Having established his central question

Chuang Tzu then leaves off with this dialogue and addresses the reader directly. He sets up a comparison between a broad, passive view of life and a fragmented, personal, active and desire-oriented view. For those who hold this second and more common view, "With everything they meet they become entangled." He describes the human condition, the lives of ordinary people, as being constantly tossed between opposing poles of experience, primarily pain and pleasure. They also tend to unthinkingly react to everything that happens to them. The result is that their efforts exhaust them, draining away thier life energy day by day. He says they drown in what they do, a metaphor for the numbing and cumulative effects of such prolonged, externally directed activity. At last, such people grow dark, unable to let in the light of truth, and they finally die.

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