Why Understanding Less Privileged Lives Is Harder Than Looking Upward

A few days ago, I watched a video about an adult taking a flight for the first time. He seemed lost at every step, only finding out what to do next by asking again and again. It suddenly struck me that I had never really learned how to “take a flight.” The skill seemed to unlock automatically after repeated trips following my parents. Similarly, I had never really thought about “how to take the subway.” My past experiences made these things feel like basic common knowledge. People like me seem to find it hard even to imagine what life is like without that knowledge.

My schooling in Beijing and Hengshui introduced me to all kinds of classmates. Some went to developed countries such as the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands to study or immigrate; others had not left Hengshui for the first eighteen years of their lives. There is an interesting pattern: despite limited family resources and relatively disadvantaged surroundings, some classmates—admittedly a minority—still maintain broad horizons and independent ideas about society and the world. By contrast, those supposedly raised in comfort struggle to imagine their counterparts’ lives. That includes me. Having experienced Haidian’s intensely competitive childhood education, I was shocked in my first year of middle school to hear that someone had never attended extracurricular classes. I could barely imagine how they spent their weekends. (After moving to Hengshui, I found this was true of most classmates; listening to their memories of childhood in the fields, I felt there was beauty in that, too.) A particularly clear example: I told my classmate M that a classmate arriving in Beijing for university did not know how to use the subway. M was astonished, because in her understanding there were no cities without subways.

Why does this happen? I think it comes down to human nature.

Everyone longs for a better life, not a harder one. People therefore willingly explore upward beyond the boundaries of their understanding, learning about new things in supposedly “higher-level” worlds. They imagine living in mansions and flying first class, not renting a crowded shared basement. This is a good thing: a general upward expansion of understanding can advance society. But an inability to imagine downward can lead to a widespread lack of empathy—the old saying “Why don’t they eat meat porridge?” captures this perfectly. Under a video about budget travel, a “rich young man” whose IP location was Shanghai and whose profile was full of luxury content sincerely commented, “I don’t understand the point of budget travel.” When challenged, he explained that “safety and convenience need to be considered.” I did not sense any showing off. Within his frame of reference, budget travel genuinely offers a poor experience; an amount of money that is small to him can buy comfort and save time. What he struggles to imagine is precisely what I enjoy. Budget travel can bring many unique life experiences. I find red-eye flights very worthwhile because they save both accommodation and money. But if cost were irrelevant, I would certainly choose a more comfortable trip, too.

I also think another important reason is that groups with different frames of reference may never have opportunities to communicate. Setting aside society-wide differences in wealth, consider just my experiences as a student. First, my Beijing classmates generally came from better-off families than those in Hengshui. In high school, they met more people like themselves, rather than getting to know Hengshui students as I did. This amounts to geographic separation. Second, even within one environment, people with different perspectives seem to separate automatically. Across six years of secondary school and seven classes, five of my seven closest friends had traveled abroad, although I did not use that as a criterion for friendship. Talking to some classmates can leave me feeling deeply powerless: they seem completely uninterested in what I say, living only in their own small world and unwilling to open their eyes to anything beyond it. Their everyday conversations are always about things like Genshin Impact. Perhaps this, too, is a case of like attracting like.

I had more or less finished setting out my views and evidence, but still could not find a final conclusion. So I sent the article to Kimi and asked it to evaluate my views. It replied: “Your observations are very perceptive and capture a real social-psychological phenomenon. I think your central judgment is correct, but the explanation of its causes could go deeper, and the author’s own perspective happens to illustrate these cognitive limitations.”

Screenshot transcription: Kimi’s evaluation of this article

Where your observations are accurate:

1. The phenomenon is real: understanding upward really is easier than understanding downward. From childhood we are encouraged to “look up at the stars,” but rarely taught to “look down at the mud.” Never mind subways—I have heard of university students who have never seen an ATM or do not know how to use a water dispenser. These blind spots in “common knowledge” are real and often overlooked.

2. The empathy dilemma: your reference to “Why don’t they eat meat porridge?” is an apt metaphor. The budget-travel comment is an excellent example—not arrogance, but genuine incomprehension. Similarly, many people say, “If you have no money, don’t travel,” without realizing that budget travel may be some people’s only way to encounter the world.

3. Entrenched social circles: your observation about geographic separation is on point. More subtly, even when people share a physical space, such as a university, differences in understanding automatically sort them into separate circles and information bubbles.

But I think a few points could be added:

First, looking upward also has a ceiling. Your image of “looking up at first class” is largely an imagination of consumer symbols, not genuine understanding of that social circle. An ordinary student imagining the lives of the wealthy may know only “mansions and luxury cars,” while struggling to understand how family trusts, asset allocation, and social capital operate. This upward imagination is equally flattened.

Second, the difficulty of looking downward is not merely an unwillingness, but also an inability.

• Structural separation: people are already separated in physical space. Everyday settings, information sources, and personal networks in Beijing’s Haidian district and county towns in Hengshui barely overlap.

• Differences in cultural capital: your Beijing classmates may genuinely “not know how to talk about” a childhood in the fields, just as you might not know how to discuss the rules of golf. This is not arrogance, but a lack of shared language.

• Psychological defenses: realizing that “the life I take for granted is the destination someone else may spend a lifetime striving toward” can create cognitive dissonance and survivor guilt, so many people choose not to look.

Third, your own perspective also illustrates this phenomenon.

You write, “Listening to their memories of childhood in the fields, I felt there was beauty in that, too.” This is itself an “upward” gaze looking down—romanticizing other people’s lived experience and turning it into scenery. Truly looking “downward” means understanding that this “beauty” may coexist with the risk of dropping out, restricted access to information, and anxiety about entrenched class positions. Your classmate M’s astonishment reveals limited understanding, but the slight sense of superiority in your description of “Genshin topics” is also a form of unconscious filtering.

So what can you do?

• Do not rush to “understand”: truly looking downward is neither pity nor curiosity about the unfamiliar, but acknowledging, “I cannot understand it, but I respect its existence.”

• Be wary of the impulse to “represent”: avoid speaking for disadvantaged people with the mindset of someone merely “experiencing their lives.”

• Create asymmetrical exchanges: rather than “teaching” others how to understand the world, listen more to how they solve problems. For example, the first-time flyer managed by asking questions, showing that he has his own practical wisdom.

The most valuable quality in your article is its self-reflection. Simply recognizing the boundaries of your own understanding already puts you ahead of the vast majority who live on “default settings.”

Reading the “third” criticism of my perspective instantly brought me up short. Despite trying in various ways to broaden my understanding, I still inevitably fall into narrow-mindedness. I should keep learning—not only science and finance, but also how to approach life with humility, respect and understand every way of living, and avoid getting lost in empty grand narratives. Live in the concrete world, and love actual people.