In the third decade of the Twenty-first Age, the world ushered in "a major change unprecedented in a century." In this era of struggle, why do young people still shout to lie flat? Among them, there are not only the problems of young people themselves: impetuousness, anxiety, and weak psychological endurance, but also the characteristics of the times: inner volume, sense of separation, uneven distribution... It is true that many young people continue the life of 996 while shouting "lie flat", but the diffusion of lying flat words obviously requires vigilance.
So why are the post-90s and post-00s "back waves" shouting to lie flat? The reason behind this is not only the psychological expectations of young people themselves, but also the expectations of young people in the whole society and the times.
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Young people, in the eyes of most people, should be positive. "There is fire in the heart, there is light in the eyes" is the appearance of modern young people described by the b station "After the Wave". But in the positive main melody, there is such a "lying flat" tune for a long time.
According to a report released by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center on December 6, 2021, the top ten online terms of 2021 are: the age of awakening; YYDS; double reduction; breaking defense; metaversity; absolutely desperate; lying flat; not very harmful, extremely insulting; I can't understand it, but I am greatly shocked; the powerful country has me. Among the ten words, there are many contradictions, such as "the strong country has me" and "lying flat".
Not long ago, Zhiji Afternoon Tea invited Xu Jilin, a Zijiang scholar and professor of the History Department of East China Normal University, to talk about the cultural phenomenon of "lying flat". Why are young people so keen on "lying flat?" "How can they save their psychological disparity? In Professor Xu's view, "lying flat" is a common problem all over the world. It stems from the anxiety of the inner volume, which makes young people have excessive social expectations and self-expectations. Young people in China, on the other hand, should encourage themselves with the positive and enterprising spirit of Confucianism, but also appease themselves with the Taoist philosophy of going with the flow.
01. "Lying flat" and "Buddha" are two states
Wang Sheng: In 2021, there is a hot word of the year called "lying flat", which refers to the state of doing everything without shock and desire. I would like to ask Professor Xu what he thinks of the current situation of contemporary young people "lying flat"?
Xu Jilin: I have long been concerned about the term "lying flat". Last summer, the School of Philosophy of Fudan University held an academic seminar on "lying flat", in which I was also involved. It can be seen that "lying flat" as a very hot phenomenon has also received a lot of attention from the ideological and academic circles. My first concern is who is saying "lying flat", I found a phenomenon, I don't know if you noticed it, saying that the people who want to "lie flat" are young people after 90, and there are fewer before. Because before "lying flat", there is also a word called "Buddha". It seems that "lying flat" and "Buddhist" are similar, not so positive, like the Confucian spirit of "what cannot be done".
But in fact, the difference between "lying flat" and "Buddhist system" is very big. What's the difference? The "Buddhist system" is active. I found that Buddhist youth are mainly post-80s. After the 80s, no matter what, catching up with a tail, that is, when you want to start a family, the house in the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen is still affordable.
So at that time, even if a young man from abroad came to Shanghai to work and decided to get married, he could succeed. Therefore, the post-80s are still lucky, they work hard in China's first-tier cities, can achieve a more decent position, and get a more decent income. Of course they make hard money. When they can't hold on, they will say, just "Buddhism" for a period of time, I know several young people who resigned from the big four, said to play for two years, take a breath, and then go to a company as a financial director. At that interval, they went to the Buddhist world.
A self-consciously chosen life is called "Buddhism." A bit like the Zhuangzi-style way of life, I am not so active and enterprising to work hard, I temporarily quit, to pursue a more in line with their own heart of the dashing and free life, this is called Buddhism. But "lying flat" is not the same, "lying flat" is forced. On May 4 of the previous year, Station B filmed a POST-wave TV film, which made He Bing sing a hymn about the back wave, and after this hymn came out, the applause was the group of post-80s who had "stood for thirty". They have started a family, are ambitious, and feel that they represent the future of China. They have traveled all over the world, from Paris to Kyoto. But this "back wave" hymn, there is no response there after the 90s, and the post-90s say that this has nothing to do with us. Sure enough, a year later, they were forced to "lie flat."
Why? "Lying flat" is not that they don't want to struggle, but that they find it useless to struggle. No matter how hard we fight, it is still 996, and it is still a hard day. This is one of them.
Second, ordinary young people want to start a family, but they can't afford to buy a house in a first-tier city. The parents of both sides of the down payment will not pay the money, so these post-90s young people say forget it, we can only "lie flat".
So they "five noes": don't fall in love, don't get married, don't have children, don't buy a car, don't buy a house. I will be a low-end consumer, I can work well, do not want high-end enjoyment, do not have any dreams and hopes, and refuse all kinds of small goals in life, which is the "lying flat" that is quite common after 90 today. But I would like to say in particular that this kind of "lying flat" is forced, not active, and a kind of helplessness.
So from this point of view, we must first understand why "lying flat youth" should "lie flat".
02. Why do contemporary youth "lie flat"?
Xu Jilin: Behind this lying flat, it actually stems from another hot word "inner volume". Everyone felt like they were being swept up. Whether in the company or in the school, whether it is the boss, or the staff, whether it is the teacher, or the student, it feels that it is "rolled up".
There is also a word called "trapped in the system", which originally referred to the takeaway workers trapped by the big data of the system. But now it turns out that it seems like everyone is trapped by the system. The system is everywhere, the system is calculated big data, squeezing every drop of people's blood and sweat, every minute and every second, which is called "trapped in the system".
The problem is that if "a piece of hard work, a harvest", young people also recognize, but young people suddenly find that the harvest and pay are disproportionate, so they can only take a negative posture, called "lying flat". "Lying flat" does not mean not to dry, but they no longer have poetry and distance, no longer fantasize, do not have expectations for their future, and take a posture that is lying flat. Lying flat is "going and".
Wang Sheng: But we know that young people are unlikely to "lie flat" willingly, they will definitely be emotionally cathartic. So from a cultural point of view, what will the post-90s and post-00s use to express the feeling of lying flat?
Xu Jilin: They are not in a good mood, so they cannot use poetry to express their inner dissatisfaction. We need to understand that only when the heart is full of joy can one write poetry. If they were to write poetry, the poems they wrote would be filled with hatred. Because I found that although they claimed to say that they wanted to "lie flat", they were actually uneven inside, so I called this situation "lying flat".
This hatred is an inexplicable hatred of the "system", as Marx said in the past, when the primitive accumulation of early capitalism, the workers hated the machine and destroyed it. Today's young people also have a lot of hate things: First, they hate "systems" and feel that big data and algorithms are the culprits that make them so "miserable". Second, they hate the rich, feel that opportunities have been taken away by the rich, and have a strong hatred of the rich. Third, they hate the elite, because the elite always describes a beautiful picture and presents illusory things to them. Fourth, they hate the people of the previous generation and feel that they are the ceiling of their ascension.
Many of the people who "lie flat" after the 90s are filled with a hatred generated by anxiety. You see some very radical words on the Internet, and sometimes it feels a little scary. Today's society has some sense of tearing, and behind this tear is the huge rift that the whole society of today has created between all classes and all ages. This rift is formed first of all by income distribution, followed by the chain of contempt, and it is precisely the post-90s generation that is downstream of the chain of contempt, and they see no hope. So if this problem is not solved, I think there will be a crisis.
And a lot of the people lying flat today are young people, young people in the city, and even some are elite. Because "lying flat" is not calculated according to absolute income, but according to their own expectations. Even in Shanghai, with a monthly income of 10,000, you will feel that you are a person who is forced to lie flat.
Wang Sheng: This is not a question of not having enough to eat and putting on a top.
Xu Jilin: Yes, the income of 10,000 in Shanghai is also quite pitiful, after paying the rent, all kinds of necessary entertainment expenses, you think you are a negative asset, simply can not afford other consumption. Of course, there are also some takeaway brothers, monthly income of 4 to 6 thousand, his expectations are not high, he feels easier than working on the assembly line, he will feel quite happy. It's all about people's expectations. So I say that lying flat is more of a mentality, which has something to do with the cost of education that people have paid before, with personal expectations, and with the expectations of families and surrounding society.
03. Lying flat is not a phenomenon unique to China
Wang Sheng: Looking at it horizontally, has this phenomenon ever occurred in the process of development in other countries?
Xu Jilin: There is a very famous book called "Low Society", which describes the emergence of a group of "low class" society among young people in Japan who are unwilling to move upstream. "Indecency" means that people are at the bottom of the chain of social contempt.
Of course, Japanese people do not come to China to travel due to the epidemic, but if there is, they are usually elderly. The elderly in Japan, with a high pension, do not bring children for their children, have money and leisure, and are the happiest generation. But young people are different, the good days have passed, and their income is limited. So 20 years ago, in the 90s and 00s, there were already a number of "lying flat" in Japan. Not just in Japan, but also in the world.
In the United States too. Trump's supporters are white-collar youth in small towns who feel that economic development has nothing to do with them. Especially in the south, the youth in the middle of the United States feel that money has been earned by Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the traditional manufacturing industry has declined, and it is difficult to maintain a relatively decent life with income after either finding a job or finding a job. In the United States, they are not called "lying flat", they are called "red neck". This group of "red necks" pinned their hopes on Trump. Because Trump has catered to the so-called "lying flat", used a populist approach, claiming to be "the enemy of Wall Street, the enemy of Silicon Valley, the enemy of the new economy", the restoration of traditional manufacturing, to bring down the elite, so that the United States is strong again.
Therefore, "lying flat" is a global phenomenon. This round of globalization has caused most of the resources to flow into the new economy, high-tech, the Internet and other industries, while the traditional manufacturing industry is declining, which is a global phenomenon, not only in China.
04. Efforts are not necessarily successful,
But without effort, you will not succeed
Wang Sheng: Although "lying flat" is a worldwide problem, each country will certainly have some solutions of its own. What do you think our traditional Chinese culture can provide them with healing or redemption for these young people who are "lying flat"?
Xu Jilin: I just said that "lying flat" is a psychological phenomenon, and psychological problems must be treated in a cultural way.
Usually in the face of lying flat, I will tell them: you have to think well, in the past there were lucky people who won lying down, lying and earning money, as Jiang Wen said in "Let the Bullets Fly", "Lying down to earn money", but sorry, there is no profiteering industry today. If there is, you also have to look for it, you may not be able to find it, and it may not belong to you. So there is no such thing as "lying down and winning".
People now have two choices, the first choice is to actively struggle, just like Confucianism, it is still active struggle, the world is so big, there is always a chance; the second choice is buddhist retreat, go with the flow, just like Taoism. I think that in a person's life, three points depend on hard work, and seven points rely on fate. But people only know where their life is if they have not achieved three points of effort, you cannot say what your life is, and the change in life is only produced at the last minute. Many people, especially young people, climbed to the middle of the mountain as if they found out that this was fate, and began to "admit it".
A lot of me didn't think he had tried three points, and he confessed his fate, I think it was too early. I think people don't have an effort to know how many possibilities your life has for you to choose. Don't raise your hand too early to surrender.
From this point of view, I still want to use the Spirit of Confucianism to encourage contemporary young people. Mencius was much more miserable than them, had grand ideals, but was depressed. Confucius said a saying called "know that it cannot be done", knowing that it cannot be achieved, but still do it. Why? Because he feels that what he does is worth doing. So don't think about whether it works or not, think more about whether it's worth doing. If you think it's worth doing, you better do it. This is a piece of advice.
But such advice is often of no use to many frustrated and disheartened people. Then I said if you really want to lie flat, then you really lie down. This lying down is not only the body lying down, but also the mind, that is to say, you have to confess. Confession is to do what you want from the heart, to listen to the call of your heart, and to change the way of life like a Buddhist youth. Go read Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi believes that the outside is never free, but if you want to return to the heart, you still have this freedom in your heart.
In fact, most of our lives are not necessarily what we want, but our parents want us to do this, our teachers want us to do this, and social opinion makes us do it. Since I'm going to lie flat, let's think, what do I really want? You will find that most of the goals that make you very hard are not necessarily what you want in your heart. Then you really start looking for what you want, and you will find that in fact, people do not have so many desires, do not have so many needs, can be a person who is even pure-hearted, play a decent job, just need to do what you like to do, you can have a good attitude, have a Zhuangzi-style way of life.
Zhuangzi asked a question in "The Getaway", saying: Who is the happiest, the big bird and the little bird? The big bird has a strong ability, Kunpeng spreads its wings for ninety thousand miles, the little bird is just a sparrow, jumping from this tree to that tree, the average person thinks that the big bird is happier, but Zhuangzi's answer is different, Zhuangzi said: The little bird is as happy as the big bird, because the little bird is also doing what it wants to do, and according to its ability to do it, so it is equally happy. This is a "Buddhist" way of living, people can live differently, but in the matter of happiness is equivalent.
Finally, there is a question of "choice". Man cannot want everything, he wants everything, which means that he wants nothing. You say that traditional culture can help you, but you can't do everything. You have to choose between the Two Sides of Confucianism and Taoism. Or you can complement Confucianism, choose Confucianism when life is relatively smooth, choose Taoism in difficult situations, and take a step back from the sea and the sky.
Life is to have two hands: both a positive hand and a dashing and retreating hand. If you want to Chinese how to survive, don't you rely on Confucianism and Taoism to support yourself, your ancestors may not be happier than you are today, but they are content to live happily, contented people are happy, and they also live quite happily.
In fact, the dilemma encountered by modern people today is not the first time it has appeared. As far as the dilemma is concerned, the general dilemma of mankind is the same, which the ancients have also encountered, and the foreigners have also encountered. Nothing new under the sun. Times are changing, but human nature is almost unchanging. The dilemmas we encounter today are all related to human nature, and the same questions that you can prescribe are similar to the answers and prescriptions. This is why traditional wisdom still has its value in modern society, and the truth is also here.
Editor of this article: Astus
【Introduction of Guests】
Xu Jilin
Zijiang Scholar, East China Normal University
Professor of the Department of History, Doctoral Supervisor
Wang Sheng
Executive Dean and Co-Sponsor of Zhiji
Founder and Chairman of Shanghai Baite Education
END