While on the bus, Aufisü took out his phone and called Eoulapa. Eoulapa, still waiting for his bus, responded instantly.
Aufisü: "I just realised I have never asked you this... Why do you strive for change? I mean, is it for justice, for efficiency, or like, for your personal preferences?"
Eoulapa: "What is your reason, then? Why did you join me in the first place? I thought you did so because you liked my motive."
Aufisü: "Well, I just don't like those inimical rules... I just wanted to be more free because I thought it would bring me more joy. Besides, a life of study-eat-sleep is too dull. Something to ponder and judge in my spare time would surely benefit me, I thought. And yeah, it does benefit me. Now it's your turn."
Eoulapa: "Freedom and challenges... I get you, but those are peripheral for me. I want change because I find the current system decadent and overly reserved. And of course it's inimical. And inefficient. A little bit dumb, to say the least... Anyway, that's the prime reason I seek change. Because the system causes trouble to people. You remember that Fan Zhongyan once said 'Attend to the people atop the throne, to the emperor down to the homes'（居廟堂之高則憂其民；處江湖之遠則憂其君）?"
Aufisü: "That's quite an aesthetic way to summarise. Anyway, that means you find comments defending the status quo, for example the comments on Casual Wear Day, 'dumb'?"
Eoulapa: "Not all of them but yeah. No offence to the people that made them, but I nonetheless think that they're rehashes of the same excuses, some of which outdated and some others never made sense. For example, someone claimed that the Casual Wear Day, being held on Christmas Party Day, would impede students' sense of belonging because they would not wear their PE uniforms but their own clothes. I mean, that makes zero sense to me. To start with, if the school has to stipulate that students wear their uniforms in order to maintain their sense of belonging, then the school is in dire straits. I've always thought that the leader of a community ought to retain their members through concrete actions, not restrictive acts. This is just an excuse to make up for deficient leadership, and hardly contributes to the issue."
Aufisü: "So that's why you acted avidly to that girl crying... Not out of empathy, but out of irritation due to the rules. Oh then it all makes sense! You used to learn 10 new vocabulary items every day, and the phone regulations restrained it. That's why you resonated with the girl. Ohhhhh. Right. I always find it incredible how you can formulate such arguments so swiftly."
Eoulapa: "OK. And the bus is still missing. It's been 10 minutes... I'd better check out the EAT (estimated arrival time). Talk to you tomorrow."
Aufisü: "Ok then, bye."
Eoulapa, after some minutes, sent an excerpt of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty (Page 67): "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty."
~Written 23/10/23 21:00 at home.