Zhang Sheng Tongji Humanities College
Perhaps the biggest difference between this era and the past is that not only do you need to give more, but you also need to get more. Especially this feature of the back is impressive. For example, when you want to find a Van Gogh painting to admire on the Internet, it is likely that you will recommend more than four hundred high-definition large pictures, which is almost his complete collection; similarly, when you are ready to look at the works of Fan Kuan or Ni Zhan, there are only a few more recommended to you, and it is not an exaggeration to say that almost all of Song Yuan's masterpieces can be exhausted in an instant, so that you do not have the courage to open the link again. Of course, in turn, you also "produce" more, and now you may take more photos in a month than your parents took in a lifetime. In addition, you eat more, see more, listen more, and walk more, so you may sometimes be worried that there will soon be no place in the world that you haven't been to. And all this makes our society a mysterious existence.
Podria once defined the society in which we live as a "society of abundance," and its greatest feature is the accumulation of "things." This "thing" is as lush as tropical plants, and they are intertwined with each other, suffocating like a tropical rainforest. At the same time, these "things" also have a viscous attraction, it seems that as long as you look at it, you will be overwhelmed and difficult to extricate yourself. The supermarket is such a temple of "things", and the mountains of shelves and a variety of goods are the objects and symbols of the "abundant society".
This, of course, can be attributed to the miraculous power of omnipresent capital, and in the process of the tireless self-proliferation of capital, our society has unconsciously entered a historical "moment" that may be called a "superproductive society". If the "abundant society" is like a tropical plant that makes people feel fat and lush, then the "overproductive society" is like the lengthy yellow plum day in Shanghai, the raindrops are always sprinkled endlessly from the gloomy sky from morning to night, day after day, although this raindrop has long exceeded the limits of people's needs and patience, but it still continues to fall endlessly on people's heads and streets, making people sometimes melancholy and sometimes manic, but they can only "resign themselves to fate". And this so-called "superproduct society" is that the wealth produced by society has long exceeded the needs of society, but it is still constantly expanding the reproduction society, just as art is art for art's sake, society only produces for production, and in this process, the purpose of production has long disappeared. On the one hand, this makes the abundance of "things" everywhere, on the other hand, it also makes everything in this society "materialized" or "objectified". And with this, the people living in this society, in order to maintain the continued existence and accelerated development of the "overproductive society", have to "produce" themselves as productive individuals beyond their own capacities, and have to exhaust themselves every day to engage in endless overproduction, which of course includes excessive access. And maybe that's why we always feel tired every day?
So, my question is, what is the living condition of the "overproductive" people in this overproductive society? What kind of emotions do they have? They, in fact, are also us, what is the ultimate fate? And in the face of this situation, where should we go?
The advent of an overproductive society: a prisoner who chops wood
In this overproductive society, everyone has to become a master of production, and once they start to engage in production, they can no longer stop. Nowadays, the works of writers are often millions, and scholars are not to mention more, writings and other bodies have long been not dreams, the profit of businessmen is also in units of hundreds of millions of yuan, and ordinary people are eager to "one specialty and multiple abilities", while engaging in a variety of occupations, in order to tap their own production capacity as much as possible. Nowadays, the most common is to wear two jobs, online and offline go hand in hand, with "multi-line" operations, and strive to "overproduct".
In 1984, the poet Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) gave a graduation speech to the graduates at Williams College, in which he told a thought-provoking story. The story takes place in a prison in northern Russia, where at seven o'clock in the morning the prison guards ask the prisoners to join them in a labor contest to chop off the mountain of wood in the prison's wind field for their own winter fire. Obviously, such a "labour contest" is only a beautiful pretense for forced labour for prisoners. But then a young prisoner suddenly asked the guard what would happen if he did not participate in this "competition", and the guard's answer was of course cold and calm, that is, he had to go hungry all day without food. So the prisoner did not say a word, and under the watchful eye of the guards, he took the axe issued to him and chopped up the wood. Unexpectedly, however, this prisoner not only did not grind the foreign workers because of emotions as the guards thought, but instead seriously chopped up the firewood like a decent, and what was even more unexpected was that when everyone finished work and rested at noon, he still kept waving the axe in his hand.
The prisoners and guards were full of energy, and by noon they were all exhausted, especially the perpetually malnourished prisoners. The guards announced a small break, and the people sat down to eat: except for the guy who asked the question. He continued to wield an axe. The prisoners and guards made fun of him, presumably saying that Jews are generally considered shrewd, and this guy... etcetera. After a short break they continued to work, although the speed had slowed down somewhat. By four o'clock in the afternoon, the guards stopped because it was time for their shift change; and soon the prisoners stopped too. The guy was still wielding the axe in his hand. On several occasions, people on both sides asked him to stop, but he ignored it. It seemed as if he had acquired a certain rhythm that he was unwilling to interrupt; or was it not the rhythm that controlled him?
(See Brodsky: Less than one, translated by Huang Canran, Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014, p. 336)
Of course, in the end, the prisoner, who had become an "automatic machine" that had become a splitting material, stopped, and he split it until more than seven o'clock in the evening. But by this time, he had been chopping wood with an axe for 12 hours without stopping, and his crazy practice of turning himself into an "automatic wood splitter" made the guards and prisoners "first confused and then frightened", and the guards never engaged in this so-called labor competition with the prisoners again. But why did this guy do this? Brodsky's explanation is that the young prisoner intended to practice one of The admonitions of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew by his own deeds: "Someone hits you on the right side of the face, and even the left side of the face turns and is beaten by him; someone wants to tell you to take your underwear, even the coat, and he takes it; someone forces you to walk a mile, and you walk two miles with him." Brodsky believes that in a sense, the young prisoner, after the guards had beaten him on the right side of the face, not only let him hit him on the left side of the face, but also gave him his coat, and, even more surprisingly, when the guards forced him to walk a mile, he accompanied the guards for two miles, and even after the guards stopped, he continued to walk for three, or even four miles. Brodsky's purpose in telling this story is, in his own words, that people "can make evil absurd by overdose."
More profoundly, Brodsky also points out that "any mass production" plays the same role. Now, I want to extend this seemingly absurd story to our overproductive society: I would say that the prisoner who chopped wood is the symbol of each of us in the present. Because once we grab an "axe", it is like being challenged by an invisible "guard", and suddenly we become the young man who chops wood, a "prisoner" who has to "overproduce", and the invisible guard is "capital". We always rush to turn the left side of our face to be hit by him when someone hits us on the right side of the face, and when someone forces us to walk a mile, we can't wait to go through another two or even three miles. Simply put, we always have longer overtime than our bosses need, and the workload of overtime is more and greater.
So, I think the image of this "wood-splitting prisoner" can also serve as a totem for our overproductive society. Interestingly, the image of this prisoner wielding an axe to split wood is very similar to Wu Gang in Chinese mythology, he is also a "prisoner", punished by the gods to keep wielding an axe in the moon to cut down the laurel, but this laurel is an immortal tree, and it grows with the fall. Moreover, you never know whether Wu Gang is cutting the laurel tree with an axe, or whether the axe in his hand wants him to wield himself to cut down the osmanthus tree that will never be cut down.
On the one hand, this overproductive society makes things extremely rich and even gushes out like a spring, on the other hand, it also makes everything "materialized" or "objectified". Among them, the first is the "objectification" of man, that is, de-subjectivization, and man gradually becomes like "things", loses self-awareness, and becomes a link in the chain of self-reproduction and overproduction of things, just like the prisoner who splits wood, from "man" to "man-thing". And the indefatigability of capital is at the cost of human exhaustion, only when people become "people-things", can they temporarily forget their tiredness in fatigue, like an "automatic machine" to numb themselves, like Wu Gang, wielding their invisible axes, to chop the "laurel tree" that can never be cut down and can never be cut.
Second, the mood of the overproduct society: melancholy and mania
In a hyperproductive society, everyone has to "overload" the operation. Once overwhelmed, there will be various "failures", some people directly "shut down", go to the inner spiritual cage, and close themselves outside the normal rhythm of operation of the social machine; but more people are running "with illness" in an overloaded state, continue to smell the "machine" dancing, and try to insist. In this state, it can be seen that there are two more concentrated phenomena and emotions in people with intermittent attacks, the former is mostly delay and melancholy, and the latter is mostly catching up and mania.
German sociologist Hartmut Rosa believes that the frequent occurrence of depression in modern society is actually a phenomenon of self-protection that people cannot keep up with the speed of society. From this point of view, the purpose of people's delays in work and life is not to make themselves Hamlet, to think about the ultimate problems of life, but to let themselves "slow down" to get a chance to breathe. This is often manifested as "late" in time, such as trying to delay the completion of their work to avoid the arrival of new tasks; there is also a strange phenomenon, that is, in order to postpone or not perform their "overproduct" tasks, many people avoid the achievement of existing tasks by frequently changing jobs and goals, because this can make themselves never need to complete a work that has to be completed, but this is also a manifestation of melancholy. The purpose of catching up is to make themselves "accelerate", to "advance" in time, to try to make themselves "people who walk in front of time", to try to make themselves "preemptive" through "calculation", to reduce the normal unavoidable operating procedures to complete the work they have to complete, and this manic mood always gives people an overly positive, hyperactive feeling, but in fact, it is a pathological performance like melancholy. In this sense, traditional Chinese Taoism and Confucianism are the ideological manifestations of the overwhelming rhythm of social development, Taoism advocates "deceleration", while Confucianism advocates "acceleration", the former's "being alone" is the melancholy of passive avoidance of the world, and the latter's "helping the world" is the so-called positive entry into the world, but in essence both are an emotional self-consolation and self-deception illusion. In reality, however, in a hyperproductive society, it is possible for everyone to have both melancholy and manic emotions at the same time, struggling to keep up with the rhythm of society in the "deceleration" and "acceleration" of the self.
It's like when we go to the train station to catch the high-speed train, every time it's always not too early or too late, because we can never get to the train station on time at the stipulated time. So, we have to be in a constant state of melancholy and mania. This is also like when we take a taxi, the more we have a problem, the more anxious we are, the more we want to be in front of the time, the more likely we are to encounter red lights on the road, and this also makes us more manic and melancholy, in the midst of sadness and joy. This is actually the essence of our life, because we are always born at the wrong time, and we always feel that we are either born too early or too late. It's just that in the era of overproduction, this sentiment has become more intense.
Schopenhauer once said that life is like a "pendulum", having to swing back and forth between "pain" and "emptiness and boredom". So people need both "bread" and "circus". In order to survive, in order to live, for the sake of "bread", we have to endure the "pain" of labor, but because of the fear of "boredom" after the satisfaction of the desire to survive, we must not "pastime", which requires "circus". Moreover, Schopenhauer also pointed out bitterly that it is precisely because of "emptiness and boredom" that people love "socializing", which may explain why we are so keen on "online social networking" today, and there are so many social media:
But emptiness and boredom are not a disaster to be taken lightly, and in the end it will portray real despair on people's faces. It makes creatures like people, who don't love each other, so eager to pursue each other, so it becomes the source of people's social love. (Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Appearance, translated by Shi Chongbai, The Commercial Press, 1982, p. 429)
Now that we have suddenly been placed in a superproductive society, the vast majority of people, in addition to constantly experiencing the "pain" of making a living, while forgetting to work or overproducting, because they are busy with various "social", they have lost the time to perceive "boredom", and the "boring" moment is the moment when we can experience the essence of our own survival. However, the emergence of various social media has cleverly evaded the moment of self-awakening in the form of a seemingly indispensable production of interpersonal relationships. Behind the emergence and prosperity of these social media is the bizarre "aimless purposefulness" of capital's self-operation, or, in Hegel's words, the "cunning" of a hyperproductive society or capital.
The Future of a Hyperproductive Society: The "New Tenant" of "Multi-Era"
In more popular terms, the overproduciation society is an era of pursuit of "many", or the emergence of the superproductive society marks the arrival of "many eras". The essence of a hyperproductive society is "more.". "Many" is a magical word, perhaps in the oracle bone is "xi" originally means "meat", "many" composed of two pieces of "meat" "xi" means abundance and abundance, so in our language, many words related to "many" are positive words, such as many yishan, many children and many blessings, colorful, many people, etc., and our worship of "many" is also full of all aspects of daily life. From the number of GDP, to the number of performances at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, to the number of "celebrities" they know, the number of friends, fans, the number of likes in the circle of friends, and then to the area of the house where everyone lives, the more the better, it can be said that the pursuit of "more" has no end. Therefore, now "many" has become the religion of our superproductive society, and it is the Bible of everyone, and it seems that everything is "the more the merrier".
But is it really all "the more the merrier"? In fact, in this era of overproduction, we not only produce too much, consume too much, eat too much, see too much, get too much, and even learn too much. Many people think that with the advent of the WeChat era, people have stopped reading, that is, they no longer learn, but in fact, everyone not only has a passion for reading, but also gets used to reading. This is an era of too much reading, everyone reads many times the past, has long been exhausting, but all kinds of sensational social news and all kinds of strange knowledge is still like an endless Shanghai plum rain endlessly flooding in everyone's circle of friends.
The French dramatist Ionescu (1912-1994) 'Le Nouveau Locataire ( 1955 ) seems to give us a certain kind of wake-up call and inspiration. In the play, the protagonist, a new tenant, moves into a room without any furniture and asks two porters to bring their own pre-booked furniture to decorate the room. Surprisingly, as the porter brought in the various pieces of furniture he had booked, it suddenly occurred to everyone that he seemed ready to move all the furniture in the world to his room. Because those benches, vases, all kinds of round tables, chairs, screens, floor lamps, books, paintings, cupboards, sofas, cabinets, etc., soon filled the entire room, but also piled up on the stairs outside the door, in the yard, on the roads in the city and in the subway, and even blocked the Seine. Finally, as you can imagine, the whole country is crammed with all kinds of furniture. This is, of course, a bit of an exaggeration, but the scene depicted in this seemingly absurd drama is the plot that our superproduct society experiences every day, and it is also the essence of our superproduct society: that is, what we produce and need has far exceeded our real needs, but we have to continue to need. And each of us in the current overproductive society is actually as diligent as this new tenant, we are constantly transporting all kinds of furniture, and finally drowning ourselves in countless pieces of furniture, until we can't stop suffocating. That is to say, our society is no longer destroyed by scarcity, but by the production and accumulation of too many "things", and it is also destroyed by our needs that are too much and more than we need, and this need is also the need we have to accept, the need we have to get. This may be a feature of Ionescu's "new tenant" in contrast to the "old tenant" of the past.
This may herald the terrible future of our overproductive society, but it also reminds us of the terrible future of each of us. For in this strange age of power driven by capital and the power itself without a subject, everyone has to produce beyond his own ability, unconsciously turning himself into an "automatic machine" beyond man's own productive capacity, that is, into a "man-thing"; at the same time, everyone is like Ionescu's "new tenant", and the "furniture" customized and owned for his "home" is not only beyond the limit of what he can have, but also far beyond his "home". There are limits to what can be had, and in the end everyone may end up being suffocated by endless "furniture". Perhaps whether this addictive and jaw-dropping picture of overproduction can be broken depends on whether everyone can start to realize it from now on. Because, as long as you realize that you are in a superproductive society, you can try not to be trapped by it, get rid of melancholy and manic emotions as much as possible, and thus obtain the hope and possibility of changing from "free" to "free".
On July 13, 2020, the grass was hastily opened in Wujiaochang.
On July 28, 2020, it was changed to Wujiaochang.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu