A force is dragging almost everyone down
It is not right to take away the beauty of others. The following is what Professor Lao Dongyan of Tsinghua University said:
In recent years, it is obvious that there has been a force in society that has been dragging almost everyone down, and this force is becoming stronger and stronger. Many beautiful things are ruthlessly broken and destroyed. In such an environment, those who are unwilling to fall together are considered guilty simply because they want to stay in their original position.
I deeply agree with Professor Lao’s words.
But I have been pondering what the connotation and cause of this fall is? Is it that people’s hearts are no longer what they used to be? Is it a sharp decline in people’s moral standards?
The Moral Dilemma of the Stock Era
A few days ago, in the column “Eight Winds”, I forwarded a very insightful statement by Professor Shi Zhan. He said: In recent years, the various incredible things in the world may mean a key era change, and the world is moving from the incremental era to the stock era. In the incremental era, the gentleman has a greater survival advantage, because people are more willing to cooperate with those who abide by the rules in order to make the cake bigger together; while in the stock era, the rogue has a greater survival advantage, because those who have no bottom line have a greater chance of grabbing the limited cake.
In the incremental era, it is the era of liberalism, guided by rules; while in the stock era, it is the era of realism, guided by power. The incremental era is an era of competing for the upper limit, and the stock era is an era of competing for the lower limit. In the past ten years, the world has begun to compete for the lower limit. In the stock era, people have to face a painful reality, that is, the ethical level will suffer a general decline, and the world will enter a state of disgust.
Professor Shi Zhan has spoken out the deeper economic and social background behind the changes in people’s hearts.
The problem is that this has brewed a kind of system theory, a theory
The realism that Professor Shi Zhan is talking about here is mainly scattered in the various details of daily life, which is what we generally call the bottom line of doing things, the problem of the gentleman and the villain in character. In other words, it is still a simple attitude towards life or life.
But if we observe further, we can find that in today’s world, this kind of realism is actually not just a simple attitude towards life in daily life, but is becoming a systematic theory, becoming the standard for judging right and wrong, and becoming a philosophy that dominates the world. Realism in life is largely an instinctive reaction, while realism as a philosophy is an argument.
This is actually more terrifying.
For example, the Russia-Ukraine war. Regarding this, different people have different views and different positions, and I can understand them all. Even those fanatical pro-Russian fans, I can understand them, because after all, they have a kind of consciousness and enthusiasm to support what they think is right or should be. The most lamentable thing is another kind of indifference without right or wrong: you are weak, why don’t you obey? You are not strong enough, why are you provoking others? You obviously can’t beat others, why are you still resisting?
Do these words have logic? Of course, there is logic, the logic of the law of the jungle. Trump said it even more appropriately, (Eastern Ukraine) the land was won by others with their lives, of course you have to give it to them. Remember, this is what the boss of the world’s boss said. But it is precisely in this seemingly logical realism that the distinction between justice and evil, aggression and anti-aggression is diluted, dissolved, and covered up.
Furthermore, they are particularly intolerant of the so-called moral sentiment, and they use various harsh languages to humiliate and criticize the so-called moral bitches.
Because it makes sense, it is even more terrifying
From a biological point of view, the behavior of sympathizing with the weak is essentially the “altruistic tendency” retained by genes through natural selection, and the core purpose is to make the group less likely to be eliminated by the environment. This is Hamilton’s rule: selfish genes maximize their own propagation through altruistic behavior.
People have even found that this behavior has a physiological basis. There is a class of “mirror neurons” in the human brain that, when seeing others in pain, activate brain regions similar to those when they experience pain themselves. For example, when seeing a weak person fall, their motor cortex and pain perception area will be slightly excited, producing a physiological reaction of “as if I also hurt” – this instinctive “empathy”, or empathy, can be triggered without acquired learning.
And the law of the jungle mentioned above, the social Darwinism embodied by this law, even lags far behind the biological evolution of mankind.
Of course, what is said above is by no means intended to simplify the complex and grand international affairs into a childish distinction between right and wrong. But what I want to say is that, even if we take a step back, even on such grand issues, the most basic justice, the most basic conscience, the most basic empathy, and the most basic compassion that humans should have from the root cannot be completely absent.
The indifference revealed in the condemnation of the keyboard warriors
At times like this, another very indifferent voice comes out: you support justice, you sympathize with the weak, have you donated? Why don’t you go to the battlefield? Therefore, the person who speaks out is accused of being a keyboard warrior. Of course, their purpose is not to make you donate, to make you go to the battlefield, not to make you provide real support, but to make you shut up.
On the surface, this also makes a lot of sense. But in reality, it is a kind of sophistry for indifference.
We can make such a comparison: Suppose, your homestead is occupied by a strong villain. You know that the other party has a hard fist and even has a background, and you can’t win the lawsuit because his background is too strong,
Then I ask you, in this case, do you resist? Furthermore, if there are righteous people around at this time, sympathizing with you in the public opinion, will you say: don’t be a keyboard warrior, go ahead, donate, and stand up?
Economic laws are not cold and ruthless
There is also one thing that has something to do with this.
A few days ago, I discussed a question, that is, in order to avoid excessive involution, we should strive towards a goal: artificial value, bottom-level decency (《Just eight words: artificial value, bottom-level decency》).
But at this time, someone immediately said that you are not respecting economic laws, you don’t understand the principles of economics, the price of labor is determined by the supply and demand relationship in the market, there are so many people in China, if you don’t do it, someone will do it, how can artificial value be possible? Even, whoever proposes that there should be some mechanisms in society to restrain the market mechanism, they immediately accuse that you are left, you are advocating power intervention in the market, and you will destroy the laws of the market economy.
But they forgot, or deliberately turned a blind eye, that the market economy does not exist in isolation, it needs the maintenance of the rule of law system and the checks and balances of other forces. Because of this, there are laws to adjudicate labor disputes, and there are trade unions and industry chambers of commerce and negotiation and negotiation systems. The market is not a naked law of the jungle, not a cold and ruthless social Darwinism.
If the market is only understood as a place of the law of the jungle, it will become a bad market economy as Mr. Wu Jinglian said.
What is said above is all about specific things, so it is inevitable that there are some miscellaneous things. But my general meaning is that the objective situation we are facing is indeed not optimistic, from the involution of the incremental era to the stock era, from the rules and order of the globalization era to the law of the jungle of the fragmented era, we can only face it helplessly. But even so, this is not a necessary reason for falling.
We are not entirely living in the material world, but also living in a social ecology including morality.
Discover more from 自由档案馆
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.