Chapter 123 Reflections in the Great Depression One_1

PS: This chapter reflects on the Great Ravine and does not involve plot development, so you can skip it. The summary is that we should not act rashly.

After seeing off Marcus and catching up with Rey Diaz, it was apparent that Rey Diaz was certainly much more capable than Lin Sen regarding the talent recruitment plan for the Great Ravine.

Lin Sen also had a brief period of stability. He needed to ponder what deeper truths the Great Ravine revealed and what was the true cause of the new humans' degeneration.

Societal ideologies are the foundation that sustains human society, but they are also the shell that constrains humanity's continued growth.

The Trisolaran Crisis also provided an opportunity for human civilization to break open its shell from within. Only if it took this opportunity to transform from a cocoon into a butterfly could it qualify for survival in the universe.

Human civilization must achieve self-breakthrough to truly qualify to face the sea of stars, which is why Lin Sen was reluctant to directly employ the Dark Forest Theory.

Knowing about the Dark Forest too early might not be beneficial for humanity's growth and could further hinder its development.

Just as a child who becomes aware of darkness too early will likely become pessimistic and negative, the probability of becoming more mature is too low. This aligns with Confucius's educational approach: he would not enlighten those who were not eager to understand.

Enlightenment at the right time leads to true growth.

In the original timeline, one could say humanity rose with Logic and fell with Logic. Logic protected humanity but cuddled it into infancy. What's terrifying is that humans became infantile in an extremely short time—a mere fifty-odd years—completely degenerating into giant infants.

Even after experiencing the war of the apocalypse, humans were still unaware of the sheer brutality of cosmic civilizational wars.

In the war of civilizations, there is no hatred, no interest, no compromise. It has no victors and, indeed, no losers, for there are no... losers.

The war among civilizations is not the mounted warfare and slashing of medieval imaginings; it overturns all our illusions about war.

All we can do is one thing: be perpetually ready, prepare by any means necessary, prepare without any constraints.

The moment a civilizational war begins, it is also its end. The Trisolaran Crisis gave humanity 400 years to prepare, which is virtually the Creator's greatest affection for mankind.

Returning to the Wallfacer Project's response to Trisolaris, the plans proposed by Wallfacers of this era are much more excellent than those in the original timeline. Tyler's and Hines's plans, although covert, gave Lin Sen hints that allowed him to speculate their nature.

Their plans both involve ball lightning, which is not surprising, as humans cannot possibly achieve transformative scientific results with conventional technology.

Tyler's plan is likely a fusion of the original Tyler's and Rey Diaz's plans; its essence is deterrence. Hines's plan is probably a combination of the original Hines's and Tyler's plans, with its essence still being escape.

The feasibility of the plans is definitely there. Tyler and Hines both have strong scientific foundations; their calculations should not be wrong, unlike Rey Diaz, who needed to consult astronomers and therefore had his plan's flaws exposed and breached by Mozi.

Lin Sen will keep Tyler's and Hines's plans as a contingency. They should not be used from the start, as an egg hatching from the inside signifies birth, while an egg opened from the outside is food.

Humanity must go through the war of the apocalypse, experience the cruelty of civilizational war, to truly grow.

Whether choosing to flee or stay in the Solar System, humans need to hone and temper themselves in the warfare of civilizations.

Humans who have not been tested on the battlefields of civilizational war, even if fleeing deep into the cosmos, will be unable to adapt to its darkness and brutality.

But if the war of civilizations utterly destroys the backbone of human civilization, then humanity will also lose the drive and hope to move forward.

When human civilization faces great challenges and tribulations, if it cannot respond and adapt effectively, it may fall into despair and degradation.

Smooth sailing cannot bring about true growth in civilization. Such a civilization is like a child that never grows up, immature for lack of hardship.

Civilization's growth requires finding balance amidst appropriate adversity.

In the face of tribulation, rationality is the only beacon of light guiding civilization forward, not being consumed by madness or overtaken by despair, but with fortitude alone.

Fortitude is the sediment of civilization in the torrent of history.

Nowadays, the Great Ravine is the same, in terms of human civilization, it is also about seeking balance through moderate trials and tribulations.

Without such disasters, humanity cannot transform, but if the disaster is too severe, it can also lead to a complete domination by despair and may even directly result in a complete change in the ideological orientation of the future new humans, as well as the overall society.

Fighting against the Great Ravine, the fight is not against environmental disasters, but against the disasters of the human heart.

It must be admitted that the ideological revolution after the Great Ravine indeed promoted the development of human technology, but it also led to the deformed development of human society.

There are many reasons that led to the "idiocy" of future new humans, but Lin Sen believes there are three key ones:

First, the disaster is so great that the human world can hardly bear it, leading humans to stop fantasizing about any possibility of victory, being completely occupied by defeatism. Since failure is predestined, why bother struggling during the final moments? There is a pleasant term for explaining this in the future, "civilizational self-healing."

In fact, they also understand that this is defeatism, and they also want to hide the sins within the Great Ravine, the best way being not to let anyone uncover it.

Second, the struggle between new and old humans, which is also a transformation of social ideology. According to future historiography deductions, the future struggle between new and old humans is inevitable. The essence of transformation is struggle, and the essence of struggle is actually the establishment of warring factions; the way humans unite often involves finding a common enemy.

In the future, Common Era People are those in hibernation with special status or missions, who already have a higher social status, but the future people do not wish for Common Era People to have the same right to speak as they do.

Their struggle against Common Era People does not involve the competition of wits but instead uses public opinion, because this is their greatest advantage. It's not mentioned in the original work, but it's easy to infer.

Third, the inertia of human groups, which do not think unless they experience setbacks.

Wrongful success is more terrible than failure.

Future people attribute all the mistakes of the Great Ravine to Common Era People through generations of propaganda, establishing their own correctness.

But the continuous brainwashing propaganda led humans to an alternative kind of collective insanity, and after several generations, they no longer wished to think.

Every era has its own madness; only the form of expression changes, but the essence never does.

Perhaps the original summary was wrong; weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, nor is arrogance; madness and morality are.

At its core, morality is the standard of human recognition of social ideology; the development of society inevitably leads to the transformation of social ideology. If this transformation is unsuccessful or leads to the wrong outcome, humans also lose the qualification to face the future.

The above are the issues of the "idiocy" of the new humans following the Great Ravine, but it does not touch upon the fundamental question of how society itself developed.

Fighting against the Great Ravine is definitely not a matter that can be solved by a few technological advancements or by solving food or survival crises.

Lin Sen needs to decipher the essential reason for the emergence of the Great Ravine and the essential reason for the mutation of humans in the later stages of the Great Ravine.

If this is not clearly understood, what Lin Sen does may even potentially restrict the future of humanity on some level.

Therefore, one must not rush when dealing with the Great Ravine.

The human world is currently undergoing an economic transformation, and the most mainstream current of thought is to spare no expense, sacrifice everything that can be sacrificed, to fight the Trisolaran invasion to the greatest extent possible, even using the most insane means to destroy the environment.

When it comes to environmental protection, most people think that even if Earth is preserved like a garden, in the end, it's still left to the Trisolarans, or furthermore, environmental protection is even equated with the Earth-Trisolaris Organization.

This wave of thought mainly stems from defeatism; on the surface, it appears to be an eager attitude to engage in resistance against the Trisolarans, but in essence, it is another form of defeatism.

Lacking confidence in human victory and even doubting the meaning of their own work, deep despair develops into numbness. Only in similar groups can they find comfort for their hearts.

Such groups are also growing increasingly larger.

Sometimes society is swept along; human society is a collective, and during society's development process, it is often a group's unconscious behavior that replaces the conscious actions of individuals, which is also the main characteristic of this era.

Individuals who join the group, under the influence of the "Collective Unconscious" mechanism, will experience an essential psychological change, with arbitrariness and paranoia as the most prominent expressions of group characteristics.