# Correspondence On "My Real Abu Dhabi?"
Published: 2025-09-28
Canonical: https://journal.xiaotianfanx.com/journal/correspondence-on-my-real-abu-dhabi

This post documents of a couple of conversations between my friends and me. Most of them are translated from Chinese. Some off-topic messages are omitted. 	The conversations started after I posted  this journal . While the following messages are context-heavy, I hope it could more or less act as a clarification to the tedious passage.    	Friend D: 	After reading your narrative, I'm very interested in your philosophy with negation at the center and would love to talk more about it. 	Back in my freshman year, I read Faust for a class talk; there I framed Mephistopheles like this: he introduces himself as "the spirit of perpetual negation," and he keeps a skeptical, sardonic stance toward all of Faust's creative projects. The whole long poem becomes a struggle between Faust's creation and Mephisto's negation, while Goethe—through a religious lens—argues why creation outranks negation. For my part, I think negation can never surpass/excel creation, because negation needs an object to negate; the act of "negating" is thus an appendage to its object and must depend on creation to exist—no creation, no negation. I lay this out to ask: how did you come to choose negation/nihilism as your philosophy of life? 	(As for relativism, I had some thoughts around 2024, but I've forgotten most of them… Now I just feel that, personally, relativism is logically correct but not correct in practice; as social beings, we can never achieve the state of "doing whatever we want.")  	X: 	In a nutshell, I think negation for me is both a choice and a kind of inevitability (akin to the logic in that "Then, to give my last …" section). As for nihilism, I'm not sure we're working with the same version, so it's hard to speak precisely; but since I can't remember ever having stable "beliefs" from early on, perhaps there's a nihilist undertone there (which—of course—is also the starting point of the subsequent quest). 	That said, I wouldn't describe myself as "centered on negation." It has to work with the other leitmotifs (in my journal); otherwise, pulled alone, any one of those strands is partial (I also can't claim that, taken together, they're complete—only, for now, comprehensive enough). In general, I'm not much inclined to award myself a final explanation; put differently, "keeping no final explanation" is already a kind of award. 	I don't know the negation/creation pairing well in the Faustian context, but in general, I do keep skepticism (sardonic, less so). An acceptable oversimplification would be: begin with skepticism; take the negation/(de)construction cycle as an instrument; let apparent relativism/eclecticism/nihilism function as facades. Again, I'm not sure which sense of creation you mean, but I do agree that "negation requires an object to negate." If anything, that is indeed one reason to "choose negation," with an added premise that negation also requires a subject that negates. 	Practically speaking, my appropriation of negation (in the text and in life) is somewhat excessive—skepticism and negation toward externals, toward the self, and even toward negation itself. In the latter two cases, the very "negation needs an object" ends up entailing an affirmation of the self (arguably a kind of "creation"). This self‑referential evidencing is also an affirmation of the system—even if it's ultimately incomplete. So on the "is it complete" question, I can roll out "I don't care & no difference" and move on; and in the ongoing, imperfect oscillation of self‑reference and evidencing, the system itself gets to becoming as being (if I had to choose one leitmotif as "core," I'd actually pick this one). 	From a "positive" perspective, these negations (or the de‑ in the de‑and‑re‑construction cycle) also rest on the inevitability of "creation/reconstruction." In a survival sense, reconstruction happens naturally after negation—and even after the negation of negation—so one hence needs to "actively" do negation and deconstruction. Of course, from a critical angle that's arguably "the cart before the horse": because ultimate creation/construction is unattainable, the drive converts (via something like surplus enjoyment) into a pursuit of negation/deconstruction. Honestly, either works, and I don't care which one is the "truth." The run of these arguments—and the further "negation" of them (or, to borrow Hegel very loosely, sublation, since I'm in no way telos‑driven)—is enough for me. 	As I write, I'm realizing my Chinese probably isn't strong enough to carry these contents cleanly. Still, I did try to answer your question.  	Friend D: 	Got it. I think "no final explanation" is a pretty good state; it means you hold a strong plasticity and a lot of possibilities! Once there is an explanation, it signals a shape is set—and that's when de‑and‑re‑construction should kick in. It's a very interesting self‑iteration, [smirk]. 	Let me check if I understand you: you affirm that reconstruction and deconstruction/negation co‑exist, only you regard deconstruction as the more important half—so it becomes your philosophical core. And because you keep doubting most objects, the importance of many dogmas/moral values drops sharply for you, which lets you take a relativist stance toward living, right? 	Suddenly, I see how relativism and absolutism can be compatible. I'm thinking of Descartes in Discourse on Method: while he's attempting to doubt, he still selects certain "social values and rules that large numbers of people observe" and refrains from violating them. So it's like inserting an absolutist baseline into a relativist doubt. The hard part, of course, is how to select those "values and rules"; the selecting is already a process of doubting, and it easily falls into circular‑evidence traps (and Descartes does this a lot…). 	Also: your Chinese can support philosophical academic writing; I've never been able to do that, [facepalm]. But I understood everything (you said)!  	X: 	Yeah—when that moment arrives, one ought to find a way to deconstruct. I can't guarantee I can keep doing this indefinitely, but so far, every round of d/n/r‑construction has been significant. Stepping back, I can also understand why people who (are willing to) believe there is a final explanation—or (are willing to) pursue one—exist (though those who truly hold these views might not agree that I "understand" them). Personally, simply for some reason, I happen to be neither. Writing that journal functions as a checkpoint in a becoming process; leaving these checkpoints matters to me—they work as evidence distinguishing becoming as being from a (Deleuzian?) directionless (?) becoming. 	As for the first half of your take: that's basically right, and I'll even shamelessly call it optimistic—reconstruction is, in essence, instinctive and vital for subsistence (within limits; I won't exclude the possibility that a total deconstruction ends in complete nihilism). So I focus more on deconstruction (and that focus, in turn, back‑feeds the capacity to reconstruct). But the latter half—relativist/eclectic attitude—fits more my judgments about external matters (or, more often, appears as the lack of judgment) and thus stands in contrast to the still disciplined personal life; hence, the first half of the journal discusses mostly the exploration/experimentation around the contradictions and boundaries of the moral‑model persona/performance. 	I also feel the selecting/choosing process is a necessary condition for becoming as being. I hesitated over whether to discuss, in the text, the kinships and differences between Nietzsche's will to power + revaluation of all values and what I'm sketching now; in the end, I didn't quite dare—I don't really know Nietzsche's stance comprehensively, and I likely need more practice. The point is: I take the selecting/choosing process to require practice/experiment; that's why I push myself to test some boundaries—to see whether they concretely exist and how I myself react. 	Whether this counts as academic writing, I don't know. Since entering college, my (Chinese/English) writing may or may not have improved, [lol]. As long as it's readable, I'm good, haha.  	Friend D: 	I do believe a final explanation exists, but I recognize that I (as a flesh‑and‑blood human) basically can't obtain it; I can only recursively pursue the state of "being ready to pursue the final explanation." In that way, at this stage, I've also become a supporter of "no final explanation."  	And I'm absolutely for the habit of keeping records—it's excellent as a growth log and material for self‑examination, [grin]. 	I also agree with this point ("I also feel the selecting/choosing …"). I hope I'll still have the chance/energy/courage to practice that selection process. But sometimes it needs turbulence in one's environment to push it along; when things stabilize, I tend to settle for a quieter comfort. I don't know if that's good or bad.  	X: 	Context/environment does matter a lot. I once thought I could screen out parts of the environment; then the desert made me re‑learn myself. Gains and losses—both. If we have to name it, I'm agnostic on a final explanation; IDC & ND re: whether it exists—I'd think its existence/non‑existence shouldn't affect one's practicing/experimenting of a personal philosophy.  	Friend D: 	What do you mean by "the desert," exactly, [teary‑laugh]? Do you mean that in the 21st‑century globalized world, a Walden‑style hermitage is impossible? I'm actually curious what the atmosphere is like at schools in the UAE/Qatar! Compared with the U.S. mainland, are there more international students—more diversity in study and in life, [grin]?  	X: 	Whether hermitage is possible, I'm not sure; I'm saying I've realized that, at this stage, I'm not quite able to accept that desert‑island kind of "hermitage," [lol]. Statistically speaking, in the DEI sense, the "diversity" here is unmatched. Yet precisely because of that, one can accelerate one's disenchantment with both diversity and globalization. There's a running joke here that after four years everyone becomes simultaneously much more open & much more racist (not as its denotation)—which has already turned out to be very true insofar as we disillusion ourselves from universal adaptability and confront real divergence. Of course, resilience probably does get trained in the process. 	As for academic and daily life: think, in general, of those small‑town LACs—close‑knit, small classes, high resources per capita, but the limited scope, very bubble, etc.  	Friend D: 	Got it—thanks for sharing!  	X: 	By the way, would you mind if I anonymize/translate the earlier part of our exchange and put it on my site as an addendum to that journal?  	Friend D: 	No problem at all. So I'll be "Friend D," right, [doge]?  	X: 	I do actually plan to label it that way, [doge].  	Friend D: 	Perfect. Delighted.  09.29.2025    	X:  	No one's actually going to read my poems, okay?  	Friend A:  	Don't be so sure. People did even read that 10k+ piece all the way through. Your poems will definitely have an audience.  	X:  	Who would've thought anyone would actually read them. I write poetry out of pure arrogance, totally ignoring readability—self-projected much heavier than in the journal.  	Friend A:  	So you're even more extreme than I do (in that sense).  	X:  	I mean, putting myself in others' shoes—if I weren't me and I came across my stuff, I'd at most read the 10k+ piece and probably skip the poems. At least in my head, the people who read those poems wouldn't be there "for the poetry"; they'd come for me as a person—for reasons good or bad, earnest or unhinged.  	Friend A:  	Hahahahaha. You should come here and take an experimental poetry writing class—pure chaos, starts from Dadaism; feel the intensity. Then you can, in a sense, get some institutional backing for your experiments.  	(I suppose the folks who read your stuff are) your partners‑in‑crime living their best life, plus the Fan‑haters.  	X:  	Funny thing is, I've never actually met a real Fan‑hater. I've basically never had any real conflict with people in my life. Only imaginary attackers.  	Friend A:  	Given your high‑school moral outlook, it's hard to make enemies, right? Plus you're not especially social; people don't see your inside, and you don't have that need—so the damage stays low.  	X:  	General‑interpersonal‑wise, nothing's changed now either, so it's hard for me to imagine getting into serious conflict with anyone.   	Friend A: 	Because you'll still, to some extent, respect the other person. At most, you just part ways. So the strongest‑intensity scenario would be a breakup, at most.  	(In fact,)  setting a model is actually already pretty decent. Back in high school I really admired that model.  	X:  	True. You called it.  	"Moving on and getting over are not the same thing, it seems to me"—playing John Mayer. 	Every time I get invested fullheartedly and then part ways, I loop this song for a while. This time the looping phase wasn’t as long as the last two, but the from‑time‑to‑time chance I pull it back out has actually gone up.  	Friend A:  	Hahahahaha. I would still need Teresa Teng for soul‑fragile moments.   	X:  	That's actually another perspective with quite some explanatory power. You could also tell the 10k+ story as "constantly testing whether the soul is fragile, when it's fragile, to what extent it's fragile, whether the fragility is real or fake, whether it's allowed to be fragile, etc."  	On the same JM album there's "Changing," which is about to become my theme song of life lately.  10.07.2025    	 I just realized that I have been using the term and concept of negation ever since  that time . What a goodie!  12.26.2025