁症的泥潭不能自拔，其实只要学会了“用另一条腿走路”，他们不仅能健康地成长，而且能成长得比所有正常人更加健康，审美的眼光能够治愈顽疾，可见其有多重要！就一般意义上来说，我们凡人首先是生存其次是快乐与否，当我们得到了充足的生存资源并因而能过上丰衣足食的生活后，我们就不得不“将重心放在审美的那条腿上”并从平凡生活中各种美好的琐事中得到愉悦，否则我们就会成为欲望的奴隶，即便如机器一般昼夜运转也因满足不了它而得不到任何快乐。

That is my opinion towards aesthetics and utilitarianism.

这就是我对审美和功利的理解。