Wake up, post-90s, your mid-life crisis is coming

Recently, Hebei No. 1 Cinema released an article saying that by forwarding the circle of friends, you can watch movies for free with the elderly at home. The

article specially marked the elderly: born in 1970-1985. In other words, a 37-year-old has been identified as an elderly person.

In the later response, the studio staff said that most of the people at this age are parents, and it is exaggerated to classify them as "old people". Although it is meant to be joking, the psychology behind it is very interesting and worth investigating.

Neil Postman , the author of " Amusement to Death ", has also written a book called " Childhood Gone ". "Childhood cannot exist without a sufficiently developed sense of shame," he said.

But I think it's more accurate to express it this way: "Without enough developed innocence, childhood will disappear."

In China, it doesn't matter whether childhood is disappearing, but youth seems to be disappearing. From time to time there are some half-truths that permeate. For example, "old people born in 1980", "34 years old to have children", "she fell in love with me, a 29-year-old middle-aged uncle"...

put it on the label of "post-90s", and the more people who shouted "mid-life crisis" more and more. And among them, the oldest is only 32 years old. According to the "Medium and Long-Term Youth Development Plan (2016-2025)" issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council, youth refers to people between the ages of 14 and 35. In terms of biological age, the majority of young fresh meat comrades born in the 1990s seem not to be able to mix in with China. Revolutionary ranks of young people. But why don't you have the confidence to say that you are young?

Language is a psychological phenomenon; psychology is a social phenomenon; society is a political and economic phenomenon; In this article, I would like to draw a mental map of youth, a portrait of social psychology from the macroscopic social- psychological mechanism .

Action

I have always had a strong interest in the psychological research of youth. From the perspective of people's psychological characteristics, the ego is still being formed during childhood, and socialization is not obvious; after middle age, although the degree of socialization has been deep, the ego has been relatively solidified, and the psychological structure is not the same as the established one. The social structure has a high degree of isomorphism, but is not sensitive to changes that shake this social structure.

youth is different. Their egos are at a moment when they are formed but not solidified, so social bells and whistles can always skim and leave their mark on their psyche, and they like to shout it out in exactly what they think is fashionable. Therefore, if there are changes in the youth, it must mean that the society has changed.

Young people are quietly changing society (Still photo of "Youth Pie 2")

The young people I have contacted online and offline range from county towns in "sixth-tier cities" to first-tier cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen. They are either walking on the streets, or haunting college campuses, or have their own social positions in office buildings and government offices, or play games in the Internet cafes in the county, or they are simply a networker in the live broadcast room. Red fans. More and more I find that many of them lack something, a thing called "mobility".

I would like to explain what "movement" is. Definitions that pretend to be academic but say nothing is not used here.

According to a formula I have expounded about human existence - human existence = mind + mind + personality + body, action force is the ability of personality to do what one wants to do after the mind and psychology have cognition and experience. Take responsibility, drive the body to act, and in the process, gain a sense of power, and allow yourself to have a close and specific connection with others and the world, thereby changing and improving yourself and the world. It is somewhat similar to what Wang Yangming and called "the unity of knowledge and action", but of course, it does not reach the profound state of "the unity of knowledge and action".

​​The pain and anxiety we experience will eventually make us grow (The Big Bang Theory)

If a person has the power to act, he must be able to feel that he is alive. Facing the world, even if he has no sense of control, he still has a sense of power. Such a person cannot be in a state of self-repression, nor is he particularly self-conscious, because, in the structure of "self-world", his self is neither repressed by the world nor in order to survive psychologically. And deliberately make yourself appear taller than the world.

If he were a young man, he would be full of passion, dreams, and self-confidence. It is impossible to say that he has a "midlife crisis" - the so-called middle age is still very far away from his state of existence.

It's not just young people who have the power to confirm that they are young. Even if a person is over 40 years old, if he is full of energy and how he can experience the passion of life, not just the way of playing in society, he will not feel old and there will be no "middle-aged" mentality. Like life experience, mobility represents a state of being.

The mentality is not old, forever young (still photo of "Welcome")

A person who has no action may have cognition in his head and experience in psychology, but his personality cannot afford to transform cognition and experience into action. He is only mentally and psychologically connected to the world, but he is not willing to connect with the world through actions.

is like the countless otakus I saw in the Internet cafes in the county town and the live broadcast studios. They just use their minds and psychology to recognize and experience the world in front of them, and such a world is constructed through media and technology. of. An inactive person who tends to escape reality and live in another virtual world.

Without truth, there is no power.

from abstract back to concrete

During my research, I discovered a feature that surprised me.

We like to talk about how the youth are, how the post-90s and post-00s are, and how are the young men, men of science and technology, and the second generation of rich people. This holistic thinking or labeling thinking presupposes that these people are homogeneous groups. The reason for this is to save cognitive resources, and we have implicitly admitted that these groups are not so homogenous. So everyone can understand that no one will give a counter example to slap in the face.

But now, it is very suspicious to use words that seem suspicious of homogenization thinking to say how young people are. There is only one reason left, that is, there is no way, we have to adopt this kind of "universal thinking" when we know the world, because once we adopt "specific thinking", you can only speak of a single person or a small group.

My observations and investigations tell me that the degree of heterogeneity among youth is now very high. The so-called "rich second generation" and "poor second generation" are not only different species, but also different psychological species. Likewise, it is difficult for young people who work in government agencies, as well as those who work in office buildings and factories, to find much common language.

​​The degree of heterogeneity of youth is very high (stills from "Twenty Do Not Confused 2")

The youth who play games, the youth who start a business, the youth with "positive energy", and the youth who complain, the youth who play literature and art, and the youth who play science and engineering Young people, in many ways, have difficulty understanding each other. The overall picture of "youth" is actually a mechanical piece made up of countless heterogeneous fragments.

Not to mention that before the 21st century, compared with the previous years, there are already great differences between young people on the social and psychological level. In a few years, the "youth" has actually changed a group of people, and the new group of people is already different from the countless people in the past. When

asked why, I realized that it was caused by "abstracted" social and technological mechanisms.

According to sociologists Giddens , Weber and others, abstraction is an important feature that distinguishes modern society from traditional society. In traditional society, the connection between people is a direct offline connection, and our perception and grasp of others and the world are specific.

Of course, this is because of its simplicity, and the social structure is not woven through complex technological networks, but through the interaction of people and groups.

But the current society is a highly complex society. The connection between people and the world is largely achieved through technological networks, such as through WeChat, through QQ, through live broadcasts, and through other media. This kind of online interaction is abstracted.

The connection between modern people and the outside world is largely achieved through the Internet. At the same time, we are also more aware of the world through technical media, and the "virtual" world has also replaced the real world. It's like a cashier who actually counts a few hundred dollars when she receives a stack of money handed over by a customer, but she still has to choose to trust and rely on the money printing machine .

Regarding abstraction, psychoanalyst master Fromm once gave such an example in "Sound Society": In the 1950s, " Time Magazine " published a news article with the headline: "B.Sc. + Doctor of Philosophy = $40,000". Some statistics below show that an engineering student who has earned a Ph.D. can earn $40,000 more in his lifetime than someone with only a bachelor's degree in science.

Fromm commented, "Such a way of expressing facts by linking degrees to dollars in an equation is a manifestation of abstract and quantitative thinking in which we are Knowledge is obtained in the form of a certain amount of exchange value in the personality market.” What I want to add is that everyone also recognizes and evaluates a person in this way. As for what this person is, it doesn’t matter, he is just abstracted into a symbol— — at most an image.

Nowadays, many young people actually live in an abstract world. They constantly browse the circle of friends, play games, watch live broadcasts, watch a lot of news on the Internet, deal with others, and understand the world, largely with the help of technical media, which replaces their actions. .

They deal with the world, and they use their minds, psychology, and personality to drive the body. It seems that they are missing. If they want to interact offline, it is difficult to adapt.

At the same time, the world constructed by technological media seems to have replaced reality. They do not recognize reality more through actions, but also recognize the world through the fact constructed by the media. They frequently comment on many events on the Internet, but the reality that everyone grasps is also very abstract.

This is very interesting, first hide in an abstract world, to escape from the reality that makes you feel repressed, and then, to speak to the reality constructed by the technical medium, through such a way to "act" , to establish a connection with the world.

So I see this: they are self-repressed and very self-reliant. Considering the structure of "self-world", the self includes mind, psychology, personality, and body. In an abstract world, just using the mind and psychology to deal with others and the world is obviously a form of self-suppression.

And if the "world" is too powerful and the ego feels weak, it will also feel repressed. But this is very uncomfortable. Therefore, they are very egoistic. In the "self-world" structure, they hope to make the "self" seem to overwhelm the "world" and gain a sense of power and value.

It's an oxymoron, but for a lot of people, the mechanics and the truth are.

So, I think that although there is no way to abstract, but into an abstract world, young people will not really feel a sense of power. And only when you find a true sense of power can the future be in your hands. Mobility is what we need to rebuild youth and the world.

Retrieve naivety from the mundane

The abstraction itself has admitted that young people face many things, there is a feeling that cannot be changed, youthful passion, etc., will always be hit. So mentally it will age. But in the face of all this, in addition to escaping into an abstract world, they also accelerate secularization.

This is a major source of youth "midlife crisis".

I have always had the feeling that the youth is far less intelligent than he isTheir "predecessors" are comparable. It is not an exaggeration to say that those of us born in the 70s were thrown out of the street by them, and it is not to flatter them. It's a fact. My small-scale investigation shows that a post-70s generation can only know things at the age of 25, a post-80s generation can only know things at the age of 20, and a post-90s generation can already know things at the age of 15. As for the post-00s, it is even more incredible.

Young people are well versed in how to get along with social reality (stills from "Twenty Do Not Confused")

But this kind of intelligence also means premature maturity. Premature maturity means that the degree of socialization and secularization is advanced and deepened. Such young people, who have been familiar with the rules of the social game since childhood or through the intentional education of parents and schools, will naturally stay away from innocence very early, showing an old-fashioned expression.

At the same time, premature secularization means that they will assume their social functions in advance, such as pressures like the future of a house and a car, which will overwhelm them. In addition, the competition of interests and psychological competition in today's society is far more cruel than in the past. They have been thrown into this game, and it is impossible to think in the same way as young people. At least it seems that they can't after graduating from college. Therefore, many post-90s have a "mid-life crisis", which is obviously not hypocritical, it has a real side.

The lifestyle after graduation has been turned upside down (still photo from "Who")

According to my observation, people's "aging" is not only the devastation of life and psychological torture, but also the killer of secularization.

Someone once asked me how to not look old? My answer is: if life is not hard, if the body is not ravaged by work, then the secret is to be naive about the world, and to be less secular in the sense of a mixed society.

A person who is full of calculations, a refined egoist, a vulgar utilitarian person, in a mixed society, the meaning is very secularized, they have no naivety to speak of, no dreams to speak of (only goals), All of these will be written on the face and manifested in demeanor, expression, and temperament. It will also be written in the heart and manifested through the state of mind.

Secularization does not in itself lead to a paralysis of mobility, but it leads to an accelerated disappearance of youth. In other words, secularization is all about achieving success in a worldly sense, not to experience the peculiar passion of life, the meaning of life, and the preciousness of youth. Losing the peculiar temperament of youth seems to be the price of worldly success. This is actually a huge cost, and it will be old before you are young.

But young people like to hide in Internet cafes, appear in live broadcast rooms, and are old-fashioned and self-suppressed on various occasions? Don't they really like to radiate youthful energy? I did two sample surveys, and out of 100 participants, only 5 said they didn't want to act, and the other 95, or 95%, were eager to act.

Even if he "scolds" an escapist youth, he will not be angry. It is their desire to express their sense of power through actions, to improve themselves and change the world. It's just that they seem to feel that the reality is too powerful, a little dazed, and they have no expectations for the results of their actions. For psychological protection, it seems more comfortable to maintain the current state.

But among youth, there are also many doers. They have provided incentives at the individual level through their concrete actions, reinventing themselves, connecting others and the world. What we need to summon is just social incentives.

The pictures in this article are partly from Visual China, and partly from the Internet

author | Shi teacher

editor | Su Mi

typesetting | Bajin