Therefore, they have actually been regarded as a family member to varying degrees. And when we mention that animals are human friends, the first thing we think of is naturally cute pet animals like this.

In modern urban family life, the following anthropomorphic names for animals are common: "Cat Star Man", "Baby", "Furry Child". In addition to the title, all "tee shovelers" usually give names to cats and dogs they live with. In the early years, there were "Big Huang", "Xiao Bai", " Tom ", and in recent times, there were "Ice Cream", "Cola", etc. Therefore, they have actually been regarded as a family member to varying degrees. And when we mention that animals are human friends, the first thing we think of is naturally cute pet animals like this.

Another type of animal is ignored. This is the economic animal.

In a sense, economic animals are far away from urban life. They live in farms, breeding farms, or farm yards in suburban or rural areas. Generally speaking, when they are slaughtered and transformed from their bodies into "meat", they will be sent to the city by transport trucks, appear in vegetable markets, enter people's refrigerators, and are placed on dining table . They have no anthropomorphic title. This is not difficult to understand. With a name, it is easy to be regarded as a perceptual and emotional animal. To be wary of the sympathetic resonance, compassion evoked by anthropomorphic titles, breeders, cookers, and the vast majority of us would not do that.

Of course, there are also economic animals that are brought into families as cute pet animals, such as raising piglets and chicks, but this is not common after all. Among the topics about animals, economic animals can become a hot topic in almost one situation - whether to eat vegetarian food or to eat meat. Is eating vegetarian food more moral than eating meat? Is vegetarianism a pretentious thing? Not eating vegetarian food means having no love, is it hypocrisy? On this issue, neither party can convince the other party. If they are obsessed with some extreme view, neither party can start a rational dialogue. It can even be said that this has nothing to do with logic or reasoning.

Huang Zongjie, a writer who is good at writing animals, also discussed economic animals in "Where are Other Country: City, Animals and Literature". His method is to start from the texts in literary works, reproduce the life situation of economic animals and the moral and ethical situation of economic animals, and continue to try to approach "diet ethics". Many things are not a matter of choosing one. After all, "the truth is ambiguous, we can only be as close to it as possible."

The following content is excerpted from "Where Are Other Townships: City, Animals and Literature" with authorization from the publisher. The excerpts are edited and deleted. The complete discussion is found in the original book. The title was taken by the editor.

Original author｜Huang Zongjie

「Where is another place: city, animal and literature」, written by Huang Zongjie, Nanjing University Press ·Sanhui Books, April 2022.

"vegetarian" or "meat", an issue that cannot be discussed rationally

Let's take a look at a paragraph Lewis Carroll (Lewis Carroll) "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) The last grand banquet of the classic work, the conversation between the Red Chess Queen and Alice :

"You seem a little shy, please introduce you to the leg of lamb. Alice - lamb leg, lamb leg - Alice." The leg of lamb stood up from the plate and bowed slightly to Alice. Alice also bowed to the gift, but she didn't know whether it was afraid or it was funny.

She picked up the knife and fork and said to the two queens on both sides: "Can I cut a piece of meat for you?"

The queen of the red chess firmly said: "Of course not. It is not etiquette to cut the friend whom I just introduced to you. Come on, remove the leg of the lamb!" The waiter took away the leg of the lamb and replaced it with a large plate of raisin pudding.

Alice quickly said, "Please, don't introduce the pudding and I know each other, otherwise we won't be able to eat anything. Can I give you some pudding?" Stills from the movie adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland 2: Adventures in the Mirror" (Alice Through the Looking Glass 2016). The subsequent development of the

story is not difficult to imagine - Alice was introduced to Pudding again, so Pudding was taken away again.Alice mustered up the courage to ask the waiter to bring the pudding back. After cutting off a piece of pudding, she was scolded by the pudding: "Will you be happy if I cut a piece of it from you?" Although in this paragraph, Carol uses the pun meaning of cutting both "cutting" and "deliberately neglecting or pretending not to see it", Alice's mood of not wanting to know pudding and lamb legs is probably not unfamiliar to most people, because when faced with food, we often don't want to know too much about what happened before they appeared on the plate, but the original appearance of these "foods" is the most difficult and core key to talking about economic animals.

To discuss economic and animal issues, we must touch an unsettling fact, that is, the food we eat comes from living lives. And the journey they arrive at our dining table is full of all kinds of truths that people don’t want to gaze at. Although most of the time, the fact that humans are omnivorous people can make most people face various controversies about meat eating with confidence. If we regard omnivorous as necessity, the difference between vegetarian/meat should be a choice under the free will of one's individual, and it doesn't matter whether it is moral or not. However, the choice of vegetarianism itself seems to have a certain moral (condemnation) meaning - although vegetarians do not necessarily have the intention to condemn meat, and the reasons for vegetarianism may not necessarily be related to animal ethics considerations, vegetarians on the table always seem to feel a bit disappointed for a banquet that seeks the guests and the host to have fun.

J. M. Cochetteller's "lethality" brought by the animated people to the banquet atmosphere through the conversation between the heroine Costelo on the dining table. After a lengthy and speculative animated welfare speech in Costello, someone politely asked during the banquet: "Ms. Costello, is your vegetarian claim out of moral belief?" She replied: "No, I don't think so, it's just out of the desire to save my soul." So "there's a dead silence around." The embarrassment of the crowd vividly presents the incompatible with the animated people, especially when someone tries to resolve the embarrassment and says that vegetarianism is the lifestyle he respects, Costello answered without any mercy: "I wear leather shoes and a leather bag in my hand. If I were you, I would not respect vegetarianism." Interestingly, does this conversation sound familiar? Because it is the most common cycle of argument that we hear when facing animal issues. If something is criticized as cruel, "Isn't eating cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens not cruel?" is almost a standard question and answer example; however, once the advocate is also a vegetarian, "You are not wearing leather shoes or holding a leather bag" is probably the question that will happen next; if the vegetarian happens to be a person who practices veganism in life, then "are plants not life" become another debate set combination.

" Little Pig Baby " (Babe 1995) Stills.

Obviously, compared with other animal issues, economic animals are almost the most difficult to discuss rationally. However, talking about economic and animal issues is bound to be equivalent to debating whether people should eat vegetarian food? Not exactly that. If vegetarianism and meat are regarded as opposite ends and mistakenly thinking that economic animal issues are just encouraged to eat vegetarian food, it will easily fall into the aforementioned debate cycle and make the discussion lose focus. To truly understand the experiences that occur in economic animals from "original place" to the dining table, and to take the possibility of change seriously, we may have to put aside the moral right and wrong of choosing between vegetarian and meat, and look back at how and why the situation of economic animals touches our uneasy feelings. Only after letting go of the defensive mentality, many treatment methods that are taken for granted or "necessary evil" can be re-examined and loosened.

Why are we uneasy?

In April 2017, a popular diet program in Hong Kong, "Grandma Teached the Falling Food D", received protests from several viewers after it was broadcast because the two hosts picked up two complete frozen suckling pigs wrapped in plastic wrap in the freezer when they were selecting fresh pork ingredients. The eyes, ears, mouth and nose of the suckling pig seemed quite clear in front of the camera.The reason for criticism is that this scene is "cruel, disgusting and disturbing", and some people also point out, "Eat it and don't wave it with it."

In fact, for the suckling pig that has become frozen fresh meat, there is no "cruel" or not to be "cruel" or not, but this picture of waving the suckling pig will be too cruel to protest. If the audience's reaction is only reduced to "hypocrisy" or "moral inconsistency" - after all, what they protest is "Don't let me see the suckling pig waving in front of the camera" rather than eating or killing the suckling pig - they will ignore that this is actually a very typical "Alice-style" reaction: Please don't let me know that lamb leg/suckling pig. For food, we just want to eat, but we don’t want to see it. The reason why pictures like

feel uncomfortable is simply because they look too much like living. One of the most core operating methods of the carnivorous belief system is "hidden". Hiddenness can be divided into symbolic concealment and substantial concealment. The former is through various names to avoid it; the latter hides substantial violence in an invisible corner, so that the truth is hidden without revealing. The problem is that clues of the truth still emerge in life from time to time, reminding us of the life situation behind the meat. When the king's new clothes are exposed, the connection between diet and death will force people to choose a way to respond, whether to stare into the abyss or continue to build higher walls to avoid seeing? Different choices actually highlight the complex relationship between diet, animals, environment and people behind eating animals. We don’t want to see food as a reaction to life, will it connect with deeper reasons for not wanting to remember or being reminded of the similarity between humans and animals?

"Pig Classroom" (㖖タがいた Classroom 2008) Stills.

In the short story "Pig" with black irony, Raysington, a boy with both parents, grew up innocently and isolated under the care of his vegetarian aunt. After his aunt's death, his property was almost deceived by a lawyer, but Raysington, who knew nothing about it, was curious about New York's strange and fresh world. When he arrived at the restaurant, he asked for a daily familiar food, the waiter impatiently said that all the meals were only pork (pork), so Resington ate his first bite of meat in his life and was amazed by the novel taste of this novel food. He called the waiter again to know what this amazing worldly delicacy is made of. The conversation between the two then fully demonstrated how meat can produce hidden effects through the symbolic system of language:

"I have told you," he said. "This is pork."

"What is pork?"

"Have you never eaten roast pork?" the waiter asked him with wide eyes.

"For God's sake, man, tell me what this is and don't suck my appetite anymore."

"is a pig (pig)," said the waiter. "You just stuff it into the oven."

"Pig!"

"All pork comes from pigs, don't you know?"

"You mean, is this pork meat?"

In the Chinese context, it may be difficult to understand the impact of Resington. That is because our language does not separate the concept of "pig" from "pork", and the reason why the vocabulary of pork and beef is so different from that of pigs and beef in English is not to create the illusion that "this food does not come from pigs and beef." In fact, pork and beef are from French language used by the lord class at that time (only the Norman kings could eat meat frequently in the past), and this vocabulary has been used. To this day, pork and beef are still expressed in French, while pigs and beef are used in Anglo-Saxon language. However, through the symbolic system of language, people feel alienated from food/animals, which is always a very common operating model in the carnivorous system. What kind of language we use to refer to animals reflects the coordinates of animals on our moral ruler.

In "Animal Liberation", known as a classic work of animal ethics, Peter Singer reminded that when we choose to replace "pig's legs" with the word "ham", the word itself is already covering up the facts. Hal Herzog has a more in-depth analysis on how language affects moral distance. He argues that language can help us create perceptions of reality, such as the unpopular “Patagonian toothfish” on the menu, which sounds more delicious after being renamed to “Chilean sea bass.” This shows why some animal rights groups choose to create new words as a certain action strategy: for example, "Have the sea kittens" (PETA) once used "Save the sea kittens" as the slogan for anti-fishing activities. Joan Dunayer, author of Animal Equality: Language and Liberation, also suggested using "water prisons" instead of "aquariums" or using "cow abusers" instead of "cow jeans" to emphasize human exploitation of animals.

"Babe 1995" Stills.

Of course, the above-mentioned calls for "must be corrected" may be regarded as a minor issue for those who are more excited. The substantial changes that can be made to the animal's situation may be quite limited, but increasing sensitivity to vocabulary is definitely one of the starting points for re-reflecting on the relationship between humans and animals.

If we are always accustomed to using "pig teammates", "mad dogs", "beasts" and "divine pigs" as vocabulary to belittle others, when animals are always in the symbolic system of language and manifestations of frivolity, ridicule, derogatory and prejudice, it is not difficult to imagine that their experiences in the real world may be difficult to take seriously. From this we can find that although ordinary people may not be so clearly aware that language can be used as a measure of moral distance, we have long shown our own vision of looking at animals through the practice of daily language. Why do most people think that naming economic or experimental animals is very unwise or weird? Because once a name is found, the distance on the measuring ruler is closer. However, as He Zhage said, naming comes at a price, which is "the moral cost of converting 'them' into 'us'." When economic animals have names, they are blurred, collected and instrumented, their outlines become clearer and even have their own unique personalities and emotions. Naming at this time may become an unbearable burden, because we will be more likely to develop sin and uneasy feelings for their irreversible encounters and destinies.

Priceeded Life

How can the connection between pig and pork be established? The aforementioned short story "Pig" actually has a rich follow-up development. After tasting the meat for the first time, Resington asked to know how the delicious food was cooked. The chef told him, "At the beginning, you have to have a good piece of meat." So Resington went straight to the meat factory. During the tour, the panicked pig struggled constantly when he was hung upside down by the chain:

"It's such a fascinating process," Raysington said. "But when it went up, it made an interesting click, what was that?"

"Maybe it's a thigh," said the tour guide. "Either the thigh or the pelvis."

"But, isn't that important?"

"How could this matter?" asked the guide. "You don't eat bones."

The "doesn't matter" here is the most common "concept transfer" in humorous techniques. Resington asked, "Is it okay to be injured by pigs (life)," but the guide thought, Resington asked, "Is it okay to be damaged by pork (commodity)." The guide's disregard is a reflection of the general mentality under the logic of industrial agricultural commodities. When life is defined as commodities under intensive production lines, it is difficult for them to receive treatment that meets the welfare of basic animals. To change this situation, they must be exposed from hidden places. Therefore, there have always been many artists or creators who are committed to exposing these "truths that you don't want to face."

"Shark Tale 2004" screen.

British artist Sue Coe has used a series of paintings to express the situation of animals in the slaughterhouse, and published it as the book "Dead Meat" to reveal the appearance of the slaughterhouse. In her works, the interior of the wall painted with cute farm animals is an unbearable scene. Coy said she attempted to think "Why do animals slaughter in this way? And more importantly, why is this phenomenon ignored and taken as the norm"? The word "normal" is not an exaggeration. If you look at all works with industrial farms as the theme, you will find that the content is often surprisingly similar.

The first work to reveal the terrifying landscape in a slaughterhouse should be recommended. The book "The Jungle" in 1906, although Sinclair's motivation is mainly to arouse the public's confrontation with the situation of workers in a slaughterhouse, the difficulties of employees and the difficulties of animals are actually two sides. The novel describes the situation in the slaughterhouse in this way:

People use electric shock sticks to drive cattle into that aisle. ...When the cow stood inside and yelled and jumped, there would be a "head-knocker" with a big hammer on the corral, and he would find an opportunity to smash the hammer down. ...As soon as the animal falls, the side of the corral will be lifted up, and then the cow that is still struggling with kicks will slide into the "butcher bed". ...The way the workers' activities are unforgettable for life; they work hard like crazy, and it is really like running with all their might. This pace can only be compared with American football. This is a highly professional division of labor, everyone performs their own duties. A person usually only needs to cut off a specific two or three knifes, and then repeat the same action on the next fifteen or twenty slaughter lines for the cow in front of him.

Because the bloody, filthy and terrifying slaughter scene in the novel is so realistic, it quickly aroused readers' panic about black-hearted food after publication. The more amazing fact may be that at this moment when "The Abortion" has been published for more than a hundred years, several scenes in the book are not only historical records, but on the contrary, they are still some kind of "daily" in slaughterhouses around the world.

In the book "Eating Animals", Jonathan Safran Foer listed several videos taken by nonprofit organizations when secretly searching for evidence, including how pig farm employees beat pigs every day, and saw off their legs and peel off their skin when they were aware of it. Sonia Faruqi's footprints cover Project Animal Farm, which covers all over Indonesia to Mexico , and you can see such examples from time to time. While picking up dead chickens in the cage, Brick, a farmer at the laying hen easily picked up dead chickens in the cage, while explaining several major causes of death of laying hens, including: he stuck his head out of the cage because he was bored and hanged it, the staff letting the chickens go too quickly when they put them in the cage, causing their wings or legs to break, and after laying too many eggs, the internal organs exposed and were pecked by other laying hens. The pleasant tone "as if we are strolling in the apple orchard".

" Chicken Run " (Chicken Run 2000) screen.

However, the brisk and insignificant tone do not mean that these people are evil or cruel in their hearts. On the contrary, this is because, under the premise of considering costs and benefits, the feelings of animals are hidden, and the human ability to feel is also hidden in such concealment.

It is worth noting that after visiting the Blackwater Slaughterhouse in Canada and experiencing huge shocks and frights, Faluqi had the following insight:

In the Blackwater Slaughterhouse, I reached a certain inner limit. When I stood swaying at the door leading to the slaughtering area, I knew that something in my heart would be different again... I also felt alienated from my family and friends. I think they live under the veil of falsehood, intentionally or unintentionally, and they believe that this society itself lives behind the huge excuses. Industrial Agriculture 's reality is so far away from most people's daily lives, it is simply like something that happened in another time and space.

Whether it is hidden, creating moral distance, or the "excuses" used here, they all point to the same thing in different ways, that is, industrial farms are so distant from our lives that we can easily turn a blind eye to the huge pain hidden behind them. How can we free ourselves from such a distance and convert “them” into “us”? Li Xinlun's prose work "This Body" reminds us that the "body" of animals may become one of the starting points for connecting the broken road before the meal.

How to "restore" the corpse to the body?

If we always choose to avoid "seeing" and constantly hide the truth through various ways of treating animals as objects and commodities, it is difficult to expect people to seriously consider the importance of changing the life situation of economic animals, because it is impossible for moral considerations to occur for objects. The article "Their Body" in Li Xinlun's book "This Body" makes us realize that the situation is so different between me and him, between humans and animals, but the ability to feel the body may not be different. In the article, she wrote a poetic elegy in a sad tone. And these children would not jump off the car. They just rubbed each other with a snoring and snoring and being pulled and pushed by some force, in the direction of suffering. Several times, I actually changed my distance temporarily and rode my bike all the way to where they were going. The sun shone on me and on them, treating everyone equally and without any distinction. I always feel cold in that sunshine. …The green light came and the truck continued to move towards the trail. Close my eyes and I shed tears. ...Look, look, I shed tears and almost shouted out, look, look, their bodies are on the road, on the road. ...On the road of life, on the road of death, wandering life and death, wandering life and death.

Will this be invalid sadness? At first glance, no matter how much sentimental you feel for this irreversible last road, it is futile. But Li Xinlun reminded us that the purpose of this journey is to make their bodies "become the bodies of everyone." So, can we really rationalize everything with the reason "Anyway, we have to kill to eat, so it doesn't matter how we treat them"? Not everyone can agree with this seemingly natural choice.

" Charlotte's Web " (Charlotte's Web 2006) Stills.

In fact, the treatment of economic animals before their death is an indispensable part of considering the welfare of economic animals. In addition to the need to regulate the delivery time of water and food during transportation, there are also examples of humanitarian slaughtering in recent years. Investigation of facilities such as the Qutrough Walkway when entering the slaughterhouse is carried out to ensure that there are no details that will scare the farm animals. Temple Grandin, who is famous for promoting humane slaughter, once regarded her as an autistic patient, and compared the similarities between animals and autistic patients in terms of "seeing details". Including shadows on the ground, shaking iron chains, the sound of metal collisions, and the hissing of the air, they can all scare and discourage animals. The typical way to deal with these "disobedient" animals in the past was to take out electric shock sticks, beat and yell, but these violent acts were simply completely unnecessary if they could indeed improve the detailed environment in the slaughterhouse.

There is also a seemingly quite "unrealistic" example in Dan Barber's "Third Meal Plate": When the Lanchow Restaurant in the "Stone Barn Center" which combines farms, restaurants and education centers opened, one day, livestock and poultry manager Craig brought an Buckshire Pig to the slaughterhouse, which was very unpalatable after slaughtering. Craig believed that it should be because the pig "had too much pressure on his way to the slaughterhouse alone", so he adopted a "partner support method towards death", allowing the two pigs to travel together, and put sufficient feed and enlarged photos of the farm woods in the transported truck. After arriving, one of them was slaughtered, and the other was transported back to the farm. The next week, the last time the transported pig took its last journey, another companion was accompanied by it. After using this method, the dry texture disappeared.

However, it is conceivable that when you care about the animal's body and life, the next dilemma will return to the uneasy fact that eating animals itself is an animal's use. In other words, the guilt and the psychological mechanism of that are discussed here, , which wants to escape and defense, will inevitably disturb us again. The implicit accusation behind "morality" seems to enter the aforementioned cycle again: Should all morality be pushed to vegetarianism? Is moral practitioners who do not eat vegetarian food hypocrisy?

"Chicken Run 2000" screen.

Julian Baggini's book The Virtues of the Table challenges our simplified view of dietary morality. In his book, he uses three virtual British menus to let readers experience the diversity and complexity of moral choices: in January's "Chicken, Mushroom Pie, Free Range Chicken, Shredded Carrots, Pure Garlic. Reversal of organic cream apple pie . The ingredients are all from the UK, and the origin is mostly no more than twenty-five miles away", and in March's "M S C (Marine Management Council) Permanently Certified Wild Salmon. Fair Trade Certified Organic Pea . Fair Trade Certified Chinese Organic Basmati risotto made with saffron risotto. Added Fair Trade Certified organic figs and mascarpone cheese almond cakes and September’s “Swordfish. Grilled cream melon. Creamy leek. Berry crispy. All ingredients come from the UK and the UK waters”. Which of these options is “the most ethical”? Although the book provides a relatively good choice, his focus is to emphasize the "seasonal, organic, and local" principle that is regarded as the three golden laws. Sometimes they will conflict with each other and find it difficult to take into account both. Between various moral values, we must make which more important priority decision.

In other words, the so-called morality has no standard answer, and it does not replace communication with lazy "plurality", but fully understands that when practicing moral values ​​in real life, there is almost no single and absolute standard, as Bagini reminds: "The moral stance is originally an endless inquiry between wholehearted belief and indifference. The most important thing is to have moral consciousness and maintain doubts about the moral stance we take." Only by maintaining doubt can there be loose elasticity and gaps in the change, and avoid falling into the myth of moral pluralism or binary opposition .

Therefore, for Bagini, he believes that treating animals well and eating animals can be no contradiction, and the moral bottom line he chose is to distinguish pain from pain/suffering: "All animals with basic central nervous system feel pain, which is undoubtedly even some crustaceans. Torture is a period of pain, a accumulated and deepened pain, and requires some degree of memory." He believes that some animals such as shrimps may not be able to feel that they are tortured, but pigs can, so obviously we should not let pigs suffer during the breeding process, rather than not killing pigs.

Whether it is based on the fact that animals will feel pain, should not let animals suffer, or even simply want to relieve the pressure before death, these different moral bottom lines still point in the same direction, that is, we can always find reasons to change the status quo from seemingly natural daily life.

Continuously trying to approach "diet ethics"

Warren Belasco proposed a fairly brief model in the book "Food", explaining the three aspects of food choice: identity (society and individual), convenience (price, skills, and availability), and sense of responsibility (awareness of what we eat). Each of our meals is the result of the competition and complex negotiation of these three factors. However, in the past, our eyes were more often on how food connects emotions, continues culture, and how to consume in a faster, convenient and affordable way. After all, these two parts can bring more positive and pleasant energy to food than responsibility.But today, perhaps it is time to focus more on dietary ethics, because the diet and lifestyle we are familiar with have caused the environment to undergo almost irreversible changes.

When climate change and resource scarcity will become the new daily life, the sky, land, ocean and all living things in it will release the same message, that is, the ecological environment is a whole, and diet is a system and a cycle. Any actions of ours will have an impact on the environment and will have to pay a price. More importantly, every choice may have a chain effect in unexpected places.

documentary "Dolphin Bay " (The Cove 2009) screen.

"The Third Dinner Plate" gives an example worth pondering: some chefs are concerned about the seriousness of the phenomenon of mixed catch (miscible catch) (on average, about 400 kilograms of fish caught per thousand kilograms are abandoned), so carefully cooking these ingredients that would have been abandoned and have poor appearances are also very paradoxically creating new demands, making the fish that were originally caught by mistake the targets everyone is rushing to eat. Did the purpose of initially looking forward to maintaining the ocean's perpetuity by promoting alternative seafood, but did it endanger the future of these alternative seafoods? This is a moral dilemma that Dan Barber has thrown out and has happened in the real world. Similar problems also have various changes. When values ​​and conditions conflict with each other, they will constantly challenge our thoughts and behaviors.

It is never easy to think about economic animals, especially when we try harder to seek moral ideals, the more likely it is to bring new impact to the familiar belief system and cognitive model in the past. Many thinking based on the "humane economy" may sound more like a fantasy in science fiction - for example, if you draw needle-like muscle cells from a pig or a cow, you can "raise" meat in the laboratory. If we feel resistant, is these products because they are “unnatural” (but the way animals are raised in industrial farms are not “more natural”), or because the old world we are used to have been subverted? Products like "lab-generated meat products" will undoubtedly continue to impact our moral values ​​in the future. But no matter what, don't choose to go over it. As Bagini pointed out in "The Virtue of Eating", trying to look at the blurry areas and complexity of dietary ethics with an appreciation will find how unbearable your understanding of knowledge is. Many things are not a choice, after all, "the truth is ambiguous, we can only get as close to it as possible." There is no absolute truth in morality, we can only continue to try to move in a better direction.

original text/Huang Zongjie

excerpt/Luo Dong

introduction part proofreading/Liu Baoqing