Middle-aged pink in a small county: studying the world situation while eating and waiting to die

Article Source | Public Number: Sololouse

"The epidemic in the United States is serious, and Trump plays golf leisurely."

In this regard, the Americans are not angry, but Zhang Liqiang, who is in a small county in China across the Pacific Ocean, is very angry. As soon as the "Today's Toutiao" news came out, Zhang Liqiang immediately posted a circle of friends, strongly condemning Trump.

"The Canadian court has pronounced the verdict, and Meng Wanzhou has not been released."

This made him grit his teeth even more. Across the screen, I can imagine that the frank he will definitely show the intense hatred on his face.

More than 20 years ago, when we were working in a small town, because of our shared hatred for the United States, after playing mahjong in the evening, we often went to the small night market shop together, and the green plums boiled wine and scolded the American emperor.

After twenty years of absence, I finally got in touch with him. On the day I returned to the small county town, when I was about to reach the small shop he runs, I swiped this Moments he posted. He was untouched, still "pink". The difference is that the "little pink" in those days has now become "middle-aged pink", and I have already "changed color".

In early 2000, when I left the town and went to work in Xiamen alone, we were only 27 years old. Now both I and he have run five. Zhang Liqiang and I have been out of touch for 20 years. The information technology revolution has made WeChat. WeChat, let us meet again.

In the late 1980s, he and I were admitted to different high schools in the county. The biggest embarrassment that our high school students encountered growing up was that the cultural atmosphere of the 1980s was open and diverse, but our minds were not mature enough to draw spiritual nutrients from it. We were in high school, and just about to open our eyes to see the world, the relationship between China and the West suddenly became tense.

We completed three years of high school in the picture of a world of rivalry between ourselves and the enemy that was portrayed by the textbooks and the media. The worldview of the vast majority of us, along with our height, stops growing once we graduate. In our minds, the black and white way of thinking and the world schema of either enemy or friend are almost our common spiritual birthmark. Many people live into their 40s and enjoy the benefits of economic globalization, but they still fail to understand what globalization really means.

At that time, the university did not expand its enrollment, not to mention the undergraduate, it was very difficult to take the junior college entrance examination. Fortunately, after graduating from high school, he and I were recruited to work in a state-owned enterprise in a township and township, and we won the iron job that many people envied in those years.

In the era of no Internet, the spiritual life of the town is very poor. Every night, the only way to pass the time is to play mahjong or sing karaoke. "News Network" and "Reference News" are the only way we can understand the situation in the world.

"Reference News" has not many pages, and all of the above are the news reported by foreign media in the original text. One of the pages that attracted us the most was "Foreigners Look at China". In those years, just a few years after the implementation of the market economy reform, China's economic aggregate was not large, and every year, the US Congress suffered "difficulties" for "most-favored-nation treatment for trade". The less confident you are, the more you want the recognition of other countries. Every compliment from foreign power is enough to make many people rejoice.

As a strategy for running a newspaper, Reference News from time to time reprints several foreign media criticisms of China. Not only is this not enough to subvert our sense of happiness, but on the contrary, it makes people feel that this newspaper provides a true perspective on all aspects of the world and China. The compliments it reprinted are therefore more credible.

There is no bookstore in the town, so you can't buy this newspaper, it all depends on the unit to subscribe. The postman delivers it to the unit every morning. The director and deputy director have the priority to read it, and then it is our ordinary employees' turn. Every afternoon, a few of our young colleagues would wait at the door ahead of time around 2:30, when the deputy director is expected to finish reading. We are eager to know how foreign countries praise our China.

Our state-owned enterprise has only a few dozen employees, full of illiterate and semi-literate people, and high school is the highest degree. We naturally became "intellectuals" in the eyes of our colleagues. In 1998, the Bush administration of the United States wanted to develop and study the theater missile defense system TMD, and we were often so nervous that we often stayed up at night. In 1999, the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was accidentally bombed by the US military. On that day, during working hours, my colleagues sat in front of the TV set of their work unit and watched CCTV news roll out that several famous college students in Beijing protested at the gate of the US embassy.

Zhang Liqiang and I denounced the United States loudly in front of our colleagues. My anger and his anger are sincere. Of course, this anger also secretly gave us a kind of psychological satisfaction: we used our anger to remind our colleagues that the two of us who were in high school belonged to the same kind of people who were protesting in front of the American embassy on TV news: we Both have culture and have an international perspective.

During the reform of state-owned enterprises in 2000, Zhang Liqiang and I were laid off at the same time. After the Spring Festival, I went to Xiamen to work alone, worried about whether the DPP would win the elections in Taiwan. He returned to the county seat and opened a grocery store to make a living. Unexpectedly, this separation is 20 years, and there is no connection between them.

That night, a colleague wanted to treat me. After four o'clock in the afternoon, I went to his store to meet him. Although we haven't seen each other for 20 years, we are not surprised that the other party is greasy in middle age, and we already have expectations in our hearts. He greeted me to sit down first, the computer WeChat group was chatting hot, and he wanted to close. He is chatting with several local friends in small towns about Meng Wanzhou's experience and the epidemic in the United States in the "Elite Kanzheng WeChat Group". They agreed: "There must be a war between China and the United States"; "The epidemic in the United States shows that it is a country that is beginning to decline. China will definitely surpass the United States. Let's not be afraid of the United States."

Seeing the word "elite" makes me feel a little funny. Could it be that by talking about international politics, these middle-aged pink people in small county towns with a junior high school education have found the feeling of "elite"?

This reminds me of myself when I frequently expressed anger at the United States in front of my colleagues. All in all, there may be some psychological needs hidden behind many people's scolding of the United States and their open conversations about the world situation. To be honest, in those years, only by paying attention to the world situation through "News Network" and "Reference News" can Zhang Liqiang and I feel that we are no worse than those who went to college.

Small county towns in the transitional zone between urban and rural areas accommodate a small number of successful people, but a large number of "frustrated people". Successful people come from villages and towns. They have money. The highest ideal is to buy a suite in the county town and become a city person. The "frustrated" are all natives of the county town. They are "frustrated" when they fail to jump out to work and live in a larger city, but watch the country people who were looked down upon in the past catch up with them.

Here, the so-called "employment", there are only two ways. One is stable employment. Those are civil servants and public institutions within the system that only a few people can enter. The other is precarious employment. Most people work for small shops or factories to make a living or run their own businesses. The population base is small, the market capacity is small, and there are very few people who can expand their business. Most people struggle to gain self-identity from work. Therefore, under the surface of increasing urbanization, there is always a sense of loss floating in the city well of the county.

Many people are eager to escape, but are blocked by their ability, education or high housing prices in big cities. From paying attention to the world situation, they seem to be able to obtain an illusory sense of "rushing out" of prison escape. From the strength of the country, they can gain a sense of pride that cannot be obtained from work. This seems to be enough to explain why the box office revenue of the movie "Wolf Warrior" is mainly provided by small counties and fourth- and fifth-tier cities.

Today, on this planet, the only thing preventing China from becoming a superpower is the United States. Who doesn't hate America?

Several recent copies of the Global Times were placed on the counter of the shop. Zhang Liqiang said that he has not read "Reference News" for many years. This is not surprising. Over the past decade, the newspaper has become increasingly marginalized. This is the logical consequence of China's growing power: we are so powerful that we don't care what foreign media think of us. We just need to tell the story of China well. The Global Times, which is good at telling stories, has naturally become the most popular newspaper.

Unlike "Reference News", which is full of foreign news, "Global Times" almost only provides a Chinese perspective. The keynote of its newspaper is that it strives to tell the people how good China is and how the West is not good or does not want to see China good. As a condiment, occasionally it will put a few criticisms of certain issues in China that only Hu Xijin is qualified to publish in China. As a strategy, these criticisms served to make the paper more objective and authoritative in the eyes of readers.

If in 2000, I hadn’t seen the rare bestseller among the academic works of that year, The Trap of Modernization, the first award-winning book of the “Yangtze River Book Award”, in the bookstore next to Xiamen University, would I be loyal to the Global Times today? What about readers?

At that time, Xiamen University Street was not demolished. In that neighborhood where youth, religion, life, business and culture coexist harmoniously, there are many brick-and-mortar bookstores. They offer books that are simply unavailable in small towns and small counties. They pull my eyes from the world back to home.

I gradually realized that China has made great economic achievements in the past few decades of reform and opening up, but if the accumulated contradictions are not resolved in time, it may be hard to come back. According to the "Social Blue Book" of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published by People's Daily Online, there are more than 100,000 mass incidents every year due to various social conflicts. We should first focus on solving domestic problems. China and the United States should not be enemies, but partners for win-win cooperation.

After closing WeChat, Zhang Liqiang suddenly turned around and called me "Professor", "You were well laid off back then. If you hadn't been laid off, would you have been admitted to graduate school for a Ph.D.?"

He began to complain about his situation in the years after he was laid off. The store business has been half-dead. My wife doesn't have a job, and my kids are going to college right away. If admitted, four years of college will cost a lot of money. After graduation, the child has to worry about working and buying a house.

"There is no hope in my life. I can only hope that my children will not live as useless as me in the future." He described his current state as "eating and waiting to die".

After being laid off, in order to ensure that you can get a pension at the age of 60. He also has to pay several thousand yuan for social security and medical insurance every year. There are more than ten years before retirement, and he has already begun to complain about the dual-track treatment after retirement. As a corporate retiree, his pension is expected to be just over 2,000 yuan a month in the future.

"You don't think it's fair, do you?" I asked.

"Of course it's not fair. But there's injustice in America, too." His answer reminded me.

I am clearly talking about the domestic dual-track retirement system. Why did he immediately mention the United States and emphasize that the United States is also unfair? I am both puzzled and understand. Just like more than 20 years ago, whenever he hears any criticism of certain aspects of China, the picture of Sino-US "death and life" will immediately pop up in his mind. In his perception, any criticism of China is to elevate the United States in disguise.

I heard that I was studying world history. During the dinner in the evening, he specially called a few friends from the "elite WeChat group" and said that he wanted to have a good chat with me about the world situation.

"The United States is very rampant recently," he said bitterly.

After 20 years without any contact, he thought that I still belonged to the same ideological pedigree as him, and he looked forward to revisiting his memories and denounced the American emperor with me.

In the evening, there were four local "elites" he invited. They are all five, either laid-off workers from state-owned enterprises, or self-employed. When it comes to corruption, there is pain in the flesh, but at the same time, they all agree that corruption also exists in the United States. They seem to have a deep hatred for America.

Seeing that these people who will be grandfathers or grandpas in a few years, do not care whether the milk powder their offspring will eat in the future, but rely on today's headlines and "Zhi Dao Xue Gong" to study the world situation every day, I can't help suggesting them. , instead of hating the United States every day, it is better to be more concerned about food safety issues.

"Many problems, the more people pay attention, the faster they can be solved." I suggested.

They immediately became anxious: "Which country has no problems? Don't always have trouble with your own country. No matter how bad the profiteers and corrupt officials are, we are all a family behind closed doors. We can't let the Americans bully us all the time."

I said, "How can it be difficult to live with your own country when you pay attention to the existing problems? The rational and gentle expression of concern by the common people is also helping the government to better prioritize and make better decisions."

They disagreed: "Do you think the officials will be stupider than us? What should we worry about."

During the more than two hours of eating and chatting, I sighed from time to time, the information technology revolution, the popularization of mobile Internet access, and the most hurt subject is international politics. Most of the articles on international politics are narrative and do not require abstract and profound theories, which can be understood after graduating from junior high school. Fragments of information about international politics are everywhere on the Internet. Just pick up a broom and sweep it, and you will be able to sweep a bunch of baskets. So much so that international politics has now become a public topic with the lowest threshold. However, when talking about the world situation, the force is very high.

Lies and fallacies are difficult to falsify because they speak foreign affairs, so it is difficult for people who are not good at critical thinking in the field of international politics to realize that they are wrong.

The Internet promotes the dissemination of knowledge and also dispels the charm of knowledge. In the era of no Internet, people with low education level are generally in awe of knowledge and education. Nowadays, you can search for a lot of "knowledge" by picking up your mobile phone and Baidu. Some technical terms that used to sound "tall" can now be "picked up" everywhere on the Internet. After they were pulled down from the academic "altar" by Baidu Encyclopedia, they have become so cheap that they can be used to fill the gaps between the teeth , so that some political concepts that even professionals do not fully understand, such as populism, are often associated with women, mahjong, and Mark Six. And so on, the topics are mixed together, floating on the night market stalls in the small county town.

Filled with fragments of information, their brains are overloaded with no room for dissent. The pieces of information at their fingertips gave them anti-intellectual confidence. Although they were not highly educated, these friends at the dinner table unceremoniously laughed at the public knowledge, at the experts, and at me, "I'm a fool for reading and speaking for the United States." As a university teacher, the only thing they envy is not my doctorate, but the future pension of the institution.

They despise their neighbors, colleagues and friends who don't care about the world situation, and lose their vigilance against the conspiracy of the United States. "They don't know how these people will be killed by the United States in the future." Rewarding the "Zhi Dao Xue Gong" is "the humble dare not forget the national worries". Give the author a little encouragement so that they can create more "wake up" works.

There is only one truth in everything, but there can be many versions of lies, because lies can be fabricated without cost. Internet access on mobile phones is conducive to the dissemination of knowledge and the replication of lies. What we see all too often now is a truth besieged by dozens of lies in public discussions.

Not only will it be difficult for you to convince the middle-aged and elderly pink whose brains are occupied by fragments and lies, but you may be refuted by them as "incomplete". For example, you say that Lincoln freed the slaves and was a good president. They can refute you by citing dozens of "heinous crimes" committed by Lincoln. They firmly believe that those are the truths, but you cannot falsify them.

In the face of these middle-aged pinks who never touch books and rely entirely on mobile phones to obtain information, their logic is powerless, their thinking is pale, and they have more fragments in their brains than anyone else. Even a scholar of international politics who has learned to be rich in five cars will probably fall into a deep sense of powerlessness.

On this early summer night, these few middle-aged pinks in small county towns were enjoying the thrill of the illusion of "looking down at the world and discussing the world" in their spittle, but I was saddened to see that this was obviously an information overload. In this era, people are increasingly living in isolated islands of information. Israeli scholar Yuval Harari said that in the age of underdeveloped information, it is difficult for people to obtain the truth. In the age of information explosion, people only believe the truth that conforms to their own values.

In this "post-truth era", the only pieces of information that can be put into people's heads are those pieces of information that are compatible with the original cognition. The more they pretend, the more "confident" they become. The more homogeneous the content, the more paranoid they are. In the polarization of ideas, different groups of people are coerced by emotions and prejudices, rational dialogue is becoming more and more difficult, and society is constantly moving towards tearing apart.

The moment I left the night market stall, I suddenly became "enlightened" uncharacteristically. Perhaps, Zhang Weiwei, a famous person from Fudan University, Jin Canrong, a professor at the National People's University, Zhang Zhaozhong, the director of the bureau, and the founder of "Zhi Dao Xue Gong"... are the most "top wisdom" people in this era. In the face of such a huge pink group, since you can't change them, why not use them to make money? If you can't get along with them, isn't it just hard to get along with money?

Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qTD4VjH88_MuDdWOYIpn3g