Vol.3 How do you view Abe's death and the carnival? understand romanticism

On the day of Abe's assassination, the entire Chinese Internet ran to tell each other, and it was a joyous celebration.

At the same time, @fanmisuo was hit by a cyber attack because of a social platform that did not want to celebrate with everyone.

In these furious comments, we find that a certain kind of ideological change that has happened in history is being repeated in China. It's not a brand new thing, it hints at some kind of ideological resurgence behind it.

In this podcast, we will take this opportunity to talk about the value differences behind this dispute. Why is it said that many of the friendship mentalities are in the same vein as 19th-century European romanticism? What is the difference between an immediate "romantic nationalist" and Weibo's "original mob"? How did the two different thinking tendencies of "reinforcing" and "reinforcing" come into being when people interact?

This is a witty and humorous "romantic" science popularization, and also a serious reflection meeting. We hope to talk about Abe's actual merits and demerits from an objective perspective as much as possible? How should we view Abe's death?

Below, enjoy the original audio

Vol.3 How do you view Abe's death and the carnival? understand romanticism

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(The public account "Lonely Reader" will reply to the "third issue" in the background to obtain the full version of the text; and the text of this issue is some abbreviations that have been reviewed and used, please forgive me)

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Miso: Today is a special episode of "Effective Failure"~

Ge Xu: Yes, I heard that you tried to popularize some ideas with netizens a few days ago, and then you were attacked by the Internet, right? Today we want to make this failure more effective. So why did you get hit online, can you tell the audience?

Miso: After the assassination of Abe a few days ago, the whole country celebrated and the whole network "eats". That night, I opened the takeout and found that even the merchant changed its set menu to "Celebrating Abe's Death Dinner Set".

This whole atmosphere made me feel a little panic and uneasy. Although he is the former Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, does his death require all the Chinese people to rush to tell each other and hold a banquet to celebrate? I've been wondering is it reasonable? Doesn't anyone think there's something wrong with this thing?

At first I found out - there's really no one there.

Later, I couldn't help it anymore, so I posted a post to express my sadness about this incident. So, I was labelled the Virgin and the moral kidnapping...

Ge Xu: Yes, when we chatted two days ago, we said that we arrived immediately because we couldn’t stand Weibo, but I didn’t expect to encounter similar comments in the moment. However, similar to similar, it has some differences.

Compared with China's overall fundamentals, instant netizens are actually quite an elite group of people. If you have not received systematic thinking training, it is easy for you to be persuaded by this seemingly reasonable message.

Their rhetoric is actually more than a question of nationalism. Today I would like to do another analysis from the dimension of romanticism. This kind of ideological change that has happened in history is being repeated in China.

It's not a brand new thing.

1 ►

What is Romanticism?

Ge Xu: Romanticism is actually an artistic and cultural concept first and foremost. That is, if you look at some literary and artistic works born in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they often have mysterious and natural colors, and they emphasize personal will, and you will feel a burst of passion.

This passion is - I don't want to think rationally anymore, I want to imitate nature, I yearn for that raw power.

What can the specific form be? For example, if you imagine a character image, I imagine Germany as a person who has a clear sense of mission and stands in the forest of nations in the world.

You can imagine a German boy riding a dragon to the ground, with a fat French man with big ears and bejeweled beside him, riding on the head of a hero boy.

Its narrative is full of struggle, full of oppression, full of resistance.

However, the ideas implied in any literary and artistic works originate from reality, either from the social trend of thought or return to the social trend of thought.

What was the mainstream thinking in Europe at that time? It's rationality, the Enlightenment.

Reason and Enlightenment actually originated in France. At that time, everything the French said was the standard of the universal world. How would you feel if you were a young man in Germany? It's just that I'm really tired of the French chatter.

In addition, the German region at that time did not have a unified country, and the other was extreme poverty.

Many of their thinkers, such as Herder and Fichte, were very contradictory after returning to Germany from France.

On the one hand, he wants to tell the Germans that I went to France to study and that I have seen Paris, which is awesome! Then on the other hand, he wants to brush his presence. It’s a bit like the more patriotic international students go abroad, the more patriotic they are when they arrive in the United States. They criticize the United States every day. They will also go and bash France.

There is another important person behind. This person does not actually claim to be a romantic, but he has laid a very strong theoretical foundation for the social thought of romanticism. This person is Kant (in fact, there is also Harman, but Kant is familiar to everyone, so I take He gave an example).

At least for the layman in philosophy, Kant is a very rational person, right? He is not only rational, he also criticizes rationality (laughs), and he also has a strong personal opinion in the field of moral philosophy.

Let me give an example, for example, there is a table in front of me, and when I push it like this, the table moves. On the surface, the movement of this table is determined by me, right? But everything I do is subject to the principles of physics, that is, when I push it, it moves like this, which is a very fixed causal law.

Many times, people are actually this table, and you can't control anything, so the meaning of life appears to be very illusory.

So he emphasizes that the really important philosophical proposition of our time is where we find free will.

Therefore, in a superficial understanding, Kant's later research perspective and theoretical contribution are: rational human beings shout that man will conquer the sky, we seem to have mastered the laws of nature, but we have not actually conquered it, we just learned it and obeyed it. In fact, human beings are always the slaves of the laws of nature and this law of causality.

From this perspective, only the raw human power that is poetic, primitive, mystical, and unexplainable is the liberation of free will - this is the essence of romanticism. So romanticism is an upgrade of rationalism .

This can explain a difference between Weibo and Instant. It is this violent and irrational performance, whether it is artistic performance or social media performance, there are two types:

The first is the uneducated, who are native vulgar and wild. For example, netizens on Weibo come up and greet your ancestors directly.

The other is the Romantics. The romantic is not irrational, but he chooses anti-rationality, that is, he does not understand what reason is, but is tired of reason.

So he wants to use an irrational way to stimulate something different, and he wants to re-express a certain passion in his heart.

Do you think these people do not understand economic and trade relations? I think they understand. Don't these people understand the complexity of the international situation? They also understand. Including these words and sentences you look at them, they also use high-level vocabulary such as "mourning a wife", but I can see that they don't want to discuss the compassionate human conscience, I'm tired of these.

He said, "I just want to jump on my feet and have fun," which is a very typical manifestation of primitive impulse. I just want to form a community, I just want to create a sense of belonging. These are actually in line with the most primitive impulse in our hearts.

Xiaobai : Let me ask another question. You mentioned just now that romanticism is not counter-intuitive. From my understanding, it is intuitive, right?

In that sense, it seems easy to be a romantic. But from another perspective, when you just talked about this pioneer of romanticism, you said that these people are very familiar with using these rational tools. After they discovered the limitations of reason, they actively chose to be anti-rational.

In this sense, it is difficult for you to be a romantic. I don't know if my understanding is correct?

Ge Xu: Yes, it is indeed difficult for you to become a true romantic, that is, to be worthy of the word "ism". It means that you have to have a deep understanding of reason.

What is it like? Like Picasso's paintings that others don't understand at all, or Duchamp's urinals. That is, your basic skills in the early years must be recognized by others before you can have willful qualifications.

Picasso has a saying, "Me llevó cuatro años pintar como Rafael, pero una vida entera como un niño", that is, I spent four years painting like Raphael, but I spent my whole life painting like a child.

Ge Xu: In addition, I also want to deconstruct our own people, that is, between romanticism and rationalism, you can distinguish two types of people.

The first is that he has a rational core, but is dressed in a romantic guise. The second kind of person is that he has a romantic core and is dressed in rational cloak.

For example, my analysis of myself is - I have a rational core, dressed in a romantic coat .

As a concrete example, I often fight online mobs on social media. Whether it's the higher education mob that goes on immediately, or the lower education mob on Weibo. But before I forward it, I must first make sure that this person has no traffic demand. If he has traffic demand, I forward it means that I will divert traffic to him. This is not acceptable.

Then there will be a series of calculations involved. I will analyze "the spiral of silence, the echo chamber effect, setting up imaginary enemies, how to arouse people's sympathy" and so on. I must use all of these social psychological conspiracies and tricks, and then Squeeze out all the value that you can provide me as a black fan, this will not be a waste of your painstaking efforts to black me.

But when I comment, I often use these artistic means of cynicism, yin and yang, and self-destruction. You will find that I don't seem to be speaking rationally at all.

You know me privately, I'm a good talker, and I consider myself a very docile person. It looks scary, looks scary, and sounds scary, but my heart is actually very weak.

Miso: I feel like you are just right, if a mob comes to diss you, my subconscious reaction is to lament for that person: it's over, it's over. I really shudder for that mob, you know?

Ge Xu: Yes, he will definitely be used as a gunman by me.

Although sometimes I do not sleep at night, because sometimes you think this person may still be a malleable talent.

From an educator's perspective, this is a dilemma for me.

On the one hand, an educator should be restrained, restrained in all circumstances. But on the other hand, I had to make a choice in order to have the right voice spread a little wider. So I don't think I'm a completely innocent person, not a 100% innocent person, and I use some intrigue like this.

But I think I am a real villain, not a hypocrite.

I'm going to make a confession every issue with all my listeners, telling you about this dark side of my heart.

This will make it easier for everyone to deal with me in the future, because I have no other weaknesses, right? I've already told you all my weaknesses, it's called the "Certificate of Voting in the Internet Age", right?

Then there is another one - with romance as the core and rationality as the coat . For example, the children you commented below are typical of them. You see the way they speak is rational, but that's just a defense of his primal urge. It is sensibility that forms their backbone.

We say that to produce this original impulse of romanticism, generally two conditions are met:

First, this person must have read books himself, and he cannot say that he has read poetry and books, but at least he cares about the world. If you look down there, there are people who put the words "Interna Schonelle" in their screen name, so it must be very concerned about human beings. It's just that he doesn't know how to care about human beings, so he places his hopes on this red flag fluttering, and on these grand narratives.

The second condition is that the books he reads have no way out at the moment. It's just that he has no way of turning what he has learned into productivity.

Then as long as these two conditions are met, that primitive impulse will surely arise in his heart.

From the perspective of gender, most men are actually dressed in rational clothes, and then there is a violent and primitive child inside. This can be seen from most male quarrels.

On the surface, he is eloquent, but in his heart he doesn't want to talk at all. Then he wrapped himself up in the cloak of rationality. The ancient Greeks called this sophistry. But you will find that when this woman expresses, her heart is actually very logical and well-organized, but when she outputs, she often adds a lot of poetic and emotional expressions.

2 ►

Tolerance principle and moral kidnapping

Miso: In addition, I want to talk about a topic - moral kidnapping.

I have found that if someone steps on that high-voltage line now, then no matter what achievements you have or what kind of good deeds you have done, it seems that everything can be wiped out. Only one thing will be infinitely magnified, that is, insulting China, that is, your rude words , hurt our national feelings.

Including me, I also received comments at the time, saying that you don't want to morally kidnap others, you can have mercy yourself, why stop others from eating? This thing is also very interesting, why do they think I am morally kidnapping? I just feel sad.

So I'm curious, what do you think of this misplaced moral kidnapping?

Ge Xu: I will talk about it from two aspects. At the micro level, morality is used for self-discipline for me, and I try not to be harsh on others.

At the macro level, I usually look at whether there is political power behind this moral kidnapping. If your moral kidnapping becomes the legitimacy of populist politicians, then I will never let you go, because this is a war over the safety of my own life and property and that of my descendants .

That's why you look at a person, no matter what idealism or materialism he is fighting for, Cartesianism or whatever, then I respect it. But why am I chasing after the so-called patriotic big V? Chasing so-called Marxists?

It's because, I'm sorry, the concepts you promote can easily change the social system in the current social environment, and it's easy to threaten the freedom of thought of me, my children, and even my descendants. Then I will do my best, and I will fight with you to the end.

Here I would like to add one more creed of my self-discipline, which I have been particularly fond of. It's called the principle of charity . It's probably stated like this:

When each of us speaks, there is no way to make a complete statement. It must have some hidden context. Then our attitude should be - to give this statement the most plausible interpretation, and the most reasonable interpretation. A well-meaning initial assumption, even if the person is trying to argue with you .

In the process of complementing the context, complementing the other party's words in the direction of "good motives, empathic and logically sound" is called "reinforcing"; Complement in the direction that is illogical and not worthy of empathy, which is called "complementing weakness".

For example, after seeing the same sentence, people who reinforce it will think: Fan Misuo may know these things. After comprehensive consideration, she chose to speak from the perspective of human nature. I don’t think everyone should do this.

And those who make up the weak will think: What is the worst motive for Fan Misuo to send this news? Did the Japanese government give her money? Is she a spy? Her surname is not Fan, her surname is Wang, is she Wang Jingwei's illegitimate child?

How did the character of strengthening and strengthening come from?

The first is to see if the person has the confidence and resources. I believe in you unconditionally, but don't betray my trust. If you betray my trust, you will have good fruits to eat. For example, if a person has 100 million, he invests 200,000 and can vote 500 times, so he doesn't care if you lied to me this time, if you spend 200,000 for me, then I won't give it to you next time It's over.

But if you only have 200,000, then I'm sure you have to "make up for your weakness" every time, because I can't take this risk. So it depends very much on whether a person is deficient. Often, the more a person believes in himself, the more he believes in others.

The other is to see who he is imitating. First of all, if you have a very tolerant parent, it is easy to handle. If your parents have no guiding role for you, then you must leave it to the society.

We can think about it, when you watch the news network, when you watch the speeches of the foreign ministry, do you think they are strengthening or strengthening the weakness? I don't judge this, everyone analyzes it by themselves, but the up and down effect, the entire national character will be subtly affected in this way.

Similarly, GuYue has its own community, and the community principles are as follows:

Why do I have to build a community? Because I know that my influence on a student in class is no match for his toxic environment .

If his circle of friends is a mob, then the class will be for nothing.

So I have to take the atmosphere of my own class offline. If he can also come into contact with such a group of tolerant people after class, especially tolerant strangers, then his whole personality may be affected.

And I am also farther and farther away from training, and closer and closer to real education.

3 ►

What is Abe's actual performance?

Ge Xu: In the end, I think it is necessary to make a popular science about Abe himself.

Regarding Shinzo Abe, there are several points, we can try to do some analysis from the perspective of strengthening and strengthening the weak:

The first is what is the status of this person in the world, and what will the international public opinion think of him?

Shinzo Abe has a very good reputation and public opinion in the Asia-Pacific region, especially ASEAN countries. This is a very respected former prime minister of Japan. There must be a reason for respect. What is the reason? These are his three economic policies.

If these three economic policies are placed in other countries, such as China and the United States, they are actually nothing, but he is a Japanese. Under the intricate influence of Japan, he can promote monetary policy by himself. , fiscal policy, economic structural reform, these three light is the need for courage.

A lot of people probably don't know how hard this is. In such an extremely conservative and traditional country, and it is still a democratic country, as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, if you dare to say this, it is very likely that your party will lose its next seat, that is, your policy is very It might end in one session.

In addition, Japan is a country that is highly dependent on the international economic system. It is in the middle and high end, occupying the middle and upper reaches of the industrial chain. In this way, the hotter the downstream industry chain and mass consumer market in this region, the more Japan gets.

Therefore, even if Abe is particularly hostile to the Chinese, it must be only because China is rich that Japan's economic policy can succeed.

Even if Abe doesn't even care about the Japanese, he only cares about power, then in a democratic country, if you can't fulfill your political promises, you can't keep your power. So even with the most vicious motives to speculate on Shinzo Abe, he "tearfully did things that benefit others" and brought benefits to the regional economy.

As for why he is going to visit the Yasushi GS Agency, I think so, because he wants to ensure that the Japanese chaebols, right-wing forces, conservative parties and so on are all rooted in the foundation of these voters who pushed the Liberal Democratic Party to that position. Because his economic policies have already hurt their vested interests, should I at least do some superficial work, such as visiting the Yasukuni GS Society, so as to calm the anger of these people.

From the point of view of reinforcement, I think the shrine itself is difficult to clean up, because after all, there are more than two million war criminals in it.

But after thinking about it for a long time, I still came up with a defense angle, that is, the more than two million people are actually cannon fodder, and the soldiers who sacrificed for this are worthy of mercy no matter what.

In the second part, we talk about Abe's actual performance.

When we evaluate a politician, we should mainly look at his achievements in the professional field. The visit to the shrine cannot be regarded as his political achievement, but the development of the region and the role of mediator between China and the United States, I think, can be regarded as a certain degree of political achievement.

No matter what country you are from, you should understand what the policy logic of a democratic country is.

For example, if 5 people out of 100 are elected to govern. Then he said that these five people were selected because they promised that the 100 people would earn 10,000 yuan, but now they can earn 20,000 yuan under my leadership, which can be doubled.

There is another kind of political system, that is, these five people are not elected, and he is sure that these five people will always be these five people, or at least they will designate five people.

Then in this case, what they focus on is not how to earn 20,000 from 10,000, but how much the five of us can share the 10,000. In the case of earning 10,000 yuan, if we are friendly with foreigners, five of us can share 10%, and one person can share 200 yuan.

If we don't make good friends with foreign countries, 100 of us will earn 5,000 yuan, which is half of our money. But we can share a total of 30%, and each of us actually takes more than before, so these five people will be more concerned about the distribution issue, rather than how to make the pie bigger.

If the leader of the regional economy is a democratic regime, the risk factor of the entire region will be reduced.

But all of this must ensure that in the process of listening, you must remove your own nationalist assumptions, because once you have nationalist assumptions, you will think, what does the good of other countries or the democratization process have to do with us? relation?

If you think that way, you will never understand what Japan has to do with you in this area.

Miso: You made me think of an interesting point, how exactly should we divide our identities? One sentence that comes to mind is "Unite all the proletariat".

If you think about it from the perspective of money, isn't it that the people at the bottom of the world, the working class all over the world stand together, and the capitalists all over the world stand together?

Speaking from this perspective may actually be more beneficial to our own situation, but why do we have to think from the perspective of the nation first?

Ge Xu: This also involves the issue of coherence. For example, I often see children like this. On the one hand, he advertises himself as a Marxist, and on the other hand, he himself is a person with serious national sentiments. These two are inherently contradictory, that is, if you tell the truth, you can only choose one or the other.

Because if a person says he likes Marx very much, theoretically he should be an internationalist.

So what is my understanding? It is that he may have confused Stalinism and Marxism, because the theory of one country revolution will appear only when Stalin is in. I will go through all this horizontally and divide the society into classes, and then I will go through all this and divide the country into different countries. of different classes. For Stalin, only a small piece of the grid, a particular class in the Soviet Union, was important.

Third, let's talk about the emotional level, Japan's historical issue with China.

Many things are not mentioned in our textbooks. For example, from 1979 until the Olympic Games, Japan's aid to China actually lasted for 40 years.

At that time, there were three types of Japanese assistance to China. One was preferential loans, the other was free assistance, giving money directly, and the other was technical assistance.

Concessional loans are the most. I was shocked when I saw the annual interest rate at that time. It was 0.5 points to 2 points, which was almost an interest-free loan.

What we know now, Capital International Airport, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Pudong Airport, Baiyun Airport, Wuhan Iron and Steel Baosteel and these companies are basically their equipment, and they basically use this loan for construction.

Not to mention technical assistance, is the take-off of China's early light industry and manufacturing. Japanese loans to China account for 60% of all foreign aid to China, and more than half of them are given by Japanese. So you can understand that the first buff to China since the reform and opening up was done by the Japanese.

So in fact, the reason why we are today, no matter what the motives of the Japanese were back then, objectively speaking, the direct injection of their production factor is a very necessary condition.

4 ►

Do the Japanese people need to apologize to us?

Ge Xu: Finally, let's talk about whether the Japanese really need to apologize to us?

There is such a convincing argument among Japanese folk, at least I find it really hard to refute. It was all because there was a prime minister, Takeshi Inuyo, who was killed by the Japanese military in the 515 coup. Everyone knows that when a war is launched, no matter how pure a person is, you can only obey in this army, right?

Who are the biggest victims of World War II besides China? The Japanese themselves are victims, its ordinary people, those mothers who have lost their children, the wives of their husbands who have died, and the children of their fathers who have died, they themselves are victims.

So how can you get one group of victims to apologize to another group of victims? If the military unit that started the war still controls the Japanese regime after Japan was bombed by a nuclear bomb, then I think they should apologize. But the actual situation is that those led by Hideki Tojo have been executed at the International Court of the Far East.

So it's hard to say how to apologize now, who should apologize, and who should apologize on behalf of.

I think a higher priority thinking proposition than thinking about who should apologize might be - what caused the Japanese Empire in the 1930s and 1940s? Does this factor still exist in the 21st century? Was it unique to Japan at the time, or shared by humans?

Here I would like to recommend a book called "Pacific War and Japan News" , which traces how the Japanese nation came to the arrogant and domineering fields step by step.

You may feel a chill after reading it. Because that book concluded that this factor is not going away in the 21st century, and may even be worse. It's just that this factor does not necessarily exist in Japan, but in other countries.

Miso: That's the end of this podcast. Then we mentioned a community of Lonely Reading earlier. If you want to join Discord's Lonely Reading Plaza, you can click this QR code to accept the invitation.

You are also welcome to reply to "effective failure" in the background of the public account "Lonely Reader" to learn more about the captain~