How to avoid becoming stupid?

When are people the dumbest? Some say that people are the dumbest when they are poor, because the poor need to focus on where their next meal is coming from, so they have to be shortsighted; others say that people are the dumbest after a series of failures, because the more they fail, the more confidence they lose, and the less confidence they have, the easier it is to keep failing; some also say that people are the dumbest when they are greedy.

Are these statements correct? Yes, all of them. Each point can be elaborated on, but I think many people already know this. Today, I want to talk about a point that many haven't realized yet, which is that "comfort" can make people stupid.

Look around you—whether it's your parents, friends, classmates, or childhood friends from your hometown—whose taste is the most obvious? Who loves to pretend to understand things they don't? Who is most out of touch with the times? Who has the shallowest understanding of things? It’s definitely those who have been out of school the longest and those whose routines are most rigid.

When I say comfort, I don't just mean having enough to eat and drink, lounging at home. It also includes environmental stagnation—being far from new stimuli, no longer allowing the brain to grow through challenge. These people might be idling at home or doing very fixed routines. In short, they can complete daily tasks very easily and mechanically.

These people will inevitably become increasingly dull.

Many people don't realize that the brain, like other muscles in the body, needs constant stimulation to grow—if muscle growth depends on tearing, then the brain is the same. When you're in an environment where you have to lift 100 kilograms repeatedly every day, your body will gradually adjust your muscle size to adapt to that environment; conversely, if you stop strength training, your body will think that your environment no longer requires that muscle size and strength, and your muscles will atrophy because the body tends to conserve energy—if you don't need it, it becomes a burden and wastes the energy you've worked hard to gain.

The same applies to the brain. When it realizes you don't need to use it and you can get enough food and energy every day without it, it will regress because its goal is also to save energy. A brain that has been optimized for energy saving for some time is very hard to reboot because it has long lost the ability to quickly activate complex calculations.

Some might ask, "Although I don't participate in market competition, I have my hobbies and entertain myself at home. Will my brain also regress?" Yes, it will. Because entertainment and self-amusement don't face survival pressure, and usually don't require you to do or not do things with strong insistence, which means you're still doing things you can easily handle, and your brain will help you eliminate unnecessary redundancy.

When won't it happen? When you can skip work, stay at home, do what you love, but you must strive to contribute more and more to society—based on how much others are willing to pay for you, not just what you think you've contributed. Only by constantly demanding more of yourself according to this standard will your brain be fully exercised. But if you turn what you love into a form of self-imposed pressure, many people might stop liking to do it—that's the problem. No matter the era, brain atrophy will not decrease because many people's lifelong pursuit is simply to lie flat, conserve energy, and regress.

And if you become increasingly dull, any system you're part of will gradually choose to optimize you out, excluding you from the system. Because your contribution is decreasing, from the system's perspective, your existence itself becomes redundant—whether it's social relationships, resource systems, career systems, or even family systems.

The underlying logic of everything is interconnected: muscles develop because the environment needs them to; brains become smart because the environment requires it; your existence exists because at least one system in society needs you—everything that is "not needed" will eventually become "nonexistent."

When your original strength and computational power are optimized away by a simple, fixed environment, your survival ability is diminished. The external manifestation of reduced survival ability is that you will become increasingly confined to that original environment, even if it becomes less suitable for survival and yields fewer benefits. You might seem stuck, watching your situation worsen while remaining motionless.

You might blame those who have worsened the environment, but the real problem isn't there. It's that your brain has been simplified over the long term, and you no longer have the ability to live elsewhere.