The Cognitive Pain of the Middle Class: Worshipping the Strong, Loathing the Job, Mistaking Jade for a Wooden Carving, and Cliques Huddling Together

The cognitive pain of the middle class is a cluster of propositions in the observation of the world and society. It holds that almost everyone worships the strong, and that those caught in the middle — whose cognition is sharp enough to see clearly how the system runs, but whose ability falls short of changing it — fall into the deepest suffering of all, neither able to rise nor willing to sink. From this observation the cluster branches into several diagnoses of labor, of evaluation, and of community: what people refuse is not the work itself but the sense that the wage does not match their time; the Chinese style of evaluation routinely takes a block of jade and works it like a wooden carving, then turns around and blames the material; and the high-priced course and its circle, which look like learning, are in truth the same crowd huddling together for warmth, without the courage to break the circle. The core tension can be stated in a single line: they understand, and yet cannot change a thing.

Worshipping the Strong and the Suffering of the Middle Position

The proposition begins with a judgment about human nature: almost everyone worships the strong. This is not the failing of some particular type of person but a universal tendency — by nature, people look upward and gravitate toward those stronger than themselves. The real suffering lies neither at the very bottom nor at the very top, but in the middle. The defining trait of the middle class is that their cognition is far from low: they have, more or less, understood how the system runs, and so they feel the urge to change their lot — yet their ability is limited, and they genuinely cannot. Seeing clearly and being powerless exist at the same time, and out of this comes a continuous inner attrition.

Almost everyone worships the strong… The urge to change comes from having more or less grasped the laws by which the system runs; the inability to change comes from limited ability… Whether in wealth or in wisdom, to be neither able to rise nor able to sink is what hurts most.

This state is named “neither rising nor sinking” — and, crucially, it operates along two axes at once: wealth and wisdom. Those who cannot see clearly do not suffer, because nothing weighs on them; those who have wholly given up the struggle do not suffer either, because they no longer expect anything. Only those who “understand in their hearts but cannot change a thing” are pinned in the seam between cognition and ability.

I find more and more things that I understand in my heart but cannot change… Whether in wealth or in wisdom, to be neither able to rise nor able to sink is what hurts most.

This forms a sharp counterpoint to the claim in Raising Your Cognition Is the Only Shortcut: You Cannot Earn Money Beyond Your Cognition: cognition is usually regarded as the way out, but when cognition runs ahead of ability and finds no lever to act on, it instead becomes an amplifier of suffering. The more clearly one sees, the more concrete one’s dissatisfaction with one’s own situation becomes. What this proposition reveals is not that cognition is useless, but that between cognition and action there lies a chasm that “more cognition” alone cannot bridge.

Mistaking Jade for a Wooden Carving: The Mismatch of Evaluation

The second diagnosis targets the standard of evaluation itself. In the Chinese context, the verdict people hear most often is that “the rough edges have not been smoothed down” — a rhetoric that demands a person shed their individuality and conform to a single mold. One metaphor names the fundamental error of this mechanism: many people are handed what is in fact a block of jade, yet they work it the way one works a wooden carving, treating it as cheap stock to be chiseled at will and shaped to a uniform form; and when the finished piece falls short, instead of questioning their method of working, they blame the material itself.

Many people take a block of jade and work it like a wooden carving. And in the end they still blame the material.

The blade of this metaphor lies in a double error of mismatch and attribution. The first layer is the wrong craft — applying the standard for ordinary stock to what should have been treasured. The second is shifting the blame for failure onto the thing being worked: if the material does not shine, it must be the material’s fault, never the worker’s. By this, the point is made: the criticism of “rough edges left unsmoothed” is, more often than not, not a defect in the material at all but the evaluator holding the wrong measuring stick. This shares a root with the image of being “pressed into the mold” in Growing Up Is Being Pressed Into Society’s Mold: Disenchantment Reveals Freedom: society’s mold assumes everyone ought to be whittled down to the same shape, whereas the value of jade lies precisely in its not being treated as wood. It also carries forward the concern of Education Is the Root of All Roots: Values Are the Soil, Morality the Lubricant of Efficiency, Law the Floor — what kind of material you treat a person as being is itself a choice of values.

Loathing the Job: What Is Refused Is Not Labor but the Pricing

The third proposition handles a phenomenon that is widely misread. The lazy attribution of “not wanting to go to work” to laziness is rejected here. An escalating question dismantles the misreading: if I gave you a hundred thousand a day, would you go? And a million a day?

I give you a hundred thousand a day — would you go? …A million a day? …Almost no one would refuse, right? …So the real reason you don’t want to go to work is that you feel this wage doesn’t match your time.

When the pay is high enough, almost no one refuses; this shows that what is being refused has never been the act of “going to work,” nor labor itself.

So the real reason you don’t want to go to work is that you feel this wage doesn’t match your time — am I right or not?

From this, the problem is redefined as a dispute over pricing: what a person truly refuses is an offer they judge unworthy of their time. This replaces the moral charge of “laziness” with a rational judgment about the value of time and the fairness of an exchange. It chimes quietly with Time Can Stretch Without Limit: Attention Is the Scarcest Thing of All — if time and attention are the scarcest resources, then “the wage doesn’t match my time” is a clear-eyed refusal of a bad bargain, not an evasion of work. This diagnosis turns the accusation away from the worker’s character and toward the reasonableness of the exchange itself.

Cliques Huddling Together: The Illusion of the Paid Circle

The fourth proposition points to the move the middle class most often makes to ease the suffering described above — paying to join a circle, signing up for high-priced courses. On the surface, paying tens of thousands for a course counts as “learning from those who have gotten results in the past,” an upward effort; but there is a point at which this logic deceives itself.

Many circles look like learning, and paying tens of thousands for a course counts as learning from those who have gotten results in the past. But in truth, what finally gathers together is still the same crowd, merely embracing, resonating with, and consoling one another amid the torrent of the age — fundamentally lacking the courage to break the circle, to feel the new and rising forces.

The verdict: what finally gathers together is still the same crowd. What these circles offer is not new cognition but the mutual embrace, resonance, and consolation of a homogeneous group — huddling together for warmth in the torrent of the age. What they truly lack is “the courage to break the circle,” the willingness to meet the heterogeneous, the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable new and rising forces.

But in truth, what finally gathers together is still the same crowd, merely embracing, resonating with, and consoling one another amid the torrent of the age — fundamentally lacking the courage to break the circle, to feel the new and rising forces.

This observation draws a strict line between “learning” and “keeping warm”: paying is not itself growth, and entering a circle is not itself breaking out of one. It resonates with Attention Is Precious: Beware the Coreless and the NPCs — a homogeneous community is the readiest to become an echo chamber that confirms its own members, spending attention on mutual consolation. It is also one concrete face of Fleecing the Flock Comes Down to Gaps in Information and Cognition: False Cures, Learning the Wrong Lesson, and How a Lie Can Save While the Truth Kills: what the high-priced course usually sells is the “false cure” of confirmation and belonging, not a lever that can actually shift one’s situation. What truly lets a person change is precisely that bit of courage to leave the comfortable warm layer and bear the impact of the heterogeneous.

A Single Thread Running Through

These four diagnoses are not isolated from one another but different facets of a single predicament. Worshipping the strong and “neither rising nor sinking” sketch the basic situation of the middle class: they can see what is above, but cannot reach it. Mistaking jade for a wooden carving reveals how external evaluation mistreats this group, and then pushes the blame for failure back onto them. The true cause of loathing the job is the gap between this group’s clear-eyed valuation of their own time and the offer reality makes. Cliques huddling together is their futile self-rescue — seeking solace within that gap, yet remaining trapped in the warm layer.

Running through all of it is the same knot, returned to again and again: they understand, and yet cannot change a thing. Cognition brings clarity, but clarity does not automatically bring a way out; and the surrounding mechanisms of evaluation, the pricing of labor, and the structure of community press these clear-eyed people back into place, again and again. This cluster offers no complete plan of escape — it is more a description of the predicament. How one actually completes that leap of “breaking the circle” is a question the proposition leaves open, declining to force a close. Its sense of direction can be read against Seeing the World Through Evolution: Home Is the Safest Ground, and Seeing Through the Prison of Fame, Wealth, and Power: seeing through the cage is the first step; walking out of it is another matter entirely.

Sources

Manuscript — “Almost everyone worships the strong… The urge to change comes from having more or less grasped the laws by which the system runs; the inability to change comes from limited ability… to be neither able to rise nor able to sink is what hurts most.”
Manuscript — “Many people take a block of jade and work it like a wooden carving. And in the end they still blame the material.”
Manuscript — “I give you a hundred thousand a day — would you go? …You feel this wage doesn’t match your time.”
Manuscript — “What finally gathers together is still the same crowd, merely embracing, resonating with, and consoling one another amid the torrent of the age, fundamentally lacking the courage to break the circle.”

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