□ Tan Jiawen ( Hunan Women's College )
Starting from the second half of 2020, the word " inner volume " is reflected in our lives all the time. Some people can't bear the burden of "996" and "postgraduate entrance examination fever", so they choose to "lie down", live in a daze, and resolutely resist "involution". What exactly is involution? Where does it come from? What does it mean again?
Regarding involution, I think the most accurate expression is: "The process of continuous refinement and development of a system under the circumstance that the external expansion is restricted." This concept has an important condition, that is, "external expansion is restricted". An explanation of this condition can be traced back to Geertz's 1963 book on Indonesia, The Involution of Agriculture. Geertz found that due to the lack of advanced technology and the limited land resources of Java Island , it was impossible to extend agriculture outwards, resulting in the unlimited filling of labor into the limited rice production.
Meanwhile, let's look at the country with the most involution right now - South Korea. The top ten chaebols monopolize high-tech and high-tech industries, contributing nearly half of the country's GDP, resulting in serious homogenization competition. Students have to work hard to squeeze into the "City of the Sky" - the three major universities in South Korea, and the "City of the Sky" almost monopolizes the opportunity to rise. Data shows that 90% of South Korean parliamentarians are from the "City of the Sky", but the "City of the Sky" The city's acceptance rate is only 2%. When
compares the two, it is not difficult to find that the two introversions have three things in common: the inability to develop advanced technologies, external expansion is restricted, and internal resources are limited. And in the context of today's industrial society, we should pay attention to a question: why can't we develop advanced technology?
Combined with the situation in Korea, the answer is self-evident. It is the monopoly of capital in the high-tech and high-tech industries that makes most people unable to obtain effective resources and thus have no real opportunity for innovation. People either try their best to squeeze into those big companies, or they repeat the same work in other fields, the homogenization competition is serious, and they desperately compete for limited resources, which leads to the " inflation " of efforts, that is, "internal refinement. development”.
So why is external expansion restricted? From an economic point of view, due to the fact that new technologies have not yet been developed and economic growth has slowed down, the original resources are limited; at the same time, the high-tech and high-tech fields are monopolized by capital, resulting in “the cake cannot be bigger” and “the cake cannot be divided equally” " situation. That is to say, the efficiency has not been improved, but the balance has continued to tilt towards the status quo of capital.
and the serious homogenization competition caused by limited internal resources, on the surface, it is an objective fact of last resort, but in essence it reflects the " commodity fetishism " that has been rampant in human society for more than a hundred years. We might as well look back on society, are all internal resources limited? No, it's just that resources are limited in some popular areas, such as educational resources and jobs. And why do we only compete for these popular resources while ignoring others? The reason comes from the "digital thinking" derived from "commodity fetishism" in modern society.
The essence of "commodity fetishism" mentioned by Marx in " Das Kapital " is: the thinking tendency derived from capital logic, everything can be measured by money, people worship the price of things, not the price of the price. the thing itself to worship. This cultural tendency promotes the objectification of people, ignores the inner life of people, and regards people as a tool to promote economic development. The ultimate goal is to let others continue to create wealth for the bourgeoisie. Marx also put forward in "Das Kapital": "The soul of capital is the soul of capitalists, and capital has only one instinct, which is to multiply itself." The "digital thinking" derived from "commodity fetishism" in modern society, in the former Harvard Gould, the University Librarian, is well summarised in his book Human Miscalculation, Serialized Thinking and Substantiated Thinking.
serialization thinking refers to ordering things according to a random judgment standard, and strive to distinguish the best. For example, under the huge pressure of employment nowadays, the "fraction-only theory" of education ignores the personal development of students, and regards the score as the only criterion for evaluating whether a student is excellent. This kind of thinking does not respect the differences and diversity of each individual, simplifies complex issues, is very misleading, and cannot make accurate judgments on things. At the same time, modern people frantically compete for popular resources, and homogenization is a serious phenomenon.
Materialized ThinkingIt is the cultural tendency of people to find physical sustenance for abstract concepts, and it also reflects their love for simple and clear answers. Therefore, when people want to judge some things, they tend to regard artificial sequences as the essence of things, and fall into the prison of single-dimensional thinking.
At the same time, "digital thinking" still has the characteristics of its parent "commodity fetishism", that is, ignoring the connotation of things themselves, and only judged by a random extension standard.
what do we get? What does society get? Seems to get nothing. Because only the capitalists benefit, they harvest the wealth created by the laborers over and over again, and at the same time block the rising channels of talents, and use the bad money to drive out the good money , delusional manipulation of economic development.
and Capitalism treats laborers as tools and ignores the behavior of human beings, which is the destruction of diversity and the desecration of human inner life. Why not conflict with the banner of "humanistic spirit" held high? The freedom they speak of is nothing more than sacrificing the interests of the general public in exchange for their own freedom. There was a popular saying on the
network that "everyone hates involution, but can't see a way out." But I think that when we understand the nature and reason of involution, it is just around the corner to get out of involution. It is precisely because of the monopoly of capital in the high-tech industry that
cannot provide everyone with opportunities to innovate, so it cannot develop advanced technologies, resulting in serious homogenization competition among the people. It is also due to the fierce one-dimensional competition caused by the "digital thinking" further derived from capital logic, which will lead to everyone competing for hot resources and ignoring people's own development.
Marx once wrote in the book " on the Jewish question ": "All liberation is to return the world of man and the relationship of man to man himself." So, how to avoid involution, or end involution ? We only need to prescribe the right medicine. On the one hand, we need to improve our self-awareness, cultivate diversified thinking, and improve our own abilities, instead of thinking that only popular resources are valuable. On the other hand, public opinion should guide people to pay more attention to people themselves, to improve the connotation of humanistic spirit, to pay attention to inner life, and to pay attention to personal development, instead of blindly comparing monthly salaries and changing tricks to " Versailles ", with salary as a single standard to measure individual excellence. In short, to avoid involution, it is necessary to properly handle the relationship between fairness and efficiency, comprehensively crack down on capital monopoly, provide people with more equal opportunities for innovation, and promote the all-round development of people.