Why, in this one life you have, should you escape a low-level environment as quickly as possible? My answer may sound a little dark, but it is completely true.
You should know that I, Master Chi, was once poor myself. Due to a reversal of family fortune, I lived for a time at the very bottom of society.
And that is precisely why I came to understand this truth so deeply in my bones: whenever you get the chance, do not — under any circumstances — stay at the bottom for too long. Because a prolonged life at the low end of society will genuinely corrupt and distort a person’s character and values.
Let me be clear: I hold no contempt for ordinary people. When I was at my lowest, I encountered many warm, kind, and sincere ordinary people.
What I want you to understand is this: the real poison is not the ordinary people within a low-level environment — it is the low-level environment itself.
I must also be honest with you: if I had spent a continuous decade or more in that world during my youth, absorbing it day after day, I would have been twisted and deformed by it just the same.
Because, like any ecosystem, the lower the environment — the scarcer the resources and money — the more it breeds every manner of petty, ugly behavior you can barely imagine.
Why?
Because opportunities in low-tier circles are simply too scarce, while the number of people competing for them is far too great.
The result? Whenever a sum of money appears, whenever an opportunity surfaces, a flood of red-eyed people instantly rushes to fight for it. And once they get their hands on it — family bonds, friendship, trust, honesty — all of it goes straight out the window. What matters is what ends up in their own mouth.
And if they cannot take advantage of you? Their burning jealousy and resentment transform into razor-sharp rumors and slander, stabbing at you viciously from behind.
Why?
Because they cannot beat you. Because you have risen. So the only thing left for them is to curse your downfall — to pray you crash and burn, suffer calamity, meet disaster. Your misfortune is their happiness.
Of course, if you have never climbed out of that hole yourself, you probably cannot fully feel the weight of these words.
But brothers and sisters who have come out of villages, small towns, or county-level cities — you will understand exactly what I mean.
Especially if you climbed out entirely on your own, through sheer relentless effort: the people who now respect you and the people who now resent you will number roughly the same. In fact, many who show you deference to your face harbor deep resentment toward you beneath the surface.
This is exactly why, over all these years, I have always encouraged every brother and sister to keep pushing forward — to work hard, to earn more, to build a better life.
Because only through personal experience will you truly understand: the higher you go, the better the environment, and the more that environment genuinely nourishes you.
Mencius’s mother moved three times to find the right neighborhood — that is a timeless truth.
We were always meant to keep climbing upward, without stopping.
Why? Because the higher the level, the more growth, the more opportunity, the more resources and wealth.
It is not that people at higher levels have no capacity for wrongdoing. It is that the higher you go, the greater the cost of betrayal, and the steeper the price of a ruined reputation.
So rather than scheming to grab the ¥20 million in your pocket, it makes far more sense to combine resources and channels and go out and earn ¥80 million — or even ¥100 million — together.
More importantly, a person with net assets of ¥50 million is very unlikely to still carry that desperate, savage hunger to scramble for survival.
When things work out, wonderful. When they don’t, you can afford to wait patiently for the next opportunity.
This is also why I have never agreed with parents who spend their children’s entire upbringing instilling a naive, white-lotus worldview — the fantasy that the world is pure and kind and everyone plays fair.
That approach to education is almost guaranteed to cause problems. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it will lead to serious harm.
My own hard-won understanding is this: when you are living in a low-level environment, do not do evil, do not envy, do not harbor resentment, do not give up. Do not let people who have achieved nothing contaminate your values.
Instead, keep a healthy distance from them. Quietly, without drawing attention, build your ladder upward — one rung at a time.
And when you do climb up — say nothing. Simply let success find you in silence, and solidify everything you have built.
Take care of the people closest to you — your parents, your spouse, your children, your most trusted friends. Everyone else? Gradually cool those relationships, increase that distance.
Because new levels bring new environments, and new environments bring new connections — naturally.
I once shared a truth with my closest brothers and sisters in the community:
At an annual income of ¥100,000, you will constantly face the kind of maddening, petty troubles that grind you down. At ¥200,000, those troubles become far fewer — because the people around you are simply more grounded. At ¥500,000, you will still be working hard, but it is real work on real things. At over ¥1,000,000, you will discover that this is where life truly begins — where you can charge forward with your whole heart and soul.
It is true: the higher you climb, the more you will find the climbing itself becomes easier.
The day you become a person of substantial wealth — say, ¥30–40 million in net worth — you will discover that life actually holds far fewer troubles than before. Focus on your work and your purpose, and everything else will resolve itself along the way.
I remember, many years ago, a young reader left a comment asking me: “Master, why must a person keep climbing upward? What is wrong with living a simple, low-level life?”
At the time my answer was fairly rough: because a low-level life carries too much gravity. The weight of it increases over time. What feels manageable now only feels that way because you are young — you have not yet faced the full force of life’s real pressures and challenges.
Today’s article is, I think, finally the proper and complete answer to that question.
One final thought to close:
I have always wanted you to understand: the longer you remain in a low-level environment, the more your mind will inevitably be shaped by it.
Your original ambitions, your drive to improve, your healthy values — they will be slowly worn down by gossip, petty entanglements, and meaningless chaos.
You will gradually come to feel that life is just meant to be muddled through — that eating, sleeping, and scrolling your phone to nowhere is perfectly fine. And you will start making life decisions in blunt, thoughtless ways.
The result, naturally, is a life that keeps getting worse. The opportunities and noble benefactors (Gui Ren) that your destiny had in store for you drift further and further away — until the connection is severed entirely.
At the end of the day: a bad environment contaminates you. A good environment purifies you.
When everyone around you is living more intentionally than you, growing more focused than you, pushing harder than you — and when so many of them are achieving remarkable transformations, building prosperous careers, and attracting wonderful fortune — how could your own mindset, your energy, your values, and your Chi fortune (气运) possibly fail to improve?
After all, investing in your own future is never a mistake.