Li Fengliang, associate professor of the Institute of Education and Research of Tsinghua University: Now people are talking about "inner volumes", which shows that society can obtain upward opportunities through competition, otherwise the social class is solidified, and how to work hard is in vain, and in this case, society may face great turmoil and great regression. Because if there is no competition, or if there is no differentiation in competition, the children of the dominant family will easily crush the children of the weak family by virtue of their existing advantages, which will be "no cold door in the upper product, no family in the lower product".
If you enter a prestigious university and think that you can sit back and relax, have a bright future, and easily get a job that is "more money and less close to home", then the majority of students who have lost on the starting line of education for various reasons, especially family reasons, will no longer have the opportunity to "counterattack", and this situation will only be worse. Therefore, college students with less good family backgrounds should stop complaining about the "inner volume". Without competition for the hard indicator of academic performance, then the children of dominant families can easily occupy most of the resources through various so-called "qualities".
Encouraging competition has many benefits, including facilitating mobility and slowing down stratification, but the costs include having to "roll in" society as a whole. A basic theory of educational economics is to describe the signal function and screening function of education. This theory holds that the economic function of education is to distinguish between high-ability and low-ability people and thus match them in the job market.
If this screening function of education disappears, there will be various failures in the functioning of society. One of the founders of this theory, Mike Spencer, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his contribution to the creation of the theory. He believes that as long as education has a screening function, over-education is an inevitability, because in order to distinguish themselves from low-ability people, high-ability people must obtain higher education than low-ability people, and only in this way can they obtain effective educational signals and thus show the labor market that they are people with higher ability. Therefore, according to this logic, the competition of education is for the well-being of the whole society, and the "inner volume" is the cost that society has to pay while reaping the benefits from it.
In short, we must not adopt a "lying flat" attitude because we do not like the "inner volume". "Lying flat" is a very irresponsible attitude, not only sorry for their parents, but also sorry for hundreds of millions of hard-working taxpayers, after all, the operating funds of colleges and universities, tuition fees are only part of it, and a large proportion comes from financial appropriations, and the source of financial appropriations is taxation.
Recently, perhaps no academic term has been more out of the loop than "inner volume". The phenomenon of "involution" was first proposed by the American anthropologist Giltz in his book Agricultural Involution: Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Giltz found that farmers, under population pressure, would continue to increase the labor input of rice cultivation, carry out inefficient production at the expense of diminishing marginal returns, and labor tended to be inward-looped, thus forming "undeveloped growth".
But the involution of the economic perspective fails to explain the cultural drivers behind involution. In fact, in the context of the present, the inner volume points to a dimension of deeper ethical significance. Sociologist Max Weber observed that the modern economy cannot employ undisciplined, "freewheeling" workers. Once they are out of supervision, they will try to be lazy, hoping to earn the same salary in the most leisurely and effortless way. In other words, what modern society needs "labor" to do is by no means a simple labor service, but also needs to have a keen concentration, a professional spirit of "having obligations to work", and a calm, self-controlled work ethic. Only this rational and resolute character can bear the intensity of urgent and intensive work.
In fact, China's development since the reform and opening up has to a large extent been based on Chinese special family ethics and labor ethics. Generations of people "for the next generation", "live a good life", "get ahead", cut down on food and clothing, work hard, work hard, work hard, and all the hard work has a "head" because it can change the fate. This sense of fullness is enough to overcome Weber's image of an "unintentional hedonian".
The labor ethics of the reform era are not only a simple extension of the Confucian tradition, but also come from the upward opportunities released by the market society. In this sense, the sudden popularity of the inner-scroll mentality is not an escalation of the "mortal version of the arms race", nor is it a "gyroscopic cycle of constantly whipping yourself", because these constitute the mystery of wealth growth in the reform period. The growth of young people's emotions stems in part from their confusion about the direction of their struggle and their own future. As the threshold for competition rises, people pay more and more, but they may not be able to get a corresponding return. When work is difficult to relate to the higher value of life, labor falls into a state of self-idling.
This sense of confusion can be manifested as both spitting and complaining, as well as depression and dissatisfaction; it can be disguised as the self-deprecation of "yard farmers", "social animals" and "workers", and can also be manifested as the three gods of "playing for three days a day". As the feeling of inner volume becomes stronger and stronger, the "chicken baby" (that is, the parents of Jackie Chan give their children chicken blood and keep letting the children fight), the phenomenon of rising job requirements and rising boats will become more and more intense, and the consumption concept, marriage and employment concept of young people will also be greatly impacted.
When college students compete fiercely for test scores, professionals are constrained by statistics such as clock timing, 996 work system, kpi assessment, etc., although more social, consumption and entertainment can continue to fill the time, but people are increasingly uncertain about the meaning of life and the future direction. It manifests itself as being dissatisfied with one's current situation on the one hand, but at the same time lacking the motivation to pursue ideals; although people are working at full capacity, they do not affect the laziness, confusion and desertion of the fact.
The healthy development of modern society depends on the forging of a healthy and upward work ethic, and the individual's labor struggle also requires the settlement of the spiritual world. The increasing pace of work and life may be stressful, but people's spiritual mentality should not be inward-looking. Only by creating more development opportunities for young people, further doing a good job in social protection, and paying more attention to people's pursuit of a sense of meaning and justice, can they avoid being confused by the inner volume and face the future with a more enthusiastic and full state.
(Original title: Tsinghua Professor said that lying flat attitude is extremely irresponsible: sorry parents, but also sorry for taxpayers who work hard)
Source: Beijing Evening New Visual Comprehensive Science Network, China Youth Daily
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