Last time, we fellowshipped about things involving family within the broader topic of letting go of people’s pursuits, ideals, and desires—which section in the topic of family was our fellowship about? (Last time, God fellowshipped on some sayings that come from family conditioning, such as “Among any three people walking together, there is at least one who can be my teacher,” “If you want to appear dignified when people are looking, you have to suffer when they aren’t,” “Just as a fence needs the support of three stakes, an able man needs the support of three other people,” “A lady will make herself beautiful for those who admire her, while a gentleman will sacrifice his life for those who understand him,” “Daughters should be raised like rich children, and sons like poor children,” “People don’t need to have a high IQ, but only need to have a high EQ,” “When someone beats a gong, listen to its sound; when someone speaks, listen to their voice,” and “The parent is always right.” In total, these eight sayings were discussed.) We fellowshipped about letting go of family conditioning, which subject matter covered family conditioning and education toward a person’s thoughts. Certain sayings were fellowshipped about in detail, while others were only briefly mentioned and not specifically fellowshipped about. Family holds great importance in every individual’s life. It is a place where people create memories, grow, and where their various thoughts begin to form. How people conduct themselves, behave, deal with things, interact with others, face different situations, and when faced with those situations, how to make judgments and from which perspectives and stances they should handle these matters, etc., regardless of whether their thoughts and viewpoints are preliminary or more concrete, all of these are based largely in family conditioning. That is, before people formally enter society and join social groups, the embryonic stages of their thoughts and viewpoints all come from their families. Therefore, the family is highly important to everyone. Its significance goes beyond physical growth; more importantly, before people enter society, at home they learn a lot of thoughts and viewpoints that ought to be applied to how they approach society, social groups, and their future life. Although these thoughts and viewpoints aren’t specifically or accurately defined as a person matures, these various thoughts and viewpoints, and these various methods, rules, and even means for dealing with the world, are already fundamentally and primarily instilled, influenced, and conditioned into people by their parents, elders, or other family members before they enter society. This practice of instilling, influencing, and conditioning is carried out during the time when people are growing up among their families; that is why the family is so important to every person. Of course, this importance is merely targeted at the level at which individuals enter society and join social groups, and enter the life and existence of adulthood—it is limited to the level of physical existence. This demonstrates how crucial family conditioning is for a person entering society and adult life. That is to say, when people reach adulthood and enter society, most of their philosophy for worldly dealings originates from their parents’ heritage and the influence of their family. From this perspective, it can also be said that the family, as the smallest unit in society, first and foremost plays a formative role in shaping a person’s thoughts as well as various methods and principles for dealing with the world, and even their outlook on life. Given that these various thoughts, viewpoints, methods for dealing with the world, and outlook on existence are negative, not aligned with the truth, unrelated to the truth, or it can even be said, run contrary to the truth, and they do not originate from God, it therefore becomes necessary for people to let go of the conditioning of their family. When considering the consequences of family conditioning, we see that it contradicts and does not align with the truth, opposes God, and essentially, it can be said that families are places where Satan corrupts humanity, leading people to deny God, resist Him, and follow the wrong path in life. From this perspective, can it be said that the family, as the smallest unit in society, is where people are initially corrupted? While saying that Satan and social trends corrupt people is a broad perspective, when it comes to specifics, the family should be regarded as the place where people initially accept corruption and negative thoughts, evil trends, and Satan’s viewpoints. More specifically, the corruption individuals accept originates from their parents, elders, other family members, and the customs, values, traditions, etc., of their entire family. In any case, the family is a starting point where people encounter corruption, accept Satan’s evil thoughts and trends, and it is where people begin to accept various corrupt and evil thoughts during their formative years. The family plays a role that neither society as a whole, social trends, nor Satan can play in corrupting people, which is that it introduces individuals to various thoughts and viewpoints from the evil trends of Satan before they enter society and join social groups. Regardless of how it’s framed, the family is the primary source of your thoughts and viewpoints that belong to Satan. Therefore, to help people let go of various erroneous thoughts and viewpoints, it is necessary to discern and dissect not only the widespread erroneous thoughts and viewpoints from society but also the various thoughts and viewpoints, as well as principles for dealing with the world that come from family conditioning. Family is itself part of the whole of human society, it is not the church or God’s house, and it certainly isn’t the kingdom of heaven. It is merely the smallest unit within society created among corrupt humanity, and this smallest unity is also formed by corrupt humanity. Therefore, if a person wants to free themselves from the constraints, bindings, and troubles of various erroneous thoughts and viewpoints, they should first reflect upon, understand, and dissect the various thoughts and viewpoints they received from family conditioning, until they reach a point where they can let them go. This is an accurate principle of practice for letting go of people’s family conditioning.

Previously, we fellowshipped on people’s family conditioning, which has to do with such matters as their outlook on life, rules for survival, principles and methods for behaving and dealing with the world, and some unwritten rules of the game when entering society. What are some of the outlooks on life involved in this subject matter? For example, “A man leaves his name behind wherever he stays, just as a goose utters its cry wherever it flies,” and “People need their pride just as a tree needs its bark.” What are some of the principles for dealing with the world that families instill in people? Examples include: “Harmony is a treasure; forbearance is brilliance,” and “Compromise will make a conflict much easier to resolve.” What else? (“Just as a fence needs the support of three stakes, an able man needs the support of three other people,” and “When someone beats a gong, listen to its sound; when someone speaks, listen to their voice.” These are also methods and principles for dealing with the world.) Are there any social rules of the game? Such as, “The bird that sticks its neck out is the one that gets shot”? (Yes.) “He who talks a lot errs a lot.” What else? (Here’s a taste of your own medicine.) That’s also one, but we didn’t fellowship about it last time. Moreover, your parents often told you, “Out in the world your judgment should be keen, your talk smooth, and your eyes sharp. You should ‘keep your eyes open to every road, and your ears to all directions.’ Don’t be so set in your ways.” There’s also, “It never hurts to compliment somebody,” and “You have to go with the flow wherever you are. The law cannot be enforced when everyone is an offender. When in doubt, follow the crowd.” These are all types of game rules. Then there are sayings like, “A lady will make herself beautiful for those who admire her, while a gentleman will sacrifice his life for those who understand him,” and “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” What category do these belong to? These belong to the category of everyday life; they tell you how to live and how to treat your physical body. Then there are sayings like, “The parent is always right,” “Mom is the best in the world,” “A wise goose never lays a tame egg,” and “To feed without teaching is the father’s fault.” These pertain to the thoughts and viewpoints of family affection and feeling. Also, people often say, “The dead are great in the eyes of the living”—after a person dies, they become great. If you want a higher status, if you want people to speak well of you and respect you, then you must die. Once you die, you will become great. “The dead are great in the eyes of the living”—is this logic ridiculous or what? They say, “Don’t say anything bad about a person after they die. The dead are great in the eyes of the living. Give them some respect!” Regardless of how many bad things this person did, they become great after they die. Doesn’t this show a complete lack of discernment between good and evil and a lack of principles in how people conduct themselves? (Yes.) “The parent is always right.” We fellowshipped on this in detail last time. These other sayings, like “To feed without teaching is the father’s fault,” and “A wise goose never lays a tame egg,” weren’t part of the fellowship, but aren’t they easy to discern? Is the saying “To feed without teaching is the father’s fault” correct? It makes it look like a father’s education is very important. What kind of path can a father lead people down? Can he lead you down the right path? Can he lead you to worship God and become a genuinely good person? (No.) Your father tells you, “Men do not shed tears easily,” but you are young, and you cry when you feel wronged. Your father scolds you, saying, “Hold it in! Be a real man. You cry over every little thing, good-for-nothing!” After this happens, you think, “I can’t shed any tears; if I cry then I’m a good-for-nothing.” You hold back your tears, not daring to cry, and secretly cry under the covers at night. As a male, you don’t even have the right to express or convey your emotions naturally; you don’t have the right to choose to cry, you have to hold it in whenever you feel wronged. This is the education you received from your father, and it’s the true meaning of “To feed without teaching is the father’s fault.” Your father, your mother, and the older generation all stick to this education, saying, “You, a boy, cry over anything, cry whenever you feel wronged, and when you were beaten up outside. Good-for-nothing! They hit you, why didn’t you hit them back? They hit you, so don’t play with them anymore. When you see them again, and see that you can beat them up then you do it; if you can’t then you run away. Look at how Han Xin^[a] endured the humiliation of being forced to crawl between another’s legs. He didn’t cry; that’s what a real man is!” This is how fathers educate their sons and instill the thought of being a real man into them. Men can’t speak of their troubles and can’t shed any tears; they have to hold it in. Tell Me, how much injustice must men endure? In this society, men must support their families, show filial piety to their elders, and they don’t dare complain no matter how tired they are. They can’t vent no matter how much injustice they’ve endured. Isn’t this unfair to men? (Yes, it is.) When your fathers educated you like this, how did you feel? When you wanted to cry on occasion, what did your father say? “I, so-and-so, have been wise and eager to excel all my life. How could I have raised such a weakling like you? When I was your age, I was already supporting the family by myself. Look at you, pampered and spoiled, you good-for-nothing!” How did you feel? Your parents and grandparents educated you, saying: “A man is the pillar of the family. Why do we support you? Why do we send you to college? It’s to help you support the family, not for you to cry or feel wronged whenever something comes up.” How did you feel when your fathers and elders said these things? Did you feel wronged or take it in stride? (I felt depressed, I felt wronged.) Did you have no choice but to accept it, or did you feel resentment in your heart? (I felt resentment, but I had to accept it.) Why did you do this? (Because I felt that under such a circumstance or social system, I had no other choice.) This is how society positions men. They are born into this kind of social circumstance, and nobody has a choice. The education you received from your father and elders originated from society; after they received this ideological education, they then instilled these thoughts from society into you. In reality, when they accepted these thoughts and viewpoints during their formative years, they did so reluctantly as well. As they grew older, they passed these thoughts onto the next generation. They didn’t consider whether the next generation should accept these thoughts and viewpoints or whether they were correct, because this is how they grew up. They thought people should live this way; what does it matter if you’re wronged, the important thing is that accepting these thoughts will help you find your footing in society and not get bullied by other people. Why did they also endure these grievances, and feel depressed and resentful just like you, yet still pass these thoughts and viewpoints onto you? One reason is that they naturally accepted various thoughts and viewpoints from society that allowed them to assimilate into the social trends, helping them find their footing in society. Everyone follows these thoughts and viewpoints as guidelines and criteria for living, without anyone questioning them or wishing to break or rebel against them. This is one aspect—in order to survive. The other aspect, the main one, is that people lack the ability to distinguish between positive and negative things. Why is that? It’s because people don’t understand the truth, and they lack the correct thoughts and viewpoints regarding survival, dealing with the world, or the path that they should follow. In order to adapt to society, fit in, and survive within this society and in social groups, people must actively or passively accept the various principles for dealing with the world and game rules set by society. The purpose of adaptation is for people to establish themselves in society and to stay alive. However, because people don’t understand the truth, they have no choice but to choose these principles for dealing with the world and game rules set by society. Therefore, as a male, when your father taught you, “Men do not shed tears easily,” although you felt wronged and wanted to vent your frustrations, you had no way to refute him, nor could you discern what he was saying. Ultimately, the reason you accepted this in your heart was that, “Although my father’s words are somewhat harsh and difficult to hear, and even though accepting these words goes against my will, he’s doing it for my own good, so I should accept them.” Due to their conscience and filial piety as a child, people have to make concessions and accept these thoughts and viewpoints. Regardless of which aspect of people’s family conditioning, they are constantly in such a state, continuously being instilled through these methods until they eventually accept them in spite of themselves. Throughout this process of continual acceptance, these incorrect and negative thoughts and viewpoints gradually seep into a person’s innermost being, or they slowly and steadily infiltrate into their thoughts and viewpoints, becoming various different bases for how they behave and deal with the world. This process can be aptly described as a person undergoing corruption, for the process of accepting erroneous thoughts and viewpoints is also the process of corruption. So, who corrupted people? In an abstract sense, they were corrupted by Satan, by evil trends; more specifically, they were corrupted by their family, and even more specifically, by their parents. If I had said this ten years ago, none of you might have been able to accept it, and you all may have felt hostile toward Me. Now, however, most of you can rationally accept this statement as correct, and say “amen” to it, isn’t that right? (Yes.) Why is this statement correct? To understand that, people need to gradually come to appreciate it throughout their experience. The more specific and profound your appreciation is, and the more your experiences come to reflect this, the more you can agree with this statement.

Family conditioning most likely involves many more rules of the game for behaving and dealing with the world. For example, parents often say, “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him; you’re too foolish and credulous.” Parents often repeat these kinds of words, and even elders often nag you, saying, “Be a good person, don’t harm others, but you must always guard against the harm others might do to you. All people are bad. You might see that someone says nice things to you on the outside, but you don’t know what they’re thinking. People’s hearts are hidden beneath their skin, and in drawing a tiger, you show its skin, but not its bones; in knowing a person, you may know their face, but not their heart.” Is there a correct side to these phrases? Looking at each of them literally, there’s nothing wrong with such phrases. What a person is truly thinking deep down, whether their heart is vicious or kind, cannot be known. It’s impossible to see into a person’s soul. The meaning behind these phrases is ostensibly correct, but they’re only a kind of doctrine. What is the principle for dealing with the world that people ultimately derive from these two phrases? It’s that “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him.” This is what the older generation says. Parents and elders often say this, and they constantly advise you by saying, “Be cautious, don’t be foolish and reveal everything in your heart. Learn to guard yourself and be vigilant. Even with good friends, don’t reveal your true self or lay your heart bare. Don’t risk your life for them.” Is this admonishment from your elders correct? (No, it teaches people deceitful ways.) In theory, it has a good primary aim: To protect you, to prevent you from falling into dangerous situations, to protect you from being harmed or cheated by others, to safeguard your physical interests, your personal safety, and your life. It’s to keep you out of trouble, lawsuits, and temptations, and to allow you to live every day peacefully, smoothly, and happily. The primary aim of parents and elders is simply to protect you. However, the way they protect you, the principles they advise you to follow, and the thoughts they instill in you are not at all correct. While their primary aim is correct, the thoughts they instill in you unconsciously lead you to an extreme. The thoughts they instill in you become the principles and bases for how you deal with the world. When you interact with classmates, colleagues, work partners, superiors, and every type of person in society, people from all walks of life, these protective thoughts instilled by your parents unconsciously become your most basic talisman and principle whenever you handle matters involving interpersonal relationships. What principle is this? It is: I won’t harm you, but I have to be on guard against you at all times to prevent you from deceiving or cheating me, to avoid getting into trouble or lawsuits, to prevent my family fortune from going under and the people in my family from meeting their end, and to prevent me from ending up in prison. Living under the control of such thoughts and viewpoints, living among this social group with such an attitude toward dealing with the world, you can only become more depressed, more exhausted, fatigued in both mind and body. Subsequently, you become more resistant and averse to this world and humanity, despising them more. While despising others, you begin to think less of yourself, feeling like you’re not living in a way that resembles a person, but rather, you’re living a tired and depressed life. In order to avoid being harmed by others, you have to be constantly on your guard, doing and saying things against your will. In the pursuit of protecting your own interests and personal safety, you wear a false mask in every aspect of your life and disguise yourself, never daring to speak a word of truth. In this situation, in these survival conditions, your inner self cannot find release or freedom. You often need someone who poses no harm to you and will never threaten your interests, someone with whom you can share your innermost thoughts and vent your frustrations, without bearing any responsibility for your words, incurring ridicules, digs, mockery, or taking any consequences. In a situation where the thought and viewpoint of “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him” is your principle for dealing with the world, your inner self is filled with fear and insecurity. Naturally, you feel depressed, unable to find release, and you need someone to comfort you, someone to confide in. Therefore, judging from these aspects, although the principle for dealing with the world that your parents taught you, “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him,” can succeed in protecting you, it is a double-edged sword. While it protects your physical interests and personal safety to a certain extent, it also makes you feel depressed and miserable, unable to find release, and even makes you more disenchanted with this world and humanity. At the same time, deep inside, you also faintly begin to feel fed up with having been born in such an evil era, among such an evil group of people. You can’t understand why people have to live, why life is so exhausting, why they must wear a mask and disguise themselves everywhere they go, or why you must always be on guard against others for the sake of your own interests. You wish you could speak the truth, but you can’t because of the consequences. You want to be a real person, speak and comport yourself openly, and avoid being a base person or doing vile and shameful deeds in secret, living exclusively in darkness, but you cannot do any of this. Why can’t you live uprightly? As you reflect on your past actions, you feel a faint contempt. You hate and abhor this evil trend and this evil world, and at the same time, you loathe yourself deeply and despise the person you’ve become. Yet, there’s nothing you can do. Although your parents, through their words and actions, passed this talisman along to you, it still makes you feel like your life lacks happiness or a sense of security. When you feel this lack of happiness, security, integrity and dignity, you find yourself both grateful to your parents for giving you this talisman and resentful of the chains they’ve placed upon you. You don’t understand why your parents told you to comport yourself in this way, why you must comport yourself like this in order to gain a footing in society, to assimilate into this social group, and to protect yourself. Although it is a talisman, it is also a kind of shackle that makes you feel both love and hatred in your heart. But what can you do? You don’t have the right path in life, no one tells you how to live or how to deal with things that come your way, and no one tells you whether what you’re doing is right or wrong, or how you should walk the path that lies before you. You can only pass through confusion, vacillation, pain, and unease. These are the consequences of the philosophy for worldly dealings that was instilled in you by your parents and family, making it so that your simplest wish to be a simple person, namely your desire to be able to comport yourself uprightly without resorting to these means of dealing with the world, cannot be realized. You can only live in a debased manner, making compromises and living for the sake of your reputation, making yourself especially fierce to guard against other people, pretending to be fierce, tall and mighty, and powerful and extraordinary to avoid being bullied. You can only live like this against your will, which makes you loathe yourself, but you have no choice. Because you don’t have the ability or the path to escape these ways and strategies for dealing with the world, you can only let yourself be manipulated by the thoughts conditioned into you by your family and parents. People are fooled and controlled by the thoughts instilled in them by their families and parents during this unconscious process, because they do not understand the truth or how they should live, so they can only leave it to fate. Even if their conscience still has a little bit of feeling, or they have even a small desire to live with human likeness, to get along and compete with others fairly, no matter what their wishes may be, they cannot escape the conditioning and control of various thoughts and viewpoints that come from their family, and in the end, they can only return to the thought and viewpoint conditioned into them by their family that “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him,” because they have no other path to take—they have no choice. All of this is caused by people’s lack of understanding the truth and their failure to obtain the truth. Of course, parents also tell you, “In drawing a tiger, you show its skin, but not its bones; in knowing a person, you may know their face, but not their heart”; they tell you about the art of guarding against others, and tell you to do this because everyone is cunning; it’s easy to get tricked if you can’t see through people, their inner thoughts may not be the same as their outward appearance, a person may appear righteous and kind on the surface, but their heart is as venomous as a snake or scorpion; or a person may speak of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness on the surface, saying all the right things, their speech full of righteousness and morality, but deep down in their heart and soul, they are particularly filthy, despicable, lowly, and wicked. Therefore, you can only approach and interact with others based on the thoughts and viewpoints instilled in you by your parents.

“One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him,” and “In drawing a tiger, you show its skin, but not its bones; in knowing a person, you may know their face, but not their heart” are the most basic principles for dealing with the world that parents instill in you, as well as the most fundamental criteria for viewing people and being on guard against them. The primary aim of parents is to protect you and help you protect yourself. However, from another angle, these words, thoughts, and viewpoints may make you feel even more so that the world is dangerous and people are untrustworthy, leading to an entire lack of positive feelings toward others. But how can you actually discern people and view others? Which people can you get along with, and what should be the proper relationship between people? How should one interact with others based on principles, and how can one interact fairly and harmoniously with others? Parents do not know anything about these matters. They only know how to use tricks, schemes, and various game rules and strategies for dealing with the world to guard against people, and to take advantage of and control others, in order to protect themselves from being harmed by others, no matter how much they harm others. While teaching these thoughts and viewpoints to their children, the things that parents instill into them are merely certain strategies for dealing with the world. They are nothing more than strategies. What do these strategies include? All kinds of tricks, game rules, how to please others, how to protect one’s own interests, and how to maximize personal gain. Are these principles the truth? (No, they’re not.) Are they the right path for people to follow? (No.) None of them are the right path. So, what is the essence of these thoughts that parents instill in you? They do not conform to the truth, they are not the right path, and they are not positive things. Then, what are they? (They are entirely the philosophy of Satan that corrupts us.) Looking at the results, they corrupt people. So, what is the essence of these thoughts? Like, “One should never intend to do harm to others, but should always guard against the harm others might do to him”—is this the correct principle for interacting with others? (No, they are wholly negative things that come from Satan.) They are negative things that come from Satan—so what is their essence and nature? Aren’t they tricks? Aren’t they strategies? Aren’t they tactics to win others over? (Yes.) They are not the practice principles for entering the truth, or positive principles and directions with which God teaches people how to comport themselves; they are strategies for dealing with the world, they are tricks. Moreover, is the nature of phrases like “In drawing a tiger, you show its skin, but not its bones; in knowing a person, you may know their face, but not their heart” also the same? (Yes.) Don’t these phrases tell you to become cunning, to not be simple, straightforward, or upright, to be difficult to read, and make it difficult for others to see through you? Don’t the specific principles for dealing with the world, brought to you by these thoughts and viewpoints, tell you to use strategies when interacting with others, to learn how to win others over, and to learn the game rules that circulate among people in every era? (Yes.) Some people say, “Parents tell people these phrases in order to instruct them to guard against others and learn how to view people.” Did they tell you how to view others? They didn’t tell you how to view others, they didn’t tell you to approach different people according to the correct principles, but rather to use corresponding tricks and schemes to cater to the needs and strategies of different people. For example, your boss or superior is vile and a skirt-chaser. You think, “The boss looks respectable on the surface, he seems upright, but beneath it all he is actually a skirt-chaser. That’s the kind of wretch he is deep down in his soul. That’s fine, I’ll cater to his preferences, see which woman looks good, approach her, and introduce her to the boss to please him.” Is this a strategy for dealing with the world? (Yes.) For example, when you see someone who has value to exploit and is worth your interaction, but they aren’t easy to mess with, you think, “I have to say flattering words to them, whatever they like to hear.” That person says, “The weather is nice today.” You say, “The weather is really nice today, tomorrow will be nice too.” They say, “The weather is really cold today.” You say, “Yes, it’s cold. Why don’t you wear something warmer? My coat is warm, go ahead and put it on.” As soon as they yawn, you hurry to hand them a pillow; when they take out a medicine bottle, you quickly pour water for them; when they sit down after eating, you quickly brew tea for them. Aren’t these strategies for dealing with the world? (Yes.) They are strategies for dealing with the world. Why are you able to use these strategies? Why do you want to flatter them? If you didn’t need them and they presented no benefit to you, would you treat them like this? (No.) No, it’s like what people tend to say, “Never lift a finger without a reward.” It’s like carrying a water pot to the vegetable garden—you only water the useful ones. You actively go and flatter those who are useful to you. Once they step down or are removed from their position, your enthusiasm toward them immediately cools and you ignore them. When they call you, either you turn your phone off or you pretend that the line is busy and don’t answer. When you see them, they greet you and say, “The weather is nice today.” You blow them off, saying, “Ah, yes. Goodbye, let’s chat later if anything comes up, I’ll treat you to a meal sometime.” Empty promises, and then you ignore them, don’t contact them, and even block them. The various thoughts and viewpoints that parents instill in people establish an invisible protective wall over their hearts. At the same time, they also instill some basic ways of dealing with the world or surviving, teaching people how to play both sides and how to assimilate into a social group, how to establish themselves in society, and how not to be bullied in a group of people. Although, before you entered society, your parents did not specifically guide you on how to deal with specific situations, the conditioning of parents or family in terms of these ways and principles of dealing with the world has given you basic views and principles of dealing with the world. What are these basic views and principles for dealing with the world? They teach you how to wear a mask whenever you interact with people, how to live with a mask in every social group, and ultimately achieve the goal of protecting your fame and profit from suffering loss, and simultaneously obtaining the fame and profit that you want, or achieving a basic guarantee of personal safety. From the thoughts and viewpoints and various strategies for dealing with the world instilled in you by your parents, it can be seen that parents have not taught you how to be a more dignified person, how to be a real person, how to be a good created being, or how to be a person who possesses the truth. On the contrary, they told you how to deceive others, how to be on guard against others, how to use strategies to interact with different people, as well as what people’s hearts are like and what mankind is like. Under the conditioning of these thoughts and viewpoints from your parents, your inner self continually grows more sinister, and you develop a dislike for people. In your young heart, even before you have any strategies for dealing with the world, you already have a rudimentary and basic definition of humanity, as well as a rudimentary and basic principle of how to deal with the world. So, what role do parents play in your dealing with the world? They undoubtedly play the role of guiding you along the wrong path; they do not lead you to walk the good path, or guide you toward the right path of human life in a positive and proactive way, but instead lead you astray.

Footnotes:

a. Han Xin was a famous general of the Han dynasty, who was once forced to crawl between the legs of a butcher who mocked him for his cowardice before he became famous.