escape the system

This article was first published in Crooked Brain: "Self-statement: Existential crisis once prompted me to escape from the system"

In an era of bleak economic prospects, China's ever-increasing craze for public examinations has become a spectacle of the times. The reason why young people flock to work in the system is well known - facing the reality of fierce competition, shrinking income, difficulty in finding jobs, and poor social security, only the system can provide a stable and predictable "shelter." However, if this "shelter" itself is a factor that contributes to economic problems, how can we expect the people in it to be immune?

The heavy burden brought by the huge establishment

Recently, news about the "downsizing" of civil servants and public institutions has attracted widespread attention, and has also given off a red light to those who want to catch up with this trend. China has widespread problems of redundant staffing in administrative agencies and public institutions, and excess financial support personnel. In order to pay the salaries of a disproportionate number of government employees, local governments often face pressure to make ends meet, and news of "borrowing" money to pay salaries is common. The heavy support burden has made local finances, which were already high in debt, even worse and unsustainable. In recent years, in order to absorb local debts, the state is promoting a series of fiscal restructuring measures, one of which requires the "downsizing" of government agencies and public institutions.

Experts believe that the central government's intervention in local debt will help solve the stubborn problem of redundant establishments, but it may not be able to cool down the enthusiasm of young people for public examinations. Because downsizing only means that the "iron rice bowl" is no longer secure, it "does not fundamentally change the superiority of jobs within the system over jobs outside the system." In addition, due to the large-scale enrollment expansion, many young people have gone to university and studied The quality of the majors is worrisome, and it is difficult to find employment opportunities in society after graduation.

"If these college students have not discovered their interests and talents at a personal level, nor have they mastered practical skills or gained certain experience, or in a word, have not found something suitable for them to do, then to be honest Yes, taking full advantage of the preferential conditions as a fresh graduate to strive for admission to the program is still a reasonable choice under the current economic and employment situation, because the opportunity cost is not too great."

There is nothing wrong with an individual's choice under limited conditions. However, we can’t help but ask, why has China’s “system” become such a monster? It has kept too many young people in captivity who have no goals and only want safety, constantly reproducing their incompetence, wasting their lives, and eventually swelling into a tumor that endangers the health of the entire society. Whether for the country or for individuals, the construction of institutions (and participation in their construction) is a story of cocooning itself. To break out of this heavy cocoon, without experiencing the pain of rebirth, it may be difficult to gain a new life.

System: the initial setting of contemporary China

Some liberal friends around me have a very naive idea. They feel that as the domestic economy becomes worse and worse, social conflicts become more prominent, and more disasters spread around them, people who still agree with the system will be "taught to behave" and they will To be stirred into rebellion, or at least, to wake up to something.

The reality is just the opposite. In the Chinese context, the worse the environment, the more dominant power is in monopolizing and allocating resources, and the smaller the space for individual autonomy. For most ordinary people, the more they need to rely on power to obtain necessary protection. And this "autonomous space" not only refers to the physical living space, but also the spiritual space will be reduced. In other words, I am afraid that not only will people not "woke up", but they will become more sympathetic to the system.

The popularity of public examinations after the epidemic has somewhat proved this point. When the author was a child, in the 1990s after the restart of reform and opening up, the booming economy followed the call to "emancipate the mind" and "going to sea" became a national craze.

Of course, there is no need to laugh at these liberal friends, these orphans of the golden age. They think this way because they still have free minds. They always believe in human agency - if they are oppressed, they have to fight against the shackles. How can they accept it? So they are people who have the ability to leave this land, whether spiritually or physically.

People often describe the system as a "siege city", and the "siege city" created by the system is the result of power monopolizing resources.

"Before the reform and opening up, China was still in the period of planned economy. Chinese people all belonged to specific units and were exclusive to specific units. Individuals had neither actual political rights nor independent economic credit. Even consumption could only be based on The quantity and variety specified by the ticket are purchased and distributed. The space that can be called "society" because of its diverse, uncertain and flexible attributes is very small." said Professor Gao Bingzhong, a professor at Peking University, whose Civil Society Research Center In 2009, the "Blue Book on the Development of Chinese Civil Society" was released. More than 20 scholars who participated in its compilation at that time agreed that China had entered civil society.

Today's young people naturally regard reform and opening up as China's "initial setting", but in fact, the system is the initial setting of contemporary China. After the reform and opening up, the market appeared outside the system; with the rise of the market economy, people had a private sphere; the private sphere gave birth to people's sense of independence; free people formed "civil society" through free association - these are the New concept.

These new concepts are already "outdated". When the power of the state expands excessively and resource allocation is too much affected by administrative power, then the state will naturally become the biggest exploiter, squeezing the interests of the market and the private sector, and trying to control all aspects of society and individuals. Only by becoming a part of it can ordinary people have channels to get a share of the pie. In order for the system to maintain this kind of privilege, it naturally needs to raise its entry threshold. Therefore, the country creates the spectacle of thousands of troops crossing a single-plank bridge every year, and selects an entire "privileged class" from it.

Of course, the system is not unique to China. The United States and other capitalist countries also have "systems" - government administrative agencies and public service agencies, universities, the military and other systems are also relatively independent of the market and society. They rely on public finances to maintain their operations, receive little market intervention, and rarely circulate resources with society. But the difference is that the state power behind these systems does not monopolize social resources, and the work within the systems does not have such a strong aura of power. Therefore, the system has limited appeal to people, and the barriers to entry are not high. After all, in addition to public power, there are equally strong capital markets and civil society. They form a tripartite state and are able to check, balance and supervise each other. An American who has left college or the military also faces the gap of readjusting to society, but it does not mean that he will not have enough resources and space to survive and develop outside the system.

In recent years, young people who attribute their painful circumstances to "evil capitalists" may not be wrong. After all, capital controlled by the state is considered capital, and the Party’s powerful class will also be the capitalists who control the country’s economic lifeline. This is not to say that private entrepreneurs will not "do evil", but we should ask why this country's laws, labor rights and social security systems are unable to deal with the problems caused by capital, and who is exempt from supervision? In addition, many people on the extreme left or right lack the wisdom to analyze "context" - the nature of things depends on their relationships and proportions. The issue of power is often not about its own good or bad, but about mutual balance and checks and balances. When the power of the state machine is too great, capital will inevitably collude with it, and the weak people can only be reduced to leeks harvested by the two.

For China, which was at the height of its reform and opening up, it made sense to distinguish between the inside and outside of the system, but in a totalitarian country there is actually no space outside the system. It is not government agencies, public institutions, and state-owned enterprises that are called systems. Today's China is a huge "system" with the country as the unit. Because the entire society has been firmly trapped by the state apparatus, there is increasingly no room for autonomy - independent NGOs, independent news media, civil organizations, gatherings, etc. have difficulty surviving, and it is even difficult for everyone to defend their own private sphere and boundaries of physical and mental autonomy.

While this system promises to provide society with support and shelter, we should see that it is this system that creates difficulties for society and that it is complicit in the dark side of capitalism.

The so-called "going ashore" will actually drown people.

It is difficult for ordinary people to find a way out in such a society. People always refer to entering the system as "going ashore", which seems to imply once and for all relief and a happy life "from now on". However, there is another hopeless ordeal within the system, and the voices complaining that work within the system is depressing and numbing, and that it feels like a "waste of life" are equally sharp.

Looking at the self-reports of those who resigned from the system, the problems they most frequently mentioned include: too much administrativeization, politicization, and bureaucracy, and too many matters unrelated to professionalism; people have become screws, and only leaders are obedient. Unable to give full play to their own strengths and abilities; working in a step-by-step, monotonous way, without a sense of accomplishment and meaning; in an inefficient and mediocre atmosphere, doing more or less the same, with no room for development; being in the system is not easy, and things cannot be done well. Free and unable to control one's own time...

People within the system need to bear the problems of the system, which is particularly painful when the system conflicts with people—with their character, reason, values, moral intuition and other traits.

An author, Qiao Jialan, who once worked as a teacher at a university in Shanghai, recorded his resignation experience after teaching for ten years. This article became popular across the Internet but was quickly blocked. The author claims that teaching and academic freedom have suffered from too much political interference, and that students have become eager for quick success and intolerant of dissent due to the influence of the general environment. It was not easy for me to meet some students who were enthusiastic and seeking knowledge and came for an interview, but they were discriminated against and turned away by the school leaders.

"In recent years, ideological control in colleges and universities has become more in-depth. Every course syllabus and teaching plan has been revised, and more than three ideological and political knowledge points must be added, which is disgusting. Later, it developed to the point where every class must have ideological and political content. 'Course Ideology and Politics' was In the past few years, individual teachers applied for the project to receive funds, but now it has become 100% covered. Every teacher must connect his or her class with ideological and political education.

During one class break last year, an academic supervisor suddenly came in through the back door and sat down to inspect the class. After class, he walked to the podium to talk to me and asked me why I hadn’t heard about the ideological and political content. I lied and said that you had just talked about it before coming. At that time, I The students in the first few rows of the class immediately responded and helped me fool me, tacitly understanding each other and smiling at each other. "

I can relate to his experience. Because I used to be a university teacher in my hometown, teaching architectural design, and then I made up my mind to resign and study abroad, and I never looked back. At that time, the politicization of schools was not that serious, but it was normal for administration to take precedence over teaching.

When I first started taking classes, I was very enthusiastic about teaching, because I found that the students in the class generally had poor basic skills. The other teacher and I used our spare time to work hard to formulate supplementary teaching and practice content for them. The response from pupils has been excellent, with some gifted children making rapid progress. But it didn’t take long before we were reported to the school by students and teachers from another class for teaching content that “went beyond the syllabus.” The course was suspended, and we were even investigated and interviewed.

Later, I discovered that even some basic autonomy of teachers was interfered with. For example, if students failed a class if they failed, the vice-dean would call to advise: "Don't fail too many, give higher scores, otherwise the students' grades will not be good." It looks good, and it will also affect the future evaluation of our department." At the end, he added: "This is also to protect you teachers." Sometimes even an ordinary counselor can call and ask for a grade change for a student with whom he has a good relationship. And those teachers who know how to cooperate with the leader's agenda without caring about the students receive the most appreciation.

But to be fair, these little annoyances were nothing compared to the stable and leisurely working atmosphere of colleges and universities. I quickly got used to muddle along and became a person who was good at paddling and doing things perfunctorily. By the time I came to my senses, I had fallen deeply into the quagmire of laziness and was unable to extricate myself. I stopped growing at a young age, I couldn’t feel the meaning of my work, and I didn’t know why I was alive. I fell into a chronic state of depression, day after day, feeling hopeless about the future.

What confuses me the most is why, even though I am living a very painful life, people around me still say good things and envy me for having the "best career for women" recognized by the establishment and the whole people. My parents are also worried about my "perfect arrival". Satisfied. At the beginning, I also warned myself not to "not know the blessings despite being in the midst of blessings." Later, I suspected that this was a huge lie - is this the "happy life" that the Chinese middle class has built for their children since childhood? Just ridiculous.

I tried all kinds of "self-help", reading, working out, writing, raising cats and dogs, backpacking... but these activities failed to calm my anxiety and reactivate me. I realized that if I still want to stay in the safe zone, unwilling to take any risks, and only dare to obtain entertainment through consumption, the so-called "self-improvement" is just deceiving myself.

Now I understand that what really prompted me to leave was an existential crisis. I have seen some people leave the system in their forties or fifties. They suddenly overturned their previous lives and completely changed their trajectory. This "system" does not only refer to public office, but to their mainstream life. They quit their jobs, get divorced, immigrate, study again... and decide to do what they have always wanted. Because when life approaches aging or even death, people will always have an urgent impulse - they want to live truly, they want to go to the real world, because they want to find and practice their true self.

However, when more than half of life has passed, the cost of leaving has become too great. I was lucky enough to feel this urge in my early thirties and choose to trust my feelings. I couldn't listen to everyone's advice. I even had a big fight with my parents and had to leave. To others this may seem like willfulness, but to me it is a life or death decision.

The family is often the front line of the system

Seven years have passed by in a flash, but the feeling when I left is still fresh in my memory. Now I am accustomed to life in Canada, I have made friends who are like family, and I am doing a job that I love. This is just an ordinary life. It can no longer compare with everything I had in China, but it is what I have worked hard to obtain.

During this journey, I was once high-spirited, then drifted, and there were times when I hit rock bottom. After experiencing the blow, I was no longer young and frivolous. But looking back, it can be called an extraordinary hero's journey. The people I met, the things I experienced, and the inspiration they brought me were things I could never have imagined when I was in the system. It all helped me know who I am and ultimately who I am. The precious things in my life also came to light in this process.

Because I have experienced it myself, I understand better how difficult it is to successfully break away from the system and break away from an institutionalized life. To cope with the huge uncertainty that comes with freedom, in addition to your own unremitting struggle, you also need a lot of "privilege" and luck. Although my parents did not agree with my choice at first, they gave me unreserved support later on. Every time I failed, they did not take the opportunity to ridicule me, and they never brought up the past, but only encouraged me to get back on my feet. Feel free to try again next time. But I will never forget that it was my "stubbornness" that restarted my life. I am proud that I did not surrender myself. When I hit the road, because of their love for me, they had to learn, grow, and adjust their mentality and vision with me, and then they gradually came together with me.

As mentioned before, China is a huge system. Generations of "Old Chinese" in this land, long before we want to take the public examination, long before we enter society, we have been regulated by the system. training. The consistency between the state and the family means that the family is often the front line of discipline. If parents lack reflection on the system, then these disciplines will be channeled through kinship and carried out in the name of love, and their effect will exceed that of the state machine.

Speaking of family discipline, Wang Lu's article "It's Worth a Fart" impressed me deeply. He told the story of his nephew who loved sports and was forced to take the college entrance examination, but failed. It is pointed out from this that Chinese parents always pass on to their children the concept of "cannot afford to lose", so the children's failures can only be used to prove the parents' correctness and establish their authority.

"This is the coercion of family ties. Even in the most subtle way. I have seen too many children like my nephew. If they want to learn sports, art, or something else, the parents will have this attitude: You have to learn, We won't stop you. No matter how difficult it is at home, we will still provide for you, but one thing is that you have to study hard and give credit to your family. Since you have been given the opportunity and you can't learn well, don't say anything to your family in the future. Whatever is arranged for you to do, you do it.”

"The concept of 'can't afford to lose' will permeate the child's youth and adolescence bit by bit from elementary school, to junior high school, to high school. The more obedient a child is, the harder it will be to withstand this dual pressure of morality and family affection. Turn a person who has followed the instructions of parents and teachers honestly and step-by-step into a person full of guilt and guilt." - Only when those in power deprive you of your confidence in independence and trust in yourself will you be willing to Give him the control and let him make the judgment for you, because you believe he knows better than you what is good for you.

Intolerance for making mistakes is a form of totalitarian control. In fact, everyone makes mistakes and learns from them. Making mistakes is the way for a person to calibrate his direction and eliminate the false while retaining the true. When the society's error tolerance rate is too low and the cost of individual trial and error is too high, too many people are afraid of "detours" and avoid them. As a result, after half a lifetime, I didn’t even know what I wanted or didn’t want, which was the biggest mistake in my life.

Are you really out of the system?

The most shocking thing to me recently is a non-fiction story written by Sandwich , "I regret resigning from the system, and at the age of 38, I prepare to take the exam again." The author Yuan Qi is a woman who works as a social worker in the community. She cannot stand the oppression of her boss. With no prospects for development, he resigned from the system at the age of 38. But after encountering the cruel social reality, she regretted it so much that she fell into depression and desperately wanted to get back into the system.

It is extremely suffocating to read the author's repeated mental suicide and his almost obsessive obsession with the "system". In another article , she once clearly recorded the ins and outs of her resignation - the pressure from her leaders had threatened her physical and mental health, and this was just the last straw that broke her back. For more than ten years before this, she had long been tired of this job and wanted to seek more career possibilities. Therefore, leaving the system was not a hot-headed decision on her part, but one that had been in the works for a long time.

However, after resigning, she accidentally learned that "the social worker's salary has increased significantly." Coupled with the frustration in finding a job, she suddenly felt unbalanced. She seemed to have completely forgotten her previous feelings and desires, completely overturned her previous ideas, fell into extreme self-blame and self-denial, and even began to complain that her parents did not stop her early.

"I feel like I'm an idiot who left the game early because I didn't know the rules of the game. I even started to hate my parents for not telling me when I first entered this unit, 'Although I will make less money, it will increase and I can do it.'" Retire; but you must not lose your job when you are almost 40, otherwise you will become an unemployed person in your 40s or 50s.' They just said, 'Just stay here.' How do I know how long to stay? How to stay? Why to stay? ?”

This is really surprising. A 38-year-old person doesn’t know what the real society is like? And still relies on her parents to take responsibility for her life? But when I thought about it, I couldn't blame her too much. After all, she was so broken because of the age discrimination, gender discrimination and vicious competition she encountered when applying for a job. The oppression of individuals by this abnormal workplace environment should not be normalized.

It takes great courage for the author to frankly expose his own vulnerability, and it also allows more people to understand how the fateful tragedy of old China is formed - about how this system uses reward and punishment mechanisms to discipline people, and more importantly, Why people have completely lost the ability to rise above the system.

This person who ran away from the "system" actually failed to escape the system. If she still retains her true physical and mental feelings, her reflection on the system, and her initiative to resist it in the system, she has been destroyed by the system through her complete denial of herself and her heartfelt re-understanding of the system.

"I love Big Brother." - At the end of "1984", Orwell had already revealed this destruction.

At the end of the article, Yuan Qi wrote: "I also particularly question the saying 'life is a wilderness, not a track'. It is a popular saying on social networks, and it probably only applies to people who use the Internet for self-media, right? ——I think so. Because the bloody and cruel reality does not provide sufficient objective conditions for life to become a wilderness!"

The terrible thing about the system is that it castrates people's self, deprives people of their abilities, and plunges them into a state of incompetence. The scary thing is not that you have no security without it, but that it has subtly shaped your weak values, narrow vision, extremely poor imagination about life and the world, and instilled in you excessive greed and fear. People who have been disciplined by it can no longer take charge of themselves, and they can only recognize and pursue the values ​​they understand and are familiar with through the system.

When I was in the system, I wanted to give up because of the boss’s difficulties and the pressure of work. After I resigned, I was hit by reality, and I thought about the good things in the system day and night. A person will not automatically grow just because he leaves the system. She It is still the same as when he was in the system. At most, he knows how to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, but he does not yet have the free will to control his own destiny.

When the bubble of the system is broken, it is normal to encounter disillusionment and trauma, but those who are incapable will desperately want to return to the illusion of the past, while those who are capable will quickly adjust their cognition to face reality. I believe she will soon realize that the other side of the crisis is actually an opportunity, an opportunity to return to the truth. If you seize this opportunity and grit your teeth and go on, you might be able to survive, gradually open up a new path, continue to gain more new knowledge and abilities, and eventually transcend the system.

The value of life does not exist outside the system out of thin air, nor does it exist anywhere out of thin air. They all need to be created in practice through 120,000 efforts and even high costs. As a reader left a message after Yuan Qi's article: "'Life is a wilderness, not a track' only applies to those who are determined to overcome all difficulties and inner fears and turn life into a wilderness. If you think it is what it is, go and explore it. It’s just vast.”

I believe that society is so big that it cannot be monolithic. There should be gaps everywhere to accommodate deviants. Although the space for living outside the system will become increasingly cramped as the environment deteriorates, it often means deprivation, poverty, and loneliness... But for many people with a clear mind, choosing such a life is a moral obligation - they Refuse to be complicit in the system.

Finally, I would like to share the end of one of my favorite articles : "Life is like a long-distance rally over mountains and ridges. The journey is so long, there are so many unknown risks, and the starting point is higher or lower, but it only affects the beginning. As long as If you keep running, you will eventually realize that the benefits you were given at birth are all in vain. In the end, you have to rely on yourself. You must rely on your own feet to run, your own perseverance to support you, and your own strong heart muscle to pump your blood. .Compared with those enviable assets and social status, the intangible things given by your family are more precious, such as the words and deeds of your parents, the sound mind and body they helped shape for you, the support of your family, and the independence and self-improvement they taught you since childhood. etc……"

When you have gone your own way, look back - you did lose some "benefits" when you left the system, but when your mind has already grown to a higher level and you no longer recognize the values ​​of the past, why would you? Are you sad about this?