Sun Liping: Out of the Involution: A New Exodus

Source: Lao Sun recommended reading

Author: Sun Liping is a professor at the Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University

Involution is almost a topic that has been talked about rotten. But before that, I rarely said anything about it. Why? Because I don't see any hope of solving this problem, until yesterday I saw a report about one thing. I'll talk about that in the sequel.

Let's start with the involution itself.

What kind of phenomenon is the so-called involution, and what does it mean to us? Is it just a result of the epidemic? Is it a cyclical product? Or is it a phenomenon in a specific scene? Perhaps, we can see it more clearly and truly understand its heavy meaning when we put it in a more far-reaching historical background.

On New Year's Day, long-lost old friends gathered in Hainan, where the winter was like summer, the quiet waves, and the warm breeze recalled the years we had experienced. It was at this time that I understood more clearly the meaning of the word involution.

We were all college students in the 80s. In that era of renewal, opportunities are almost presented as a kind of overflow: those who want to take a career are in need of young professionals everywhere, those who want to do professional jobs will soon become the backbone of the unit, and those who want to study abroad can go through most of a class. Soon after, the door to business opened and many people became business leaders, and those who did not want to do business could earn more than their lifetime salary by buying two more houses.

It was an era of endless opportunities and hopes. But what cannot but be sighed is that the vicissitudes of life, today is a completely different time.

Also present are a young couple who are waiting for the birth of their baby. So, the conversation turned to the younger generation. Especially, the post-90s and post-00s, and even further, the post-10s. Compared with the aforementioned era of opportunity overflow, they are facing the starting line of cutthroat competition from the moment they are born. A few days ago, a long Weibo article by a junior high school student complaining about the principal revealed a corner of this cruel scene: the school arranges 12 classes a day, arrives at school at 7:10, and can only go home at 9:00 in the evening, and the meal time in the middle is too short, and there is no time for self-Xi.

Can we imagine what this means for children?

This fierce competition in childhood is, of course, to have an advantage when it comes to future opportunities. But the problem is that opportunities are becoming increasingly scarce. And the scarcer the opportunity, the fiercer the competition. The tragic end point is the meaninglessness of the result. Yesterday a friend told me on the phone that she had heard knocks on the door several times at home. When she opened the door, it was a flash delivery boy, quiet and wearing glasses. At first glance, he is a reader, or maybe a college student who has just graduated.

This reminds me of a joke: my father worked hard to deliver food, and used the money earned from delivery to pay for his child's education, and after the child graduated from college, he couldn't find another job, and then delivered food.

Writing this, I know that some friends may kindly remind me that these words are a bit of negative energy, and they want to sing the theory of China's economic brightness. But what I want to say here is that what is being discussed here is not directly related to this issue. Because the matter of involution is not unique to China. It can be said that this is a problem that the entire human race is facing, including the developed countries. The most typical example is South Korea, and the degree of volume is also very strong, otherwise it is difficult for us to understand why the birth rate in South Korea is so low.

It can even be said that this kind of involution is not directly related to the level of economic development and the rich and poor. Once, after lunch, my wife and I went to the market to buy seafood. After buying a bunch of small fish, my wife said to the lady who sold the fish, can you help me clean it up? The lady who sold the fish said, "Sister, take it back and clean it up yourself, I want you to pay less, I have to sleep." I know how important it is for Hainan people to take a nap. It's better to earn less money and take a nap, that's an option.

I think the most important thing is two factors. First, the end of major structural changes and the consequent locking of the structure of opportunity. Second, the backlash between technological and economic progress. The former one is easier to understand. The opportunity for our generation was born out of a major structural change, and it was a kind of accident. Now that this structural change has largely come to an end, the accompanying opportunity structure has begun to lock up. Even the pattern of vested interests formed in it makes this structure more solidified.

In a sense, our generation is a kind of vested interest, a vested interest in the sense of the times. Relative to younger generations, we have been on the upper hand of the structure of opportunity for a long time. Even if you are retired, you still have a lot of pensions. From a modern point of view, this seems to be a matter of course, but have we ever wondered where these pensions come from? Yesterday, when a friend came to see me and had dinner in a restaurant, I couldn't help but sigh that our pension comes from the pension paid by young people like restaurant waiters, but the pension insurance of a few of them is enough to support one of us? And with the decline in the fertility rate, how many such young people will there be in the future?

From the standpoint of progressivism, the problems we encounter today should be solved by development and progress. The truth is true, but the reality is not always that way. On the contrary, we are sometimes eaten up by technological and economic advances. For example, in the case of AI, which is the hottest topic right now, not to mention the long-term that we can't see, what does this mean for the opportunity structure in terms of the future that we can perceive?

In the previous era, even if you didn't study a very practical major at university, you could still work as a secretary in an institution or company. But now, GPT can do it instead of you. In Beijing, near my home is the world of 100,000 yard farmers, and when I commute to work, the roads are crowded with people. But today, with the advent of AI, who knows where this way to work will be cut off? We used to naively think that with the advancement of technology, heavy manual labor will be replaced more and more, and more people will sit in the office and do light things.

But is it really that cozy?

Every time I think about it, I can't help but think of the words Exodus and the melody associated with them.

This is not alarmism. Don't think of the involution in front of you as a local, temporary phenomenon. This is a wide net, and this is a serious and fundamental challenge that we face. If we want to live a little more comfortably in this world, at least a little more normal, we need to break through this big net. Technological and economic progress will benefit humanity, but sometimes it will not automatically benefit humanity, and a rational social arrangement is needed in between.