Jiahao Shen and the Quiet Fight to Keep the Inner World Alive

When dynasties fell in third-century China, two poets refused to follow the collapse. Ruan Ji and Ji Kang — members of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove — withdrew from a court consumed by corruption. Ruan Ji poured anguish into poetry that still trembles with sorrow; Ji Kang faced execution rather than compromise his beliefs. Together, they proved that when the outer world disintegrates, integrity can survive within.

Seventeen centuries later, their defiance has found a modern voice in Jiahao Shen, an independent history researcher from postgraduate program of World History and Philosophy at King’s College London. Shen, who has studied History and Asian Studies at James Madison University and completed a Master of Higher Education at the University of Oklahoma, sees in Ruan Ji and Ji Kang not distant historical figures, but companions in a shared moral struggle — to remain truthful in a world that rewards surrender.

In his essay “Ruan Ji and Ji Kang — The Painful Mind and the Internalization of the Idealized World,” Shen names this condition the painful mind. It is the awareness that comes from refusing to hide from contradiction — the tension between the world’s demands and the soul’s integrity. For Ruan Ji, that awareness turned into art; for Ji Kang, it became the price of courage. For Shen, it defines the spiritual life of the 21st century.

He argues that modern systems — economic, bureaucratic, and digital — now shape life as thoroughly as any ancient empire. Their control is softer, but deeper. They govern not only what people do but how they think, what they value, and how they see themselves. They rarely use force; instead, they invite participation. In their endless cycles of productivity and distraction, Shen sees a subtler kind of oppression — one that leaves the body free but occupies the mind.

His response is neither withdrawal nor revolt, but preservation. Shen calls for what he terms the “idealized inner world” — a moral and intellectual space that remains untouched by the demands of conformity. For him, turning inward is not escape; it is a deliberate act of endurance. Like Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, he believes that when public virtue collapses, the mind must become its own sanctuary. Reflection, sincerity, and solitude become acts of resistance in a civilisation that prizes performance over thought.

Pain, in this philosophy, is not something to be erased. It is a sign that one’s conscience still breathes. Shen describes the painful mind as the proof that one has not gone numb — that awareness itself has survived. To feel is to remain free. The greater danger, he suggests, is not suffering but indifference: a world so efficient and self-satisfied that it forgets how to think about meaning.

Shen’s education across cultures gives his reflections a global scope. From the intellectual traditions of the United States and United Kingdom to the work conditions of East Asia, he sees the same pattern repeating. The modern world, for all its progress, asks for obedience disguised as success. Its systems — in offices, institutions, and screens — may differ in form, but they share a common rhythm: the conversion of time and thought into productivity. In that sense, the oppressive culture he experiences in Japan is not a local condition but a global one.

His writing, therefore, is not an escape into history but a message to the present. By reading Ruan Ji and Ji Kang, Shen rediscovers what it means to remain sincere when the world measures worth by adaptation. Their solitude becomes his vocabulary for survival. He treats their withdrawal not as resignation but as the ultimate form of strength: the choice to live truthfully, even when truth no longer rewards.

There is a quiet faith in Shen’s work — the belief that the human spirit, however pressured, still possesses the power to think freely. His essays remind readers that the most important freedom is not political but interior. The mind, if protected, can outlast the system. The painful mind, in this sense, is not a curse but a calling — the reminder that awareness, however difficult, is what keeps us human.

Across centuries and civilisations, Shen finds the same unbroken thread: the struggle to preserve conscience in a world that asks for surrender. His conclusion is not grand but deeply personal — that in the noise of modern life, the truest act of resistance may be silence; the truest victory, the survival of one’s inner world.