Let me start with the answer: no.
1
I don't like watching cartoons. But I actually watched "The Spiritual Journey", and the motivation was - is this like "The Lion King", it can be made into a film course?
After reading it, the evaluation is not high. why? Because this is actually a fable for adults. After 2020, the popularity of this movie is almost doomed, it appeared at the right time, at the right time.
A movie suitable for children must be a story like "The Lion King", especially a growing up story. Children solve a series of their own psychological problems through stories, such as Oedipus complex, and finally, become a mature adult, a responsible adult. All responsible adults are "kings" in their own karmic world, which is also the purpose of our education.
However, after becoming the Lion King, the rest of your life is still long, what should I do? What happens after the prince and princess get married? The stories for children do not tell these things, but only vaguely say, "The earth is full of life again", "The prince and the princess have lived happily ever after."
Because "the rest of my life" is not a problem for children, but a problem for the adult world. So lion kings, kings and queens, have to deal with their troubles without letting their kids know. These troubles must be experienced by human beings: after dealing with political affairs for a long time, the king will become burnout. Maybe one day, when he is driving and seeing a homeless person, he will start to ask himself: Who is the free person? The ruler? After staying in the harem for a long time, the queen may fall in love with a guard or a gardener, and love always has an insurance period. The adult world is a series of paradoxes, in Schopenhauer's words, a pendulum between pain and boredom. Or to use Bernard Shaw's generalization: There are two tragedies in life, one is not getting what you want, and the other is getting what you want.
So many great people, they can really inspire kids, but it's hard to inspire adults... so, so what? The number 22, therefore, became an anomaly, a problem.
2
Fortunately, for too many anxious adults, the tragedy of life is not getting what they want. The more vulgar ones are houses, higher positions, and so on; the more elegant ones are the so-called dreams, not as pure as children, some obscure and obscure with too many things mixed in, but still dreams.
Dreams come true, so what? Like Joey?
In a sense, the appearance of No. 22 at a critical moment is to guide Joey. It is equivalent to your mother who has always encouraged you to take the entrance exam to Tsinghua University and Peking University. Your score is very high and you will definitely pass the exam. One night while waiting for the notice, your mother said, come, let's talk about the Tsinghua University and Peking University. I have to tell you that it doesn't matter at all to get admitted to Tsinghua University and Peking University...
But if you can't even get an undergraduate degree, it's ridiculous that your mother tells you this.
So, those "modern people" who claim to have been cured by "The Spiritual Journey", have you taken another placebo and then claimed to be particularly curative?
Is it possible to continue to be decadent and Ge You paralyzed after watching "Spiritual Journey"? Can you be "born as a human, don't have to be sorry"?
3
Perhaps, life is like a pendulum. In this era of declaring that everything is uncertain, in this era of overemphasizing "I think" and "I think", we also need to look for something that is certain and unchanged, even if it is only post-metaphysics, Just a temporary consensus?
One cannot choose to live without meaning, and one cannot choose to live without value. ——Can this be our consensus?
Because life is meaningful and valuable, this is the essence of human beings, and the value of life is the inherent stipulation of being human. Can you imagine a rose that decides not to bloom? The inner strength of all life is to survive and develop. Survival is preservation, development is expansion.
Once overstretched, people get tired, anxious, lost, and want to stop. However, this is not a denial of development itself, but a reflection and adjustment of pathological development. In this sense, Taoism is medicine, and naturalism is medicine, which needs to be taken at a certain stage of life so that life can restore a certain necessary balance. This is like a regression in psychology, it is necessary, but it is not permanent, and it is not the essence of life. Life has no freedom to choose degeneration.
4
Therefore, the crux of the question is not whether people can choose to live without meaning and value, but where is the meaning and value? Is it the process or the result?
Life always has a purpose, life always has a purpose, it points to both the future and the present. When our present life loses its meaning and becomes only a means of future life, pain arises and people are alienated. Therefore, the inspiration of No. 22 is by no means denying meaning and value, but emphasizing that meaning and value are not in a distant future, but in every moment. A leaf, half a bottle of drink, a conversation... It's the settling for Joey's lifelong pursuit.
So, we can also redefine the meaning or value of life to combat nothingness and anxiety: live in the moment.
So, is No. 22 a denial of Joey's lifelong pursuit?
It's not negation, it's reactionary, "the opposite is the movement of the Dao". It is a reminder, a balance, a moderation.
In the true sense of "living in the present", is to embody the future in the present. "Walk slowly and appreciate it", it's not that you don't leave from now on. When advocating weight loss, scrawny people don't have to jump for joy.
5
The problem with contemporary people is not that they are too attached to their dreams. To be honest, how rare are people with dreams? The problem of contemporary people is that they are too obsessed with desire.
Most of our anxiety is caused by desire.
Dreams can not be realized, of course, is also painful, that pain is bright, as Wang Xiaobo said, all human suffering is essentially anger at incompetence. The pain itself brings strength.
Number 22 does not deny this dream, but further points out that every moment of our lives, and even life itself, has intrinsic value. The future is valuable and worth looking forward to; the present is also valuable and worth enjoying.
The value is not only in music, but also in friendship, in the leaves of autumn.
When you pursue the sea, in fact, you have been in the sea all the time. What you lack is just an awareness and a heartfelt feeling.
If you don't want to work hard and just want to indulge your desires, don't use this movie as an excuse.
After all, if you don't live in the village, you are Tao Yuanming, and you may just be poor.
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