One day I woke up with a sudden realization: the world isn’t divided by good and evil. It’s divided by the size of the fish.

When I was young, I believed that if you worked hard, stayed smart, and kept trying, you’d become the glowing fish. (Disney really did a number on us. Everyone thought they’d be the chosen one.)

Only after entering society did I realize this: the fish most likely to get promoted is usually the one that swims slowly, talks a lot, and knows exactly how to splash its tail.

The small fish that actually catch bugs are too busy working to make any splashes at all.

So in the end, the fish that splashes loud enough for the whole river to hear naturally becomes the big fish.

But, are big fish actually stronger? Not necessarily.

A big fish often grows into a position where it can no longer move. Because the moment it does, it stirs up all the mud at the bottom of the pond: worms, rotten leaves, half-decayed legacy systems, everything floats up demanding “reallocation.”

Over time, even the big fish learns this logic: 🐟 “If I move, I die. If I don’t, I survive.” 🐡 “Those who move are seen as problems. Those who stay still are labeled stabilizers.”

This absurd logic suddenly made me laugh, because now I finally understand why every big company has a few big fish whose only job is to attend meetings and never actually do any work.

They’re not evil. They’re just the three bricks the entire pond is leaning on.

And what about the worms🐛? The worms are the freest of all. They reproduce fast, dig fast, learn fast, evolve fast. Kill ten today, and thirty smarter ones appear tomorrow. Because worms have a special talent: the more you try to clean them out, the better they get at hiding.

It sounds evil, but it’s actually just nature. Any system that grows large and complex will inevitably grow worms.

Companies do. Governments do. Civilizations do.

You think society’s problems are about people? Wrong. It’s about scale.

You think a country’s problems are about policy? Wrong. It’s about complexity.

You think civilization’s problems are about greed? Wrong. It’s that algorithms naturally generate loopholes.

So whether you’re a fish, a worm, algae, or a rock, once the pond is big enough, problems will swim in on their own.

🐋 So what can be done? I used to think replacing the stupid big fish would fix the company. Then I thought cleaning up the worms would upgrade the nation.

Later, I believed that if all the good people climbed upward, civilization would become brighter. Reality taught me something else: complex systems don’t improve by repair, they improve by absorption.

Either an even bigger fish appears, or the entire pond resets itself (a quiet version of the Big Bang). It sounds dark, but it’s actually liberating.

Because it tells you this: it’s not that you’re not good enough, the pond is just too big. It’s not that you failed, the system has crossed the optimization threshold.

The only thing you can do is make the small patch of water you’re in a little cleaner, a little brighter, a little better, so nearby fish can see that another way of living exists.

Surviving in society isn’t about standing out like a crane among chickens, nor about becoming king of the chickens. It’s about being this kind of fish: Ordinary-looking, quietly glowing, moving forward without splashing.

It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t flatter big fish. But other fish feel that being near it is safer, and drifting away somehow makes them duller.

This kind of fish isn’t big, but it matters. It isn’t loud, but it reshapes the ripples. It may not change the pond, but it slowly changes every creature willing to swim closer.

And that is the greatest system reform humans are capable of.

Not revolution. Not overthrow. Not grand redesign. Just this: staying where you are, and quietly becoming a better fish.



—— XC Scribbles · 參拾伍 XXXV 🎣