73、The Chinese Wisdom: No fish Can Survive If the Water Is Too Clean—One Should Not Demand Absolute Purity

No fish can survive if the water is too clean. For the same reason, no company can bear one whose requirements are too critical. This is an old maxim.

But this is not just an old maxim. Instead, I think it is the truth which has gone through test for many times.

The words of wisdom are not obtained by me from official circles but from business circles. It is my personal experience after countless communication with the public masses.

For people who hate this saying like poison, I can be 100 per cent sure that they have not done business by starting from scratch. They don't know how to do business at all, or they have never done any small business.

The way of doing business is also the way of being a person. Doing business is being a person—this is the first rudimental lesson I have learned, and it is also the classic saying of my predecessors and countless successful marketing people.

What is called being a person? Or what is called being a businessman?

1. To study the nature of human beings, and understand real people, especially the clients you need to deal with every day.

2. To try to overcome the undesirable part of our nature.

3. To take advantage of the weak part of other people’s nature.

Thus, successful businessmen know people, the good and evil of human nature and human weaknesses best. Because they have to deal with people every day, and must deal with people successfully to make a living.

This aspect is most lacked in men of letters and also all the internet users.

In the conclusion of my experience in business circles, no fish can survive if the water is too clean. Such is human nature. Thus, I say that human nature is ugly.

Human greed is a kind of natural instinct that cannot be changed by whoever who wants to change it.

Chairman Mao launched the cultural revolution to change humanity, but what was the result? Crushing defeat that left people plunged into an abyss of misery.

Whoever wants to change anything must pay cost, and this is a bottomless pit that can never be filled to the full by human nature. It can only be bypassed and made use of. The defiant can only bring about one’s own construction.

Nobody is perfect. There are both goodness and evil in everyone’s human nature. Wise leaders should make use of the goodness in the human nature and try to overcome the evil.

Good systems can make use of the goodness of the human nature and overcome the evil.

One of the essential measures of whether a system is good or bad is ‘make good people do more good things, and bad people find it difficult to do bad things’.

Good systems can make use of and ease the human nature. It is conducive to make everyone serve for socialism voluntarily and involuntarily. This is the truth and right way.

Do not consider corruption as great scourges.

People’s hearts are the same. In the social system full of loopholes, anyone can be as corrupted and seek money. It is only because these people are not bold enough or intelligent enough. There are no essential differences between them.

Evil people are as bad all over the world. This is also true of the human heart.

Therefore, to carry out anti-corruption from both origin and system when problems arise is to truly take care of the cadres, which is only the truth and right way.

Only hatred towards corruption cannot solve any problem.