Chapter 24 2.The more changing society is, the more uncertain it will be

The faster a society changes, the more distrust among people, the more disordered the order, and the more fatal the blow of uncertainty will be to people. Unfortunately, we live in such an era.Everyone is psychologically precarious.The poor, the middle class, and the rich don't know the future. Psychoanalyst Frankel once said a very classic saying: psychological events are nothing but the psychological level of social events, and social events are nothing but the social level of psychological events.Any disturbance in the society will cause a person's psychological changes; and what a large number of people think in their hearts will be manifested to form a social phenomenon.For example, many people despise the poor, so everyone thinks that money is a good thing in their hearts; and everyone thinks that money is a good thing in their hearts, which will form the phenomenon of worshiping money in society.

Therefore, as I mentioned earlier, as long as your psychological structure and social structure are embedded together, when the social structure moves, your psychology will follow.The social structure is disordered, chaotic, and full of uncertainty, and your psychological structure is also disordered, chaotic, and precarious. Never forget that the society we live in today is fraught with risks.In this risky society, there are two key words: modernity and transformation. For sociologists, "modernity" is a common term for understanding what "society" really is.What is needed to build a society?It definitely needs things like systems, order, thinking, and concepts.When these things change, society changes too.This is just like a person, if he also learns from Michael Jackson, his skin changes and his hairstyle changes, he looks different, and he is not quite the same person.However, having these things is not enough, a person also needs to have a soul and personality, otherwise, no matter whether it changes or remains the same, he is just a bunch of physical tissues! "Modernity" is the soul of modern society, and it is the core logic that makes modern society have a certain system, order, thinking and concept.

To decipher this logic, the three words: negation, change, and innovation can be summed up in one word, which is "change". Negate what? The first meaning, of course, is to deny tradition. "Modern society" is originally relative to traditional society.In traditional society, many things handed down by the ancestors are golden rules, which are not allowed to be questioned. Obedience is a virtue, and disobedience is a sin.Because right and wrong are not decided by human reason, but by tradition.But as soon as "modernity" came, something was wrong, just like the madman in the old Lu's writing asked: "It has always been like this, so is it right?" In this way, many things of tradition are negated.During the period of the New Culture Movement, intellectuals found that the way of Confucius and Mencius was not right, so they simply set fire to the "Confucius's shop". During the "Cultural Revolution", the revolutionary generals found that something was wrong with the Earth Temple, and they also smashed it.

The second meaning is to go one step further after negating tradition, that is to deny what already exists, to deny "yesterday".Tradition is of course "yesterday" in time.However, for people in modern society, today's things will soon pass away, and they will soon become "yesterday" psychologically.Therefore, as long as it is something in the past, it has no psychological meaning for us, and we must quickly forget and deny it, because living in "yesterday" has the potential to make people unable to keep up with the pace of society, be forgotten and abandoned. dangers, so that we will not be able to experience our own existence and the value of existence.

The logic of this "negation" is very powerful, bringing about an addiction to change and novelty.You have finally taken a fancy to a piece of clothing, and you are quite confident when you wear it, but after a while, you will soon feel anxious, are you out of date?Because the latest styles will be launched in the market immediately, the time gap between new and old styles is getting shorter and shorter.Many things in society are constantly changing and seeking new ideas, which causes you to do the same psychologically. "Modernity" is to make you addicted to "change", and it is becoming more and more addictive!

Under constant change, nothing can gain certainty, and even if you gain a sense of certainty, this feeling will disappear immediately under external change.The great proletarian revolutionist, philosopher, and economist Marx said when evaluating the negation and dismantling of the "past" by the logic of "modernity": "All solid things evaporate into thin air." However, as we have said before, modern society is risky. It changes too fast. Things like technology seem to be able to produce any magical things, but it is not without consequences, like "SARS" and "poultry". Influenza," "Garbage Besieged City," and "Nuclear Leakage" are all products of "modernity."Logically, you can't eliminate this kind of thing at all, because the means you eliminate this kind of risk are the thinking and technical means of "modernity".In other words, the means you use to solve the problem is precisely the root cause of the problem.This is the risk of social life, which may be called an external risk.

Another inherent risk is psychological risk.Why are there so many mental problems in modern society?Why are there more than 170 million people with mental and mental illnesses in China?It is that the changes are too fast, the competition is too great, and the pressure is too great, which deviates from the laws of human psychology.Of course, people can "adapt" to such a social situation psychologically, but sorry, the price is neurosis, personality disorder, psychopathy or even mental illness.There is no free lunch in the world, and the operation of any society has to pay costs. Psychological and mental illnesses are the costs that contemporary Chinese pay for such a society.

Therefore, although "modernity" is constantly negating the "past", it does not paint a clear picture for the "future". What will the future look like, a horrible hell, or a world of bliss?It is not clear at all, because the risks it accumulates will participate in the construction of the "future".At the same time, man has created a lot of technologies, and we live in a world that has been changed by our activities; in turn, these technologies and the world will also change people, and people will never know what kind of people will be shaped by them in the end. .This is the characteristic of modern society.Corresponding to this, the psychological characteristics of people are: no sense of stability and certainty, eagerly looking forward to the future, but not sure, and faintly worried.

What are the social and psychological characteristics of the ancients who lived in the "traditional society"?A friend whose hometown is in the countryside once told me that working and living in a big city is very stressful and tiring, and he really wants to live in a remote and quiet place for the rest of his life.I bet him that he will stay for a week at most, and he will roll back to the city soon, because he is familiar with city life, and the life in the countryside is no longer compatible with his psychological structure, even though he grew up in the countryside since he was a child of.

Sure enough, after more than a week, he came back and said that he had just been back for a day or two. He felt very good, the air was fresh, people were very kind, and his whole body was relaxed. But from the third day onwards, he felt faintly anxious, feeling As if he was cut off from this society, the tide of social fashion and social progress was rolling forward, and he could only watch himself being abandoned and forgotten.This feeling became stronger and stronger, so he fled his hometown like he fled from hell. Most post-70s born in the countryside have this experience: in the countryside, the day feels very long, but in the city, time passes very quickly.This inner feeling of time is equivalent to traditional society and modern society.The difference is this: In different societies, people relate to the world in different ways.

In traditional society, a person is part of a family or a community, not an independent individual psychologically, and is firmly attracted by an order that rarely changes.He and such an order are psychologically isomorphic. If the order of life remains unchanged, his psychological structure will be very stable.He gains a sense of security by being psychologically attached to a deterministic order. But "modernity" has ruthlessly destroyed those orders of traditional society.Man is stripped from a deterministic order to which he once belonged, and from a community of which he is a part, and thrown into a strange and dangerous world.He is no longer part of the community, but has become a social atom like a ghost. In China, this divestiture has two stages. The first stage, counting from the May 4th Movement, is characterized by the gradual disintegration of the family and village communities, and one seems to have gained independence and is no longer a part of them. In the second stage, counting from the reform and opening up in 1978, the "work unit" no longer provides people with all-round protection, and many of his needs have to be solved in the market, from a "work unit person" to an atom in society.In addition, politics, economy, culture, morality, etc. are all undergoing changes. Together, they are collectively referred to as China's "social structural transformation", which is the transition from traditional society to the Western version of modern society. Today, this transformation is full of disorder, barbarism, chaos and hysteria, disparity between rich and poor, humiliation of the poor, hereditary "official second generation", exclusion of "poor second generation", group incidents, conspicuous consumption, industry "hidden rules" ", food safety, etc., all went into battle together.No one knows whether this society can slowly and successfully "transform" or just collapse and reshuffle the cards.What everyone feels is that the pressure is increasing, money is becoming less and less valuable, values ​​​​are becoming more and more confused, and the direction of society is becoming more and more dangerous.