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To be honest, as early as 2010—and perhaps even earlier, around 2001—I could already vaguely see the person I am today.
But let me be clear: this was not because I had seen a pre-determined destination.
What I sensed was something deeper: the structural constraints underlying my life system.
Within CYSM, I do not believe that an entity called “destiny,” or some predetermined attractor, was pulling me toward a fixed endpoint. Rather, it was the interaction of repeated choices, environmental constraints, and real-world feedback that gradually shaped my direction over time.
My choices generated signals.
My environment imposed constraints.
Reality provided feedback.
Time amplified the effects of repetition.
Through this process, my life gradually converged toward an increasingly clear direction.
Probability and the Limits of Human Perception
We sometimes hear the statement that “probability is an illusion of the human mind.”
I understand this primarily as an epistemological metaphor, rather than as a claim of determinism.
Probability is not necessarily an illusion in the mathematical or physical sense. But from the perspective of human cognition, probability can sometimes reflect the limits of our ability to observe a system in its entirety.
When a system contains too many interacting variables, constraints, and feedback loops for us to fully perceive, we experience uncertainty and describe possible outcomes probabilistically.
In some constrained systems with strong feedback and stabilizing mechanisms, however, when the key constraints and initial conditions are relatively clear, long-term behavior may become increasingly predictable at the macroscopic level.
This does not mean that the future is predetermined.
It means that structure can constrain possibility.
And when constraints are repeatedly reinforced over time, some trajectories become increasingly likely to persist while others become increasingly difficult to sustain.
From Direction to Convergence
This is where the idea of spiral convergence becomes meaningful to me.
I do not see life as a straight line moving toward a predetermined destination.
Nor do I see it as a completely random sequence of events.
Instead, I see it as a system in which repeated choices, constraints, feedback, and time continuously reshape the next stage of operation.
Each cycle carries information from the previous one.
Each calibration changes the system.
Each change influences the next set of choices.
Therefore, returning to a similar point does not necessarily mean returning to the same state.
The system may return with a different level of understanding, stability, and structural awareness.
That is why I use the metaphor of a spiral, rather than simply a circle.
Why Stability Still Needs to Be Designed
This does not mean that designing stability is pointless.
Quite the opposite.
Precisely because systems can develop structural inertia, deliberate system design becomes important.
Repeated signals can reinforce a direction.
Repeated behaviors can strengthen a pattern.
And patterns, once sufficiently reinforced, can become increasingly difficult to change.
If the signals being accumulated are chaotic, destructive, or poorly calibrated, the system may gradually converge toward instability.
If the system continuously receives meaningful signals, accumulates time, builds stability, and responds to feedback, it may instead converge toward a more naturally operating state.
In CYSM, this is why stability is not simply an outcome. It is something that can be designed, maintained, and continuously calibrated.
The Problem of Retrospective Recognition
At the same time, I must be honest about one important limitation.
My statement that I could already vaguely see my present self in 2001—or even earlier—is itself vulnerable to retrospective narrative bias.
I know what happened today.
Looking backward from that known outcome, I may unconsciously select those earlier signals that appear to “fit” the story.
Such retrospective recognition cannot be treated as scientific evidence of predictive accuracy.
Its value lies elsewhere.
It may help reveal whether there was an underlying mechanism that can explain why apparently separate events, choices, and constraints eventually converged toward a recognizable direction.
This is consistent with the self-review standard I discussed in Section 6.5 of the CYSM Whitepaper:
Retrospective alignment is not theoretical inheritance.
Recognizing a pattern after the fact does not prove that the pattern was consciously understood beforehand.
Nor does it prove that the future was predetermined.
It simply allows us to ask a different question:
Was there a structural continuity beneath the events that only became visible with enough time?
I Did Not See the Future
So, I did not see the future.
I simply sensed the weight of constraints earlier than I was able to articulate it.
I was not being pulled toward the present by destiny.
Rather, through every choice, every constraint, every feedback loop, and every act of calibration, I gradually shaped myself into the person I am today.
The system was running long before I had a name for it.
The framework came later.
Life came first.
Epilogue I: A Systemic Reflection on Perfection
Many people believe that a good system must have a perfect design.
I have come to believe otherwise.
Like many engineering systems, a human life does not require perfect design.
Perfect designs can sometimes be fragile because they depend on assumptions remaining correct.
Life is different.
What life needs is a structure that allows time to pass naturally without allowing small failures to accumulate into systemic collapse.
That means accepting noise, allowing imperfections, maintaining redundancy, and—most importantly—having sufficiently strong feedback mechanisms to detect deviation and prevent local failures from becoming systemic failures.
A resilient system does not depend on perfection.
It depends on continuity.
Even this cover image is an imperfect example.
It contains an AI-generated watermark. It even contains an extra redundant icon.
Yet the system still communicates its structure clearly.
It does not need to be perfect to function.
It simply needs to remain operational, adaptable, and capable of continuing through imperfection.
For me, this imperfection is not merely a metaphor.
I live with glaucoma and schizophrenia. They are two enduring constraints within my life system. CYSM was never built on the assumption that every constraint must first be eliminated. Instead, it seeks to design sufficient buffers, redundancy, and feedback mechanisms so that these constraints do not accumulate into systemic failure.
This reflects a fundamental difference in perspective:
Conventional thinking may focus on identifying a failure, eliminating it, and restoring an ideal state.
CYSM focuses on identifying constraints, designing buffers and redundancy, isolating local failures, and maintaining the sustainability of the overall system.
A real human life cannot realistically operate under a condition of zero failure.
The more practical objective is not collapse.
That may be one of the deeper lessons of CYSM:
A resilient life system does not need to be perfect. It needs to keep running.
And perhaps, after decades of operation, what may appear from the outside to be “destiny” is simply the visible result of signals, constraints, time, stability, feedback, and repeated calibration.
Epilogue II: Reason, Faith, and the Psychological Buffer
After writing this reflection, I was reminded of a famous quote by Thomas Aquinas:
“Faith without reason is blind, while reason without faith is empty.”
These words led me to reflect on a difficult chapter of history—the Cultural Revolution in China. During that period, traditional religious practices and institutions were severely suppressed, while many existing sources of social and psychological meaning were profoundly disrupted.
From a CYSM perspective, this illustrates an important principle: when critical psychological and social buffers are weakened, a system may become less capable of absorbing prolonged stress.
This is not to suggest that faith alone creates stability. Rather, faith can function as one component of psychological stability within a larger human system.
As for the other half of the idea—“faith without reason is blind”—it prompted me to re-examine my own psychological buffer: my practice of following my father in venerating Guan Yu, the Martial God of Wealth.
I do not treat this inherited faith as evidence or as a guarantee that nothing will go wrong. Instead, I have interpreted Guan Yu's symbolic “protection” as system sustainability—a psychological buffer that helps me maintain continuity under uncertainty.
In this sense, my faith does not replace reason. It serves a different function.
Reason constructs the system's framework. Faith can provide the psychological buffer that helps sustain it.
This is not a claim of supernatural certainty, but a personal interpretation that has emerged from experience, family tradition, and continuous self-calibration.
Reason builds the architecture.
Faith provides the buffer.
Stability sustains the journey.
And perhaps this is another form of Spiral Convergence: not the elimination of uncertainty, but the gradual integration of different sources of stability into a system capable of continuing to operate.
Stability and Time appear twice: once as foundational precondition and once as operational variable. They are the same concepts at different levels of abstraction.
Framework came later. Life came first.
A Personal Source of Stability
Devotion to Guan Yu embodies loyalty, righteousness, and divine protection.
I follow my father in venerating Guan Yu—the Martial God of Wealth—interpreting his "protection" as a symbolic assurance of system sustainability.
It instills in me a unique sense of stability.
Life → Experience → Family Legacy → Faith → Psychological Stability → Systemic Stability
This chain describes the developmental path of my own psychological buffer, rather than a necessary condition for CYSM as a systemic framework. CYSM can operate independently of any specific belief system; however, for me personally, the belief in Guan Yu serves as a genuine source of psychological stability.
