Everyone in the world praises Zhuangzi for transcending the mundane and equalizing all things, yet when I read the Zhuangzi what I felt was a kind of elitist arrogance. He keeps talking about free and easy wandering, and yet he can’t even understand the ease of the cicada and the turtledove; he advocates the equality of all things, and yet with his own hand he builds a chain of contempt. Today I’m going to play the contrarian and refute this “sage of free wandering” who has been hoisted onto an altar.
I. The Joy of the Cicada and the Turtledove: What Is So Shabby About It?
The cicada and the turtledove laughed at it and said: “We spring up and fly, reach an elm or a sandalwood tree and stop; sometimes we don’t make it that far and just fall back to the ground. What’s the point of going ninety thousand li and heading south?” He who travels to the dim wilds carries three meals and returns with his belly still full; he who travels a hundred li pounds grain the night before; he who travels a thousand li stores up food for three months. What do these two creatures know!
In “Free and Easy Wandering” Zhuangzi borrows the cicada and the turtledove laughing at the giant peng bird, and then turns around and claps the label of “ignorant” onto these two small creatures. With the single line “What do these two creatures know!” he lays out his condescending sense of superiority plain as day.
Zhuangzi says the great peng must strike the water for three thousand li and whirl up on the rising wind for ninety thousand li, borrowing the six-month wind before it can migrate south — this is the grand vision, the grand aspiration. Whereas the cicada and the turtledove spring up and fly, reach an elm or a sandalwood and stop, and if they can’t fly high they simply fall to the ground — that is shallow, ignorant, devoid of ambition. But I have to ask: is the essence of free wandering really “flying high and going far”? Is heading for the Southern Darkness ninety thousand li away the only thing that counts as having aspirations?
The joy of the cicada and the turtledove has never been one bit inferior to that of the great peng. They needn’t wait for the sea to move and the wind to rise, needn’t store up three months of provisions, needn’t carry the burden of “migrating ninety thousand li south.” They fly when they want to fly, stop when they want to stop. When they hit an elm or a sandalwood they rest; when they can’t reach the heights they land without a fuss — unanxious, unforced, dependent on no external force, three meals a day assured, at ease as their hearts please. Isn’t this ease of “following your heart’s desire without overstepping the line” a purer form of free wandering? Look instead at the great peng: it seems magnificent, yet it is constrained everywhere — if the water isn’t deep it can’t bear a great ship, if the wind isn’t thick it can’t lift a great wing. It must wait for the right moment and borrow external force just to complete a migration it has no say in. Its “loftiness” is nothing but a frantic running about kidnapped by “great ambition,” a helplessness bound by “grand vision.” It can’t even decide its own flight — so what free wandering is there to speak of?
Zhuangzi goes on to say that he who travels to the dim wilds carries three meals and returns, he who travels a hundred li pounds grain the night before, he who travels a thousand li stores food for three months — using this to prove that the greater the aspiration, the greater the effort, and that the cicada and the turtledove, not understanding this long view, are ignorant. But what does that actually prove? It’s merely different choices and different needs — where does any ranking of high and low come from? Some people love the homely warmth of the near suburbs and feel complete with three full meals a day; some long for the scenery a hundred li away and prepare grain in advance before setting off; some are fixed on a thousand-li journey and store up strength for three months before stepping onto the road. The cicada and the turtledove choose to soar at low altitude and are content with the ease of the woods, just like those people content with an ordinary life — not seeking earth-shaking achievements, only three meals and four seasons, safety and smooth going. That isn’t ignorance; it is clear-sightedness, it is contentment, it is the wisdom of knowing how to enjoy the present.
The most laughable thing is that Zhuangzi shouts “the equalizing of things” from the rooftops, advocating that nothing is noble or base, high or low — and then, pen in hand, builds a chain of contempt with his own hands: the great peng above the cicada and turtledove, the thousand-li traveler above the person from the near suburbs, as if only pursuing “greatness” counts as elevated and being content with “smallness” is shallow. How is this transcending the mundane? It is plainly the most worldly admiration of the strong and contempt for the weak, an elitist superiority in the marrow of his bones. He looks down on the ordinariness of the cicada and the turtledove, looks down on the small daily life of ordinary people, and from his own “spiritual high ground” gazes down on the “smoke and fire of the human world,” using those two characters “grand vision” to kidnap every different choice in life.
I’d like to ask Zhuangzi back on behalf of the cicada and the turtledove: we soar at ease and pass our days in peace; we have never obstructed anyone, and we have never longed for the ninety-thousand-li sky. What have we done wrong? You pursue your Southern Darkness, we keep to our elms and sandalwoods — each has its own joy, each its own free wandering. On what grounds do you decide we “don’t know”? On what grounds do you use your standard to define our worth?
II. “You Cannot Talk of Ice to a Summer Insect” — Who Gets to Define Your Sky?
Besides the cicada and the turtledove, Zhuangzi buried another landmine in “Autumn Floods.” The original text:
When the autumn floods came, the hundred rivers poured into the Yellow River.
The current was so vast that between the two banks and the islets one could not tell ox from horse.
At this the River God was delighted and pleased with himself, taking all the beauty under heaven to reside in himself alone.
Following the current eastward, he arrived at the North Sea, looked east, and saw no end to the water.
Only then did the River God turn his face, gazed out over the ocean toward Ruo, and sighed:
“There is a common saying: ‘One who has heard a hundred ways thinks no one equals himself’ — that is me.
Moreover, I once heard of people who belittled Confucius’s learning and made light of Boyi’s righteousness, and at first I did not believe it.
Now I have seen how inexhaustible you are. Had I not come to your gate I would have been in danger, and I would have been laughed at forever by the great masters.”
Ruo of the North Sea said:
“A frog in a well cannot be spoken to of the sea, because it is confined to its space;
a summer insect cannot be spoken to of ice, because it is bound to its season;
a cramped scholar cannot be spoken to of the Way, because he is fettered by his teaching.
Now you have emerged from your banks and islets and beheld the great sea, and so you know your own inadequacy. With you I may speak of the great principle.”
A summer insect doesn’t live to see winter, so you can’t talk to it about ice and snow. Originally this was only a neutral metaphor illustrating the limits of cognition, but over the centuries and right down to today it has been hauled out by countless people as a weapon of condescending superiority. The moment someone’s view doesn’t suit you, “you can’t talk of ice to a summer insect” pops out of your mouth, as if you were the winter’s envoy who has seen ice and snow while the other person is merely a frog at the bottom of a well or an insect of a summer night.
Looked at closely, the abuse of this phrase in a modern context is essentially a form of cognitive bullying. The speaker places himself in the high position of “one who has seen ice and snow” and demotes the other to a lower existence “trapped in the summer heat,” wrapping the nakedest arrogance in a seemingly elegant piece of classical language. More ironic still, Zhuangzi himself advocated “equalizing things” and “free wandering,” stressing the equality of all things and each being at peace in its own place. If he knew his words were being used by later generations to rank high and low and manufacture chains of contempt, he would probably shake his head and sigh too.
Five Elevated Comebacks
If you too have run into someone using “you can’t talk of ice to a summer insect” to press you down, the following responses may help you push back elegantly.
1. The grand-vision counter-kill version
You are not a summer insect — how do you know the summer insect doesn’t recognize cold ice? You take heaven and earth as your limit yet measure others by yourself; you are merely a frog looking up at the sky from a well.
Core logic: on what grounds do you decide the other person hasn’t seen ice and snow? The “summer” in summer insect is a limit of time, not a limit of cognition. The limitation you imagine is nothing but a projection of your own prejudice.
2. The give-as-good-as-you-get version
The summer insect is confined by its season; you, sir, are confined by your prejudice. We’re even — why laugh at someone for taking fifty steps when you’ve taken a hundred?
Core logic: who has no limitations? Doesn’t your prejudice count as a limitation? Wielding Zhuangzi’s metaphor as a weapon proves precisely that you too are “bound to” your own meager stock of knowledge.
3. The strike-at-the-arrogance version
A person who has truly seen how vast heaven and earth are never mocks the narrowness of another’s view. Setting yourself up with “you can’t talk of ice to a summer insect” exposes exactly how limited your own cognitive level is.
Core logic: true insight is inclusion, not mockery. The more of the world people have seen, the more they respect difference; the half-full bottle is the one that sloshes with superiority.
4. The sharp, realistic version
It isn’t that the summer insect doesn’t understand ice — it’s that you only know how to look down on others from your own dimension, unwilling to listen, unwilling to include, while dressing up in classical phrases to seem profound.
Core logic: many problems aren’t differences of cognition but problems of attitude. The other person doesn’t fail to understand — they disdain to understand. It isn’t that communication is impossible; it’s that they don’t want to communicate as equals.
5. The minimalist one-line finisher
- You cannot talk of the sea to a well frog; you, sir, cannot be talked to as a person.
- Everyone has cognitive limits; nobody needs to brim over with superiority.
- You and I are both passing guests in this human world — don’t slight others over the breadth of your view.
III. “A Short Life Doesn’t Match a Long One”? Only Living Well Counts
In “Free and Easy Wandering” Zhuangzi has another passage that’s even more glaring:
Small knowledge does not match great knowledge; a short life does not match a long one. How do we know this is so? The morning mushroom knows nothing of the end and beginning of the month; the cicada of summer knows nothing of spring and autumn — these are short lives. In the south of Chu there is theMingling tree, which takes five hundred years as its spring and five hundred years as its autumn; in high antiquity there was the great chun tree, which took eight thousand years as its spring and eight thousand years as its autumn — these are long lives. And yet Pengzu alone is famous to this day for his longevity, and everyone matches themselves against him. Isn’t that pitiful!
The morning mushroom lives a short life and doesn’t survive a single day and night; the summer cicada is worse still, unable even to experience the turning of spring and autumn. The label Zhuangzi sticks on them is “short life” — small, meaning insufficient, meaning inferior. Whereas theMingling counts five hundred years as a single season and the great chun counts eight thousand years as one cycle of spring and autumn; this is called “long life” — great, meaning elevated, meaning worthy of pursuit. And finally he adds one more cut: everyone envies Pengzu’s longevity — how pitiful!
Yet the irony is that while his mouth says “don’t envy Pengzu,” his marrow is still ranking lives into grades by length, size and grand vision. Long life above short life, great knowledge crushing small knowledge — how is this logic any different from the “everyone matches themselves against him” that he mocks? The only change is that the top of the chain of contempt has been swapped from Pengzu to theMingling and the great chun.
Zhuangzi Only Looks at Length, Not at Quality
He has only one standard for measuring life: the longer you live, the wider your experience, the grander your vision, the more elevated you are. The morning mushroom and the summer cicada live briefly, so they are naturally one grade below others; theMingling and the great chun live long, so they are naturally worthy of reverence.
But has he considered — the morning mushroom and the summer cicada may live briefly, but they have no rat race, no over-extraction, no anxiety, no mortgage, no workplace PUA. They live according to their nature, rising with the sun and resting at sunset, never working overtime, never wearing themselves down internally, never worrying about old age, every day at ease and stretched out. That is called “living a life.”
Look instead at the people with so-called “long lives”: 996 and 007 for a lifetime, over-extracted by capital, swept along by life, a body full of chronic illness in middle age, insomnia and depression, a mortgage on their backs, body and mind exhausted every day. Grinding on to seventy, eighty or a hundred is merely gritting out a lifespan, not living a life.
Living long is only “enduring the days”; living briefly can be “living a life.” Who is more worthwhile? Who is more pitiful? Zhuangzi has it completely backwards.
The Kidnapped “Long Life”
More absurd still, Zhuangzi’s “cult of the long life,” set in today’s world, becomes precisely capital’s handiest tool.
“Young people should endure more hardship, have a grander vision, take the long view” — does that sound familiar? When your boss has you work overtime unpaid, what he talks to you about is “growth” and “vision.” When the company cuts benefits, what it talks about is “long-term interests.” And when you’re “optimized” out at 35, you discover that all the accumulation of the so-called “long life” was merely making a wedding dress for someone else.
Zhuangzi says “everyone matches themselves against him — isn’t that pitiful,” meaning it’s pitiful that people compete over Pengzu’s longevity. But in the contemporary context the real sorrow isn’t competing over who lives longest; it’s being kidnapped by the narrative of the “long life” and trading a lifetime’s health and happiness for a number you ground out.
Some live to a hundred, spend their last twenty years paralyzed in bed, covered in tubes, kept alive by medication — is that a “long life”? Some live only to forty, but spend every day as they wish — reading, traveling, keeping family company, doing what they love — and die without illness. Is that a “short life”?
The Scoring Standard for Life Shouldn’t Be Set by Zhuangzi
Zhuangzi stands only on the scale of time and space to judge big and small, entirely failing to understand that life experience and spiritual happiness are the core. He uses “the morning mushroom knows nothing of the month’s turn” to prove the limits of a short life, yet he can’t see that the morning mushroom completed its whole life cycle within its brief span, never anxious about tomorrow, never regretting yesterday.
Life isn’t a contest over who lives longest, flies highest, has the grandest vision; it’s a contest over who lives comfortably, who lives happily, who lives without being swept along.
The morning mushroom knows nothing of the month’s turn and the summer cicada knows nothing of spring and autumn, but they don’t have to work overtime, don’t have to compete, don’t have to worry about pensions and mortgages — they rejoice in their own nature. Those who live to a hundred yet spend a lifetime over-extracted, worn down internally, riddled with illness and depression — however long the lifespan, it is only a prolonged ordeal.
The value of life has never lain in length or size, but in ease and peace of heart; better a whole life of joy and freedom than a hundred years of toil and suffering.
IV. The Debate of Small and Great? The Suffering Peng Bird vs. the Happy Little Sparrow
In “Free and Easy Wandering” there is also a passage of Tang questioning Ji, which Zhuangzi treats as the ultimate argument for “the debate of small and great”:
This is also what Tang asked Ji:
Tang asked Ji: “Is there a limit to up, down, and the four directions?”
Ji said: “Beyond the limitless there is again the limitless.
In the barren north there is a dark sea — the Pool of Heaven.
There is a fish there whose breadth is several thousand li, and no one has ever known its length; its name is Kun.
There is a bird there whose name is Peng; its back is like Mount Tai and its wings like clouds hanging from the sky.
It whirls up on the rising wind, spiraling ninety thousand li, cuts through the clouds, bears the blue sky on its back, and then plans for the south, about to travel to the Southern Darkness.The little quail laughs at it and says: ‘Where on earth is it going?
I leap up and, after no more than a few fathoms, come down, soaring among the weeds and brush — and this too is the utmost in flying.
So where on earth is it going?’”This is the debate of the small and the great.
The gist is: Tang asks Ji whether heaven and earth have an end. Ji says no. In the deep-sea Pool of Heaven north of the barren north there is a fish called Kun, several thousand li wide; it transforms into a bird called Peng, with a back like Mount Tai and wings like clouds at the edge of the sky. Riding a whirlwind it goes straight up ninety thousand li, breaks through the cloud layer, bears the blue sky on its back, and flies south.
The little quail laughs at it: “Where on earth is it flying to? I hop up a few fathoms and come back down, circling among the weeds — that is the utmost in flying! Why fly so far?”
Zhuangzi stamps it at the end: this is the difference between the small and the great.
Zhuangzi Arbitrarily Decrees: Great = Elevated, Small = Inferior
In his logic:
- Great peng = great knowledge, long life, grand vision, lofty realm → elevated, awesome, free and easy
- Little quail = small knowledge, short life, small vision, narrow view → inferior, ignorant, laughable, pitiful
He recognizes only size, height, distance and length, and completely ignores another dimension: joy and suffering, ease and constraint.
Who Is More Free and Easy?
The great peng’s ninety thousand li sounds magnificent, but on reflection it’s a pilgrimage of suffering:
- It must “store food for three months,” stockpiling provisions three months ahead;
- It must wait for a great wind and rely on a whirlwind — without wind it cannot fly at all;
- It takes half a year to reach the destination, lonely the whole way, under enormous pressure and at extremely high risk;
- If the water isn’t deep it can’t bear a great ship; if the wind isn’t thick it can’t lift a great wing — constrained everywhere, unable to act on its own.
How is this free and easy wandering? It is plainly straining to death for the sake of “greatness,” competition kidnapped by “grand vision.” Just like modern people who, for a million-yuan annual salary, an executive post at a big company, a house and a promotion, exhaust their health and grind their spirit dry, and finally stand on the shore of the “Southern Darkness” to discover that all they have left is an empty shell.
The little quail’s weeds and brush sounds insignificant, yet it is genuine clear-sightedness:
- Flying a few fathoms is enough — no competing;
- Circling among the weeds is ease — no anxiety;
- Flying when full and stopping when tired: no pressure, no mortgage, no workplace PUA, no 996.
It says “this too is the utmost in flying“ — this is the best flying there is! That isn’t ignorance; it’s contentment. It isn’t shallowness; it’s insight.
Zhuangzi’s “Debate of Small and Great” Is Just a Hierarchical PUA
He arbitrarily decrees a chain of contempt: great > small, far > near, high > low. It’s exactly the same as the toxic chicken soup of real life:
- “Have a grand vision!”
- “Set your sights high!”
- “Do great things!”
- “Don’t crave small comforts!”
The essence is: forcing you into competition, forcing you to endure hardship, forcing you to give up happiness to pursue the “greatness” he defines.
When the quail laughs at the great peng, it isn’t laughing at high and low — it’s laughing at “why put yourself through so much.” A person who is genuinely free and easy wouldn’t mock a little sparrow for flying low. It’s the person kidnapped by “greatness” who needs to keep belittling “smallness” to prove his own choice was right.
The suffering of flying ninety thousand li is worse than the joy among the weeds; the ordeal of living eight thousand years is worse than the ease of dying at dawn’s end. Size and length are all illusory; peace of heart and joy are real.
V. The Perfect Man, the Spiritual Man, the Sage? Zhuangzi’s Four-Tier Realm PUA
Near the end of “Free and Easy Wandering,” Zhuangzi throws out the ultimate version of his whole hierarchical system:
Thus those whose knowledge fits one office, whose conduct pleases one village, whose virtue suits one ruler and who win the trust of one state — they see themselves in just the same way.
And yet Song Rongzi smiled at them.
If the whole world praised him he would not work harder; if the whole world blamed him he would not be disheartened.
He fixed the division between inner and outer and distinguished the boundary of honor and disgrace — and that was all.
He was not one to hustle in the world. Even so, there was still something he had not established.
Liezi rode on the wind and traveled, cool and skillful, returning after fifteen days.
As for pursuing fortune, he was not one to hustle. Yet although he was spared the trouble of walking, he still had something to depend on.
But as for one who mounts the regularity of heaven and earth, drives the changes of the six energies, and thereby wanders in the boundless — what would he have to depend on?
Therefore it is said: the perfect man has no self, the spiritual man has no achievement, the sage has no name.
Translated into plain terms, Zhuangzi has laid out a four-rung chain of contempt, from low to high:
Rung one: ordinary officials of the mundane world
Those whose talent can only fill one office, whose conduct can only unite one village, whose virtue can please a ruler, whose ability can win the trust of one state — in Zhuangzi’s eyes these people are bound tight by fame and the mundane world, with an extremely narrow field of vision, on the same rung as the cicada, the turtledove and the quail.
Rung two: Song Rongzi
The whole world praises him and he doesn’t strive harder; the whole world curses him and he isn’t disheartened. He can distinguish the boundary between the inner self and the mundane world and discern the edge of honor and disgrace. Zhuangzi’s verdict: “and that was all,” “there was still something he had not established” in his cultivation of the Way.
Rung three: Liezi
He can ride the wind and travel, light and marvelous and at ease, returning only after fifteen days. He is spared the toil of walking, but “he still had something to depend on” — the wind — which doesn’t count as genuine free wandering.
Rung four: the highest realm — the perfect man, the spiritual man, the sage
Following the inherent regularity of heaven and earth, driving the changes of the six energies, wandering in a boundless realm. Without dependence, without self, without achievement, without name — only this is true free wandering.
Zhuangzi Is Building a Chain of Contempt Again
Ordinary person < Song Rongzi < Liezi < the perfect man — forever dividing high and low, forever ranking realms. His mouth speaks of the equality of things, while his heart grades everyone into tiers everywhere.
But here’s the problem — who set these standards? Zhuangzi did. On what grounds is “no self, no achievement, no name” the highest realm? On what grounds does “knowledge that fits one office, conduct that pleases one village” deserve to be sneered at?
An ordinary person whose talent is enough to hold a job, whose conduct is enough to get along with the neighbors, whose virtue earns his family’s trust, whose ability earns his colleagues’ recognition, who steadily lives out his days without stealing, robbing or harming anyone — what is there to laugh at? In Zhuangzi’s eyes this is “inferior”; in reality it is the most substantial happiness there is.
“True Free Wandering” Isn’t Grounded in Real Life at All
Liezi needs the wind to fly; Song Rongzi has to deliberately restrain his sense of honor and disgrace to remain unmoved by either; and the so-called supreme realm is even further removed from the smoke and fire of the human world — not pursuing fame, not building achievements, not leaving a name. Then what about the ordinary person’s “worldly” responsibilities: supporting a family, putting a child through school, caring for aging parents?
What Zhuangzi extols as “no self” is, put plainly, dissolving the self and canceling the value of the individual; “no achievement” is denying the meaning of labor and creation; “no name” is detaching completely from social relations. This kind of “free wandering” is essentially escape, not transcendence.
All an ordinary person wants is: no need to climb the official ladder, no need to chase a name, no need to ride the wind — stable days, a comfortable mood, not over-extracted by 996, living solidly and happily. Isn’t that more real and more precious than forcibly pursuing an empty “great Way of free wandering”?
That Final Line, “The Perfect Man Has No Self, the Spiritual Man Has No Achievement, the Sage Has No Name”
It sounds transcendent, but in fact it denies ordinary people’s worldly aspirations and denies the value of an ordinary life. Ordinary people have a small self, have smoke and fire, have family, have stability, and don’t aspire to be perfect men or spiritual men. Living a whole life happily is itself free wandering in the human world.
Zhuangzi spent his whole life setting up chains of contempt, dividing big and small and high and low, constructing tiers of realm. The free wandering he extols is an abstract fantasy detached from ordinary human life. But genuine free wandering has never been up in the ninety-thousand-li sky, nor in the eight-thousand-year chun tree, nor in the void of “no self, no achievement, no name” —
It is in your breathing at this very moment, in every day you are free to choose for yourself, in the composure of having nothing to prove to anyone.
VI. In Closing
The greatest common failing of human beings is taking our own three views as the measuring stick and our own experience as the plumb line, and using them to measure, judge and even belittle others.
Everyone’s family background, upbringing, cognitive circle and trade-offs differ as widely as heaven and earth. Some seek stability, some venture out into the world; some value personal ties, some hold to principle; some warm slowly and are reserved, some are ardent and blunt. There has never been a single standard answer, and there is no such thing as a superior way to live.
The morning mushroom doesn’t see the month’s turn not because it is stupid, but because within one day and night it lived out a complete self. The cicada and the turtledove don’t head for the Southern Darkness not because they are shallow, but because their joy was always among the elms and sandalwoods. The little quail doesn’t fly ninety thousand li not because it is ignorant, but because the weeds and brush already contain all the ease it needs. The summer insect doesn’t see ice and snow not because it is shut off from the world, but because the rhythm of its life was never connected to deep winter. The man whose knowledge fits one office doesn’t admire the perfect man not because he is base, but because his one office and one village already contain his real footing.
When the three views differ, there’s no need to force a merger; when circumstances differ, there’s no need to judge. Nobody’s choice is nobler, and nobody’s life is meaner. Everyone is simply living in their own time zone, on their own track, each with their own way of living and their own causes and effects. That’s all.
Those who readily use “you can’t talk of ice to a summer insect” to shut people up are usually themselves summer insects in another context — never having seen other people’s ice and snow, yet assuming they’ve witnessed all four seasons. Those who mock the cicada and turtledove as “ignorant” are merely using their own “loftiness” to kidnap every different choice in life. Those who belittle the little quail as “shallow” may themselves be pressed breathless by the obsession with “ninety thousand li.” Those who sneer at “knowledge that fits one office” may not even manage one office and one village well themselves. Those who envy the “long life” and mock the “short life” may be kidnapped by their own “grand vision,” grinding their vitality away in a prolonged ordeal.
Zhuangzi’s so-called “free wandering” is merely a delusion of his own defining, seen through an elitist filter; his so-called “great knowledge” is merely condescending arrogance and prejudice; his so-called “long life” is merely a sophistry that swaps the length of time for the quality of life; his so-called “debate of small and great” is merely a hierarchical PUA forcing you into competition and making you abandon joy for suffering; his so-called “perfect man, spiritual man and sage” are merely spiritual shackles using an empty realm to bind the smoke and fire of ordinary people.
There’s no need to hold others to your own standard, and no need to let other people’s evaluations kidnap you. Allowing others to be others, and allowing yourself to be yourself — that is the highest form of insight. After all, in this vast universe, who isn’t in some sense a summer insect, in some dimension a cicada or turtledove, at some altitude a little quail, on some scale a morning mushroom, in some circumstance an ordinary person?
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