Born Bad: The Dog Trainer

We are both “beasts” restrained by rules and “civilized beings” driven by primal urges. Good and evil are never separate labels, but the underlying colors that coexist within us. The essence of training a dog is to restrain its wildness with rules, but that cannot root out its innate longing to run and bite. The “civilizing” of human society works the same way: morality, law, and etiquette build fences around our inborn greed, destructive urges, and even our secret thrill at “crossing the line.” It is like a child secretly breaking a bowl just to watch the pieces scatter, or an adult browsing forbidden content late at night. That brief pleasure of escaping restraint is the breath of our primal instincts. The label “bad seed” is far too simple. Someone who thrills at doing evil may once have wept over a stray cat by the roadside. A law-abiding “good person” may still have secretly mocked the rules. Good and evil are never a choice between one or the other. They are a tug-of-war waged with every heartbeat: wild impulse pulls on one side, the chains of civilization on the other. We spend our whole lives caught in that struggle, becoming a contradictory yet genuine “whole.” When all is said and done, humanity’s greatness does not lie in having completely erased the possibility of “evil.” It lies in knowing there is a beast living inside us and still choosing to take up the reins. Not to become a perfect saint, but to preserve enough dignity, amid the struggle between wildness and civilization, to be able to respect ourselves. Perhaps this is the deepest romance of human nature: bearing our cracks, yet still moving forward. I hope this novel can offer readers some insight into life. Zheng Kui wishes friends everywhere a wealth of knowledge and a full hall. A match made in heaven, gathered from a thousand miles away.