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Desire drives economic development; desire is the engine of economic growth.#

People always choose the social class they belong to as a reference for consumption, seeking recognition and admiration from others for their class, identity, and status. This mindset can stimulate economic development. Consumers often lack rational analysis of themselves and their surroundings, becoming trapped in a mindset that craves admiration, which can lead them to remain stuck in a vicious cycle they have created for themselves.
Desire is merely a habit. What is a habit? It is an action or behavior that, when repeated many times, enters a person's subconscious and becomes a habitual action. Once a habit is formed, it becomes a force that governs one's life, automating behavior without the need for special willpower or external monitoring; regardless of the circumstances, one will act according to the established will.
The views on desire and values formed during growth are like an invisible chain that binds us. Naturally, we take these chains for granted as habits. Thus, we must strive to motivate and spur ourselves, believing that we must succeed and become wealthy, must possess a large amount of money, and must achieve a satisfactory life.
Society is a realm of commodities and desires, where normal life always requires us to be polite. This is a law: if we want to earn the respect and affection of others, we must deeply hide some seemingly "bad" aspects of ourselves, such as our aggressiveness, recklessness, greed, and contempt. We cannot expose all aspects of our emotions and intellect; otherwise, society will not accept us. Therefore, once sexual love allows our hidden selves to be seen by others—thereby gaining approval—we will experience pleasure in desire (to be more precise, it is a form of emotional satisfaction).
In front of someone who firmly believes in our purity, we dare to reveal the sides of ourselves that we usually fear or are ashamed to show. What we say and do in such situations may lead the world to label us as madmen. Thus, allowing oneself to slap or choke another can be a testament to love. Such permission signifies that our partner knows we are fundamentally good people. Although we have dark sides, they do not care. They can see through all of us like ideal parents and affirm that we are essentially kind. When a tolerant lover willingly invites us to express or do the worst things we can think of, we actually gain a special opportunity to show our true selves.

If we are on the receiving end of such violence and brutality, we may also experience the same pleasure and a sense of power, as we can decide the extent of the humiliation, harm, and control we endure. In daily life, we often endure the abuse of others, frequently having to yield to the tyranny of the powerful, allowing them to manipulate us; yet here, in our own dramatic performance, we hand over the power to conquer ourselves to someone who is inherently kind and gentle, thus achieving complete liberation. We command the other to slap and insult us, thereby overcoming our inner fears of our own vulnerability; at the same time, after enduring the worst abuse imaginable from the other and emerging unscathed, we will feel the pleasure that comes from our resilience and strong vitality.

The loyalty between couples will escalate with the continuous escalation of violence. The more we believe that our actions will cause panic in the norms of normal society, the more we feel that we have established a paradise of mutual acceptance with each other. Such brutal behaviors make no sense from an evolutionary biology perspective; only from a psychological standpoint can we understand that being hit, pinched, bound, or raped is proof of acceptance by a lover.
Sex temporarily liberates us from the harsh rules we have been taught since childhood that distinguish dirtiness from cleanliness. Sex allows us to display the dirtiest sides of ourselves and endows them with new value, thus purifying us. The moment we most vividly feel this is when we press our face—our most public and dignified part—against our lover's most hidden and "dirty" parts, kissing, sucking, and licking, symbolizing the acceptance of the entirety of the other’s self. This is akin to a priest gently kissing the forehead of a penitent, symbolically washing away all the sins committed by the penitent, allowing them to return to the embrace of religion.
Civilization has brought many benefits to gender relations, including enhancing understanding and communication between genders, promoting equality, and distributing household labor more fairly. However, we must admit that civilization has also made it—at least for men—more difficult to enjoy sex. Now, we all know that we must never stubbornly insist, never rudely force the other to satisfy our needs, and never treat others as mere tools for our own pleasure and gratification.
Pornographic content, like alcohol and drugs, can make it impossible for people to bear certain sufferings in life, which are necessary to have a normal life. To be more precise, pornographic content reduces our tolerance for anxiety and boredom that lacks clear direction. Anxiety is a real but confusing feeling that indicates we have some problems, so we must listen carefully to the messages conveyed by anxiety and interpret them patiently. If we are repeatedly distracted by computers—the most distracting tool ever invented—then the aforementioned listening and interpreting process becomes difficult to complete. The entire internet is a pornographic space that stimulates the senses, continuously providing us with irresistible excitement and enticing us to indulge, leading us away from responding to our true inner needs.
Moreover, the easy access to online pornography also lowers our tolerance for boredom, which precisely provides the space for our creativity to emerge—when we are bathing or on a long train journey, we may indulge in this creativity-enhancing boredom. Whenever we feel an irresistible impulse to escape our own thoughts, we can almost be certain that something important is about to enter our consciousness; however, it is precisely at this moment of nurturing new ideas that we are most easily tempted by online pornography, leading us to escape the right path.
Since the secular world always rejects censorship and firmly believes in human maturity and rationality, advocates of secularism often find it absurd: can a rational adult man really turn his life upside down just because he caught a glimpse of a woman's elegant knee or elbow? Who, besides the psychologically weak, would fantasize about a group of nearly naked girls on the beach?

Secular society adopts a tolerant attitude toward bikinis or sexual temptations because, overall, they do not believe that sexual desire and beauty have a strong influence on people. Secular society believes that men have enough self-control to appreciate a group of beautiful women playing—whether online or in real life—and then return to their daily lives as if nothing had happened.

Religion is often mocked for being overly restrained; however, the warnings it offers regarding sexuality stem from a profound understanding of the power and allure of desire.
Religion considers sex dangerous precisely because it knows that sex is also very beautiful. The problem is that this beauty may hinder humanity from focusing on more important and worthy things, such as God and life.
Of course, we do not go so far as to cover up beauty, but we should perhaps recognize the necessity of censorship on the internet and agree that the government should restrict the unregulated pornographic content that is everywhere online. Even if today we no longer worship deities, we must admit that appropriate repression is beneficial for the moral health of humanity, and our orderly, loving society can only function normally with it.
For our own sake, we must restrain some of our carnal desires. Repression is not merely for the followers of religion or other traditional cultures; rather, it is something that each of us cannot escape from to a certain extent. Since each of us must work, maintain our respective social circles, care for our offspring, and deepen our understanding of ourselves, we should not let sexual impulses run rampant—whether online or elsewhere. Once the tiger is out of the cage, our lives will be completely destroyed.
Pornographic content demands that we abandon moral ethics, aesthetic taste, and rational knowledge, aiming to immerse us in completely irrational lust. Pornographic content is filled with poor plots, absurd dialogues, emotionless performances, shabby settings, and shameless filming techniques—thus, once we satisfy our desires, all that remains in our hearts is disgust.
However, it is also conceivable that there exists another type of pornographic content that does not force us to make an absolute either-or choice between lust and morality—where lust is used to support rather than harm humanity's higher values. In fact, something similar already exists and appears in the most unexpected places—namely, in Christian art.
Marriage is the solution to satisfy all our desires for love, lust, and family. Marriage has transformed from a social institution into an emotional sacrifice, from an externally recognized rite of passage into an internally driven response to a certain emotional state.
The transformation of views on marriage appears legitimate due to the fear of so-called "false feelings." The psychological phenomenon of "false feelings" refers to the gap between a person's internal feelings and the expectations of the outside world. What the older generation used to call "surface work" is now classified as "lying," while the act of "fabricating stories out of politeness" is exaggeratedly viewed as "betraying oneself." Thus, what constitutes an appropriate marriage has added a strict condition, emphasizing that the internal self and external self must be consistent with each other.
Love-based views on marriage hold an intuitive respect. Under the influence of cultural biases and ideologies, it is difficult not to hold this respect; however, as we age, we often begin to have doubts: is all of this the result of a fantasy created by a group of authors and poets with adolescent minds hundreds of years ago? Should we return to the old institutional system?—after all, this system has been sufficient to meet the spiritual and social needs of humanity during most historical periods.

We meet an online friend in a chat room, and after some erotic teasing, they suggest meeting at an airport hotel; we might ruin our lives for a few hours of pleasure. Sometimes we may get angry with our partner, wishing they would be hit by a car immediately, but soon we feel that we would rather die than grow old alone. For example, during a long and boring weekend, we might eagerly hope that our children grow up quickly and stop bouncing on the trampoline all day so that we can settle down to read a magazine and keep the living room tidy. But just a day later, we might feel deeply regretful for not being able to return home in time to tuck them into bed because of a meeting or overtime.

Supporters of love-based views on marriage respect emotional sincerity and reliability, but they hold this attitude only because they have not closely observed the kaleidoscope of emotions that most people experience: the various contradictory, sentimental, and physiologically influenced forces that drive us toward madness and uncertainty. If we follow all our emotional impulses, we cannot achieve a coherent life. If we want to find satisfaction, sometimes we must display false feelings, and perhaps we must often do so. In other words, we must restrain our momentary impulses, such as wanting to strangle our children, poison our partners, or simply wanting to end an entire marriage over trivial matters like changing a light bulb.

Romanticism highlights the dangers of false feelings, but if we try to maintain consistency between our external lives and internal feelings at all times, the dangers we face will not be any less. It places a heavy burden on our emotions, hoping that the significant matters in our lives can be guided by our feelings. We are chaotic combinations of chemicals, desperately needing basic principles to adhere to during moments of rationality. We will find that our external environment often does not match our internal feelings; at this point, we should feel grateful and protected, as this situation indicates that we may be on the right track.

The popularity of institutional marriage can be attributed to its ability to continue day after day without needing to care too much about the psychological feelings of either spouse. Compared to systems that require constant monitoring of individual emotional states to adjust their positions, this indifference of marriage may better reflect the long-term desires of individuals.

Marriage is also suitable for children's needs. Marriage allows children to be free from worrying about the consequences of their parents' arguments: they can confidently believe that their parents love each other enough to resolve any issues, even if they argue fiercely every day, just like the children's behavior in the playground.

In a marriage judged fairly by the legal system, couples should not blame each other for occasional infidelity; instead, they should feel proud that both can generally remain loyal to the marriage. Too many people mistakenly place the moral focus in the wrong place when starting a relationship, self-righteously mocking infidelity as something disgusting and unbelievable. In fact, faithfully honoring marriage is a more wonderful and commendable act, but we usually take it for granted and consider it a norm that does not deserve to be celebrated. A couple who remain together for a lifetime in the cage of marriage, indifferent to external sexual temptations, is truly a miracle of civilization and kindness, and both parties should be grateful for it.

Couples who are loyal to their marriage should recognize the many sacrifices they have made for love and for their children, and they should be proud of their courage.
Abstinence is abnormal and brings no joy. Loyalty should be seen as an achievement and continuously rewarded—ideally, a loyalty award should be established, with drums and gongs to let everyone know—rather than being regarded as a trivial normal state that, once violated by infidelity, ignites the partner's anger. Couples loyal to marriage should always be acutely aware of the great restraint and tolerance they exhibit in resisting external temptations (which also includes restraint against each other). Once one party strays, the other can only be confused and surprised that, after so many adversities, they have managed to maintain loyalty and calm for so long, so there is really no need to get angry about it.
Without sexual impulses, many things would not exist. No one would bother to open a jewelry store, no one would embroider lace, no one would insist on serving food in exquisite silverware, and no one would insist on opening a hotel on a floating box in a tropical lagoon. Without sexual impulses as a driving force and organizing principle, most economic activities lose their meaning.
Accepting the pain that sexual impulses bring us is essential because, without this pain, we would not be so familiar with and understand art and music. Schubert's ballads, Natalie Merchant's album "Ophelia," Bergman's film "Scenes from a Marriage," and Nabokov's novel "Lolita" would lose their significance. We would not understand pain as we do now; we would become more cruel and unable to self-deprecate. After we use various contemptuous yet fair words to judge our inner sexual desires, we still praise them because sexual desire constantly reminds us of what it means to live a life rooted in the flesh, filled with chemical reactions, and fundamentally lacking in rationality.

Note: There are wonderful explorations in Pascal's "Pensées," Arthur Schopenhauer's "Wisdom of Life," and John Gray's "Straw Dogs."
From the perspective of biological evolution, the relationship between beauty and sex has been analyzed, making it a good introductory book. Kenneth Clark's "The Nude" explores the themes of beauty and desire, leaving a deep impression. For Ingres, Andrew Carrington Shelton's monograph "Ingres and His Critics" is a quite useful reference book.

The struggle for power and the resulting compromises and submissions are important components of all interpersonal relationships. When it appears in direct forms such as authority, coercion, bullying, aggression, and blame, it is easy to identify. Those in power will decide whether to punish or reward others based on how compliant they are with their own will. But there is also the power of the weak. Compliance, passivity, obstruction, flattery, and the feeling of moral superiority of the victim are all manifestations of the power of the weak. The imbalance of power is inevitable.
In "Feeling Strong," it is written that we first recognize power disparities within the power network of the family. "All power relations, all desires to dominate or submit have their psychological roots: we were all once children facing powerful parents; they also have their real roots in a chaotic world where we feel small and need to conquer it."
In childhood, we undergo basic training in power tactics: we have our will, and our parents have theirs; we make demands, and they oppose us; we negotiate for what we want, and they tell us what we can have; we learn to resist, and we also learn to submit. From the best perspective, we learn to balance, mediate, and understand.

All these power relations also manifest in our intimate relationships as adults, both for men and women. When boys and girls first use power, there is a significant difference. Men are good at expressing power directly, while women tend to express power indirectly, and these differences are also evident in sexual relationships.

As adults, we control our sexual desires partly to resist the inherent fragility of love. When we place our hopes on another person, we are intensely dependent on them, and our frustrations and disappointments can be immense. The more helpless we feel in love, the greater the possibility of shame. The more we need, the angrier we become when we do not get it. Children know this, and partners know it too. No one can anger us more than our partners (perhaps except for parents, who are the people we have relied on since childhood). In a sense, love always accompanies hate.
While we worry about becoming too dependent on others, we fear our own rage even more. We navigate our anger through complex relationships and channels; however, the partners who successfully achieve this peaceful mode often lack passion. When we confuse assertion with aggression, eliminate differences, adjust our expectations, and use reason to eliminate hostility, we reinforce a sense of peace that gives us security but does not excite us. Stephen Mitchell suggests that the ability to embrace the other’s aggressiveness is a prerequisite for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggressiveness rather than eliminate it. Stephen Mitchell explains: "The regression of romance and the weakening of desire are not due to aggression contaminating love, but because we cannot maintain the necessary tension between the two."
The reason desire is difficult to sustain over time is that it requires the coordination of two opposing forces: freedom and commitment.

Therefore, it is not only a psychological or real problem but also a systemic issue, making it more difficult to solve. It belongs to a survival dilemma that is both unsolvable and inevitable. Ironically, even in the pragmatic and efficient business world, people acknowledge that some problems do not have clear solutions.
In everyone's brain system, similar two extremes can be found: stability and change, passion and reason, individual interests and collective interests, action and reflection, and these are just a part of it. These conflicts exist within individuals, couples, families, and various organizations.

These dynamic relationships are part of the essence of reality. Leadership expert Barry Johnson, author of "Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems," describes polarity as a pair of interdependent, opposing, and unified relationships within the whole—you cannot choose one and discard the other; the survival of the system requires both to exist.

These adults, who understand nothing themselves, still demand that we explain everything to them. This truly annoys children.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "The Little Prince"
Childhood is like a forgotten spark, which can burn again in our hearts.
—Gaston Bachelard
Many formal and informal institutions are "monitoring" our sexual behaviors, including the clergy, government agencies, the medical community, the education sector, the media, and popular culture, etc.
These institutions define and regulate our "sexual happiness index" almost every moment through their overt or covert influence. The "incentives" and "prohibitions" surrounding sex, such as beauty and body standards in beauty contests, as well as idol dramas featuring handsome men and beautiful women in love, can almost be regarded as a driving force for social development. Most of our "knowledge" about sex comes from street gossip, film plots, and peers at school. However, before we encounter these, we are first influenced by our families. We are members of society, but we are also the children of our parents. The term "parents" is used broadly here, including not only biological parents but also grandparents, stepparents, guardians, foster parents, and others who cared for us during our childhood. Generally speaking, the people we interacted with as children, especially those who took care of us, have a more lasting influence on our ideas than anyone else later in life.
All these past conscious experiences shape our self-perception and expectations of others. They are part of the dowry each man and woman brings into adult love. Some parts of this emotional scorecard are obvious, but most are unspoken, and we may not even be aware of them.
Sexual preferences stem from the stimuli, challenges, and conflicts of our early lives. How these influence our thresholds for intimacy and pleasure is what we need to delve into. What stimulates your sexual desire, and what causes you to lose interest? What makes you feel bored and intolerable? What kind of intimacy do you prefer? (A bit like the TV series "Westworld.")
The imagination of desire lies in untangling knots, allowing negative energy deep within to be transformed. In other words, our most painful childhood experiences may later become our most important sources of "sexual interest."
Imagination is the core medium of desire, but for many, the fear, guilt, and distrust caused by parental education hinder the self-discovery of sexuality. The intention behind parents conveying those messages is to protect their children, but these messages become sources of sexual anxiety for children when they grow up.
The psychology of desire is often hidden in the details of our childhood. All these experiences shape our self-perception and expectations of others. They are part of the dowry each man and woman brings into adult love.
Throughout our lives, we struggle in the interplay of dependence and autonomy. The reactions of parents to dependence and autonomy determine how we will reconcile these two needs as adults in the future. One important point is that the actual behavior of parents is only part of the problem; the other part is our interpretation of these behaviors. In the game of life, every child has their own power; for the same thing, one person may feel good while another may feel suffocated. Some people wish their parents had participated more in their lives, while others feel intimidated by their parents' supervision and intrusion into their lives. When expressing dependence and autonomy, each family has its preferred response—we sometimes receive rewards, and at other times we feel frustrated. Through the giving and taking of parents, we determine how much freedom we can safely experience and to what extent family intimacy will suppress our needs.
Ultimately, we form a system of beliefs, fears, and expectations regarding our understanding of social structures, some of which are conscious, while others may be unconscious, influencing our relationships with others. We wrap these in a neat personality (software) package and hand it over to our lovers. This exchange is mutual.
My entire emotional history will be revealed in sex; this is no coincidence. The body is the purest and most primitive tool we use to communicate. As writer Roland Barthes said, "What I cover with language flows out of my body. My flesh is a childish and stubborn child, even though I am a very sophisticated adult in language." In other words, physical contact is our true "mother tongue"—before we utter our first word, the body is our way of communicating with the world. From the moment of embryonic formation, the nutrients of love flow from the body connection from the mother to the child. Bodily sensations govern our initial perceptions of the environment and our earliest interactions with our parents. The body is a repository of sensory enjoyment memories.
The body is also a warehouse of the pain and frustrations we have experienced. Our bodies cleverly remember things that our brains choose to forget, including pleasure and pain. Perhaps this is why our deepest fears and most enduring desires emerge in intimate sex: our immense needs, fear of abandonment, fear of being consumed, and yearning for omnipotence.

Intimate relationships require both an open heart and a self-centered behavior; we need to give and receive. When we enter our lover's body, entering their space of desire, we should not fear being consumed or losing ourselves. At the same time, we also need to be able to enter our own hearts, immersing ourselves in our own selves in front of our lovers. We must believe that when we step out of ourselves, our lovers are still there; believe that when we temporarily indulge in ourselves, our lovers will not feel rejected. In intimacy with our partners, we should not fear being consumed, and at the same time, when we feel our independence, we should not worry about being abandoned by our lovers.
Some people can achieve a balance between self and others on an emotional level but repeatedly fail in physical intimacy. I have always been interested in the inner world of such people. The intense feeling of unity in sex, along with the accompanying sensation of losing oneself, leads them to take defensive actions, either stopping sex or redirecting desire elsewhere.
"The struggle for autonomy in childhood often manifests in the process of sex as adults." In fact, this is true not only for children but for most adults as well.
One quality of desire allows a person to be completely immersed in the rhythm of pleasure and desire without feeling any guilt, worry, or shame.

Primitive instinctual desires may make us feel despicable, filled with animalistic urges, and even cruel. Sex can evoke feelings of plunder and greedy acquisition. Any guilt we feel about obtaining something, including shame for desire, passion, or debauchery, is more pronounced in primitive sex.
In sex, the taboos we have shaped by our previous experiences will manifest; our sexual blueprint details these taboos. Besides familial influences, we are also affected by culture. We are socialized to control ourselves, restrain impulses, and tame our inner wildness. Therefore, to play the role of a responsible citizen and spouse, we embellish ourselves, conceal our desires, and hide our temporary objectification of our lovers in sex.
The heat generated by bodily friction is difficult to achieve through other gentle expressions of love. Thus, we see this contradiction: "Indifference" is precisely the way to achieve "affection." The intimacy of sex allows us to enter an unrestrained state where we taste the sweetness of freedom. In this state, we temporarily step out of the shadows of our inner selves, out of childhood memories and habits of love, and break free from various invisible cultural constraints.
The core issue of intimacy lies in not losing oneself while loving others. Our ability to handle both emotional and self-needs stems from what we learned as children and often requires a lifetime of practice. It not only affects how we love but also how we make love. The intimacy of sexual relationships gives us a dual commitment to discover ourselves and indulge in self-absorption. In the intimacy of sex, we experience fusion while also experiencing complete self-absorption, caring for each other while also focusing on ourselves. Merging with our lovers while also indulging in ourselves is a magical state that can be described as mystical. We experience a sense of unity with our lovers, which relies on our acknowledgment of our indivisible independence; in other words, to enjoy the feeling of unity, we must first attain independence.
Desire is a force that dislikes being constrained; when it becomes repetitive, habitual, and routine, it faces death. At that point, the power of desire transforms into boredom, or even into a more intense rejection.

Nancy Friday writes in "Men in Love":
Sexual fantasies are maps of desire, control, escape, and obscurity; they are navigational paths we sail through the reefs and shallows of anxiety, guilt, and repression. Sexual fantasies are consciousness at work, but they face unconscious pressures. The allure of fantasy lies not only in its strangeness but also in its wholeness; each fantasy unconsciously displays a person's consistent personality traits, even though they may think it is just a fleeting whim.
Marriage is about commitment, security, comfort, and family; marriage is serious, responsible, and goal-oriented; marriage is everything we need and everything we must do. Playfulness and its companions (danger, temptation, mischief, aggression) are excluded from the home of marriage, left to grow wild.
British literary giant Oscar Wilde wrote: "There are only two tragedies in this world: one is getting what you want, and the other is not getting what you want." When our desires are unfulfilled, we feel disappointed.
When there are no successful raises, no university admissions, and no callbacks for auditions... we feel frustrated. When the object of our desire is a person, her rejection makes us feel lonely, inferior, and even unworthy of love.
The satisfaction of desire can also bring a sense of loss; obtaining what we want simultaneously dissolves our urgent desire. We lose the sweet longing, the carefully arranged pursuit strategies, and the exciting fantasies; all activities and energies of desire and pursuit vanish the moment we obtain them.
Another writer, Gail Godwin, wrote: "Desire always ignites more passion than actually getting what you want."
Is it really difficult for people to desire what they already have? The law of diminishing returns tells us that increased frequency leads to decreased satisfaction. The more you use a product, the less satisfied you become with each use. When you go to Paris for the fifteenth time, the feeling is certainly different from the first time. But fortunately, this logic does not apply to the positive effects of increased frequency. For them, their playing posture becomes increasingly beautiful—the more they practice, the higher their skills; the higher their skills, the more confident they become; the more confident they are, the more willing they are to take risks; the higher the risks, the more exciting it becomes.
Of course, all of this requires effort and adherence to rules. It not only requires a momentary impulse but also patience and continuous attention. Tennis players intuitively know that skill improvement is rarely linear and may encounter plateaus or slowdowns, but the ultimate reward is worth it.
Unfortunately, we often associate effort with labor and rules with pain; in fact, we can view effort differently. Effort can be creative and self-affirming, invigorating us rather than leaving us inherently exhausted.
Relationships are a melting pot filled with contradictions and desires, where security and excitement, belonging and transcendence, comfortable love and passionate heat coexist. We hope to have it all, and we want to achieve it all through being with one person. Balancing family and passionate love requires us to achieve a delicate equilibrium, which can only be intermittently realized.
Desire requires you to understand your emotions to drive it while continuously exploring the mysteries of humanity; create a sense of security while maintaining an open mind to face the unknown; cultivate intimate feelings while respecting privacy, living together yet remaining independent. Desire refuses to be constrained, so intimacy cannot completely deprive partners of their freedom.
Note: "Desire: Death and Sensuality" by Georges Bataille, 1962. "Seduction" by Jean Baudrillard, 1990. "Everyday Zen: Love and Work" by Charlotte Joko Beck, 1989.

Charm#

Charm is an illusion, a "deceptive sensory illusion" or "magic light" that distorts people's perceptions. This illusion often begins with a formulaic image—either visual or mental—that may pertain to a person, an object, a time, or a setting. This image is not entirely a falsehood, but it is deceptive. Its construction is based on exaggerating certain aspects while covering up or ignoring others. This selective fact may reflect intentional components. Alternatively, this situation may occur unconsciously; when the audience notices an attractive quality, they may overlook the dissonant factors. In both cases, charm requires the audience's ignorance or, in more cases, even their state of illusion.
Beautification is a cognitive fantasy of things. In a sense, it is visual lying. "The best photographers are the best liars."

Secondly, charm does not exist independently in the object of charm—it is not a style, personal quality, or aesthetic feature—but is generated through the interaction between the audience and the object.
Charm is not something you possess; it is perceived from you, not something you inherently have, but rather your feelings. It is a subjective response to stimuli. You may strive to create a charm effect, but success depends on the subjective imagination of the perceiver.
As a psychological phenomenon and rhetorical tool, charm is like a sense of humor. It is an imaginative experience in which communication and interaction create a consistent, recognizable emotional response. Because of the existence of charm, this response is a painful pleasure of anticipation, admiration, and longing.
Charm is a vicious game in which only a few winners can enjoy the privileged status as a byproduct. For most losers, the predominant emotion is jealousy, as they are more easily influenced by charm. "If the socialized jealousy of individuals does not become a common and universal emotion, charm would not exist."
Charm is the sentiment of jealousy that blinds, confusing it with desire. Jealousy, without a doubt, is also a form of desire—wanting what others have. The social status emphasized in Berg's analysis also contains resentment and hostility, which do not exist for most forms of charm. Charm may be an illusory imagination, but it is neither despicable nor malicious, and no one wishes to suffer the hatred of others to enter a state of charm. Charm is not a measure of winning or losing. Instead, the object of charm—whether a person, place, or thing—is a form of self-transformation.
From an emotional perspective, it is like the appeals of those who enjoy car shows, fashion gowns, or Paris postcards. These behaviors and objects allow their emotions to find a home, transforming them from outsiders into participants, turning the utopia of their fantasies into something tangible.
Charm is not generated by the specific desires it engenders but is defined by the images it projects and the sense of desire it constructs. The object of charm can evoke similar emotions because its audience has different personalities and ideals. Similar to rituals and myths, charm also makes ideals seem easily attainable and real. However, unlike those awe-inspiring things that provide us with something to learn, and unlike simply displaying the rationality of cultural values, charm stimulates projections of imagination. It intensifies individual longings. This emotional effect distinguishes it from other patterns that encounter "displaced meaning."
Once we possess a component of our dreams, it transforms the entire ideal into something we seem to be able to attain one day. McQuarrie states that products often become "bridges to these hopes and ideals." These bridges may become objects of charm.
In fact, when products become representations of other abstract or distant events, they bring about the realization of desire on a spiritual level. This symbolic product evokes a certain feeling, which is, in fact, the state of desire being realized. "Those absurd and impractical shoes may forever be left on the shelf, but they still provide a bridge to the ideal self, thus their beauty is a source of joy." Moreover, simply striving to realize ideals is beneficial: "Effort and the realization of ideals should not exist apart from each other."
Charm, when in action, can stir your dissatisfaction; sometimes it can even magnify current difficulties effortlessly because you discover that there are so many better existences in the world. This paradox means that a writer might observe that charm contains "a moral factor," which is related to "optimism, cheer, and celebration, making charm a discourse system representing a belief in life." The allure of charm stems from despair: "If you are trying to escape the status quo through fantasy, you may be very disappointed. The kind of 'despair' I refer to feels like being trapped, with no choice."
Romanticism idealizes reality—it omits the tedious, meaningless, and dull aspects—but it reinforces the aura of achievement by presenting the difficulties in the process. Charm rarely narrates; it captures not a story but a scene: dance, not rehearsal; static photos, not movies.
Charm and romance are closely related, but charm is a state, not a change. What we experience is the result, not the process.
Regarding the relationship between the subject and the audience, romance and charm are also different. In romance, the audience experiences a series of emotional changes with the characters: excitement, fear, anger, love, sadness, joy. In contrast, charm maintains an outsider's posture, carrying a sense of mystery and distance.
The two branches of charm are escape and change. Freedom depicts life as independent, while harmony draws from the beauty of perfect coordination.
Stories confuse the two ways people use charm: as a relaxing imaginative escape and as a motivation that transforms into real action. The first rarely poses a danger and often has a positive effect on life. No one dies simply from reading superhero comics or fashion magazines, but most of their fantasies may offend clear-headed educators.
Mystery plays a central role in distinguishing charm from other attractions: personal charm. Although writers sometimes interchangeably use terms like "charm" or "personal charm," these two concepts are quite different. In a more precise sense, personal charm (originally a religious term) refers to a form of leadership that inspires followers to join in a disciplined pursuit of great causes under a charismatic leader. More colloquially, personal charm is an attraction that a person exudes that can inspire loyalty.
Personal charm, regardless of how it is viewed, is a characteristic of the individual, just like wisdom. A place, an idea, or even an object can be charming, but only people possess personal charm. Moreover, charm depends on the audience's receptive imagination; even somewhat numb audiences can feel the power of personal charm (if an aggressive person is filled with personal charm, it can be quite terrifying).
Charm requires mystery, allowing the audience to fill in the more detailed parts of the charming object with their desires. Charm does not persuade the audience to accept a leader's vision but rather inspires the audience to project their desires onto the leader (or movie star, vacation, or new car). In other words, the meaning of charm is entirely rooted in the audience's consciousness; when there is a sense of distance, charm is most effective.
In contrast, personal charm operates through personal contact. A static image is an ideal medium for charm but cannot capture the essence of personal charm, which must be presented through live performance or, at the very least, through video recordings. Personal charm attracts the audience to spread the commitments of charming individuals, seeking personal emotional support and resonance. Personal charm enhances leadership, while charm enhances sales.
The distinction between the two explains a common political dilemma. If so, it is difficult to explain why he expended so much effort to persuade the public to vote for him and support his policies.
An image that projects emotional appeal has an identity that is both idealized and elusive, which also generates desire, concealing difficulties and leading the audience to make foolish decisions—on Helen, we first see that charm is no longer a phenomenon but appears as a concept. Helen is a beautiful illusion: the embodiment of charm, because in desire, we recognize our needs and disappointments... This is a story not only of beauty, sex, and death but also of eternal longing, a story born in the first civilization of the Greek continent. Civilization is restless and greedy—it always wants more, desires everything that does not belong to it. Desire drives us into the unknown, and we eagerly embark on this journey that we hate.
The story becomes a lesson in power and the charm of conquest.
At the same time, discovery inevitably accompanies the contradictions that arise between charm and the charming object.

The process of reinforcement learning works: "The more (one) indulges in sensory pleasure, the stronger the desire for sensory enjoyment becomes, and the more they are burned by the flames of sensory enjoyment; however, relying on... sensory enjoyment, they can only find a certain degree of satisfaction and enjoyment." Behavior (indulging in sensory pleasure) brings rewards (enjoyment), laying the groundwork for repeating the process (desire). If I spend an hour lost in one beautiful dream after another, the excitement I gain from it will make me crave more. Patients drink alcohol and use drugs in the same way.

Rewards are crucial for changing behavior: "Behavior can be changed by altering its consequences, which is operant conditioning; but it can also change due to other consequences that will follow." Can we change behavior directly without changing the consequences (rewards)? If we see more clearly what we gain from our behavior, the costs of existing behavior become more apparent. In other words, if we take the time to savor the taste of rewards, it may not be as sweet as we think.
A to-do list, including the entire body, pleasure, and even conjuring up various things in our heads, is essentially "mental fabrication." The key difference between these two types of rewards is that the latter's joy comes from attention and curiosity. In fact, at any moment of wakefulness, we have the potential to tap into this awareness. It does not require any effort on our part because human awareness is always present; we just need to maintain a state of awareness. Conversely, excitement requires something to happen to us or demands that we obtain something we desire; we must do something to get what we want. To switch from excitement to joy, we can pay attention to triggers (stress), execute actions (engage in open, curious awareness), and notice rewards (joy, peace, calm).
Through our reward-based learning process, the more we take these steps, the more we can establish a habit pattern that is more focused and happier (but not excited). In fact, we may find that, given the right conditions (such as no longer getting in our own way), this mode of existence is always feasible.

The alluring nature of mobile devices and how they reinforce self-centered behaviors (such as posting selfies or self-exposure) hook us. But Louis C.K. seems to mention something else here. Certain features of smartphones (like the lack of face-to-face contact) may fundamentally shape how we interact with others, thus affecting our lives. Anonymous social media applications are probably the stickiest. They follow simple Skinner principles, providing rewards while users bear no responsibility (negative reinforcement). In turn, because we cannot accurately assess the full consequences of our actions, we increasingly lean toward seeking such rewards, ignoring the potential harm we may cause. Jack's thesis jumps out of the rhetoric of moral relativism, which holds that moral judgments only have truth or falsity relative to specific standpoints (such as particular cultures or historical periods). He gives an example of this kind of relativistic morality: the "honor killings" of young women who have been raped. Some may consider this practice immoral, while others may feel strongly that this traditional act of murder is crucial to saving family honor. Jack does not rely on relativism but instead views individual emotional motivations as the focus of ethical evaluation. He writes: "What do we feel about moral things? What do we feel about that feeling? In other words, can reward-based learning be integrated with mindfulness (in this case, referring to Buddhist ethics) to provide individuals with situational ethics? Can we make moral decisions because we see the results of our actions?" In the remainder of his thesis, Jack explores several ethical frameworks, including Aristotelianism as discussed by Philippa Foot, utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, and theories by Immanuel Kant and David Hume, even hedonism. He compares how all these perspectives layer upon each other from a philosophical standpoint and points out their potential limitations.

Next, Jack discusses evidence from modern psychology. Why, in some cases, if we feel someone has been unfair to us, are we willing to lose money to punish them? The "ultimatum game" is designed for moral research and specifically examines this tendency. Participant A (usually a computer algorithm, but researchers mostly depict it as a real person) shares a certain amount of money with participant B (the actual subject of the experiment). Participant B decides whether to accept or reject the proposed division of funds. If B rejects the proposal, neither participant receives any money. After testing multiple scenarios and calculating which types of proposals B is willing to accept and which ones they will reject, a fair setting point can be determined. In such games, if people believe the other is "playing unfairly," they report that their emotions, such as anger and disgust, have intensified.

But meditators in this scenario show a stronger altruistic tendency, being more willing to accept unfair proposals than non-meditators. Ulrich Kirk and colleagues offered insights into this phenomenon by measuring participants' brain activity during the ultimatum game. They observed the anterior insula, a brain region associated with awareness of bodily states, particularly emotional responses (such as disgust). It has been shown that activity in this region can predict whether an unfair proposal will be rejected. Kirk found that meditators exhibited reduced activity in the anterior insula compared to non-meditators. Researchers believe that this lower activity "frees them from negative emotional responses to their behavior." Perhaps they can more easily see the emergence of their emotions, which cloud personal judgment (in other words, leading them to fall into the subjective bias of pursuing "fairness"). They also believe that punishing the other participant does not bring intrinsic rewards, so they decide not to engage in that behavior. They can break out of the habitual cycle of "I will fight you to the end" because the rewards of that approach are less appealing than other responses. As Jack states in his thesis, "The costs of retaliatory responses may actually exceed the benefits." Setting fairness aside, being a jerk is more uncomfortable for the parties involved than being kind to others.

Learning based on cultural and situational norms—moral values#

He bases his views on behavioral psychology and neurobiology, claiming that "appealing to ethical judgments that all members of our human moral community would make when alert and impartial, we can understand the following assumption: both individuals and collectives can err and can be correct regarding normative truths." In other words, recognizing the subjective biases present in our past reactions may be sufficient to help us learn common human ethics.
Stephen Batchelor seems to agree with this view. In "After Buddhism," he writes that the development of awareness "requires a fundamental reorientation of sensitivity to the feelings, needs, desires, and fears of others." He continues: "Mindfulness means that as we enhance our ability to 'interpret' the bodily capacities of others, we develop empathy for their situations and predicaments." This means that seeing clearly is very helpful. He concludes that seeing clearly greatly helps to subvert "the innate tendency toward selfishness," which in turn helps to "abandon self-serving responses." Excessive self-focus and the subjective biases of our lenses blur our vision, causing us to habitually react to the world through emotions like fear and anger. If we remove these lenses, we can see more clearly the results of our actions (achieved through better interpreting others' body language) and respond more skillfully to the unique circumstances of each moment.
Flow includes the following elements:

• Focused attention, rooted in the present moment
• Merging of action and awareness
• Loss of reflective self-awareness (such as self-evaluation)
• A sense of being able to handle everything in a specific situation because "practice" has become a form of silent knowledge
• A change in the subjective experience of time, where "moments" continuously unfold
• An activity experience that inherently carries a spiritual brain feedback reward

When mountain biking, I occasionally lose all sense of myself, my bike, and my surroundings. It is not a state of oblivion; rather, my body and mind are immersed in it. Everything merges into this enchanting awareness and action. In some of the best experiences of my life, it feels like "I am no longer here," yet it seems that "I am everywhere." The best description I can come up with is that they are simply wonderful.
We have all experienced flow in various moments. We are fully engaged in what we are doing: exercising, playing or listening to music, working on projects. When we finally pull ourselves away from what we are doing and look up, five hours have passed, it is dark outside, and our bladder is about to burst; at first, we were so focused that we did not notice. If we could generate this experience on demand, that would be fantastic.
The more times I experience flow, the more I can discern the conditions that increase the likelihood of flow occurring while riding. After about a year of accessing flow, I began to don my scientific hat, observing my experiences and trying to identify these conditions to see if I could replicate them.
From a brain perspective, this concept of balance aligns with our current understanding of the self-referential network. When a person focuses on a task, the default mode network quiets down, but it lights up in environments that can foster boredom. Additionally, it activates in self-assessment and other types of self-referential activities. Of course, the default mode network becomes very quiet during meditation. The "deactivation" of the default mode network may correspond to what Csikszentmihalyi refers to as "the loss of reflective self-awareness."
Relatedly, many other elements of flow sound remarkably similar to various aspects of meditation: focused attention, fully immersing oneself in the present moment. In subjective experience, "the present" continuously unfolds, which is an internal reward.
Directing thoughts toward an object (evoking, applying)
Keeping thoughts on the object (maintaining, extending)
Searching for interest in the object (joy)
Finding joy in the object (happiness)

The unity of thought and object (fixation)
I repeatedly combine these conditions and maintain an increasingly longer state of focused awareness during retreats. My level of focus continues to improve. However, once, I thought I had all the elements in place, but I still felt something was missing. The state of focused attention did not manifest. I sat there, puzzled. All these steps had worked before. What did I miss? Then I examined my mindset and realized I was not feeling very joyful. Interestingly, I involuntarily smiled in my mind, which allowed me to enter a meditative state again. All the other components had mixed together; it just needed this final one. Just add it in.

Empathy Fatigue#

Let's start with empathy. Empathy is "the ability to understand and share the feelings of others." The ability to put oneself in another's shoes is often seen as a valuable skill. At the same time, as we have seen, how people connect with situations (in this case, standing in someone else's shoes) is equally important.
Empathizers use their five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) to process and navigate the stimuli in their surroundings. We understand and interpret others' behaviors based on our feelings and cultivate our emotional intelligence through processing this information. Our childhood experiences and attachment patterns to adult caregivers have led us to develop very sensitive senses. Although empathy is a result of childhood survival strategies, these qualities can also be developed through love, active participation, and conscious cultivation.
The Rainbow Quiz is a series of questions designed to uncover your primary type of empathy.

The Eight Types of Empathy

• Red: Emotional Empathy. The common trait of this type of empathizer is the ability to feel others' emotions as if they were their own. People often realize they have an empathetic gift because they feel others' emotions. Some empathizers are very sensitive to others' feelings, which can even overshadow their other empathetic abilities.
• Orange: Physical Empathy. This type of empathizer has strong intuitive abilities and can sense others' physical sensations through touch or close physical contact; at the same time, they may experience the same feelings or symptoms themselves. They are particularly sensitive to body language, and touch is their primary sensory channel for gathering information.
• Yellow: Energy Empathy. When you are close to or touch another person's body, your keen senses create an "intuitive" composite feeling or impression about them. You develop an integrated sense of the other, including both their physical state and their inner state.
• Green: Plant Empathy. Your sensory impressions help you intuitively perceive the needs of plants and other living beings, establishing a "consciousness" connection between you as a human and the plant world. You enjoy touching; when passing by plants, you like to touch or communicate with them. You highly value nature, believing that certain important aspects of your spirit are intertwined with the natural world.
• Indigo: Animal Empathy. When we observe others' facial expressions, our mirror neurons are activated, helping us interpret others' emotions and body language and respond appropriately. If you are an animal empathizer, these neurons will also activate when you observe animals' movements and postures. You can establish a close connection with animals using the information gathered through your senses, deeply feeling their primal needs. No cat or dog is beyond your ability to communicate with. Since childhood, you have strongly felt the emotional world of animals.
• Purple: Intuitive Empathy. As a skill, intuition develops as you learn to listen to and trust the sensory information you receive. As an intuitive empathizer, you have a close connection with your five senses and deeply believe in the information you receive, especially those that others may hardly notice. You can quickly extract subtle and sensitive information from others' emotional responses, to the point where you can sometimes even predict their reactions and actions.
• Pink: Aesthetic Empathy. This type of empathizer can grasp the emotions and meanings expressed in creative works such as art and film. Their intuitive observation allows them to deeply understand the themes embedded in the works, thus understanding the creators. Their left and right brain functions are usually well-coordinated, enabling them to express the meanings of certain profound matters. They can find beauty and potential meaning in anything, especially when most people do not notice it.
• Brown: Environmental Empathy. This type of empathizer can use their five senses to keep their body and emotions in harmony with their surroundings, whether in natural environments or structured physical environments like homes and buildings. They have a clear understanding of their fight-or-flight and freeze responses to threats and know how to trust subtle signals that indicate potential danger. Crowded places may be their least favorite because the energy there is too chaotic.

Empathizers are those who can strongly experience the emotions of others and have highly developed sensory perception. They can synchronize their feelings with others by interpreting body language and can judge others' emotions by observing micro-expressions that reflect disgust, fear, joy, sadness, contempt, and other momentary feelings. They are also good at interpreting others' gestures or facial expressions. Through intuitive and instinctive observation, empathizers can deeply feel others' emotions.

Toolbox#

Unreality is something empathizers can quickly detect. Real people are consistent in their words and actions, while unreal people often say one thing and do another, being contradictory. "Gaslighting" is often used when someone tries to convince you to believe something is true when you know it is false, or vice versa. The purpose of gaslighting is to undermine your thoughts to gain power and control. Undoubtedly, these psychological tricks are a dangerous toxicity possessed by narcissists. Empathizers are particularly vulnerable to this form of abuse. Therefore, you need to learn to recognize gaslighting to ensure it does not happen to you. Once you encounter this situation, you will feel confused and self-doubt. In such cases, remember to immediately engage in internal victim narratives regarding the thoughts that arise, and take some time to write down any behavioral patterns you notice when gaslighting occurs. This method can help you stay awake to the truth. You may not be able to change the situation, but you can be fully aware of these warning signs to minimize the negative impact of gaslighting.

How to Deal with Harmful Information and Comments#

The internet is filled with harmful dialogues and negative comments. Intense discussions can quickly trigger strong emotional conflicts, especially when it involves politics, religion, or other sensitive topics. When posting negative comments on online forums and message boards, people often feel they are anonymous and believe they do not have to take responsibility. If a post contains harmful comments, especially when these comments are directed at you, it can evoke feelings of fear, anxiety, and worry. Moreover, empathizers may experience the negative emotions of those involved even just by witnessing emotional conflicts online. If you do not recognize these feelings or understand that their triggers are harmful exchanges, you may fall into a reactive mode.
Reactive mode refers to a behavior pattern that automatically manifests due to instinctive fear or avoidance. It is an uncontrollable response triggered by stress hormones, adrenaline, and cortisol. In contrast, responsive mode represents actions based on careful assessment of the situation. Although stress hormones still play a role, responsive behavior is thoughtful and conscious; individuals in responsive mode are well aware of the consequences of their actions.
To thrive in the online world, you can use meditation techniques to cultivate your peace of mind and responsive behavior. When you consciously reinforce your responsive behavior to eliminate perceived threats, your emotional reactions become easier to control and less intense. A peaceful mind is a stable mental state that allows you to remain calm even when faced with provocative events. For empathizers, even slight exposure to harmful information can have lasting effects, especially regarding patience and maintaining interpersonal boundaries. To maintain a peaceful mind in potentially negative online social interactions, you need to be aware of your consciousness; in other words, you need to "consciously witness" your feelings, observing yourself without emotion. At this point, your inner dialogue might be: "I notice my shoulders are tense, this post makes me angry, and I feel tightness in my neck and jaw." You are not immersing yourself in these feelings; you are merely observing that they are there. Because you know feelings are just feelings, and you are merely an observer, this method allows you to step back and ease the emotions generated by exposure to harmful information.

Maintaining a Spiritual Home#

Physically: Take care of your body, long-term health, living environment, and safety. Your physical health is closely related to many aspects of your daily life, such as sleep, diet, exercise, and the state of your living environment and safety. Physical self-care is a foundational pillar; that is, if your dietary, housing, and sleep needs are met, your other needs can benefit from it. Ultimately, physical needs always exist and need to be regularly met to maintain optimal health.

Mentally: Care for your mental state, thoughts, and self-talk. Mental health needs are related to emotional needs, but they also include psychological and social needs. Psychological needs include autonomy, self-determination, perception of the quality of social relationships and social status, competence, and the ability to overcome challenges. Social needs include love, friendship, belonging, and the ability to establish intimate relationships.

Emotionally: Pay attention to your feelings of fear, anger, love, anxiety, sadness, and happiness. While, by nature, humans need to rely on each other to enrich their emotional experiences, no one can or should be responsible for our emotional health. In other words, emotional health is the individual's own responsibility. Additionally, emotional needs can fluctuate with changes in the living environment, physical health, and hormonal changes.

Spiritually: Maintain your relationship with meaningful things in life, such as interpersonal relationships, creativity, and faith. Spiritual care is related to a sense of mission and achievement. When you encounter challenges, if you think about how these challenges contribute to your growth, what experiences you can gain from them, and how you can share these experiences with others, then these challenging experiences can be redefined as meaningful events.

Physical self-care is foundational.

Your relationship with physical health is the basis for your mental, emotional, and spiritual health. People have complex feelings about their physical health. Many empathizers and highly sensitive individuals are often indifferent or even cruel to their physical health, especially if they have experienced trauma. Contrary to our constant demands on our bodies, self-care requires a gentle, loving, and accepting approach. To take care of our bodies, we need to do many things, such as eating well, ensuring adequate sleep, and increasing exercise. Caring for the body can begin with self-talk. You only need to observe or witness how you engage in self-talk to change your relationship with your body. Pay attention to whether your inner dialogue is evaluative or particularly harsh. To foster more loving self-talk, which aspects of your body are you willing to accept? When you care for your body, do any outdated beliefs or thoughts arise in your mind? What more loving self-talk can you use to replace these outdated beliefs?

The other aspect of physical self-care is managing your living environment and handling various chores. Clutter is a manifestation of subconscious chaos, which is harmful to empathizers. It indicates that you have some delayed decisions, abandoned projects, and certain abnormalities. No one wants to live in a chaotic environment, but this situation easily arises when we feel overwhelmed. Although we need to self-soothe by acquiring certain things or completing certain tasks, when we bring things home, we often do not consider where to put them, how to handle them, and what problems they can solve for us. The result is that we need to do more to integrate these things into our lives. It is unwise to hope that buying things will solve the clutter problem.

When we see tidy drawers or clean countertops, we all feel a sense of peace. Doing housework is a form of moving meditation—quietly feeling the warmth of our hands in the soapy water while washing dishes, touching dry towels, and wiping dust off lampshades. However, doing daily housework is entirely different from decluttering. Decluttering involves emotional factors. You may feel regret over a blender you bought for too much money that you have never used or a beautiful shirt you have never worn. You need to decide whether to throw them away or donate them, which may lead to decision fatigue, a feeling of blankness in the brain. Therefore, when decluttering, it is essential to start small and be gentle with yourself throughout the process.

Emotional self-care involves timely recognizing the signs of emotional exhaustion.

Emotional feelings relate to the body as thoughts relate to the brain. We cannot control our thoughts; we can only control our relationship with our thoughts. Similarly, we cannot control the ups and downs of our emotions, but we can sometimes choose our actions. For empathizers, maintaining emotional health requires self-care and attention to the balance between behavior and emotion. Empathizers need to identify various signs of emotional exhaustion, such as irritability, anger, lack of interest in anything, physical fatigue, impatience with daily tasks, and lack of motivation. These signs indicate that the levels of chemicals in the brain related to happiness, such as serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine, are low. These substances help balance emotions in different ways.

• Serotonin: You feel the effects of this chemical when you are in a higher social position or feel important to the team. Low serotonin levels make one prone to irritability and anger.
• Oxytocin: You experience the effects of this chemical when you interact with others, animals, or infants, as it promotes a sense of trust. Low oxytocin levels lead to a lack of care for oneself and others.
• Endorphins: You experience the pleasure brought by endorphins when you do not feel certain physical pain, such as during excessive exercise or working late. Insufficient endorphin secretion can lead to feelings of fatigue.
• Dopamine: Under the influence of dopamine, you can experience success and a sense of achievement. When dopamine levels are low, you feel unmotivated and uninterested in anything.

To integrate the various aspects of self-care, you can arrange activities to help restore these depleted valuable resources, such as hugging your pet to restore oxytocin levels, completing a task, or handling various chores.

Spiritual self-care involves the sense of meaning it brings.

Gaining a sense of mission and achievement from life is particularly exciting. Spiritual self-care is your private affair that can bring you a sense of meaning. By attributing meaning to your challenging experiences, you can highlight your sense of mission. If an empathizer's spirit feels fatigued, their sense of mission will also weaken, hindering their creativity. Therefore, to achieve spiritual self-care, you need to replenish your creative energy, revive it, and step out of yourself to think from a higher perspective.

Empathizers and highly sensitive individuals often have many emotions to process, which can lead to feeling overwhelmed and neglecting other pillars of happiness. Therefore, once you feel fatigued, feel your energy is about to deplete, or your mood begins to worsen, carefully check the other pillars of self-care to stabilize yourself. To keep your emotional body healthy, you need to understand how to enhance these pillars to live better in this world.

Setting goals based on the SMART principle:

• S (Specific) = Clarity: Are all aspects of the goal clear?
• M (Measurable) = Measurability: Can the achievement of the goal be evaluated with data?
• A (Achievable) = Achievability: Is the goal realistic?
• R (Relevant/resonant) = Relevance/Resonance: Is the goal related to your life blueprint, and does it resonate with your values?
• T (Time-bound) = Timeliness: Does the goal have a time limit, such as a day, a week, a month, or a year?

When setting goals, in addition to following the SMART principle, empathizers should also consider the following questions:

• Can the goal meet your self-care needs?
• Is the goal genuinely yours, rather than something someone else has set for you?
• Does the goal make you feel ashamed or want to escape? If so, can it be redefined as a method-oriented goal?
• Does this goal excite you?
• Does the goal integrate your inner desires with the realities of the external world?

If you are an emotional empathizer, you should know that a good goal needs to consider both the inner world and the external world. Internally, you need to consider your inner needs; externally, you need to be pragmatic, considering whether the goal is logical, aligns with your values, and beliefs. This is crucial. The best goals not only resonate with your wishes and visions but also inspire you to change the external environment. You can combine your specific goals with your nature of caring for and empathizing with others to help yourself and others grow. By integrating your goals—whether long-term or short-term—with your internal and external perceptual abilities, you can not only enhance your focus but also feel that your empathetic gifts do not exhaust you but empower you.

When setting goals, you need to remember that goals are different from life visions. Life visions are a combination of broad, inspiring, self-directed intentions aimed at giving your life greater meaning and depth. Those life visions that promote your relationship with yourself, enhance gratitude, and enrich your life are good life signposts. You can view your life vision as the lifelong pursuit of goals, which includes all your actionable goals. Actionable goals are the foundation for realizing your vision and are the most challenging to formulate. In fact, one of the difficulties in setting goals is figuring out what you truly want and articulating those desires in words.

Here are some good examples of goal setting that meet the specific needs of empathizers. Additionally, they illustrate the common difficulties different empathizers may face. Of course, you can adjust these goals according to your specific circumstances and purposes.

If you are an empathizer whose time and energy are excessively occupied by others, you can set a boundary goal: first identify your most influential empathetic skills, then develop a balancing plan to ensure you have time alone to strengthen your advantages. Set a necessary boundary to ensure your daily life is not affected, while explaining your boundaries to others. You can add a daily 30-minute activity to restore your emotions, such as using aromatherapy, meditating, or doing yoga, and stick to it.
If you are an empathizer who uses emotional numbness as a protective strategy, you can set an emotional embodiment goal: you can record any information related to emotional numbness in a journal, including triggers for your emotional numbness, the timing of emotional numbness episodes, feelings after scanning your body during meditation, and all negative dialogues during this process. Record daily for two weeks. Document any recurring patterns in detail as important references for setting goals in the next phase.
If you are an empathizer who cannot bear contact with others, you can set a personal empowerment goal: you can observe and record all your interaction patterns with strangers, acquaintances, friends, and lovers to determine whether your emotions are the same in different types of interactions, recording continuously for a week. Then develop a plan to limit your contact with energy vampires and choose some actionable emotional recovery strategies based on your empathetic type.
If you are an empathizer who feels lonely, you can set an emotional connection goal: you can create a "social interaction declaration" that highlights your strengths as an empathizer and how you will use these strengths to identify the people you care about most. Then develop a plan that includes three activities to deepen these relationships. Finally, apply this plan to each relationship you want to deepen for three consecutive weeks.

People often think that growth will proceed smoothly and effortlessly. This view is incorrect because it implies that if you feel frustrated, impatient, or discouraged, you must have done something wrong or are venturing in the wrong direction. In fact, the opposite is true: success requires effort and perseverance. The ultimate goals are achieved through a series of incremental goals. Creating a checklist of these incremental goals helps you stay on the path toward your ultimate goal. Additionally, remember that we must strive for the things we care about. When we encounter difficulties, we may feel discouraged and lose confidence. At such times, we should take a break, engage in self-care, and then slowly return to the task at hand. Feeling uncomfortable about something does not necessarily mean it is wrong. On the contrary, once you are willing to acknowledge and accept the existence of that discomfort, your focus and emotional skills will improve.

Meditation helps them process these emotions from others, allowing their precious empathetic gift to manifest and develop healthily.
Empathy is one of the most magical experiences of humanity. It is a power that empathizers possess throughout their lives, capable of building bridges of love between people and serving as a wonderful perspective for observing the world. In the past, you may have felt that your empathetic gift connected you with emotionally unhealthy individuals, feeling responsible for helping them. Now you understand your empathetic type, know how to maintain focus when on the verge of collapse, and realize that your only task is to prioritize your emotional health.

Before you learn to flexibly use your empathetic abilities for self-care and set interpersonal boundaries, deep empathy for others may feel like an uncontrollable force making powerful demands on you, occupying your entire body and mind without permission. Until you learn to manage and process emotions through meditation techniques, depression and anxiety may be your natural responses to feeling overwhelmed. However, once you gradually enhance your emotional health and embark on the path of self-actualization, you will be able to reclaim your emotional territory and decide who stays and who goes.

You cannot force happiness. In the long run, you cannot force anything. We do not rely on brute force! All we need is enough self-awareness and behavioral design to guide us to fully experience life.
—Mr. Fraser, a character in Skinner's "Walden Two"
A simple solution: focus on the perceived rewards of our actions. Seeing the results of actions more clearly helps us weaken our subjective biases, and this realignment naturally leads us out of unhealthy habits, shifting from stress to a joy that does not depend on obtaining something. Completing this adjustment can unleash a torrent of energy and direct that energy toward various areas that can improve our lives, such as reducing distractions, more fully integrating neurofeedback and training programs, providing standardized yet personalized evidence-based training for addicts, and offering mindfulness tools and necessary feedback to ensure proper use of the tools.
In a world increasingly drawn toward short-term rewards, making us crave more things, can this type of tool, by connecting to the same reinforcement processes, provide people with an opportunity to find contentment (regardless of food, money, prestige, or power, how much is enough)? Through such a journey of discovery, they may find more lasting and satisfying rewards.
By learning to understand desire and emotions, people can cultivate stronger awareness and care throughout their lives, making more conscious decisions about whether to engage in various behaviors rather than unconsciously pressing the lever that releases dopamine. They may find a happier and healthier life, bidding farewell to a previously shallow and exciting existence.
There exists a tendency toward gain and laziness in human nature. When a person relies entirely on external factors for success, they can easily become arrogant and lazy, developing a dependency on emotions and unwilling to spend time enhancing their abilities. In this way, momentary success can ruin long-term development prospects. Conversely, those willing to invest time and energy into enhancing their abilities, after enduring the tests of time and solitude, will find that their success is built on a foundation of true strength that will not be easily defeated.
Humans have an innate drive to seek stimulation, a reflexive need for adventure, curiosity, and excitement. This need helps individuals quickly acquire relevant survival information from the external environment, such as finding ways to survive and avoiding danger, which is crucial for individual survival adaptation, allowing it to be preserved throughout human evolution.

Awakening levels and stimulation demand levels
Stimulation can cause fear and panic, yet people cannot live without stimulation. Psychologists Hebb and Berlin proposed the "arousal theory." "Arousal" describes the state of activation of the body and nervous system. They found that people generally have the highest arousal levels when emotionally excited or panicked, a moderate level in daily life, and a very low level during sleep. The "arousal theory" posits that people will intentionally or unintentionally engage in activities to keep their arousal levels at an optimal state. When arousal levels are too low, individuals feel life is monotonous and boring, prompting them to actively seek stimulation to raise their arousal levels; conversely, when arousal levels are too high, they feel overwhelmed and seek to escape the noisy environment for quiet and relaxation. Thus, many people seek or adjust stimulation to achieve a relatively balanced state, making themselves feel comfortable.

The changes in arousal levels are influenced by each person's different personality. Some people prefer a calm and peaceful life with few demands; others enjoy thrilling experiences, believing that such experiences are the most exciting chapters of their lives. These two different expressions are determined by their stimulation demand levels, which are also related to their personalities. How can one judge the relationship between their personality, behavior, and stimulation demand? Below is a table showing the relationship between stimulation demand and personality:

Through this table, we can see that different people respond differently to stimulation: some are high-intensity stimulation seekers, while others are low-intensity stimulation seekers. The former prefer adventure and intense stimulation, daring to try new things; the latter generally respect tradition, are amiable, have a spirit of dedication, and are easy to get along with. Of course, most people's levels of sensation-seeking fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Human behavior is driven by deep psychological needs. Once basic physiological and safety needs are met, people begin to develop all sorts of strange ideas, seeking a diversified life. Everyone has a psychological need for stimulation, which is one of humanity's most primitive psychological desires. For individuals, the psychological need for stimulation is most intense and active during adolescence. If appropriately guided and controlled, this strong need for stimulation can help adolescents consciously explore the value of life and the essence of existence, igniting their desire for knowledge.

When morality becomes a sword—those "good people" who "kill without blood"#

Moral kidnapping refers to using morality as leverage to coerce individuals or groups into doing certain things. Its root cause lies in the confusion of moral judgment logic; to put it bluntly, it means that the moral standards one follows and those they demand others to follow are not unified. Such individuals often force others to comply with a moral standard that exceeds their own and enjoy embarrassing others in public. Even if they justify themselves, claiming their motives are noble, they often end up in awkward situations due to their inappropriate methods.
Morality is a category of superstructure, a special social ideology that all of humanity possesses and should follow, but we must prevent a minority from using morality as a rope to control others, thereby kidnapping their words and actions.

Attention and Motivation#