When the world is showing a new trend due to unpredictable factors such as the epidemic and trade war, we inevitably have to correct our understanding of ourselves and the environment.
In the face of "unprecedented changes in a hundred years", anthropology professor Xiang Biao issued the argument of "looking for a new world". He argues that the old "center-centric" worldview should be broken, and that a world where everyone wants to be centered would be dangerous, even disastrous.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="3" What is > "Finding a New World" about? </h1>
Professor Xiang Biao is nearly fifty years old, is now a professor of anthropology at Oxford University, and is also the director of the Max Planck Institute of Anthropology, and has published academic works such as "Communities Across Borders" and "Global "Body Hunting"" and so on.
Since he is a professor with the social sciences as the research direction, the new world he is looking for is certainly not a Columbus Magellan-style search for a new continent through great navigation, nor is it the development of space technology to find new extraterrestrial planets.
He focuses on the "world" in people's subjective consciousness, what kind of existence this world is, and what kind of object China is compared to it consciously or unconsciously when we talk about "world".
In fact, the positioning and thinking about the relationship between the two has never stopped in the past hundred years, and at different times and according to different international and domestic environments, different views have dominated the mainstream.
Professor Xiang Biao believes that this process of understanding can be summarized as three stages: in the early 19th century, it changed from thinking of itself as the center to being the Center of the West, and in the 1960s it began to see itself as the center, and in the 1990s, it was centered on the United States. The constant shift in this view is actually based on China's relative position in the world at that time.
No matter what stage you are at and whose focus is on you, the "center-centered" thinking has never changed.
This is what he believes is the most debatable: always focusing on the center, creating a center without a center, is actually an old, materialistic worldview, which is not conducive to truly understanding the specific, pluralistic, and changing elements of the world, nor is it conducive to forming an objective and true understanding of the world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > take Zhang Yimou as an example? </h1>
In previous media interviews, someone once commented that Xiang Biao, as an anthropologist, is very good at using everyday style metaphors and analogies to refine the understanding of abstract concepts.
Regarding the positioning of the relationship between the world and China, Professor Xiang Biao cited the concept of "the more nationalities and the more the world" that is often mentioned in the field of art as an analogy, and incidentally took the famous director Zhang Yimou as an example.
As a well-known director for a long time, Director Zhang is the representative of the "fifth generation of directors", holding "Big Red Lantern Hanging High", "Red Sorghum", "Hero" and other film masterpieces, the first-line scenic spots basically have his "impression" reality show, and directing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games has become the highest peak of his artistic career.
Professor Xiang believes that Zhang Dao's artistic line has never left the follow-up to the "national element" - in the early days, they followed the european and American vision, they thought that what China's ethnic elements were like, the director would shoot it; in the later stage, he began to shoot the ethnic elements he understood, and strengthened and highlighted this element in the film.
It is for this reason that Zhang Dao's works pay too much attention to form and emphasize visual impact. The Chinese in his works are full of extreme fighting, extreme customs, extreme love and hate, and lack the sense of history and society formed after independent thinking.
This "nation" has been proven by the market to be a successful business element, but rather than facilitating the world's communication with China, it is better to use extreme single impressions to hinder the opportunity for further understanding.
From the perspective of a social science expert, the evaluation of Zhang Dao is not only reasonable, but also quite accurate. The audience who watched Zhang's movie all the way down, I am afraid that they have more or less similar feelings.
But then again, scientific evaluation and literary evaluation are not exactly the same dimension. Of course, we can say that the concept of a certain director and a screenwriter is too biased, incomplete and not objective, but the creation of art itself has a strong subjectivity. If all the choreographers choose the same set of ideas and angles to shoot the film, the film will not be good.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > the first stage of opening your eyes to the world</h1>
In view of the understanding of the relationship between the world and China, Professor Xiang Biao summarized it into three larger stages.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Lin Zexu, the Minister of Qincha of the Qing Dynasty, while strictly banning smoking in Guangzhou, asked his staff to translate the Chronicle of four continents so that he could understand the situation in other countries.
Although the book is actually a Chinese translation of the British Murray's "Encyclopedia of World Geography", and the content is not simple and time-sensitive, the significance of this initiative is epoch-making. Lin Zexu was therefore called "the first person to open his eyes to the world" by later generations.
The combination of understanding of the Western powers and the fact that China was politically and militarily inferior at the time gave birth to a strong trend of self-denial. Mainstream thought holds that the world represents a universal law of human history and must be joined in with the rhythm in order to avoid the fate of being eliminated.
Sun Yat-sen's famous words "The world trend is mighty; those who go along with it prosper, and those who go against it perish" express this meaning.
At this stage, people strip the self from the world and make comparisons; the world is externalized and becomes an irresistible objective entity above the self.
In the early days, the movements such as foreign affairs and law change were more moderate, and they advocated learning from each other's strong points and making up for their own uses; but as the crisis gradually deepened, the dose of "strong medicine" prescribed to the country was also increasing. Many later generations seem to have used too much force or even unbelievable ideas, but in fact have a special historical background.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="28" > the meaning of "three worlds"</h1>
This trend of thought was not completely reversed until after the founding of New China, when the new China, which was originally built by overturning the three mountains, no longer regarded the "laws of the world" as the standard, but believed that the world was inherently turbulent and complex, and China should move at any time.
The trend of thought at this stage is the most representative of the "three worlds": Chairman Mao believes that the three are interrelated and contradictory, with the United States and the Soviet Union as the first world, the developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and other places as the third world, and the developed countries located between the two as the second world.
The concept of three worlds is not without criticism, for example, the famous anthropologist Wolff believes that this criterion is actually an operation that uses Western societies to take itself as the standard, erase the differences of other countries and even discredit the underdeveloped countries.
Professor Xiang Biao did not agree with this view, he believed that under the situation at that time, the formulation of the three worlds fully considered the relationship between East and West, that is, the relationship between the capitalist camp and the communist camp, and also took into account the relationship between north and south, that is, the relationship between developed countries and developing countries.
In fact, the united Nations later proposed the goal of establishing a new national economic order and promoting South-South cooperation, and its concept was also shared with the three world concepts. Moreover, the "Group of 77", which is dominated by the countries of the third world, does have its own influence in the United Nations and has achieved some of its goals.
So the crux of the matter is not how others see us, but how we see the world outside of ourselves. The world is not a completely external entity, but an object that can and is worth actively striving for.
At this stage, with regard to the relationship between the world and China, there is actually a certain degree of regression to the attitude of division, confrontation and comparison in the first stage. The "self" is considered to have a certain degree of subjective flexibility and can play its role in the global ecosystem.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > understand that the world tends to be single</h1>
Since the beginning of reform and opening up, especially since china's accession to the WTO, all fields have shown an increasingly open posture. The significance of openness is not only limited to doing business with the world and participating in the world's competition, but also includes the proximity and integration of the economic, technological, cultural and academic levels.
The advantage of this trend is that we once again regard various foreign entities as objects of study from the past, and obtain useful experiences or warnings from them; but there are also disadvantages, at this stage, many people's understanding of the world and themselves has gradually tended to be single and simplified.
Some of the reasons for this are also caused by changes in the general environment. We have taken a keen interest in the different paths of various countries in the world and compared them with our own circumstances in an attempt to learn from them.
However, in the 1990s, with the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War, the two poles that were originally competing with each other became a monopolistic superpower, and indeed formed a "end of history" effect.
Because the right to speak and the sense of existence are highly concentrated in the United States, the world seems to have returned to the perception of an entity. Although China's exchanges with third world countries in all aspects are also expanding and deepening year by year, the attention and interest received by these countries have been declining.
In most people's minds, "the world" can be roughly equated with the United States. Moreover, a similar situation does not only occur in China, but also in countries such as India. More and more people have the opportunity to pay attention to and even experience the customs and customs of different countries, but this does not mean that the understanding of these countries as historical subjects has also increased.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="43" > a kind of mental inertia: centered</h1>
Is there a problem with focusing on the United States? Not really.
After the Cold War, the United States is undoubtedly one of the most powerful forces in the world, and it is also a factor that affects the world situation with great weight. This is both an objective reality and an element of subjective construction.
America's central position is underpinned by its own strength, sustained by strong military, political, economic, media, and cultural forces. And as an entity, the larger the volume and the more energy it is, it will inevitably receive widespread attention.
There was once a joke circulating on the Internet, saying that China, especially in recent years, has "crossed the river by touching the US imperialists" in various fields, which reflects this reality. There is nothing inherently wrong with treating an entity as a center, and what is debatable is the inertia of thinking that must be "centered."
Professor Xiang Biao believes that Western scholars often talk about "China-centrism", especially on topics involving Asian history. However, Sinocentrism is only a concretization within the framework of "centrism", that is, subconsciously believing that human history should be dominated by a specific center.
At this time, American scholars are talking about it, and the real focus is only the competition between the center in the East and the West.
But this is not the concept that our country upholds, and our goal in the modern world is to become a rich country and a strong modern country, which does not include the competition for world dominance or "central" status. In reality, for many years, china has adhered to the diplomatic norm of non-interference in each other's internal affairs, with peaceful exchanges as the main theme, and does not easily use force to try to solve problems.
The most notable example is the G2, an idea that has always existed in the us narrative, but china has not repeated it. It also proves that what our country recognizes is still a world full of pluralism.
And the situation in the world today is far from what the alarmist views say, that China is about to replace the United States as the new center. Europe has never been a silent bystander, and even the more economically inconspicuous countries of black Africa and Latin America should not be forced to remain silent.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="53" > conclusion</h1>
In the face of an increasingly pluralistic world situation, it is imperative to establish a worldview that breaks through materialization and externalization. The establishment of this worldview is of great significance to any country.
Professor Xiang Biao used a metaphor to describe the situation: people, like climbers, always think that the highest mountain determines the landform, but in fact, it is the countless rocks, dirt and vegetation at the bottom of the mountain that make up the entire mountain range.
Only by breaking through the view of opposites and dichotomies can we understand the true face of the existence of the "world" more concretely and objectively; otherwise, it is extremely easy to insist on emphasizing the self and cannot wait to join the competition for the "center of the world", bringing dangerous and even disastrous consequences.