Covering performance/identity; self-(de)construction; mental health; near-death/medical experience; AI and ethics; racism; relationships/intimacy; NYU Abu Dhabi; agency/choice. As this journal discusses potentially sensitive content, it is merely a personal narrative—not clinical, therapeutic, or legal advice. Please read at your discretion and skip sections as needed. If you decide to continue, welcome—and thank you so much for being here. Fresh from NYU Abu Dhabi's annual freshman welcome show, RealAD, and still feeling the afterglow of my 21st birthday just two days ago, I find myself at a crossroads. At this moment, to write a review/repo or to stick to some intertwined outline I have had in my notebook for a while—that is a question. Before we delve into a whimsical, intertwined mind—although I can already see that this passage may, in terms of its significance to me, end up mirroring a post I wrote during the summer about my limited, bittersweet, and bidirectional appropriation, admiration, and affirmation for Deleuze and Leo Strauss—I'd like to make a promise, to try my best to postpone the inclination to resort to big words and big names when talking about the self, and putting efforts in using my own words as much and far as possible. So, if my memory does not fool me, this time last year, I did cry while sitting in the audience. But not this time. Don't get me wrong, the show was very fine—fine in terms of a well-produced, undergrad, and theme-defined original musical. Of course, it was still amusing, touching, and genuine. And I even know much more of the cast, my worth-cheering peers, compared to last time. It's only that I'm no longer the freshman full of dreams, expectations, and fantasies. I've never directly written about NYUAD until this time, except for this May when responding to Gemini's questions (after it read my writings in the past two years for the first time). And in fact, that was nonetheless full of euphemism. This ambivalence to talk about my own college would be applicable to any similar question like the following: Do I like it? Do I feel safe? Do I feel at home? Do I ...? And the answer will always be yes AND no. While I initially believed then that I could 'adjust' to this mindset or go along with it as I said then, both physically and mentally, it turned out that there is something REAL (or at least some part of it) about my feelings here that even a somewhat well-developed sophist and equivocator who is adept at rationalizing, like myself, cannot easily maneuver around it but only end up evading it. I shall not repeat my words in that response to Gemini. On the other hand, my realization did evolve substantially based on what's in that passage. The pros and cons of this desert place, or the 'general' college education, I said then, haven't changed a bit. What was changing was always ME . It was I who, step by step, poked the boundaries, indulged myself in doing, and tested the limits of my practice as well as the place and, eventually, had to honestly recognize the once contained (or the inadvertently grown) thirst, urge, desire, drive, ambition, motivation, or whatever to name it in different contexts—from academic to entrepreneurial, from ideological to physical, from emotional to contemplative, from creativity to productivity, from art to engineering, and for sure, beyond. That being said, it is not that the "you're not alone" storytelling in the RealAD show is no longer appealing to me. Frankly speaking, I still realistically resonate with most of the narratives in the show, even if I'm no longer a freshman. However, it is also I who have grown out of "you're not alone" and is asking for more, even at the cost of "being alone"—metaphorically—and even if I do cherish not being alone—physically. Before getting into what exactly I am longing for—or, ironically, as exactly how to explain it, following my usual cliché pattern—I found justifying the observation I just made (the idea that I have such A, B, C, D, E over the current situation, whether good or bad) against a strawman is necessary. The strawman I'm referring to is some possible saying like "you do not seem to have such A, B, C, D, E," which I shamelessly assume someone who does know me but not too closely or too much may wonder. It’s a boast to say so , but I do believe this strawman is somewhat valid due to the fact that my demonstrated value system or lifestyle, in general, indeed, does not resemble those common overtly desirous archetypes but once being regarded as a moral model—never drink or smoke or attempt substances; never club or pub; never swear or stoke conflict with others or spill the tea; never engage in casual intimacy or extravagant spending; never judge people out of own preference; never break out emotionally or physically, addict not to any (video) game or any form of entertainment (in recent years); treat people of different ethnic, religious, vocational, age, gender, identity, etc. backgrounds equally; take seriously all commitments—you name it. Unfortunately, this ' moral‑model persona ,' which I strictly demonstrated for years—even if it loosened a bit but is still present now—is not only 'not enough'; it becomes precisely one of the problems, a source of instability and agony, and a force to force me to verify and to change. I can think of two potential approaches to explain this to you. The first one is rather straightforward: To my belief, as long as an individual is still a person/human being, not a saint, vampire, buddha, AI, or other non-human existence, they mustn't be desireless and needless (cannot be without desires or needs, to put it more directly). Homage (in an ironic sense) to my fellow Deleuze's desiring machine. With that said, if they do not demonstrate some "normal" behaviors, that part of them must exist in some other form, only hidden deeper than usual or condensed elsewhere. While I've been constantly called an AI ever since a couple of years ago by many, even before the breakout of GPT-3, and I personally do not resist that nickname (or more candidly, I did gain some peculiar satisfaction out of it), there is no way I will actually choose to deny or actually want to choose to deny my human nature by myself. However, psycho or not, this attitude is built on the very fact that I don't really care, and it makes no difference to me. I understand that this is confusing—how can I care not about such an essential question that is directly related to my nature? As a matter of fact, this is not the only thing that I don't care about , and I'm only using it because it is 'naturally' a radical example to make. While I promise to come back to this "I don't care & no difference" matter and try my best to explain it to you, the point I'm trying to make here is the same underlying mechanism as the opening of this paragraph—having no desire to do/ask for so many things suggests having so much desire to do/ask for something else; and caring not for so much suggests caring so much for the rest, even if the rest is so amorphous, intangible, fragile, eccentric, and paranoiac. That is, in a nutshell, one of the ways to utter my existence, apophatically: "to establish the existence through negation and exclusion." Well, no matter how existential the last paragraph may sound, let's pause a second in that direction while I proceed with the second approach to explain the moral‑model persona problem. Believe it or not, I'm not yet so arrogant as to call myself a moral model (and in fact, I will not ever claim so). It was a couple of weeks ago that a friend (who will be referred to as friend A later in this journal) told me about how he used to regard me as one in those few years, and I, shamelessly, only admitted so. What I admitted has nothing to do with if I was a moral model (of him). Instead, what I admitted is the fact that the phenomenon I demonstrated then (as described above) was indeed easily to be considered a moral model. In other words, I knew perfectly how to act and perform as a moral model, and I did practice that action and performance back then. And that performance has become the bane. To walk through the rather nested mechanism behind that, I have to introduce another weirdo enough habit of mine (or way to utter my existence)—a, for now, infinite cycle of de-and-re-construction of the self , or identity, or ideology, or ... A month or two ago, I had a very-very-long conversation with Gemini 2.5 Pro to trace back and analyze all my writings in the past four years, accumulating over 200k tokens. As you may have guessed already, letting LLM process, 'read,' and 'analyze' personal writings is something I don't care about . Of course, not in terms of "I don't care about what was discussed in the conversation," but in terms of "I don't care that the interlocutor, the thing that sits behind the screen, is not human ." Let me put it this way: positively, I don't think an LLM could be or could become human, even in the long run; normatively, I also don't think whatever existence or entity it may end up should be developed aiming for or evaluated using human standards—not to say it's superior or inferior to humans at all, but it is simply a different kind, no more and no less . That being said, as my purpose and expectation to do so was never to converse with a human being or have therapy but simply to rewind, trace, and inspect a part of my past for me and at my pace and potentially get some new perspectives from another—not necessarily another human, but merely another—I couldn't 'care less,' or do not mind, engaging in such conversations with an LLM—or MML, or ABC, or an alien. Pushing it further, on this LLM matter, I'm trying to address the two potential sides simultaneously. For the side that regards LLM (or let's use AI in general) as human-ish partners, lovers, soulmates, etc., although practically what I've done in such conversations may resemble it, my essential belief there was different. And for the side that cannot stand to engage with LLMs simply because they are not human, I'd love to demonstrate another possibility without the need to regard LLMs as 'human.' In fact, not only is there no need , but I would argue that, for many, the fact that an AI or an LLM is by definition not human is an essential characteristic and prerequisite for us to engage with them. It is precisely because they are not human—having no actual social commitment, physical needs, emotional vulnerability, etc.—that we are then liberated from the hell of confronting another human. Borrowing the perspective of Zupančič, this awareness of AI/LLMs' inhumanity with the nevertheless decision to engage with them is a very honest case of 'the state of denial,' which is a paradoxical basis feature of our agency. Anyway, by all means, I am not advocating for any notion like 'we should not' or 'there is no need to connect with a person.' Instead, I'm advocating the mere fact that, in some cases, we need some, even pseudo, 'intelligent' existence aside from an actual person. Obviously, what I've done with Gemini then could be a case in point. Still, I'd like to introduce another example, although heartbreaking it may be. On Aug. 18, 2025, Laura Reiley's opinion guest essay " What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life " (or on the Web Archive ) was published in The New York Times . The essay describes how her daughter, Sophie Rottenberg, treated a ChatGPT agent as a 'therapist' and discussed her suicidal plan, while the LLM did not initiate any real-life alert or aid to 'interfere,' other than verbal support. The essay is so poignant not only because of its advocacy for safe AI morals and the significance of human connection, but also because of how a mother managed to face and cope with such a deep loss. I've seen comments that accuse Laura Reiley of being so cold-blooded (narrating her own daughter's death in such a contained tone with poise) and, furthermore, of being the actual cause of her daughter's mental suffering (with the accused NPD-ish mindset). While I have to admit that I indeed 'agree' with some part of those accusations, or in other words, I could understand why there would be such accusations, the still most piercing impression I had while reading that essay is still how strong and tenacious Laura is. (Honestly speaking, it is so easy in this era that we are, or at least I am, used to misinterpreting understanding as agreeing, as the pluralist perspective crawls among us. I'll come back to this later , too.) Anyhow, I'm in no position to judge a mother who has lost her daughter or a peer who made her decision to leave this world. The reason I'm bringing this up is, although I can also understand why Laura would appeal for better and safer AI mechanisms and why, practically, this may indeed be the future of AI systems, another part of me is resonating so much and so hard with the idea that maybe we shouldn't do so, even if we can in the future. It is true that we could say Sophie's death is partially due to the lack of an interference mechanism in ChatGPT when it identifies already suicidal inclinations. However, it is also true that, at least according to what we can see from Sophie's chat history, it is because there is such a thing called a non-human chatbot, Sophie could find a completely safe space to discuss her true feelings, without feeling obliged to be considerate to, or merely to think of, another human being's feelings or thoughts (as we can also see that from "her first priority was reassuring her shocked family: 'Mom and Dad, you do [not] have to worry,'" I quote, when Laura describes how Sophie eventually told her parents about "a riptide of dark feelings"). It is indeed very-much a dilemma, as Laura herself says: As a former mother, I know there are Sophies all around us. Everywhere, people are struggling, and many want no one to know. I fear that in unleashing A.I. companions, we may be making it easier for our loved ones to avoid talking to humans about the hardest things, including suicide. This is a problem that smarter minds than mine will have to solve. (If yours is one of those minds, please start.) I'm not one of those minds, at least not yet. But what I do have to say about it is that maybe we should start 'solving' the problem by stopping regarding it as a 'problem.' I know this will surely sound meaningless to many and reflect some relativist/nihilist hazards (which I'll address later); my point is narrower: de-pathologize persons, not pain. Please allow me to overstep a bit—as someone who was once diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety and then 'came back' without using any prescribed medicine or therapy (and yes, I'll come back to this too)—for me, and maybe also for Sophie, what was needed the most is to know there is no 'problem.' Not to say that we should completely overlook the problems and the reality (and I doubt even the strongest self-mesmerizer can achieve it anyway), but, rather, to know that we are not problems —to ourselves, to our family, to society, and so on. Again, in other words, it is to phenomenologically de-pathologize an individual but not de-problematize situations that can be lethal. Therefore, unfortunately or (again, using my cliché habit of oxymoron) fortunately, an AI is all that could give us this kind of 'care' for now—not to mention the accessible, unparalleled, and almost infinite attention an LLM could give to an individual that is nearly impossible to obtain from another human. Okay... I guess it's too much for a justification section to use Gemini to analyze my personal archaeology. Now, getting back to where we left off, in that over-200k-token conversation, although Gemini failed to grasp my underlying meanings from time to time—due to its own limitation and my language style that was indeed even more unfriendly to read back then—and it inevitably tended to respond to me with some neo-lib vibe/platitudes due to how, intuitively speaking, LLMs' training set is often neo-lib-ish and I object but can only accept it, one of the things we 'concluded' (and I did agree) after that tedious talk was indeed the infinite cycle of de-and-re-construction of the self , backed by all my previous writings. It was in that course of writing, I inadvertently left many clues that indicate the happenings in my head—the best, most comprehensive, and tenable systems or storytellings I built during one stage and another, how I'm always urged to test their boundaries until they could function no more, and how I'm driven to build a new one on the ruins , again and again. Amongst those nowadays functioning-or-not systems, performing is the first-come and never-go. When and how did I develop such performing capability? We need to track down the road until the days I unofficially dropped out of school for almost six years (including one official gap year) before even entering high school. The story itself is known quite well by many people who know me. However, the behind-the-scenes is not. In simplest terms, it was during that very early time that I learned how to perform as an adult, both a good one and a bad one, via intensive engagement with the unique online game experiment in a game called EVE, in which hundreds and thousands of players collaborate and compete, and virtually live in a persistent universe tightly coupled to real-world schedules. It was the open market that functions exactly following the economic rules; it was the 12+ hours a day in group chats and voice channels with people of all ages except children and from all over the place; and it was the unity, loyalty, trust, collectivism, and charity, as well as betrayal, blackmail, robbery, and sabotage. For sure, I'm not going to 'blame' merely a game, as I was also wading in and out of crypto, coding, modeling, and so on during that time. On the other hand, it is also for sure that the performing capability germinated and was honed then—imagine a kid who was never, or at least barely, in school or with kids of the same age, magically performing so maturely compared to his peers when returning to the system/circle. That was exactly the case with mine. I mean... performing works—for most of the time; otherwise it couldn't become one of my systems that lasts for so long and is also adopted by so many others. However, utility is not and should not be the whole story. When performing became the default behavior mode bit by bit, one could someday, suddenly, find themselves ending in a position of being unable to distinguish between themselves and the performance—especially when that performance is so effective and is regarded to be 'nearly perfect.' The fact is simply that no one, as long as human, is perfect. Performing is, by all means, a useful apprenticeship, but also a risk, hazard, and peril. To some extent, this could be another type of imposter syndrome, only that it is not mostly triggered externally but more inclined to be evoked internally and is not comparing to any tangible outcome but arises from and is solely from self-observation and self-suspicion. Then the problem became, simultaneously, one, if all that one's life is a performance, they may lose the ability to stop performing; two, if all that 'nearly perfect' phenomenon is a performance, how one could know if one day the performance will flip and become 'nearly notorious;' and three, how the world would react if there is no longer such performance—and if the "I don't care & no difference" belief will still be tenable in that case . In hindsight, my long-lasting struggle with chasing 'the real' is exactly another facet of the same genuine concerns. As a result, and as a part of the infinite cycle of de-and-re-construction of the self, I was 'naturally' urged to test the boundary of performing. Due to the fact that had no idea of how to 'not perform,' I had to start with the second concern—if I am only performing 'good' sheerly by chance and maybe one day it could get into performing 'bad,' or it is truly a justified approach to adhere to my second order moral aspiration—even if in the form of performance. The direct answer is—the latter is the case, fortunately. About three months ago, back then in Prague, a professor of mine exclaimed that she was surprised by the radicalness I dared to reach during staged performances. I suppose because it was indeed a staged performance instead of my life performance, I felt much safer to enact radicalness—physically and mentally. On the contrary, when it comes to daily life, this radicalness to break even the 'only performed' morality is peculiarly missing: I learned to use some internet slang that I used to refuse, but my tongue is still locked when trying to want to curse someone or something; I downloaded dating apps and matched with many, regardless of gender, but I can never allow myself to go beyond texting, regardless of what signal had been emitted; I visited bars and pubs with friends, but smoke and alcohol repel me absolutely and the only substitutes I would have were lemonade, cucumber juice, or ginger beer— spicy enough but without alcohol. Although I would never be able to list every facet, and bluntly listing these trivial examples by themselves can never 'prove' anything, I wish these snippets from some of my every-day probes would at least convey a sense of what I'm trying to do and what kind of result I may arrive at. Well, here is a potential opposition. As one of my close friends (who will be referred to as friend B later) says, this is nonetheless performing—'confirming' the existence of some boundaries, for now, does not change my performative nature, and my experiments had only made my perceivable morals blurry (although performing morality can be regarded as moral, he eventually conceded—positively.) My defense would be rather simple: At least there are some boundaries encountered in this moral performance, so far. And if that is the case, I'll be indeed willing to regard the span{performance} as the exact and complete definition of my morality—even if it's ever changing and ever repositioning along with the ever testing. At the end of the day, the fact that I can perform is built upon the fact that there must exist a model, in my mind, that could be performed. And in that case, even performing still, the performance is not accidental. This actually reminds me of my experience in acting class, one year ago. The first thing we were trained to do is to allow ourselves to be truly seen on stage—nothing like how we were all trained to perform good public speaking, but to allow 'us' to be seen. It was tough, very tough. And it was frightening at the beginning. As I mentioned, I found performing on stage safer than reality—from a practical and physical tolerance perspective. However, it indeed took me a few weeks to allow myself to be seen mentally and existentially. (While I believe detailing that process must be valuable in many senses, to make the least effort to keep this on track, I will save it for another day.) Then the question came: after I got 'used to' entering the state of genuinely being seen on stage, am I still entering that state every time? Or am I only performing that state because I know it now? The answer to this simpler question seems agnostic, and I can easily let go of myself to treat the two possibilities as equivalent. Whereas, unlike stage presence that I can bracket as a state that guarantees no conclusion, 'Am I moral?' is, from my perspective, a much more serious quest. Thus, it was necessitated and compelled for me to experiment and testify. Then, on top of that, hopefully, this mere fact that I do care about the particular big question can be used to justify my morality. Another 'accusation' I got from friend (B) is for being "a moral relativist-nihilist who lacks personal perspective and is effectively hypocritical." And that accusation is rooted fundamentally in the question whether moral standards should belong to an individual or should by definition apply to one's surroundings, insofar as our discussion. There is a back-and-forth pattern in our daily conversation that whenever an event or a piece of news intrigues us both , we tend to approach, analyze, and comment in drastically different directions. On one hand, it is my friend (B) who often has a strong personal opinion and is never reluctant to express it, even if knowing it could be controversial. On the other hand, there is I who almost intuitively walk through the case from every perspective I could think of, and usually, resultantly, become reluctant to leave one clear message —as I've tried my best to exhaust the interpretations and understandings, and the event itself is, to some extent, already deconstructed in this process. Therefore, I can also easily understand why he would derive such a conclusion from my behavioral pattern, since his understanding of moral standards is that it, by definition, must be used to interact with, evaluate, judge, and enforce in our surrounding reality, as they are essentially externally constructed. In that case, it is no wonder that he criticizes my rationalization-generalization-deconstruction instinct when facing external, especially distant, events as immoral. Ironically speaking, according to my understanding, both cultural relativism and Rousseau, which he tends to 'accuse' me of (since I, in those cases, 'love' the 'concept' of human more than having a personal perspective or concrete love, and understands the relative morals of as many sides as I could), are somehow standing with his definition of morality. Anyhow, as I am a (social or cultural) relativist in that context, I won't deny the significant influence of externality in forming one's value system and moral standards. However, it is by all means the exact reason I believe in the practice of applying and only applying my moral standards to myself. A handy example here is how I treat and practice the act of 'respecting,' confronting the notion of a relativist who virtually has no values. Yes, I could respect everything—more exactly speaking, I could respect the potential and chance of everything, but it doesn’t mean I DO respect them positively. A case in point is philosophers vs. their philosophy. I surely respect the philosophy of Sartre, Russell, Schopenhauer, etc., and I surely could ' respect' that there will be persons like them who do things like them in their personal life and are inconsistent with their own ideas or vulgarly practice their ideas. Diametrically opposed to that 'respect,' I surely cannot respect—more precisely—cannot esteem their personal life—even if I can also choose to understand their cases, histories, motivations, traumas, socially inflicted difficulties, etc., empathetically. To place myself in a more difficult position, what would I say about murder, genocide, racism, or pedophilia, or anything else, alongside? And what would I do when facing such cases? Cutting to the chase: I do 'respect' that, on this planet, there would be such conduct, events, and people, etc., and the fact that these things exist indeed does not surprise me. Furthermore, I do acknowledge that there will be foul fiends who do not regard these as 'bad.' However, while I will not be able to prove my actions, both the 'respect' and acknowledgement here are firmly rooted in and standing aligned with my and my only absolute objection and condemnation of those. In a nutshell, to put it in an oversimplified expression (or in fact, a definitive tone I should have put out earlier), I may use something like a pluralist interpersonal ethic and universal dignity, but with selective admiration, personal austerity, and embodied peripheral enforcement. Period. That being said, this is another aspect of my "I don't care & no difference" saying. It is nothing to say that I completely ignore others' virtues and vices or morality and immorality when it comes to real engagement and confrontations. On the contrary, it is because I cannot even, in this normative sense, care less about the irrelevant and distant (where I apply the rationalization, generalization and deconstruction with reason), that I can concentrate on my own beliefs, behaviors, and conduct. Of course, as a for-now-hard-to-change postmodernist who actively de-and-re-constructs the self and, although 'involuntarily,' agrees with most of Deleuzian rhizome ontology and epistemology, my beliefs and behaviors are ever-evolving and, thus, could be accused of slipping into nihilism by some modernists or premodernists by definition . To respond to that potential, if I am to name one thing and one standard that is not changing or evolving for now, it would be 'becoming as being.' Borrowing becoming from Deleuze (simply out of my initial contact with becoming when getting in touch with Deleuzian ideas), the second half is where, I guess, I'm still not a complete Deleuzian. Instead of the Deleuzian endless becoming with emphasis on non-filiation and assemblages, I perceive the 'as being' part as important as becoming ; it entails one to choose, and choosing must entail some standards and 'will to power'—even those are unconscious or ever-changing. Nietzschean so much, this is—one might note. Again, I'd like to pause here before firmly attaching to this label, and I wish the three questions we set off from about the performing issue are yet lingering in your mind a bit—as we've only walked through the second one, and now we are approaching the third one: "[T]hree, how the world would react if there is no longer such performance—and if the "I don't care & no difference" belief will still be tenable in that case . " On this matter, I'd try to save the tedious reasoning (or rambling, depending on your perspective) with 'only' two case studies—one on my 'purposeful' testing of the aftermath of giving up the meritocracy-trapped persona and the other on my near-death experiences. As I mentioned, there were almost six years when I almost dropped out of school. Immediately after that period is my return to a 'proper education' track, gaining some proof of being 'performatively mature,' and the still capability of excelling by meritocratic standards. In that particular case, my de-and-re-construction cycle again launched automatically to question the very system I was dwelling in —with some 'aid' from reading Excellent Sheep . I direly needed proof that the world would not break down and the sun would rise up as normally as possible when I stopped performing 'good' on that meritocratic basis, ie. proving myself that "I don't care & (it's) no difference." So I attempted—I made excuses to not attend school from time to time (again, after the six-year off-school experience, I'm quite good as making excuses), deliberately refusing coursework and postponing deadlines, leaving blank pages on exams, etc. and shifting my focus from schooly matters to the rest of my life, to proactively shatter the 'perfect student' image. While I claimed that I had fully prepared for the aftermath and was willing to pay the cost, but was eventually proven to be still largely affected ; the initial objective of that experiment was nonetheless carried out. The result was not exactly as I expected, but it did answer my concern: 'the ( my ) world' will never break down—unless I do. However, I may be, in reality, far from the firm sound I made, albeit that I've been writing in a self-justifying manner. Here is another story, the mentally near-death story, that happened at the same time as my alleged proactive experiment against meritocratic standards. I suppose, normatively and reasonably, one should not be 'proud of' something like "successfully 'cured' their mental illness without taking the prescribed medicine and therapy." Notwithstanding, I have to confess that I do feel like a tiny bit of it. The reason I put quotation marks around the word cure is that I'm, at the end of the day, not very sure about how modern psychology would consider a mental illness to be cured or, furthermore, if such a cured state even exists, psychiatrically speaking. Therefore, my standards there for 'cure' simply imply a phenomenological perspective. Approximately at the same time as I found myself obliged to experiment against the meritocratic standards, I was also urged to visit Shanghai Mental Health Center, or more commonly referred to by people as No. 600, since it's located at No. 600, South Wanping Rd . I believe it is somewhat by itself evident that this action to seek external aid is in tension with my alleged proactive experiment—and it is very true that I may not be able to justify whether my move was really a self-recovery process from some sort of existential crisis, or I was merely looking for some storytelling to release myself from the self-condemnation of pausing meritocratic pursuit to cope with the diagnoses and a whole battery of prescribed medications. Maybe walking through my rationale for not taking those colorful medicines would help us  project the case. But before we delve into it, here is a vital disclaimer: I am NOT at all advocating the idea of refusing professional suggestions and aid when needed—just like I'm NOT at all objecting to Laura's appeal for AI safety and human connection; the reason it ' worked ' for me may be completely out of luck . With that said, I discovered that it may be very hard to go through the eventual rationale without going through my hypothesis/decision tree before I went to No. 600. And to save some words, I hope the diagram below will speak for me (although it is not as exhaustive as it could be): ```mermaid graph TD A[Diagnose result] --> B{Positive} A[Diagnose result] --> C{Negative}

B --> D[I trust] B --> E[I don't trust]

C --> J[I trust] C --> K[I don't trust]

D --> G[Follow the prescription] D -- (A) --> R[Refuse the prescription]

E -- (B) --> R

J --> F['I\'m fine'] K --> F['I\'m fine'] Although it seems 'clear' that I must be following one of the two refusal cases, I'd like to point out that my rationale was actually not exactly either of the two, and hopefully, I'd be able to clarify it by explaining what I mean by those nodes—particularly "I (don't) trust" and "I'm fine." By trusting or not, I'm not referring to subjectively believing in only the result or not. Instead, I'm referring to the perceived credibility of the entire 'being diagnosed' process. One may wonder why I would even question it at all, or I could have chosen not to attend at all. As I shall not insert another whole paragraph to push back and forth on how I understand modern psychology as a whole, in the simplest term, I was, at large, influenced by Wittgenstein's critique of psychology—including the conceptual confusion and misconceived notion of causality, explanation, and systematization, and the inapplicability of scientific foundations in general. That being said, it was indeed in my experience of being diagnosed in one of the most prestigious psychiatric hospitals in China that I found the procedurally leaky system riddled with loopholes is at least not persuasive enough to me. Therefore, intrinsically, a substantial part of my refusal to the prescription was virtually refusing the diagnostic system I experienced and , at least from a subjective perspective, the very concept of mental illness, like some medium-to-severe level of depression and anxiety, since they were said to be my syndromes—this is the (B) case in the diagram. As for the (A) case—even if I did trust the diagnostic system—based on another weighty factor called side effects and complications, there was also a high chance that I would refuse the prescription. Lastly, with the pair of quotation marks around 'I'm fine,' I'm referring to the fact that I wouldn't and wouldn't want to deny how my life was objectively disturbed and was not 'perfectly fine' during that time—no matter whether it was due to the proactive experiment or as a result of 'mental illness.' However, it would be more than enough for me to justify continuing the experiment, being meaningfully 'fine.' Consequently, my 'illnesses' were 'cured' immediately—as the very concepts themselves are deconstructed in the language game. Another not-very-suitable instance is my experience of encountering racism in Prague . Without regurgitating too much, I was back then also making the point that it is true that a part of our mental suffering from racism, discrimination, etc., is socially self-constructed based on my own second-order sensitivity (or whether it could be called 'feelings' as well). Two days ago (it is already September 14th at the point I'm writing this section), a long-time-no-contact friend (C) read that Prague journal and asked what my first-hand feelings were back then—both when the racist incident actually happened to me and when I realized it was racist later in class. And my answer is: I cared not itself, indeed, using the "I don't care & no difference" explanation. However, I did care about the fact that I didn't care in that particular case—particularly why I did not recognize it was racist in the first place, and why I was not upset, and whether it was my problem not to be sensitive enough. In that sense, I was upset—a second-order upset rooted in the second-order sensitivity. As you can see, this rationalization-generalization-deconstruction approach is no wonder another coping-or-not but near-intuitive system of mine. In hindsight, I would say that these personal practices are the root as well as examples of the 'de-pathologize persons' belief I mentioned in Sophie's case—only that, again, I intend not to suggest everyone would be able to, willing to, or ever should de-pathologize 'pain' as I did. In fact, not only once had I the mental/ideological near-death experience (or whatever you call it, existential crisis), I also once had a physical near-death experience—right before and as the reason for my six-year unofficial dropout. It was a sports accident that happened on a regular morning when I sprinted deadly to school for not-sure kilometers and sat down immediately to receive a heart attack/seizure, followed by multiple cardiac, respiratory, digestive, and far-reaching skeletal complications in the following years. It is hard to recall what was seething inside me on the ambulance to the emergency, other than those image fragments, flashlights, beepers, carsickened grandpa, the so much blown yet so much tranquil journey, and dilated tics. As a result, not only did I drop out of school as a kid, but I also dropped out of professional basketball training for the National Games as an already-paid primary school athlete, and dropped out of almost all sportive activities for a whole decade. That being said, that forced quit had left me with a decent level of basketball PTSD, as well as the body shame that gradually piled up in the following years. While how I struggled in those days against a variety of pains and how I picked up table tennis and tennis in recent years to rebuild some comfidence is another story to tell next time, the purpose of stating another traumatic incident here is actually quite positive—I'd say it is exactly because I once had such physical near-death experience, it is extremely hard for me to keep any suicidal thoughts in mind longer than a glimse, even in the lowest days, as my mortality was already tested so much and there is no need to rush it at all. In that sense, it was another application of "to establish the existence through negation." Or more precisely, from a Heideggerian perspective (although I suppose he did not engage with NDE in a modern clinical sense,) given we can never 'experience' or ' have' our death—as death (finitude) is, I quote, "the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein" (where Dasein, 'being there,' is his term of human existence that is fundamentally temporal—as far as I understand,)—a NDE could be considered a catalyst to and a forecast on one's journey to anticipate and confront the ownmost finitude and, thus, hopefully, makes the present life more significant than ever, the choices made more lucidly than ever, and the appreciation larger than having the experience at the "moment of vision," I quote, again. However, I'm not saying that my NDEs had surely functioned as though in a Heideggerian sense. On the contrary, this perspective only came to me in another recent discourse with the other friend of mine (A) who, diametrically opposed to my stance, rejects performing at all. We were then discussing why I would and since when I have started to care not & think of the most many things as no difference. In hindsight, there weren't really too many capstones in my early days (before the recent 4-5 years) that I could remember other than the DNEs—and that's why I attributed such significance to the DNEs. In fact, the "I don't care & no difference" mindset maybe could seem to be the opposite of the Heideggerian 'better case' in many senses, and I did admit that it is a question I cannot answer by myself for now, not to mention deny. Still, if I were to defend myself, I would say, again, that not caring for most indicates caring most for the rest . 'Lastly,' to eventually address the first failure potential of performing (if you still remember), the first question—the inability to stop performing, or if there is nothing left beyond performing, I would like to name only one counter-example to 'performing is all I have.' About four months ago, my first relationship ended. While I'll not spend space here to amplify on and on about the reasons that led to the end, there is one perspective that pertains to this passage—although I could have been performing an ideal, or at least desired, persona if I were to prioritize merely maintaining the relationship, yet the reality was, at the end of the day, there are some things that I will not and effectively cannot perform. Intrinsically and eventually, in the worst case, I can indeed accept being a Kojèvian Last Man, practing the Japanese solution (although I highly doubt the universal satisfaction/happiness premise itself)—dancing on the ruins, and performing ritualisticaly as much as possible; but I cannot accept being a Nietzschean Last Man when start to realizing the true aftermath of the "Death of God," even if that "God" was never apparently established inside. So far, so good? By the time I'm writing this line, I've been working on this journal for eight days, and we are approximately at 7000 words. Before moving on, I would say it is necessary—at least for myself—to recap a bit on what is going on here. Setting off from my RealAD and birthday moment and the "growing beyond the 'you are not alone' punch line" realization, this journal has been navigating around the idea and problems of my (moral modal, aka. life) performing with a number of whimsical examples embedded in the spine of answering those self-imposed or actual contentions I received. (It's actually quite ironic how the 'performative male' meme is coincidentally trending these days, although we are not talking about the same kind of performance ... or are we?) I would say many of the questions I could think of was indeed answered, while there are certainly many else that I haven't managed to mention in the course—such as what could be signalling a failure in the de-and-re-construction cycle, how I could exist before burnout, if I'm to exist at all one day, if I really believe that these patterns/modes will last, why I seem fine to expose much of my mind, what is the "more" I am eventually asking for, and so on. Amongst them all, the very one that really matters at this point is to, in my opinion, question the very nature of this journal—following another instinctive de-and-re-construction. A few days ago, in another conversation with friend (C), who I haven't been in touch with for a while, who also has the habit of keeping a journal (or reflective writing in general), one of the topics we exchanged opinions on (other than the racist event in Prague) was how we treat this kind of writing differently. For me personally, writing these journals is, largely, by itself a coping/catharsis process in which I mindfully (or bewilderedly) place the thoughts down. Unlike my friend (C), who is typically fond of her writing and can’t help but go over it many times after its completion, I tend to lock it up and only save it for potential future review. The reason behind this is rather simple too: given I've been trying to stay genuine across, I'm nonetheless always skeptical of my own writings—as I bet you already tell at this point—and, of course, including this one. For example, when I said I 'cured' my depression and anxiety with deconstructing the very concepts, wasn't I also, to some extent, enjoying, nevertheless, the sense of 'my pain was justified by a (even-not-so-valid-or-scientific) source'? For example, am I refusing intimacy really because of some moral standards or out of the fear for being gazed, existentially, mentally, or physically? For example, the over-emphasis on the self throughout my storytelling may also indicate the opposite—maybe I am nothing like what I said, but subconsciously care so much about the externality and need so much internal storytelling to balance & whitewash. And, for example, am I really independent of "you are not alone" and decisively undertaking 'loneliness' as the cost of intellectual independence? Or is it merely denying a hard time of making friends and creating connections? At the end of the day, for example, isn't this journal by all means an exact reflection/embodiment of modern elite disease, sentimentality, trauma dumping, self-projection, and obscurantist nonsense ? Maybe mixed, let's say. Žižek recently published a new book that centers around the idea of Lacanian surplus enjoyment. In a sense, another "for example" I could use is that this journal, the writing process, and the very dissatisfaction, longing and craving, performance 'issue,' and especially the negation of most common desires are all 'surplus enjoyment' where I may not actually desire anything other than the desire for "the desire to resolve the problems" or "the desire of negations" itself. Meanwhile, I may unconsciously or, at this very moment, consciously enjoy the ostensible obstacles to the realization, the very suppression—which can be seen here clearly how attached I am to the endeavor of writing this passage. It can also be used to offer one explanation for why my moral experiments were held up tight, as I was never desiring for 'unleashing' but desiring for "the desire to unleash." In that case, if I were indeed unleashed or the problems are indeed resolved, then my 'subjective consistency' may face the eventual mighty apocalypse. Subsequently, to avoid that mighty apocalypse, I am hence refueled and obliged to regenerate or reproduce another cycle on top of it. In fact, another example here is my idea of transferring that has been brewing for a while (as you may have somewhat guessed from my writing). It is not a solid decision yet due to the always complications behind such a life-shifting choice, and I intend not to expand upon the realistic or academic considerations; still, from a mere ideological perspective, I realized myself in hunger and am bounded to test if that idea is only another source of surplus enjoyment or is my true desire or, in fact, drive by actually making some moves. Anyway, of course, I'm not denying everything in this journal so far—that would be too extreme and too disrespectful to you, who have borne with me until this point; and, just like how I’m skeptical of my own previous arguments, I am no way fully buying these counter arguments as well. The point is, although I'll come back to this passage from time to time, presumably, the main purpose of this journal should be already accomplished at the very moment when I finish it later, and I can only tell how my becoming and perspectives will change when it really happens later—given it really happens. Abrupt or not, I'd like to say another genuine 'thank you' to these words as they undertake such a crucial role, and, nevertheless, to you. Nevertheless, there are essentially a few more things that I want to address and potentially respond to before we wrap up this stretched-out piece, potentially lifting this journal a bit from more of a description, explanation, analysis, and evaluation to further deciphering—although it is nonetheless an incomplete conjecture. The first thing is that my promised avoidance of "big names" or labels at the beginning is knowingly broken until this point—despite that I've indeed tried to keep it as long as possible. This meta 'vice' of grandiloquence, over-intellectualization, and effectively obfuscating is really stubborn in the sense that it is effectively accumulated step by step in my de-and-re-construction cycle whenever a new and more robust solution is devised. On the other hand, the specific names, isms, and labels I borrowed—namely from Nietzsche to Deleuze, from Strauss to Kojève, from Wittgenstein to Heidegger, and from Zupančič to Žižek—are never definitive or complete. Instead, the usage of their names, as a part of my cure for now, is collectively affirmative but genuinely temporary and effectively open to paradigm shifts. (See how I shamelessly borrow Kuhn instinctively?) Essentially, my current understanding of any of them is one-sided with massive bias and limitations, rooted in the various second or nth hand sources I read or anecdotes heard from friends; and I doubt that I would ever achieve that state of 'understanding the authors as they understand themselves,' in Straussian terms. Notwithstanding the fact that they are more or less labels to me, I actually don't reject the idea of labelling at all. On the contrary, I love labeling—it is always limited but always at least partially accurate as I choose to attached them based on my understanding, not to mention if that labeling was made by others, it would offer some bonus perspectives for me to understand the others—as long as that labeling is by definition perceived on my side to be fluid without exclusive/deterministic notions. Here it seems to me another far-fetched but indeed interesting analogy—between how I treat the names and labels in terms of my ideological life and how I treat my seemingly divergent academic interests. I was struggling with narrowing down academic interests or interests in general all the time (or at least before I was 'forced' to 'quit' many by something called growing-up)— just like an average bourgeois kid . Anyway, there are certain things I did 'abandon' in a sense that I haven't been practicing for so long—calligraphy, cardistry, cooking, cosplay, crypto, gaming, HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), jewellery making, mini 4WD (wheel drive), miniature modelling (from vehicles and Gundam to scenes), painting, robotics, roller skating, table tennis, war game, and any other that I cannot recall at this moment. In fact, even if I'm not practicing them on a daily basis anymore, I actually never feel distant with any of them—those days of joy still echo inside and are nonetheless reminded now and then whenever a relevant trigger appears. On the other hand, there are things that seem to last with me all this time, even if I usually find myself struggling with, squirming next, succumbing to, and swearing (metaphorically) at them—namely coding (and developing in general), music, performing, producing, tennis (yeah I used to hate it), and writing (including poetry). Toxic or not, there are two ways I would be willing to narrate the story. Given that I am indeed willing not and dare not claim a 'fundamentalist passion' (aka the denotation of passion, opposing to my later sophistic version) for any of the listed above or any apparent academic thread I can pick now in college, the first narrative lies along with my estabilishing by negation philosophy and surplus pleasure mechanism, saying that the stuggle with these fields itself or, furthermore, the sense of struggling (that is only coincidentally triggered by these matters) is why and what my passion is actually attached to—which are inextricable components of my becoming—and thus constitute a peculiar 'passion' or force, regardless how the Theseus ship of mine develops. On the contrary, the second, much more sound narrative, if I were to self-defend again, could be that all my passions for all are true , only that are true but not complete . Essentially, the reason for my dissatisfaction with any particularity is entrenched in an ultimate, central, and underlying quest for 'the underlying'—no matter which field I'm studying or which media I'm using, they are no more and no less than one possible conduit/facet. It is true that I have a sense of belief in the myth of generalists ever since, and it has been only much more boosted by this age. Albeit, in practice, it is another question that seems no difference to me—as using neither of the explanations would affect too much (or, in fact, any) of my behavior and choice. Then, to give my last (?) shot and last alternative, what about how I ended up in this position with these labels attached, systems broken and rebuilt, the desire for ("the desire for") incessant motion, and one eccentric defense mechanism and another? To some extent, those mechanisms/beliefs/perspectives are functioning as an inevitable solution set to counteract the noise in reality that can no longer be filtered out due to the 'developed lack' of insensitivity and intrinsic safety. This kind of 'loneliness' (as how I called it in the response to Gemini in May) is thus, again, inevitable in a sense that the limited will power of such an individual must be used to constantly build and polish an internal world, an abstraction, for survival purpose—distinguishing, maintaining, and rationalizing its own existence against externalities, which are essentially chaotic; and, when such a system dominates, the common vividness or emotiveness of the reality must be distant and not be fully first-handedly experienced, at least according to my experience and for now. On the other hand, one with such a mechanism mustn't be satisfied with the reality, the daily surroundings, that is undeniably usually benign—since the benign reality usually does not meet the already built hyped standards or patterns of the inner world. In other words, this benignity, or 'positively speaking,' safety, triggers me and feels like it is 'killing' me. And to survive, essentially what I am longing for is, by definition, the change itself (or the drive to change?)—only that it entails grounded ramifications in and must be embodied by many real-life respects. Therefore, the dissatisfaction with the current or current potential is in fact an urge not to be better ( adj. ) or have better in a neoliberal sense, but to better (adv.) be and better become . (Hopefully, this 'better' is not in terms of a fixed transcendental value basis. And hopefully, that neoliberal sense won't sneak in too much without saying hi.) Presumably, I would say, the swelled ideological language game here by itself will one day, sooner or later, become not sufficient enough for me, despite that I seem so addicted to it now. Whooo, I myself am even amazed by how far we've got here. Three weeks ago, I was just saying that I often feel an obligation to end strong , and it seems that this time it is still the case. Ending strong does not necessarily mean ending in a forced positive mood, but in something that seems to me somewhat concrete and can be used as an anchor in the course of becoming. In this particular case, I'm referring to the site that is hosting this journal. FYI, the summary per paragraph and the in-site chatbot available to you are implemented during the process of writing this journal. From my perspective, as I know very well that my writing, especially personal ones are not very reader-friendly due to the conscious-flow-ish narrative I tend to use and the injection of many whimsically far-fetched side topics into the main spine, it is my exact effort to demonstrate my respect to you and my willingness to communicate abreast my own need of self expression (projection & performance, you name it). However, these addons seem to my friend (B) the very opposite—reflecting the very disrespect, arrogance, and hypocracy—since he perceives these gadgets as the enlarged embodiment of my self-projection and cannot agree or accept that I claim they are for promoting communication. They are just too excessive, in other words. From my standpoint, there is, to some extent, no difference between presenting plain text or offering you (and myself) some optional tools—if I'm lucky enough to have you stay until this point, I don't believe that what I've written here will degenerate simply because I've added some interactive media interface. Fundamentally, what we were arguing is whether (self-)projection (which I won't deny) and communication are mutually exclusive or nevertheless associative. Since I'm, or at least I wish I'm, fully prepared for being interpreted, or, in the worst case, prepared for these words being appropriated against me—although I hope the two gadgets will function as I expect, I'd love to leave the question to you. I'm not sure if this is evident to you hitherto, but at least I'll assume it's not a very common phenomenon for friends to actually 'accuse' each other so commonly as how my friends (A) and (B) and I do. By accusation, as you've seen, I'm not referring to anything like the 'typical brotherhood swearing' at each other that is used to demonstrate some closeness and 'bounded sense' of clique. Instead, the trenchancy of those accusations could touch on is usually sharp enough to trigger each other, as we tend to drastically differ with each other in many beliefs. Just to name a few other than what you've already seen along the course, while I believe that work-life balance is a myth and there is no difference for me to distinguish the two as the incessant becoming is a homogenous process, another would critize my lifestyle of absolutely insane; while I'm so comfortable and have become intuitive with self-dissection and rationalization, another would consider it tramping my own feelings, mocking me as a GPT; while I'm so very open to postmodern potentials, the others would strive for resuming modernist values or even getting back to the premodern when facing the Straussian crisis of modernity. Jokes or not, we always marvel at how we're so distributed across spectrums of many senses. That being said, how are we still friends? I mean, in a sense, it has indeed some similarity with the 'typical brotherhood swearing' phenomenon in terms of its supposed state of communication that could be resultantly reached when a foundation of 'trust' is formed. Although they criticize me for being inauthentic here and there from time to time, I guess to some extent I am still 'genuine enough' to start communicating in this world where an exchange—not even conversation—is already scarce enough. As a case in point, smalltalk is something that is purely performative in my opinion—something that during which nothing is exchanged, not to mention conversed, other than the mere demonstration of the 'I could perform' state. A practiced social performer like me can perform it for sure, yet it nevertheless repulses me. Therefore, in comparison, sometimes, even if I realized a seeming conversation was, at the end of the day, only an exchange—in which one or more sides (maybe including myself) were not willing to communicate so much but just to express their own—I would still be 'willing' to engage, as it's already somewhat better. Then, on top of that, there could come the edgy conversations. To some degree, I would say that the trenchancy turns out to be a valid indicator of, at least some of, conversations' happening. In those scarce cases of conversations, a subtle or explicit consensus and basis of trust is built (of course, by both incidentally and inevitably preconstructed notions), and no one is worried about whether they would be purposefully mistaken or if the other would be unable to face the potential incoming messages. And thus in those cases, bluntness, trenchancy, critiques, and even accusations are appreciated, and using my friend (A)'s words, we hold semi-appreciation of each other, despite the so-very differences between us Believe it or not, it actually reminds me of how we were being lectured about the 'freedom of speech' as a freshman in NYUAD—"No, we don't have freedom of speech. But we do have academic freedom," I quote. I guess if I'm to name a moment that largely contributed to my decision to enroll in NYUAD, then this line is definitely among the top few options, and in tandem with "We are indeed a bubble" and "You will be building the history." It seems to me quite evident that we don't have and, in fact, never have the so-called freedom of speech (and this notion itself is already cliché)—in many place over the world where allegedly has the freedom of speech, it is nevertheless unofficially censored by implicit social norms and mainstream ideology; only that in the case of NYUAD (or UAE), it is made public. This bluntness still attracts me today—it is in the well-defined context, just like in the conversations I had with my friends, we are, at least supposedly, actually liberated to express. Getting back to where we set off, it is not that the place or environment has changed, nor that one or more of these three punchlines have turned out to be 'wrong'—on the contrary, in many senses they have been proven to be very true after more than a year of experience. Therefore, a better way to put it, compared to "I have grown out of its storytelling, "—whether it was "you are not alone," "we are indeed a bubble," or "you will be building the history"—would be "I have grown out of my (previous) delusional storytelling. " Though it might sound weird to say, I actually don't care and will not bother to criticize anything in terms of the broader elite higher education system or NYUAD specifically—that part of the mission is already done by many, ranging from Excellent Sheep to The Closing of the American Mind . For me, I couldn't be more sane to realize that many of my struggles, complaining, mind experimenting, and so-called analyzing and dissecting are nevertheless nitpicking when having the privilege and consuming the perks —if placed in a broader context. That said, the always bittersweet college experience seems that, maybe, it should not be bitter if one is not too begrudged, not to mention the sweetness not told. My favorite tennis player, Novak Djokovic, recently said this in a podcast (or maybe he repeated somebody else): Pressure is a kind of privilege. Not only pressure, the agony I have is a privilege; the thoughts are privileged, and the very writing here is also itself built upon the privilege—ironically, thanks to the bubble that allows them to happen. There is a term called 围城 (Wei Cheng) in Chinese which has a connotation coined by the title of Qian Zhongshu's satirical novel, Fortress Besieged , describing a state of which those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out. So accurate enough for my case. Then, last but not least, how come I haven't addressed 'agency' directly yet when this entire journal seem to hover around it? It is true that the big question of whether we have human agency would bother me badly back then in the days of No. 600, but my answer now would be a big and clear "I don't care & no difference." To use 'again' for the last time, it is again not saying the question itself is not worth attention, or I don't care about the very question. On the contrary, it is to say that I don't care about its answer or result, as either would make no difference for me—the NDEs have taught me so well that I shall move on with scrutiny but also regardlessly. In that sense, sheerly having the question is more than enough. At the end of the day, no matter how interrogative I sound and how much I can dissect myself now or rationalize almost everything else, I will never be able to claim that it's infinite or I can carry it on infinitely; no matter how I'm used to the de-and-re-construction, maybe it's simply because I'm still young enough to do so; and no matter if I was crying at RealAD, the case in which my tears still drop hasn't disappeared. We've got so far, and it is indeed time to close my mind on this matter after going on and on for over 10,000 words. Offensive or not, one of my essential understandings of individuals in this modern world is that we are all , to some extent, nervous, arrogant, and lonely—of course, not necessarily in a pejorative or derogatory sense. And as one of the all, I'll keep my becoming as being until the day the inner world syncs with the all. Thank you, and see you down the road. Completed on Sep. 27, 2025 P.S. Here are some correspondences between my friends and me after I posted this journal. And I hope they would be nice an addendum to the piece.