> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://book.bsdcn.org/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://book.bsdcn.org/ask/flat/preface/qian-yan.md). # Preface ## Third Edition Preface: Only After a Great Awakening Do We Know This Was a Great Dream (Draft) ### The First Dream I opened the previous Excel question collection form (CFC question collection form) and found that still no one had filled it in; the spreadsheet contained only 4–5 rows of sample data I had pre-filled. Suddenly, I noticed an additional row, but it was quickly deleted. I found that two new columns had appeared in the header: one requiring real names and something akin to political affiliation. I thought I had made a mistake—perhaps I had used the wrong template—so I told the group owner in the chat that I would just send questions to him manually from now on, and he would collect them for me. Then I walked northward through the village, toward the old village before demolition. I noticed a house with a yellow square object by the door, resembling a doorbell. I was about to go in and take a look, but a dog started barking, so I gave up. Next, I dreamed that the FreeBSD organization was just east of the village where I lived, but in reality I had visited there just a few days ago—everything had been demolished, leaving nothing but an empty lot of rubble and garbage. Then I went to the west side of the village. It should have been deserted, but there were surprisingly many female students wearing red or brown pleated skirts, leaning against bicycles and chatting—the scene was quite lively. In the dream, I received a letter from Shandong in 2015 along with over sixteen thousand yuan. The envelope bore both a privacy number and my real phone number. At the end of my address on the letter was 302, and the letter came from the last maintainer of FreeBSD China. He said the highest single donation received was only 10 yuan. Inside the letter was a shipping log, and the last page recorded that this letter was sent to me, costing him 302 yuan. He said he could no longer maintain it and hoped I would carry on. There was also a book introducing UNIX. Before I could finish opening the letter, two unimportant phone calls woke me up in succession. Upon waking, I opened the Excel collection form and looked—still only the one example I had written myself. The call log also showed only one phone call. 2015 was when I first encountered FreeBSD. At the time, FreeBSD had a defect: the boot disk in UEFI mode would cause screen corruption with the HD 4000 graphics card, and I could never enter the installation process. Because of this, I set it aside for three or four years. Time flies—it has now been ten years. ### The Second Dream I dreamed that I had graduated from a university. Previously, I seemed to have participated in some kind of security competition, where I even defeated enemies through surprise attacks and ultimately won second place, along with a certificate. After graduation, I gathered my things from the classroom and prepared to go out for an adventure. I rode my bike out through the school's south gate, with the wind at my back. Along the way, I saw a male classmate from elementary school whom I was particularly close with running, so I followed him and arrived at what looked like a water park. The water current wasn't fast, but I soon lost sight of him, so I decided to ride back. On the way back, I encountered an old woman grilling a cat. The cat seemed to have injuries to its head and front paws, with its hindquarters wrapped in tin foil—I couldn't tell whether she was treating the cat or wanted to eat it. She blocked the exit, and I was anxious, so I had to detour through another exit. It wasn't just me—a group of people behind me followed me out as well. In between, there seemed to be some kind of market, and I kept weaving through one stall after another selling clothes. After I came out, I reached the school's south gate, only to hear that entry was no longer permitted. Someone said you could enter from the West China Hospital research institute on the west side. But just as I was halfway there, I heard that entering from the institute side was even harder, though after the school relocated to this site, you could always go around from the west—it was just a management issue with the sister institution, and nothing could be done. I thought I might be able to sneak in. But when I reached the institute, I was indeed blocked—everyone had to enter through the pedestrian overpass, and they checked IDs. I had to go back to the main school gate. I found a spot to park my bike by the side, only to realize I wasn't wearing shoes. I took my shoes out of my clothing pocket and put them on. A crowd had gathered at the school gate—everyone was being blocked for returning late. Someone who appeared to be a leader was criticizing the students who tried to sneak in. I waited a long time and saw the gate was about to close, so I ran over and whispered to the leader that I had graduated today and still had some things to take care of. The leader said, "You can't even handle this simple matter—go on in." I then said to the guard, "Then let me out later." The guard was afraid of taking responsibility. I said, "If there's any issue, talk to that leader just now." I seemed to need to go back to the dormitory to find something or wait for someone. At this point the dream ended. ### The Third Dream A classmate and I were walking along the road when he picked up a metal detector—the kind used during exams, but with a particularly bizarre shape, like a transformation device from Ultraman. He said he needed to use the restroom, so we entered a building that resembled a large shopping mall. We went into the restroom together—it was large and crowded. He handed me the metal detector, and only when I took it did I realize it was remarkably heavy. I turned around and he had vanished into the crowd. I returned to the street and waited for him at the building's main entrance, holding the metal detector. Suddenly, a burst of raucous music sounded. I went from the west gate to the main avenue on the north side and saw several people with light yellow hair riding motorcycles from a distance, each biting down on something that spewed fire—shaped like glass tubes but continuously emitting flames, with each flame reaching higher than the last. Yet they seemed entirely unafraid of being burned, clenching down without letting go. Four or five of them passed by. Finally, a mecha resembling a tank appeared. People had been watching, but it suddenly began attacking in all directions. I quickly ducked into the mall and watched from a distance. Seeing no one outside, the mecha charged straight into the mall. I wanted to find my classmate in the restroom and kept calling his name, but there was no response. Someone answered me, but I realized it wasn't him at all. So I ran toward the building's north gate. To the north was a pedestrian overpass. I had just run up when I found a fault line ahead—impassable. I had to hurry back and tell the people behind me not to go forward—it was a dead end. Returning to the north gate entrance, many people were escorting someone wearing a paper mask past me—and that was the mecha's pilot. I wanted to go home, but discovered that the yellow top I had been wearing was gone—I had no upper garment, and I had lost the metal detector too. I searched everywhere but couldn't find them, so I had to return to the bus stop. In front of the bus stop sign was a small convenience store. I saw something yellow there—my clothes had fallen on the ground. I quickly picked them up and put them on. I asked the person in the store if she had seen a blue object with a strange shape. She asked if it was a metal detector. I said yes—that was exactly what I had lost. She returned it to me. ### The Fourth Dream The Earth's poles reversed, and the polar temperatures became like those at the equator. A group of us were forced to spend two days packing up and fleeing. I kept trying to charge my power bank, but the weather was too cold—it wouldn't charge at all. In an entire night, it only reached 58%. Moreover, my power bank was old; only those one-to-three non-fast-charging adapters could charge it, so it was not easy to charge. A neighbor had only loaded a bed and a sofa. He was using a truck, and the truck's tailgate wasn't closed (the blue cargo barrier). I closed it for him. He was also heading toward the North Pole. I asked if he had any batteries. He said why didn't I say so earlier—now there were no usable ones left. He took me to look, and indeed, those large batteries (resembling homemade lead-acid batteries, all leaking) were frozen solid and couldn't be pulled out—like white radishes rooted in the ground. Someone said they had dug up workbooks that could perhaps be used for fire. The workbooks were dug up from underground, mixed with red bricks and coal chunks, but everything appeared red on the surface. I said that was the rust from the staples—the workbooks themselves were printed in green. I tried several chargers to charge two old power banks. It was permafrost—no ice or snow visible. *** With no one to assist with merge commits, even porting a single piece of software is difficult to put to practical use, and can only be shelved indefinitely (this has happened many times already). The Chinese community has no committers of its own. FreeBSD may already be "dead"—currently in the process of gradual decay. The upstream foundation, community, and journals all severely lack a sense of urgency—or perhaps lack it entirely. It seems that doing peripheral work has little significance. The entire community is also in stagnation, whether upstream or downstream. All mailing lists seem to have lost their meaning—they are either stuffed with bug reports or contain no useful information. Furthermore, the committers themselves do not follow the mailing lists. Bug reports are often simply forwarded to the mailing list. This is equally meaningless—they will never be assigned to any specific person. The downstream community (including our own Chinese community) won't report issues even when they discover them. He is still there painstakingly porting a GDM 47 that cannot start—I'm afraid if I don't report it, even he won't know it can't start. FreeBSD no longer has any possibility of improvement. FreeBSD will ultimately be like the desert poplar—living a thousand years without dying, standing a thousand years after death, remaining imperishable for a thousand years after falling. I realize that only when a person is alive can they be aware of being alive. This means that if the concept of "always being alive" is eternally bestowed upon a living person, then that person must be immortal. This has no necessary connection to whether the person is actually alive, nor to their physiological state—for example, it could be achieved through uploading consciousness to the internet. Questions of personal identity and the like may be set aside for now. We cannot necessarily prove whether it is being alive that produces consciousness, whether being alive generates consciousness, or whether consciousness allows us to perceive "being alive"—because this is currently impossible to verify experimentally. Therefore, my proposition may hold. We always take it as self-evident that the materiality of the world derives from practice, without considering whether the materiality of practice itself is valid. It appears that we transform the so-called environment through practice. But is it possible that everything is predetermined? And this also cannot prove the material attributes of practice and human beings themselves. So, is there a possibility that FreeBSD does not exist at all? It seems like there is plenty of time, but in reality there is not. If you don't act immediately, the opportunity will indeed still exist in most cases, but the motivation and circumstances to act again will have been lost. Yet even if you act immediately, everything may turn out to be nothing more than a protracted ellipsis. Everything truly important is often decided without thorough deliberation, while every trivial detail is examined again and again. In fact, there are always many opportunities, but the number of times one is truly willing to act is exceedingly few. Memory is a river that cannot be recrossed. The river is still there, and both banks are still there, but the boat and the ferryman are never the same. Perhaps it can never be proven whether memory itself belongs to the present self. We always blindly trust that this memory belongs to us, and assume we must have lost certain possible existences—to what extent is this self-consistent? Or rather, could these memories truly be our own, rather than fabricated by others? Everyone quotes "I wished to buy osmanthus and carry wine together, but in the end, it was not like the journeys of our youth" from Liu Guo of the Southern Song dynasty's "Tang Duo Ling · Reed Leaves Fill the Islet" to emphasize something. But they overlook one point: very often it is not that there are no opportunities or conditions—as long as one is alive—but whether you yourself have the desire to realize them. If you truly wish to do something together with your friends again, I believe that in most cases, you only need to pay them some compensation and travel expenses—this is not an excessively demanding condition, is it? Just as you would not now seek out the elderly woman who sold egg-filled pancakes by the roadside when you were in first grade—even if you believe you've never tasted that flavor again, you wouldn't expend the slightest effort to find her, even though finding her would require little trial or financial outlay. Some people emphasize the Buddhist notion that "all who meet must part," attempting to interpret human relationships as dynamic—dependent on changes in economics, material conditions, age, values, and residential distance. This is correct and realistic, but it is not what people desire. Today's internet technology is so advanced, yet the distance between people has reached an unprecedented remoteness. We can now communicate with astronauts in space, yet cannot reach our own friends. If distance is still used as an excuse, doesn't that seem absurd? In truth, every opportunity arises countless times, but the number of times one is truly willing to act is few. So what is important, and what is unimportant? If nothing is important, then what remains won't be important either. Everything returns to the origin, and no matter how many times it is repeated, the outcome is roughly the same. It seems we can still change some so-called important things, but the final decision will inevitably repeat everything from the past. In other words, even if a new world is chosen, is everything in the old world worthy of negation? After negation, the present choices and past negations are destined to reappear. "Ultimately not like the journeys of our youth"—is it truly "not like," or is it "unwilling"? Or are we ourselves confined within the world, becoming part of it and unwilling to change? Youth has been disciplined by modern industrial civilization into a component of absolute spirit, surrendering all subjectivity and alienating into a mere element of the resultant force of history—nothing more. If human civilization still exists, thanks to projects like GitHub's Archive Program and the Internet Archive, people a thousand years from now might also read these words. In fact, the loneliest thing on the internet is discovering that the doubts you have were raised by others years or even decades ago, but no one resolved them—no one even replied. The FreeBSD project, foundation, and community all have many and significant problems—this is reality. It has made everyone an outsider, though most people don't really care about these things. Making abstract videos or creating a group for everyone to play together isn't meaningful either—no one will play with you. The community, fundamentally, is also something that does not exist. It is merely the contribution efforts of a few, along with sporadic feedback from a relatively broad but rare group of actual users. Even if you gave each person 10 or 100 yuan per day, no one would keep you company. I wonder if readers have watched *Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day*. Why was it difficult for Jintan's companions to get along with him again—was it merely because Jintan gave up on further education? In most of our non-work group chats, only a handful of people still speak now—is it simply because we have time and they don't? Are they busier than Trump? Trump can still post dozens or even hundreds of tweets every day. He just doesn't speak here, that's all. And taking a step further—even assuming he is busier than Trump, what is the significance of his busyness? For most people, merely staying alive is already difficult enough. You will find that yes, there is indeed an invisible presence standing between us. This thing might be what Hegel described as absolute spirit. Some say you could perfectly well not attend school, or skip school—no one is tying you down. This Sartrean absolute freedom does not exist; Sartre himself realized this in his later years. Or rather, we ourselves have given up the possibility—and this decision is not entirely our own, but determined by the rationality of absolute spirit. But ultimately, the two are one and the same—this does indeed become our own decision. But is this really the case? In the Bible, God parted the Red Sea with a strong east wind (Exodus 14:21). And we too are separated from our old friends by this unseen wind, with only our path remaining between us. Where the path of the mortal world leads, no one knows. Those who walk the Great Way are called Daoists—the Great Way is hard to walk indeed. The plan and goal of driving everyone to improve their skills and thereby promote the development of the entire FreeBSD project lacks sufficient support in the current era. Many people have limited energy after a day of work and find it difficult to engage in additional learning activities; even getting them to exercise is often beyond their capacity. It is not that exercise produces energy, but that energy enables exercise. And those relatively time-rich students and young people have already drifted further and further away from this place. Free software and the open-source movement are narrowly equated with the history of GNU/Linux. This is not a problem unique to China. I have also discussed this extensively in a Korean community and browsed the FreeBSD communities in Japan, India, Russia, South Africa, and other regions listed on FreeBSD.org. The decline is unstoppable. I have noticed that some Christian worship teams face the same issues. But they persist with tremendous perseverance. Even when each video receives no replies and the total views don't match reuploaded videos on Bilibili—even when their song arrangements are quite perfect and other aspects are not bad either. Perhaps they have some sponsors, but I'm not sure. I myself do not hold this religious faith, but what everyone is doing is not much different. Yet my enthusiasm for this is clearly not as great as theirs. Among them, some have even made great efforts to publish a pinyin version of the Bible. This is something I could never accomplish—regardless of faith. In *BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!*, I feel that Sayo (Soyo) still lacks sufficient initiative. Logically speaking, although Sakiko's father's investment failure was not reported in the news, Sayo's mother should have known about it, or one could check investor reports. Moreover, Sakiko's goal was to debut commercially, demanding the transformation of an amateur activity into a professional one. But I did not see tension between these two aspects. Re-forming CRYCHIC is just like re-forming the "Super Peace Busters" in *Anohana*. Once the order changes, the connections between people change as well. Ultimately, it's not about re-forming any particular group, nor is it necessarily about needing those same people—it's about returning to the thing itself, returning to the order constituted by the original material conditions, economic level, and social relations. What needs to be re-formed has never been a group, a family, an organization, or a project. Rather, it is the culture, order, and rules they carry. As a person's degree of socialization deepens, their core relationships shift elsewhere—to the group where they are most deeply alienated. Their free time becomes completely occupied. Even if they break away, they will be alienated by the cultural products of other teams or other things. Each generation's village is different. You say the village has changed, but perhaps it should be said that there has never been any village here—whether in the past, present, or future. I have never wanted to return to any particular place or any particular year. Many people say they want to go back to a certain year. But even if they did go back, they would be powerless to stop this infiltration. The simple truth is that we own no means of production—we have nothing but our labor power. But this is merely a surface phenomenon that cannot explain its inevitability. The only reasonable explanation can only be that there exists a driving force in this world—a being with subjectivity—that pushes the contingent toward becoming the necessary. For how do events that are contingent for everyone become necessary? For most people, survival itself is not difficult. The difference lies in deeper needs. But if this is regarded as necessary, then there must be a driving force pushing it—and this driving force is by no means purely economic or material factors. I believe the problem is not about interpreting the world and transforming the world, but about proving the world. Before we act, we must first make the world "come into being"—to discover what the world is, whether the world truly exists. And this is often regarded as formalism. However, to unreflectively assume the reality of the world and then begin so-called interpretation and transformation is not only formalism but also self-deception, and will naturally fall into the rationality of a certain structure, unable to extricate itself. The traditional view proceeds from knowing oneself and then deduces knowledge of others and the world. The problem is that these premises, including the possibility of self-existence, have never been taken into consideration. If one simply equates "being able to see" with being understandable and knowable, substituting practice for coming-into-being—this is true formalism—substituting form for genuine existence, and covering true rationality with theories produced by practice. This can only be a false view—an empiricist or positivist attitude. This illusion should not be simply attributed to intellectual laziness, but stems from certain presuppositions. We can indeed feel the existence of our own bodies and things outside our bodies; the problem is that we cannot feel the existence of ourselves and the invisible things beyond our bodies. Moreover, is the act of proving itself not also an activity based on presuppositions of existence and pre-understanding? Language, writing, and logic all come into being on the basis that the world exists—attempting to negate the coming-into-being of the world through them has already presupposed necessity at the fundamental level. The question is not where we return to, nor how to interpret and transform anything, but: Who are we? Where do we come from? And where are we going? It feels like there's nothing fun to find, no pleasure in anything. In the past, installing a system could keep me entertained for days; now I'm like a hammer, seeing everything as a nail. Once you want to change a structure, you yourself are already part of that structure—change becomes impossible. Dialogue with this structure is impossible; it is internally self-consistent. Ultimately, power is centralized, but the internet is decentralized. Opening rsync synchronization is just a matter of minutes. But getting him to understand its necessity is difficult. Knowing is hard, doing is easy—yet because of this, "doing" also becomes difficult. It is easy to defeat bandits in the mountains, but hard to defeat the bandits in the heart (Wang Shouren. Letter to Yang Shide and Xue Shangqian\[C]//Wang Shouren. Collected Works of Wang Yangming. Wang Xiaoxin, Zhao Pinglue, eds. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2016: Volume 4, Literary Records Part 1.) You can use data and security measures to demonstrate the benefits and project priorities to him. But the problem is not there. Linux's development relies on continuous revolution and thorough negation (or further development upon that basis), while BSD relies on continuous reform. Reform is far more difficult than revolution, but it has indeed brought stability and benefits. It is hard to evaluate, but reality demands change. Existing memory is the result of the reconstruction of all past memories—"all true memory is present memory." Each memory should be entirely different, because in reality everything is in flux, which is also what memory suggests. But memory completely obscures the differences. Or rather, what is remembered has never existed—for example, that day it rained, snowed, or hailed. That day you found a hundred-yuan bill; all the contingencies of that day have become necessities—they do not exist. Even if memory could be completely reproduced, it would be impossible to distinguish any event of that day from other days. What this means is that there is no single river flowing. For instance, the sun's altitude angle that day, and its distance from the Earth—such contingencies are difficult to reproduce. What is it that we recall today? The problem is that fundamentally, it has never existed. We cannot possess the past in past time, because past memory did not exist in the past either. I now think of a building from the past—it has long since ceased to exist. So which day does this remembered building belong to? Was there ever such a moment? The person in memory has been frozen at a specific point in time, or rather, in this memory, that person has already died at that place. Or rather, they live in another world of memory, reconstructed according to their own will. Therefore, it is not that there is no need to return to the old village or find someone, nor that the village never existed. Rather, the village is not in this world. So it is not about returning to CRYCHIC, but to the CRYCHIC in a parallel world. But the problem is that this contingency is not necessary, or rather, in the present, it no longer possesses the rationality to become necessary. Because it will be overwritten by other necessities of the present—what people typically understand as material forces, such as economic factors and social relations. Therefore, the Buddhist concept of mindfulness/right mindfulness points out the above problem. It should not be complicated or mystified. But in memory, these are still necessary. What can never be returned to is never CRYCHIC/the "Super Peace Busters," but the present subject. Right now, immediately, you could have 10 CRYCHICs, or even more. Most people are not physiologically dead—at any moment, as long as they're not on a space station, is it that hard to see them? The structural factors that appear to be constraints—family, economics, responsibilities—for most people, setting them aside for 3 days is not difficult. A 3-day CRYCHIC and a 3-year or 30-year CRYCHIC are no different. In this sense, all true memory is also past memory. At the same time, regarding this obsessive remembrance as the root of suffering, as a betrayal of the past, as a characterization of the future, as a sense of meaninglessness about the present—this is actually the dissolution of the self, overwritten by a theory, which in practice is the abandonment of one's own subjectivity. The subject's own memory and time are inherently private, and this privacy cannot be made public. Therefore, this kind of world-changing may merely be creating another form of alienation. Returning to the cave is the only solution. Or rather, we are always already in the cave. It is not about returning to the cave, nor inventing the cave, but discovering the cave. I neither oppose leaving the cave, nor believe we should return to it, nor believe it is impossible to leave it—rather, we ourselves are the cave. This resonates with "Hell is other people." The problem with nihilism is that it overlooks the fact that even an illusion is a constructed illusion of reality. This formalist construction itself—this nihilism—is likewise so constructed. I do not deny, nor do I consider formalism useless. On the contrary, this is the entirety of human civilization—without these, even the "bamboo" in "a single bamboo of food" would not exist. It is not external things, not capital that alienates the subject—the subject itself is in constant self-alienation. This has nothing to do with what kind of society it is; even when no society exists, this alienation continues. Memory itself is constantly alienating the present self. True negation lies not in negation, but in acceptance and reconciliation. This is fundamentally different from the so-called negation of negation. The development of any theory ultimately becomes an eight-legged essay. It becomes the most reactionary, because it lacks the courage to negate itself, refuses to acknowledge human subjectivity, and refuses to admit that humanity can progress and develop. The true theory of historical cycles is the theory itself. Failing to realize that the development of human civilization depends not on confrontation and struggle, but on reconciliation and acceptance. On one hand pointing out this convergent force, while on the other hand refusing to acknowledge that the true source of this force is not the theory itself, but the subjectivity of each individual. Meanwhile, alienation is the exploitation of labor's free time by capital—but is not any theory also a form of alienation? No matter how one argues for the correctness of one's theory, one must also admit that one cannot and dares not negate oneself. If this is merely called a negation upon negation, it then becomes a Ship of Theseus-style negation. This is not genuine development. It denies substantive self-dissolution, which in reality is the same as Zhuangzi's equalization of all things. All true history is ancient history—as a philosophy, it cannot deny its own premises, which is itself a failure. All development is nothing but formalism, which in reality imprisons people's subjectivity. The more a theory claims to be something, the less it actually is in substance—this is a dialectical self-reflexivity, meaning its own anti-subjectivity, which is reasonable. Regarding the reason for being unable to return to CRYCHIC/the "Super Peace Busters," previous interpretations have mostly proceeded from state of mind, from social structures and capital's alienation of people, from karma and fate, from the team itself, or from individual destiny. They cannot answer a certain question—there is a rupture between their explanations and reality. I, however, believe the problem is not about where to return to; the problem lies in Socrates' ancient proposition: "Know thyself" and Confucius' "To know what you know and what you don't know, that is knowledge." Recognizing one's own subjectivity, and thereby understanding that what one wishes to return to does not actually exist—it is the subject's present reorganization and reproduction of past memory. It has never been about returning anywhere, because we as individuals have always been both there and not there. The only thing to do is reconciliation and acceptance—reconciling with oneself, accepting oneself. The team in memory is merely the recognition of many contingencies as necessities. At the same time, it further negates the occurrence of these contingencies. People can only ever possess genuine feelings about the present; all other feelings are inauthentic. Needless to say, this is the self-alienation of the subject. What one wishes to return to is the identification of one's past self with one's future self. But is this identification an affirmation of time's healing? Or merely a negation of one's past self? I believe formalism is the truly real existence of the world; all other existence is unreal. What is real? What people come into contact with through their senses and then analyze through so-called rationality is not truly real existence. The traditional view holds that this leads to agnosticism—for example, Kant's thing-in-itself. Although Kant himself started from agnosticism, it must be said that Kantian philosophy is a formalist philosophy. In other words, any previous existence is a kind of formalism, not merely agnosticism. Formalism is the true original appearance of the world. All existence that people can know has been humanized—its essence is a kind of non-existence that does not truly exist in the so-called real world. That is, people's understanding of existence is a non-existence; what human thought reflects is not a real existence, but a non-existence. What lies behind this non-existence is not existence itself, but a formalist existence—a processed existence, belonging to a knowable non-existence. Kant's previous view reflected only one point: he recognized that humans cannot know the true appearance of the so-called real world, and all existence can only be known and grasped by people after being humanized. But what people know and grasp—is it truly real existence? One can only say it might be, but most likely it is unknown. Or rather, what people can know is not real existence; what things themselves are like is limited by people themselves. But this is not the key issue—even if people's understanding of existence is the kind of existence that existence is willing to present, people still cannot know the true appearance of existence after its form has been stripped away. The being-known of existence is subjective; for existence to be existence, it must possess certain formalist elements—if existence had no admixture of formalist elements whatsoever, then this existence itself would be non-existence. Formalism is not existence without content, but a truly originary existence, and the only real existence. This is because all known existence is non-existence, and the existence of these non-existences is itself precisely the manifestation of this formalism—it is not that non-existence contains elements of existence, but that this non-existential existence is a formalist, i.e., humanized, understanding of existence by people. From this perspective, humanization is formalization. People's understanding of material existence can never transcend the scope of their own viewpoints and visual fields—this is due to the limitations of human beings themselves. So where does human knowledge ultimately come from? I believe the essence of human knowledge is a process of humanizing existence—that is, a process of formalization. An existence can only become non-existence through the above process; humans can only know non-existence, and cannot know existence. The process of reading a text is itself a process of re-creation by the reader, and the process of understanding and knowing existence is no different. All human knowledge is formalized non-existence. And the true appearance of existence, after being formalized, is no longer existence. This true appearance does not refer to the essence of existence, but to existence that has not been formalized. Because the true essence of existence may also not be a kind of existence—it may also be a formalized existence, i.e., non-existence. Is the product of people's formalization of non-existence also non-existence? And believing that the development of science is a process of approaching truth is also mistaken. > "Only when waking does one know that one was just dreaming, and even in the dream one was divining good and ill fortune from the dream."—Zhuangzi might have said this. But I believe that perhaps we are dreaming right now. Only by being willing to believe that one is dreaming can one awaken. The traditional view holds that we are currently alive and awake. But all of this is presupposed, entirely without justification, and also difficult to prove. I believe that people are already dead, and are asleep. Even if they wake again, how can one prove that this is not still a recursive dream? Previous argumentative methods have been dishonest—always attempting to substitute proof or presupposition with transcendent or empirical existence or beings, which constitutes recursive argumentation. Or attempting to bypass this question by claiming that the present world is more worth pursuing—this is a typical manifestation of alienation. Questioning the validity of the question itself is also a manifestation of alienation. In *The Matrix*, why do those who awaken from the Matrix never doubt whether this awakening itself is also a dream or another layer of the matrix? Games are virtual, but the lights in games are also illuminated by real electricity. This is not to prove that all virtual existences have material factors, but rather to argue by contrapositive: if only the lamp in the so-called real world truly exists, can this be extended by deduction to conclude that everything is material? Therefore, even if the entirety of so-called nature is real, one cannot conclude that humans are real. The reason why there is consensus regarding the non-existence known by most people is not because of the reality of non-existence, but because the process of formalization of non-existence itself possesses universality. That is, people's understanding of non-existence is itself constrained within a certain range—the so-called conditions of humanization. Universality exists precisely because the formalist non-existence is non-existence, not real existence, and is limited by the subject itself—this is the particularity of the subject's existence, but humanity as a whole is also a special kind of subject, and the contradictions within it exist as a unified whole. Therefore, the non-existence that people know tends to be consistent, so that consensus is reached about existence. The reality of the world does not determine whether all emotions within it exist or not. On the contrary, I often feel that many things worth doing that should be acknowledged for their value, or even those already forgotten—they are false, but there is no fundamental difference between the real world and the false world. Even if everything is real, or the opposite—what does it prove? Nothing more than those things. ## Second Edition Preface: Return to Copy and Paste, Face the Tutorial Itself > Quote One: > > > This book emphasizes examples over theory. As long as you follow the examples step by step, you will succeed, which gives you a sense of accomplishment and the motivation to keep learning—because many people give up when they encounter obstacles. Actually, I am this kind of person too. Just let them see hope, and they will persist. (Chen Jingfeng. Preface: FreeBSD Handbook\[EB/OL]//Netkiller FreeBSD Notes. (2024)\[2026-04-08]. .) > Quote Two: > > > Someone in the group posted this passage from the *Tao Te Ching*: "Those who possess the Way but lack technique can still seek technique; those who possess technique but lack the Way will remain confined to technique."\ A poem admits of no definitive interpretation, and for such classics, everyone may have different readings. But I want to use this to tell you: strive to understand the meaning behind each operation, so that you can apply what you've learned flexibly, rather than learning how to install one desktop and then going to ask someone how to install another. This is also why this tutorial does not provide commands you can simply copy and paste. Through inquiry, one grasps the Way, and thereby grows. (Alex11. To FreeBSD Newcomers\[EB/OL]//Alex11's FreeBSD Handbook. (2024-02-23)\[2026-04-08]. .) > > Note ①: The original quote here contains errors. Consultation of the *Tao Te Ching* (Wang Bi, annot. Laozi's Tao Te Ching: Annotated and Explicated\[M]. Lou Yulie, ed. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2016. ISBN: 978-7-101-11674-8) reveals no such passage or similar meaning. The actual source is: Doudou. The Distant Savior\[M]. Beijing: Writer's Publishing House, 2005: 446. ISBN: 978-7-5063-3174-6, corresponding to: Zhang Qian, dir. Tiandao\[Z/OL]. Mainland China: Zhejiang Tianrun Film and Television Distribution Co., Ltd., 2008. Episode 18, after the 42nd minute [deleted scene](https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1bT4y1F7qK). However, similar content about "art" and "technique" also repeatedly appears in Guo Degang's crosstalk: "Those with art but no technique are frauds; those with technique but no art are peddlers." (A relatively clear video is Deyun Society. Deyun Society Master-Disciple Father-Son Crosstalk Grand Ceremony (Shanghai Station)\[Z/OL]. Shanghai, China: Mercedes-Benz Arena, 2018-08-11. . Starting from 1:07:00) Judging from the dates of creation and places of publication, the phrases "Those who possess the Way but lack technique can still seek technique; those who possess technique but lack the Way will remain confined to technique" may have been influenced by Guo Degang. *** The two passages above illustrate the difficulty of the hermeneutic circle: to understand the part, one must understand the whole; to understand the whole, one must understand the part. And prejudice is inevitably present. We always participate based on certain theoretical assumptions and personal opinions (prejudices). But this is not necessarily negative—on the contrary, prejudice is indispensable. Let me ask you: how would you explain to someone why, when a phone screen is cracked, the screenshot image is still intact? Is this the same as the relationship between a broken mirror and its reflection? Most ancient Greek philosophers believed that things in flux were unreal. If everything is constantly changing, could the entire world disappear in the next moment? They even believed that the real world is merely a shadow of the true world, and thus they always pursued that unchanging origin and world of Forms, seeking that unchanging One. Kant argued that a "thing-in-itself" must exist. What we can know are only the appearances of things; the true appearance of things (the thing-in-itself) we can never experience. Are things truly as real as we see them? Is Descartes' "evil demon hypothesis" really just a hypothesis? Husserl's phenomenology emphasizes "returning to the things themselves" (Zurück zu den Sachen selbst), rather than "returning to Kant." The principle of all principles in phenomenological research is intuition. Suspending all traditional philosophical thinking, opinions, and prejudices. Questioning things within their own givenness—that is, advocating for presuppositionlessness. Whatever the thing presents itself as, that is what it is. Phenomenology holds that what you see is what it is, and that is the essence of the thing. Why assume a logical entity that can never be experienced and does not exist? Husserl undoubtedly pushed Descartes' principle of "clear and distinct" (Clarté et distinction) a step further. His student Heidegger advocated "facing the things themselves" (Zu den Sachen selbst)—he was a rebellious student who acknowledged that premises are necessary for us to reveal phenomena. "Therefore people should not only care for their own parents, nor only nurture their own children. Let the elderly have a fitting end, the able-bodied find useful employment, the young be properly raised. Let widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, and the disabled all be provided for. Let men have their duties and women have their homes." The "Liyun Datong Pian" elaborated on Confucius' concept of "rectification of names." "Cultural workers should have culture, doctors should know medicine, swimmers should be able to swim"—I often see people using this kind of seemingly tautological "nonsense" as sarcasm. In fact, letting things return to themselves is no easy task. "The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons people have, the more chaotic the state becomes. The more cunning skills people possess, the more strange things appear. The more laws and decrees are promulgated, the more thieves and robbers there will be" (Gao Ming. Silk Manuscript Laozi: An Annotated Critical Edition\[M]. Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2022. Hereafter the same.) We have seen too many regulations like "trash cans must not contain trash," "street signs must conform to a uniform format and not be eye-catching," and "no one may lie on the bed." At the same time, we also note that the vast majority of science and engineering textbooks, whether Chinese or foreign, are always filled with various displays of virtuosity (such as "it follows from xxx" or "easily proven") and defensive phrasing (such as "note that" or "obviously"), and even the authors themselves cannot solve the exercises printed in their own books. Yet the fact is, computer science as a science is based on empiricism. If one studies it only from a theoretical level that transcends the computer itself, the legitimacy of computer science's existence would be dissolved—does this world truly exist? Is it meaningful to study these things? What if even happiness itself does not exist? The vast majority of us will never engage in computer-related scientific research, nor work at companies like Intel or AMD, let alone earn a doctorate in related fields. Is the joy of being satisfied with copy and paste truly a fault? How many people are willing to face the sunlight outside the cave? Socrates emphasized the importance of virtue and repeatedly stressed "know thyself," yet Socrates was ultimately voted to death by the citizens of Athens. In fact, most so-called theories are just another form of copy-and-paste content. You can trace C language back to assembly language, then to processor instructions, signals and systems, computer architecture, CPU design, physics, mathematics. And then what? Does it really end at mathematics? Science and mathematics never study—and cannot study—essence; science only studies phenomena. In other words, there is no so-called "Way" in science, only "technique." If you are satisfied with this alone, then it is merely another form of "philosophy of suffering." Zhuangzi made this clear in the *Nanhuajing*—"My life has a limit, but knowledge has no limit. To pursue the limitless with the limited is dangerous indeed!" Can people truly possess knowledge, rather than merely opinion? Socrates held a negative view on this. In fact, if one forcibly abstracts "Way" and "technique" from the *Laozi*, you will find that the two are not contradictory, nor is one superior to the other. You can see clues in the works of later Daoists. Those who have seen *Chinese Paladin* should be familiar with these lines from the *Supreme Profound Spirit Treasure Primordial Limitless Salvation Scripture of the Highest Grade*: "The human way is obscure, the immortal way vast. The ghost way rejoices, at the gate of life. The immortal way values life, the ghost way values death. The immortal way is always auspicious, the ghost way is always ominous. The high and pure luminous spirit sings sorrowfully across the vast cosmos. We wish only that the immortal way succeeds, and do not wish the human way to fail." The human way is obscure yet has a destination, while the immortal way leads nowhere. Is the immortal way really superior to the human way? In the TV series *Soldiers Sortie* (beginning of episode 3), Li Meng says, "Glory lies in the mundane, and hardship lies in the long haul." The "Way" is not a simple negation of "technique"—in fact, it itself is "technique" at another level. "Who can truly say in which direction the road extends? And who can say in which direction the days flow?" Enya's answer is "Only Time." Von Neumann once said, "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." It can be seen that an ordinary life is the most difficult to understand and the hardest to live through. Indeed, anyone can do copy and paste—the question is, who actually does it? We need people to do the copy-and-paste work: if everyone wants to be a doctor, who will clean the garbage on the streets, who will sweep the roads? And garbage will always exist and always need to be cleaned—you can't deceive yourself into thinking there's no garbage just by hiding the trash cans on the street; that will only turn every place into a trash can. "The glass is clear, the oranges are brilliant." Today's academic scholars have studied Kant more "clearly and distinctly" than Kant himself, and their volume of publications exceeds Kant's own by more than ten thousand times. But among them, how many will leave their names in the history of philosophy? Which of them, and which of their works, has surpassed Kant's own critical theory? Most of them are just copy and pasting as well. Can you really expect everyone to be like a dragon—every person a Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, or Marx? Is this possible? Without surpassing them, your work is no different in essence from copy and paste. Yet are these works truly meaningless? I have seen far too many shoddy philosophy history textbooks where even the translations of classic authors' names are wrong. No one can step forward to write a book that everyone can understand. How many people said twenty years ago they would complete the translation or creation of some book—I still don't know the CIP and ISBN numbers of their applications. Is everyone the Buddha, capable of enlightenment without a teacher? Or is everyone Wittgenstein, able to become a philosopher without studying the history of philosophy? Han Yu believed himself to be the orthodox heir of the Confucian lineage, devoting his life to reviving Confucianism and suppressing Buddhism and Daoism. *On the Teacher* is no exception: Han Yu used the "Way of the Teacher" as a means to cultivate scholar-officials who could promote the Confucian Way, in hopes of revitalizing Confucianism. As he said, "Where the Way exists, there the teacher exists." Yet the real question is: is the "Way of the Teacher" possible? Is education possible? Is enlightenment and modernization possible? Facts prove that it is not. Many people seem to pursue the so-called "Way," but their understanding of science is fundamentally wrong, and they are unwilling to break free from the shackles of the cave. Truth is indeed like the sun—the problem is, we are always inside the cave. Those who believe themselves to be outside the cave are actually still in another cave. Frankly, I don't know. "To know what you know and what you don't know, that is knowledge." I truly don't know, nor do I want to know—I only want happiness. Clearly, the passage in *On the Teacher* that states "Therefore students need not always be inferior to their teachers, and teachers need not always be superior to their students; some attain the Way earlier and some later, and each has their own area of expertise—that is all" appears to be a specific elaboration of the *Analects'* "Among three people walking together, there must be one who can be my teacher." But in reality, although Han Yu spent his life attacking Buddhism, these sentences were clearly influenced by Chan Buddhist thought. In Buddhism, such discussions are common: this is also a clear difference between religion and ideological-political education—disciples and masters are equal in status when facing the Dharma (or the divine), both being seekers of the Way together. "Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Ponder the path of your feet; then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or the left; turn your foot away from evil." (Proverbs 4:25-27) "So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." (Matthew 23:3) "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" (Matthew 7:16) "Therefore the sage dwells in the realm of non-action and practices the teaching without words." May I ask, if a group claims to be the FreeBSD community and all its members do nothing but talk emptily every day—is that not also a joyful thing? Unlike most operating systems, BSD provides both binary packages for quick installation and source code for custom configuration. Two currents of thought, ancient and modern, converge here. If someone suspends both the "Way" and "technique"—just as this very article does. It's hard to imagine how happy such a person must be! In the present era, happiness is extremely difficult to obtain. Open your eyes and look at this world—what about it can make anyone satisfied? Even Guo Degang says that these days, being able to spend money to buy some happiness is already not easy. "All hope comes with annotations, all faith comes with groans." Will this world truly get better? The "Liang Shuming Question" has deeply troubled generations of scholars. Will FreeBSD truly get better? Will I truly get better? This deeply troubles me. In fact, no matter how you interpret Daoism or the *Laozi*, you cannot escape being touched by that hint of melancholy. The reality or unreality of this world's existence cannot conceal its evil. Urbanization and industrialization have caused generation after generation to lose their homelands. In truth, there is nothing complicated about it—overly complex theories serve no purpose other than ensuring you lose your successors, as the history of Chinese Buddhism clearly demonstrates. "What you cannot understand, do not try to understand; what you cannot figure out, do not try to figure out; what you cannot accomplish, do not try to accomplish": returning to nature, returning to a simple society—this is the repeated admonition of the *Tao Te Ching*. What we see is what it is, even if there may be a greater existence behind it—you cannot deny that what we see is exactly as it appears. In modern society, nearly everyone endlessly reproduces yesterday. Returning to copy and paste means returning to this simple three-point-one-line or even two-point.one-line trivial existence. An obvious fact is that the vast majority of people search for tutorials and look up solutions not to pursue truth or satisfy curiosity, but to make a living. The "truth" you pursue has long been overwritten by the Java "eight-legged essays" you memorized for interviews and the endless algorithm problems you drilled on platforms. Are these truly interesting, meaningful, or enjoyable? Saying this even makes me feel absurd and ridiculous. Looking up at the sky now, there are no stars—only the lights of tower cranes, smog, and potholes beneath your feet. Guo Degang says: "Let's just be funny first—if crosstalk isn't funny, then that's really funny!" Let's just copy and paste first—if even copy and paste goes undone, then it's an even greater blank! ## First Edition Preface: The Cape of Good Hope and Tower Cranes FreeBSD is an open-source UNIX-like operating system, directly descended from BSD UNIX. Since September 2004, there has not been a single introductory or basic FreeBSD tutorial in the Chinese-speaking world (the last one before this being Feng Baokun, Chen Zihong. FreeBSD: The Complete Guide\[M]. Beijing: China Materials Press; Beijing: Beijing Hope Electronic Press, 2004. ISBN: 978-7-5047-2160-0; prior to this there was also McKusick M. K, Bostic K, Karels M. J, Quarterman J. S. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System (Chinese Edition)\[M]. Li Shanping, et al., trans. Beijing: China Electric Power Press, 2003.). On CNKI, among master's and doctoral dissertations (it should be noted that some universities, such as Tsinghua University and Fudan University, have not uploaded some of their dissertations to CNKI, but this still indicates a trend), there are only 10 papers related to FreeBSD, all of which are master's theses; whereas for Linux there are over 20,000 papers, including more than 100 doctoral dissertations. On domestic job recruitment websites, it is nearly impossible to find any positions related to FreeBSD, and schools do not offer related courses. It seems the market has no need for it at all—is this really the case? Where are those who once promoted and advocated for FreeBSD? Do they still occasionally visit ? In the song "Having You in My Life" by Shui Mu Nian Hua, they sing: "How many people admired your youthful beauty / Who would willingly endure the heartless changes of time / How many people came and went in your life / Knowing that with you in my life, I'll always be by your side." Only those who walk alongside you are your friends—whether ahead or behind, they will all be forgotten. This world is indeed vast, but for most people, they will never reach the Cape of Good Hope in Africa in their entire lives. Due to the limitations of the Mercator projection, people fail to realize how vast Africa truly is. People only feel that Russia is very large, and Greenland even larger. In fact, the combined area of the two is less than two-thirds of Africa's area. This world is indeed vast, just like the open-source world. Facing the boundless starry sky above, will people choose to keep looking up and moving forward (even if they fall into a swamp), or will they lower their heads and fill themselves with busyness? Some people may live their entire lives in the countryside, rarely venturing far from home, but this does not prevent the world from understanding their profound intellectual world. Even if people lack the ability to comprehend their thought, they will still commemorate them every year. The world is indeed so vast that one could spend an entire lifetime and never reach the other shore; yet the world is also so small that one goes back and forth every day without ever stepping beyond the town. Where is our Cape of Good Hope? The larger the world, the smaller it becomes. It has been more than 7 years since I first encountered FreeBSD. I have never directly contributed to the FreeBSD project, nor have I submitted any code to src. I have done my utmost to sustain this treasured but humble endeavor. The fundamental reason for presenting this series of tutorials and articles as an open-source book is that I hope this book, like BSD, can be used to the greatest extent and produce the broadest benefit. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believed that existence precedes essence (see *Existentialism Is a Humanism*); the gentleman is not a vessel—human existence has no fixed essence, and human essence is dynamically constructed through practice. Clearly, most people today hold this view as well: one must create meaning in order to simultaneously obtain meaning. This seems to be the ultimate answer to the question of meaning. But is this really the case? In his early years, Sartre believed that human freedom was absolutely unlimited, not recognizing any so-called objective constraints. I could do it, but I haven't done it yet, because I haven't found the meaning of doing so. Now I recall that in Liu Zhenyun's *Someone to Talk To*, there is a character called "Old Zhan" who came from Italy to China to preach, but his preaching was ineffective and he ended up selling green onions; there is also a character called "Old Wang" who never seems to know where he's walking, and just wanders aimlessly about. In this world, apart from consoling ourselves that this is already the best of all possible worlds, already the manifestation of God's omnipotent will—what excuse do we have to speak of this world's beauty? I often wander aimlessly, not knowing anyone. It's like watching a VR film. Could this world be a movie? Apart from being an aggregate of self-perceiving consciousness, what distinguishes us from the people in a film? I am in the projection of an image; I do not exist. The walls of the kindergarten feel rough to the touch, appear yellow, and sound hard when knocked. But this is not without basis—they were built this way by workers. Yet this does not contradict the possibility that all of this is a film. Thinking carefully—who let me see the fence? Who made me touch this pillar? Is there truly no one? Is there a single cause that can explain all of this? Do I have the freedom not to touch it? Do I truly have the freedom not to touch this hard, rough, yellow pillar? Why do I wander everywhere, only to return to the starting point? Apart from illness, I have nothing. Does life truly exist? As Camus said, I have always been an outsider. Yet I console myself with Zhuangzi's "The relationship between gentlemen is as plain as water" from the "Mountain Tree" chapter. The book wholesale market I used to frequent over a decade ago—it's still there, but also not there anymore; I can no longer find any books other than exam-prep materials. The person who used to read with me—he's still there, but also not there anymore; I can no longer have a conversation with him. Perhaps neither of them ever truly existed—perhaps they were just a film I watched. When the film ends, the cast and crew disband. At the time, I was still playing *Sanguosha* with everyone—I don't know who threw the tin box containing sealed cards. In the end, I won. I thought there would be many more such happy days, but that was the end. I can never gather enough people to play Sanguosha again. Whether online or offline. I can't even find enough for 2v2. Beautiful places do not last, grand banquets are hard to repeat; the Orchid Pavilion is gone, Zize has become ruins. It has been a very, very long time since I last played Sanguosha. I may never in my life be able to study at the birthplace of BSD, or even catch a glimpse of it. I will also never obtain the doctorate in philosophy they require. Where is my Cape of Good Hope—does it truly exist? Now, when I look up, I see nothing but smog. What I thought was the moon turned out to be the searchlight of a tower crane. To exist is to be dilapidated. Even the most beautiful things are nothing more than a pile of wreckage. Many beautiful things, no matter how earnestly promoted and advocated, will ultimately fade away. All open-source projects will sooner or later become digital cemeteries, with no one ever inquiring after them again. The fact is, every day we miss countless people. Bei Dao's poem says "All encounters are first meetings." Even people we know will leave forever. I don't mean physiological death. Rather, for example, a group member who stops speaking is effectively "dead"—there is no difference. Trying to get them to speak again is also meaningless. First, you don't want to do this; second, neither do they. Isn't everyone together for only a few brief years? In practical terms, not speaking means being "dead." Only those you can actually converse with count as "alive" to you. This has nothing to do with their physical health. Such "dead people" are everywhere—are we not always living atop a graveyard? Chat groups will also disappear. The person is still there, but the group is gone—and even if you pull them back in, they're still "dead." They've uninstalled the chat app you use; even if you follow them and use the same app, it's useless. All chat groups will sooner or later become digital tombs. It's meaningless—whether in groups or in reality, it's nothing but boasting. Nothing is left behind, and it's the same in reality. Aren't screenshots just cyber group photos? There's no difference. Is this world really that big? Why does it feel so small? The people you spend the most time with, you barely know and don't want to know—they're just functionaries. Who truly wants to be friends with colleagues or classmates? Being busy is good—you forget everything, how wonderful. If everyone were busy, how "beautiful" this world would be. The fact is, they've just moved to another place to boast. And they console themselves with feeling fulfilled. Those who did not walk alongside us—do they truly exist? My impression of them is that the black-and-white avatar indicating offline is their memorial portrait. Are those their memorial portraits? Is their last message their dying words? Is that electronic signature their epitaph? I have always been an outsider. I have never participated in any FreeBSD development or maintenance. For the FreeBSD project, I am like Liu Ziji of Nanyang, who could never find Peach Blossom Spring again. Why didn't I participate? I could do it, but I haven't done it yet, because I haven't found the meaning of doing so. I have indeed "done" something, and I have never "done" anything. This is an era of great flux. Industrialization and modern science demand that everything be measured by standards, efficiency, and currency. Anything flashy is formalism, anything verbose is nonsense, anything cautious is cowardice, and anything that hasn't been mathematized is sheer fabrication. Modernity has never existed—can you find any so-called civilization in insects? Humanity has always been ignorant and backward, yet often uses formalism and modern science to obscure this fact. Can human civilization truly never come to an end? I tell you, I do not believe it! In *Three Wishes of the Rose* (lyrics by Long Qi, music by Huang Zi, 1932), the rose says: "I wish the merciless storms that envy me would not strike me, I wish the sentimental visitors who love me would not pluck me, I wish my rosy beauty would never fade, so that I may preserve my splendor." Yet the rose ultimately returns to the soil. Can I truly find a rose blooming beneath the jade-green railing? If it exists, where is it? I am always thinking. All who meet must part—there is no one left to walk alongside me. I truly cannot find any friends anymore. A friend—however I treat them, they treat me the same in return—that is sufficient. Although this was also the case before, the Chinese community is now no different from any other group. Look at other groups—that translation group of nearly 100 people where no one translates—don't you find that absurd? Discussing BSD without even knowing the basic common knowledge about BSD. There is no meaning. I started using FreeBSD in 2018. That same year, I sought medical attention for severe somatization symptoms and was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Because I could barely move at all—even my fingers—the first few years I could only chat in the group. Someone in the group asked why I didn't compile the tutorials together. I said, will you pay for the server and domain name? So he bought a domain—freebsdcn.org—and used Vercel for the server. I organized twenty or thirty articles in a single night—because I couldn't sleep at night anyway. I was still in pain all over; later, after two years, I switched to a different hospital and was prescribed different medication, and the pain stopped. But I often feel that this world is broken and tattered. Everything feels meaningless. I spent years studying Western philosophy and Christian theology. I haven't been to the hospital in several years. The writing of this book was also interrupted for a total of about a year and a half. I increasingly doubt the reality of the world. Discussing specific computer knowledge has no meaning; science has no meaning either—science is empirical. Although I once studied it in depth, mathematics is also incomplete—further in-depth study is meaningless. I have done what I can to build. As for the rest—it's not that I don't want to do it, but that I can't. I only spent a few hours, a few minutes, writing meaningless things. But that was the only activity in my day. I have never told anyone online about these things. I only say I'm not in good health. Every day I feel like I'm about to cease to exist. But later I felt it was meaningless—perhaps I never existed. I see the characters in anime forming bands, joining various clubs. Including the so-called dream-chasing movies, the ones about exploring aliens, like *Journey to the West*—I always feel they aren't trying hard enough. I know that saying these things will trouble others, so I have never spoken of them. Now I feel I have nothing except an unhealthy body. Wanting to do something is truly very difficult for me. I opened a book on the 7th, and now I've only read 15%—in the past, I could finish a book in a few days. If you check the GitHub commit history, you'll find that the vast majority of commits were made late at night—without medication, I simply cannot sleep. Saying all this is useless. I just want to say that even someone like me can make some contribution. Those normal people—why do they have the right to say it's meaningless without even glancing at what's already available? What right do they have to say it's meaningless. Every day I feel like I won't make it to daylight, yet I am still moved by my own actions. I just clicked a mouse a few times, but that day I had virtually no desire to do anything else (including eating). Even while believing my own existence was meaningless, I was still copy and pasting. I said I don't know, I don't have the ability to know, and perhaps I never will. Everyone says they're at work, very busy, no time to play with you, their work is tiring, and doing this doesn't make money. Whether in the FreeBSD community or any other community, I am an outsider. I know this is my own problem—I don't blame them. I have never resented anyone. I just copy and paste by myself, that's all. I have done my best, but I have never truly tried. I considered him my best friend. I would stick notes on his back, and no matter how I teased him, he never got angry—he just crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash. He gave me 50 cents, begging me to walk home with him along his route, asking me to wait for him—he had been caught by the PE teacher and made to practice hurdles and long-distance running. On the way, he gave me a car part he had found—a very fine steel ring. He saw I wanted it badly, so he said he found them often and didn't mind giving away one or two. He said the rented house where he lived was going to be demolished to build a brewery. He was going back to his hometown in Shanxi. At that time, yo-yos were popular, and he was the best at them—he knew many tricks. I didn't know how to do anything, just like now. I said I had spent the "huge sum" of 5 yuan on a yo-yo and would definitely bring it to show him. The first day, I forgot. The second day, I forgot. The third day, the holiday began. Until now—nearly twenty years later. His house remains a wasteland. I went to look yesterday, and compared to before, there truly has been no change. We have never seen each other again. He still has never seen the yo-yo I mentioned that day. Why didn't I ask for his registered residence address, or even a phone number that might never connect? Why didn't I go see where his house actually was? I believe we will meet again, but I still don't know what that home I mentioned looks like. The steel ring has long since disappeared to who-knows-where. Apart from BSD, I don't know where else I could go. But it is time to leave all this behind—I already know nothing. I don't know where his house is, I don't know if he still remembers me, I don't know if he considers me an outsider. I am someone whose mind is full of only myself. I have never truly tried to do anything. But I have done my best. Buddhism allows bhikkhus to return to lay life up to seven times (see the *Ekottarika Āgama*; bhikkhunis may return to lay life only once). I too have abandoned FreeBSD three times. Now, there is no longer any opportunity to continue. Long ago I wrote, "We must unite and do something, no matter how small—even if it's just sharing our learning experiences (not for the purpose of showing off). Otherwise, if we only talk big, how are we any different from those groups or communities that only boast, only engage in keyboard politics, and call each other 'big shots'? If there is no difference, then there is no meaning—and I would rather this community cease to exist. If everyone has the time and energy, consider translating documentation; if you can program, consider porting software to BSD; if you have even greater capability, you could even participate in system development." If everything that exists must necessarily have its rational aspects, and all new things are constantly acquiring the rationality for their existence while all old things are constantly losing the necessity of their rationality—then there is only one nonexistent point at which a thing is absolutely perfect. Therefore, whether new or old, everything is merely dilapidated, determined by insufficient rationality. That is, to exist is to be dilapidated. The so-called rationality that new things inherit from old things is also merely an illusion, because there has never existed a state of perfect things to constitute the world. Clearly, whether public accounts or anything else, they no longer have any reason to exist—they have all been deconstructed by the times. In *BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!*, Nagasaki Sayo says, "As long as it's something I can do, I'm willing to do anything"—and so am I. I don't want to see that even a middle school student who ranks last in exams can follow my rudimentary tutorial to install FreeBSD and KDE Plasma 5 on VMware Workstation Pro, yet an adult can't even manage to install the system in a virtual machine over the course of nine months, and instead brazenly pontificates about it all. The Tower of Babel is long gone, yet people still pretend to be illiterate, pretend they can't understand videos, pretend they can't read text. Then only God can save them. Those who talk but never act, who discuss trendy topics every day—they love this kind of thing that they don't understand at all, that they think they understand after reading but is actually absurd and incoherent. They say a bunch of empty, grandiose things, and the readers think they understand. It turns out the market likes this kind of thing—what a "brave new world" indeed. I'm no different—I have no right to criticize them. After all, how joyful that would be! If, like now, I still think I understand and say things that even I don't comprehend, wouldn't that be double the joy! It's the 21st century—nothing is more important than happiness! It is time to end this absurd farce. There is no meaning—whether among users, developers, or myself. I cannot compel anyone to walk alongside me, to play any other role in this grand game of make-believe that is the world. Those who can always stay by your side are the ones you should cherish; those who engage you in lofty discourse may not be people you can truly converse with; those distant mountains you've never visited do not mean you've never stood atop a peak. Although time is a flowing image in the eyes of different people, we are still on the same stage. ## References * Knuth D E. Ancient Babylonian algorithms\[J]. Communications of the ACM, 1972, 15(7): 671-677. . Von Neumann's quote "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is" comes from his keynote address at the first ACM national conference at Columbia University on September 15, 1947, as cited by Franz L. Alt in: Alt F L. Archaeology of computers—Reminiscences, 1945–1947\[J]. Communications of the ACM, 1972, 15(7): 693-694. . * Dongzhen Taishang Taixiao Langshu\[M]//Daozang: Vol. 33. Beijing: Cultural Relics Press; Shanghai: Shanghai Bookstore; Tianjin: Tianjin Ancient Books Press, 1988: 690b. Those who walk the Great Way are called Daoists. * CIA. The World Factbook: Area Rankings\[EB/OL]. (2023-07-06)\[2026-04-17]. . The original CIA World Factbook area rankings page has been taken offline; this is an Internet Archive archived version. Russia's area is approximately 17,098,242 km². Greenland's area is approximately 2,166,086 km², and Africa's area is approximately 30,370,000 km². The combined area of the two is approximately 19,264,328 km², less than two-thirds of Africa's area (approximately 20,246,667 km²). * Long Qi (Long Yusheng), lyrics; Huang Zi, music. Three Wishes of the Rose\[Z]. 1932. The full lyrics are "Rose / Rose / Blooming beneath the jade-green railing / Rose / Rose / Blooming beneath the jade-green railing / I wish the merciless storms that envy me would not strike me / I wish the sentimental visitors who love me would not pluck me / I wish my rosy beauty would never fade / So that I may preserve my splendor." See Selected New-Style Songs by Mr. Long Yusheng . * Husserl E. Logische Untersuchungen: Zweiter Band\[M]. Halle: Niemeyer, 1901. The original text is "zu den Sachen selbst" (facing the things themselves); "Zurück zu den Sachen selbst" (returning to the things themselves) is a sloganized formulation from the later phenomenological movement. * Liu Wanhu. "Returning to the Things Themselves" and "Facing the Things Themselves"—The Debate on Phenomenological Method Between Husserl and Heidegger\[J]. Philosophical Trends, 2019(11): 84-91. * Pascal B. Pensées\[M]. Paris: Brunschvicg éd., 1897: frag. 347. "L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c'est un roseau pensant." \[Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking reed.] * Apple Inc. BSD Overview\[EB/OL]. (2013-08-08)\[2026-04-17]. . Apple's official developer documentation notes: "The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is derived primarily from FreeBSD," but the XNU kernel itself is a hybrid of Mach and BSD, originating from NeXTSTEP, not directly derived from the FreeBSD kernel. * Liang Ji. Liang Ji's Posthumous Manuscript\[M]//Liang Shuming. Will This World Get Better: Liang Shuming's Late-Life Oral Account. Guy S. Alitto, interviewer. Beijing: Oriental Publishing Center, 2006. On November 7, 1918, Liang Ji asked his son Liang Shuming "Will this world get better?" Three days later he drowned himself in Jingye Lake. Later generations often call this the "Liang Shuming Question," but the questioner was actually Liang Ji. * FreeBSD Project. FreeBSD 1.0 RELEASE Announcement\[EB/OL]. (1993-11-01)\[2026-04-17]. . The FreeBSD project originated in early 1993, and the first official release, FreeBSD 1.0, was published on November 1, 1993. * Phoronix. Intel Ivy Bridge Borked On FreeBSD\[EB/OL]. (2012-06-22)\[2026-04-17]. . This article tested Intel Ivy Bridge HD 4000 graphics card driver compatibility issues on FreeBSD/PC-BSD. * procps-ng Project. procps Package Documentation\[EB/OL]. \[2026-04-17]. . The free command in the procps package reads memory information from the Linux procfs (**/proc/meminfo**), while FreeBSD has deprecated procfs, so this command cannot be used. * 1Ferrox. Lamps in Videogames use real electricity.\[EB/OL]. (2019-11-28)\[2026-06-04]. . In this post, it is proposed that "Lamps in video games consume real electricity. Because they illuminate the surrounding area, the screen needs to become brighter. And a brighter screen consumes more power." --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://book.bsdcn.org/ask/flat/preface/qian-yan.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. 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