Stop blaming yourself for "missing the era": what your father missed back then wasn't a train, but a meat grinder

Recently, a piece of writing has been going viral online, making many people cry:
"At this moment, I suddenly understand my father's helplessness.
He stood in the wave of reform and opening up, the country's GDP multiplied a hundredfold, but why did he miss that train of the times?
Now I stand here under the AI wave...
Opportunities are clearly in front of me, yet I can't seize the moment.
It turns out I am ultimately just an ordinary person like my father.
The tide on the Qiantang River rises, and only today do I realize I am who I am."
Many emotional bloggers and so-called elites have come out to comment, saying this passage reveals a common flaw among ordinary people:
Being too obsessed with security, having zero cognitive arbitrage ability, and thinking with severe path dependence... Don’t believe this arrogant nonsense.
When you understand the true laws of social operation, you'll find that behind this poetic and helpless sigh lies one of the biggest cognitive scams of this era.
First, what your father missed back then wasn't a "train of the times," but a roaring "meat grinder."
When we look back, we always carry a thick "survivor filter."
Looking at the 90s from today, we only see the big shots on the rich list, and naturally think:
That era was full of gold; as long as you dared to go offshore, you could make money. My dad only knew how to work steadily and play cards after work—he was too conservative. But this completely contradicts reality.
You only saw the planes taking off, but didn't see the wreckage everywhere.
What was the true background of that so-called "Golden Age of the Muckrakers"? It was the "triangle debt" that crushed countless families;
It was the wave of layoffs of tens of millions of state-owned enterprise workers;
It was the extreme danger of reckless growth—lose your fortune or even your life with a slight misstep. Don’t forget the experience of New Oriental founder Yu Minhong back then.
In the 90s, he made money running training classes in Beijing, but was directly targeted by robbers, who forcibly injected him with a massive dose of animal anesthetic and stole over two million yuan in cash.
The robbers had previously used the same method to kill several people. Yu Minhong survived only because he had an unusual physique and incredible luck, miraculously saving his life.
In that era, most people rushing into the wave became cannon fodder for macro cycles.
Today’s billionaires are a tiny minority of "survivors" built from countless bankruptcies, debts, and even deaths.
Your father worked steadily, played cards after work, didn't borrow high-interest loans to start factories, nor did he gamble on the crazy real estate boom in Hainan back then.
In the eyes of success coaches, this is called "lacking cognitive arbitrage ability."
But in the real survival game, he used the simplest intuition of ordinary people to perfectly help your family avoid the most deadly "catastrophe" of that savage era and protect your bottom line.
This is not cowardice; it’s top-level survival wisdom.
Second, the current AI boom is actually a "capital burn furnace."
The protagonist of this story feels hopeless: "The big model keeps iterating, opportunities are right in front of me, but I can't seize the moment."
Are opportunities really right in front of you? It’s like standing outside a nuclear power plant, looking at the high-voltage grid and saying, "Electricity is right here, why can't I grab it with my bare hands?" AI large models are a trillion-dollar-level arms race, a battle among top geniuses and multinational monopolies.
The first to profit are always the "shovel sellers" (like Nvidia selling chips), and most ordinary people rushing in to strike it rich will become casualties. Just think about the "Metaverse" and "Web3.0" waves from just over three years ago.
Were those opportunities also "right in front of your eyes"? Countless ordinary people brainwashed by the toxic chicken soup of "cognitive upgrade" risked everything—money, life—to trade virtual currencies, buy digital collectibles, and virtual land, trying to catch the train of the era.
Today, where have those trains gone? They have taken ordinary people's capital into the abyss. The wind is never for ordinary people; it’s a scythe used to harvest their anxiety.
Third, "Only today do I realize I am who I am" should not be a sigh of resignation. Stop using "path dependence" to manipulate yourself.
The greatest moat for ordinary people is to admit that they are ordinary, and then resolutely refuse to participate in those "high-risk, low-probability" "era gambles."
You didn’t miss the train; you just restrained yourself from picking up that steel coin in front of the steamroller.
Instead of worrying about missing the AI boom, it’s better to find those "hard currencies" that never depreciate regardless of the wave:
Firmly protect your cash flow and health:
Don’t recklessly invest or tinker—strengthen your body, this is your machine’s most fundamental physical defense.
Build your "skill stacking": Don’t believe in "perfecting a single point," because AI can wipe that out in a wave.
The true moat for ordinary people is "skill stacking":
You don’t need to be number one nationwide in one field; just excel in three or four unrelated areas, reaching the "top 20%" threshold.
For example, master some core professional skills, understand basic financial pitfalls, and be able to write smooth communication copy.
When these three "top 20%" skills combine, you become a polygonal warrior who can never be toppled by a single technological revolution.
"On the tide of the Qiantang River, only today do I realize I am who I am." This phrase shouldn’t be spoken so sadly.
When you truly see through the meat grinder nature of the capital markets, this phrase should be your confident declaration after building your personal defenses: To hell with the train of the era, I will never get off and become your fuel.
Today, I realize I am who I am, standing here by this great river, watching you rise and fall in the tide.