Moderator of the 012 issue | Lin Zi people
Recently, the topic of #Women's Graduation 9 Years Cut Out Two Suites rushed to the hot search, because the interview program "Talking to Strangers" interviewed Wang Shen'ai, who was worshipped as a "big god" in the Douban "cut group". According to her own account, she graduated for 9 years and insisted on "cutting" out two apartments with a monthly salary savings rate of more than 90%. To this end, she never gathers with her colleagues, regards luxury goods as a flood beast, picks up old clothes from friends, and relies on vouchers for transportation... Wang Shenai said that after graduation, her work experience in the advertising industry made her realize that society is inciting consumer anxiety, and many people overdraft their money to buy things that do not meet their income at all for the sake of face. She felt it would be better to save money and save money for more important life needs, such as a house.
If we watch this episode in its entirety, we may reflect on the various drawbacks of consumer society, but the fragmented dissemination of social media has focused the public's attention on the most nerve-provoking elements such as "two suites" and "the greatest happiness is to count money with a piggy bank", which has made her suffer many bad comments on the Internet, and some netizens even attacked her for having "mental illness", "deducting children, eating chaff dishes". On the evening of October 27, Wang Shen'ai helplessly said in a post on Douban, "The hands and feet that were scolded by so many people for the first time were cold. ”
At the moment when consumerism is prevalent, people who are extremely sharp and unwilling to consume may indeed be alternative beings in society. At the same time that people are talking about "cutting god", the double eleven promotion of the new year has begun. From 2014 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate of the retail industry's Singles' Day turnover reached 35%. CBN quoted Bain&N's recent report "Chinese Retail: Redefining the Success Standard of Double Eleven" to point out that Chinese consumers are still looking forward to Double Eleven. Under the premise that the average expenditure on Singles' Day reached 2104 yuan last year, more than half of the respondents said that they planned to increase consumer spending this year, and only 8% of the respondents said they would reduce spending. Saving money or spending money is not only our individual choices and lifestyles, but also greatly affects the economic performance of society as a whole.
Jiang Yan: My perception of the changes in the daily people's livelihood prices often comes from the elders, such as the boxers who box together in the morning are mostly retired aunts. When someone finds out that the small vendor selling cheap eggs at the north gate of the Temple of Heaven has reappeared, he will definitely shout in the group. If the cabbage in the East Gate supermarket is cheap, you will definitely rush to buy two. They are also particularly sensitive to fluctuations in vegetable prices. Listening to these conversations from them will find it a very interesting picture. It's not so much that they're slamming doors, it's better to say they're going to live their lives. But many of them are very generous, for example, when everyone eats together, they will bring tea, snacks, and fruits, and who usually makes something delicious, they are also willing to share it with everyone.
I think people should be blessed, and I can especially understand what Wang Shen ai said about the feeling of heartache in the company canteen when watching others eat meat and eat two bites. Since I was a child, I watched my grandmother cook, the milk must be poured from the bag with a little water and then poured into the pot, and after the eggs were beaten, the remaining egg liquid should be controlled as much as possible from the eggshell, which had a great impact on me. The older generation has suffered hardships and cherished material things much better than the younger generation. Once a friend came to the house to see that after I finished fishing the vegetables that I had boiled from the pot, I would use a fence when the water came out, and I would also filter out the broken vegetable leaves at the bottom of the pot. Occasionally I go out to eat with others, and I feel uncomfortable when I see that there are still a lot of scattered grains of rice left in people's rice bowls.
Ye Qing: The most door-slamming behavior in my daily life is to insist on traveling by bus: I will never take the subway or take a taxi until I have to. Because chengdu bus is really too affordable, if you recharge the card, you can take as long as one dollar (and many free community buses), and you can transfer for free multiple times within two hours. This means that when I go out to run an errand, the round-trip transportation costs often only cost a dollar. But buses are sometimes very difficult to wait for, easy to get stuck in traffic, resulting in a significant increase in time costs. Many friends do not understand my behavior, think that I do not need to save a few dollars and a few cents in this regard, and I have not seen how much economy I have in other places, but for me, the focus is not on how much money I save, but on the concept and behavior of "I have saved".
The biggest sum of money spent recently was buying a pair of speakers of a certain brand, but I don't regret it, the auditory sensation has been improved by the flesh, and there is often a feeling of "this money is really worth it" (or am I deeply trapped in the consumerist trap but do not know it?). ）。 At the same time, I don't think there is any contradiction between this perhaps impulsive consumption and choosing to take the bus in order to save a few dollars. Both bring me joy. Provincial or introspective, I think, is to find some kind of balance and comfort in life that varies from person to person, rather than blindly delving into the numbers, that may be the least worthwhile.
Lin Ziren: Holding a wedding two years ago should be the most expensive thing I have ever done since I graduated from work, when my partner and I have actually been licensed for a long time, but the parents of both sides still hold the wedding on the grounds of "lack of sense of ceremony", and there is no way (stall hands). During the preparation of the wedding, I realized how the "sense of ceremony" that everyone pursues has spawned a vigorous and interlocking wedding industry chain, such as the "four king kongs" (wedding celebrant, wedding makeup artist, wedding photographer, wedding videographer) that everyone who has been married should have heard of, and for example, wedding invitations need to be accompanied by wedding photos, and wedding photos need to be taken several months before the wedding. Everyone has seen couples taking wedding photos on location at city landmarks, right?
At that time, in order to cut expenses as much as possible, I made some "door-cutting" decisions: not to take wedding photos, to serve as the emcee, there was no lively performance and no lottery at the dinner, and the scene was arranged according to the minimum budget. When communicating with the wedding planner, she was stunned, saying that she had never seen such a wedding. Mom and Dad were dissatisfied at first ("Why don't you take wedding photos when everyone else takes wedding photos"), and a week before the wedding, my mom was still angry with me for not asking for the celebrant, "It's really not like the bride herself is the emcee!" "But it seems that precisely because this is a wedding that everyone has never seen before, the relatives and friends who attended the wedding have expressed their deep impressions, and some people have praised my parents for a while after the wedding, which has made them proud for a long time." After this incident, I found that spending money is sometimes a kind of peer pressure. "I have xxx everyone else" is the most effective mantra that drives people to buy this and that.
Huang Yue: After seeing this news about cutting and the incomprehension and sarcasm in the comment section, I thought that in the past two decades, our attitude toward frugality has undergone subversive changes. In the past, the words related to thrift had obvious positive moral connotations, which were frugality, thrift, frugality, and simplicity, which was both a positive evaluation and an effective life strategy in the context of limited resources. In the past, it was also said that "cut", more to describe or emphasize the extreme miserliness of the extremely rich, or some kind of unequal exchange of human feelings and the lack of etiquette or communication caused by unequality.
I spent my entire childhood in the clothes that my cousin "retired" from, except for the New Year's Eve when I could have a new set of clothes. I always can't forget the temptation and cowardice psychology when I hope my mother buys new clothes, in such a laid-off era, the family tightened the money bag to survive, the child said not to buy or buy, the eyes could not be moved, and finally the mother bought it back, and felt embarrassed in her heart, so she was reluctant to wear it on the body, and it was not willing to fold it in the cabinet. At that time, the relationship between people and things was both tense and close, and my mother always felt bitter in retrospect, and I felt that the feeling at that time was much richer than opening the closet full of idle clothes.
Chen Jiajing: When we use "cut" to describe a person, it is more or less pejorative, as if it is accusing ta of saving too much money, even if it should be spent, it is not willing to spend, so that people feel a little undignified. Another, more serious term is "miserliness", and there are many well-known images of miserly ghosts in classical literature, portraying what the most extreme unseemly and unbearable is like. For example, in Balzac's "Eugenie Grande", although the old Grande is rich, he only blindly guards money, is extremely harsh in eating and wearing, is good at calculation, and even treats his relatives with "only recognizing money and not recognizing people". Such a miser is, of course, annoying, because his savings actually reflect an extreme greed for money, which in his eyes is not used to spend at all, but to consolidate his own position and inner security.
On the other hand, Wang Shen'ai, she is obviously not a person who saves money for money. She has a clear purpose for saving money, to buy a house, and it is an important family decision she and her husband make together, which requires joint cooperation and long-term persistence. When we watch the news, it is easy to pay attention to exaggerated data, such as the savings rate of more than 90%, etc., which is incredible, but when you think about it, isn't this an admirable thing? How much determination and willpower does a person need, as well as a clear awareness of their own needs, to do this? Many people ostensibly say that they want to pursue a minimalist life, but in fact they just live in a minimalist decoration style house with a bunch of minimalist furniture (usually the design fee is not cheap), but I believe that Wang Shen'ai is really as she said, identifying with and practicing the Occam razor principle - "if it is not necessary, do not increase the entity". As for her wool tips, it proves that she has not affected the needs of life because of saving money, but has been exploring the possibility of improving her life under limited conditions. It is said that she also shared these tips in the Douban group, which can be said to be quite generous! Those mocking and insulting spectators, I am afraid that they do not know that they are jealous of the wisdom of others in life.
Lin Ziren: In the Weibo comment section of Wang Shen'ai News, I saw a high-praise comment saying that everyone is going to collapse like her. This commentary points to some of the truths about how society works today, which is analyzed in detail by Sigismo Baumann's Work, Consumerism, and the New Poor. Bowman points out that we have transformed from a 19th-century producer society into a consumer society in which economic growth depends not so much on the "productive forces of the state" as on the consumption power of the people, and the lack of willingness to consume or consumer confidence is nothing less than a harbinger for the economy, and the economic recovery is largely expected by consumers to regain their obligation to "buy, buy and buy". At the individual level, consumption also becomes the most important (if not the only) means for individuals to define themselves and build a "good life", and the more choices a person has in consumption, the higher his social status and the more social respect and self-esteem he receives. It is no wonder that today the rich are often the object of worship, and what impresses them is not their ability to work (to get rich), but their ability to choose freely, that is, wealth itself. In the consumer society, "normal life" is the life of the consumer, and "no consumption" is a major defect, a manifestation of defying the unspoken rules of society. And we know that almost all societies can't tolerate people who don't fit in.
Pan Wenjie: After graduating from college, I learned that things like "cutting gods" would be regarded as bad. At that time, I was looking for a house, and I met a family who bought a two-bedroom school district house, and in order to repay the loan, the house was rented out, and the three people squeezed a small one-bedroom. Friends do not understand, how to pay so much attention to the quality of life, but also must buy such an expensive house. I was shocked by my friend's thoughts, which seemed to me to be wise. It's a little more modest now, but look at the smiles on their faces! That's the family's confidence that their future life will be better. Today to write this paragraph to check it out, that year more than 3 million houses, now the lot of similar units have been sold for more than 6 million.
The reason why I feel this way. Because my mother also had a similar move when she was operating to buy a house. There was a time in elementary school when the door slamming at home was visible to the naked eye, but it didn't cause me too much trouble, everything was just downgraded, and there was no food, clothing and warmth - except for one time when the demotion was too bad, the quality of the pants was not good in front of the classmates, but because it was okay to study at that time, no one made fun of me. These things were cut in exchange for improvements in housing, and I also owned my own instrument. There are no complaints. Galeano criticized consumerism in Upside Down, saying: "The right to spend money is only the prerogative of a few, but it insists on pretending to be the freedom of all." "I agree with that. I understand that for many rich people, cutting the door is poor and stingy, after all, it is not very generous to be careful. But most people are not rich people. In my case, slamming the door is never a pejorative term. It is the art of the witty life of small citizens like us, dodging the scams set by consumer society, and spending money on the blade will bring more lasting happiness. The consumer goods bought by the money spent will only continue to depreciate, and the money saved will become the hen that lays eggs for us.
Jiang Yan: My ideal relationship with money or material is probably the appearance of Yan Hui and Fan Li. Confucius's evaluation of Yan Hui was "a piece of food, a scoop of drink, in the dark alley." People are overwhelmed by their worries, and they will not change their happiness when they return. And Tao Zhu Gong Fan Li is also indifferent to wealth and fame, and can achieve three gatherings and three dispersions. It is not that people must live a simple life, but that external material conditions do not affect a person's state of mind too much, and at the same time, they must try to give as much as possible when they are capable.
Zhao Yunxian: Replacing a rented small one-bedroom school district with a two-bedroom school district, my family's life seems to be the opposite of this witty art. My parents were ordinary state-owned enterprise workers, but they were very focused on the experience of the moment, willing to use the surplus money to make life more comfortable, rather than investing in the future, except to leave enough necessary protection, and hardly think about how to accumulate assets. When others look at my parents, they always feel that they have missed a good opportunity to invest, and it seems that this is indeed the case in hindsight - if they could have been more calculated, today's life may be more abundant? But they hardly feel sorry for these things, much less regret it.
My attitude toward property was almost the same as that of my parents, and I knew nothing about financial management, but with this attitude and the habits of past behavior, I quickly discovered many problems. It is not that there is something wrong with this attitude, but that the social environment has undergone drastic changes, and the leisurely and self-absorbed view of money has become more and more luxurious. Most people are ordinary people, and it is impossible to have the realm of Yan Hui. Moreover, Yanhui still has dark alleys to live in, and today's burrows need a lot of money in a city like Beijing, and the future life must be carried out accordingly. In this case, how easy is it not to "cut the door" and not to "chase the material"? Huang Yue mentioned that in the past, the relationship between people and things was tense and close, and now the relationship between people and things is probably only tense. On the one hand, materials are abundant and even flooded, so it is difficult to feel rich when idle things fill the cabinets; on the other hand, those critical and basic resources need to be obtained through "cutting the door". This situation is too distorted, creating a lot of unnecessary consumption to seduce you, and at the same time telling you that you have to do a physical and mental cultivation to save up a more expensive place than those consumptions. Wang Aishen's door-cutting technique and results are very good, she herself chose simplicity, and saw through the desires that were created. But I think it's also hard to use as an example for everyone, because there are a lot of people who cut off their lives, their dignity, their families, and other important things in life in order to earn a house, rather than consumerist desires.
Pan Wenjie: That's right, Wang Xiaoming, a professor at the Department of Chinese of Shanghai University, once said in an interview that the logic of capital encourages people to like the new and dislike the old, and the relationship between people and things is very cold, but he believes that people and things should cultivate a long-term stable relationship: "People's feelings and experiences are therefore constantly condensed into objects, and the nature of objects changes, not only has use value, but also becomes a carrier of memory, a witness to experience, and thus arouses people's keener attention, so that the interaction between people and things can produce rich material enjoyment." ”
Huang Yue: Cutting or frugality may involve not only our relationship with money, but also our relationship with things, and the relationship with the wider environment. Do we really need that much stuff? If not everyone can change their lifestyle a little bit, save food, save water and electricity, and do not buy things that they don't need, then whose responsibility is it that everyone is responsible for protecting the environment and everyone is responsible for green life? How can we take on, understand, or even get close to this responsibility?
Dong Ziqi: I have turned over two inspirational financial management books before, one is called "Poor Dad, Rich Dad", the other is called "The Millionaire Next Door", the first book attaches great importance to savings, wealth management and investment, needless to say, and the latter book reveals a phenomenon, that is, "rich people" - the definition in the book is the people who are worth more than a million dollars in the United States, that is, the general rich people around them, not the richest people - usually very frugal, they will not be inclined to buy luxury houses, luxury cars, designer clothes and bags. Another type of "people who look rich" have more luxurious consumption habits, they will buy off the car with high leverage, and they will constantly renovate their clothes, shoes, and brand-name watches, but the actual net worth is quite scarce. The authors also found that the professions of this group of people who seem to be rich usually have high-income characteristics, such as doctors who are high-income and high-debt people in his opinion. Why is that? The author's point is simple - for ordinary people, assets can only reach a certain height after such simple accumulation, and if they have entered the comparison environment before becoming rich, such as in the living environment of luxury houses, people will have to bear a heavy financial burden. Does this view work for contemporary China? After all, we have also seen so many people who are in debt for designer cars and bags.
The "Millionaire Next Door" is easy to understand, and perhaps it does point the way for our financial future, not to fall into conspicuous consumption, but to contribute to our life and work in a down-to-earth manner. I still think that the basic logic of this kind of money management book is to encourage the Puritan spirit of people, that is, Marx Weber's "Puritan Ethics and Capitalism" said that there is a vocational view, thrift and simplicity, not to enjoy, just to expand reproduction, such as "The Millionaire Next Door" very much encourages people to work diligently, not to speculate to win. Saving money is not about saving money, but about continuously fulfilling the obligation of work, which is probably a virtue recognized by contemporary society. But I still wonder what is the real point of living frugally and working hard to expand reproduction, although I am also a member of the saving group, but my thinking of saving, saving, and cutting is only a way, and what I get through this way should be the ultimate freedom, rather than endlessly jumping from one small goal to another. Eagleton likens the plot model of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to capitalist multiplication greed, never ending, as if the desires of the narrative can never be satisfied, in fact, our lives must be a little absurd if they become Defoe's novels.