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Try to imagine yourself living in China during the warring states period.
Try to imagine you're born into poverty.
You have no real family to speak of.
I mean, your mom's a teenager, your dad's 70 years old, and on top of it all, you're horrendously ugly.
As soon as Confucius was able to perceive the world around him, this is the world he found himself in.
Now, just to recap, the Zhou dynasty was coasting to a stop.
War broke out everywhere between regional dictator warlords.
It was the warring states period.
Crime skyrocketed, and living your day-to-day life as a citizen must have been extremely scary.
Now, instead of just being a subject of some distant ruler,
now you had to worry about the imminent threat of being caught in the collateral damage of a couple feuding local dictators.