Chapter 3 human factor

Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Carter committed suicide by car exhaust in 1994. His last words said: "I'm sorry, but the sorrows in life far outweigh the joys." It has been only 3 months since the dead picture won the award.For a while I liked Carter so much that I found quite a few photos of him - certainly not as good as the winning one.Carter, thin-cheeked, dusty, and very poor, resembled a street youth in the 1960s, looking like a reporter who was not just a reporter.Jung said that in the same era, there will be people of different ages in the psychological sense, for example, there will be people of the ancient Carthaginian type in modern society, and so on.In the same way, it can be said that Kevin Carter is not considered a contemporary reporter, but belongs to the group of idealists a long time ago, with the shadow of compassion and self-torture in his heart.Modern journalists mostly wear half-rimmed glasses, their eyes shine brightly, and they like to work in a relaxed way. They are no different from people in other industries, and they don’t know much about pain.

The case of Kevin Carter made me wonder whether a thoughtful guy is a good fit for the business of the world, and more specifically, modern society.Times have their powerful laws, and if we are not enough to flirt with them contentedly and joyfully, we are likely to be nothing, so the naive artist like Monet is extinct, and Andy Warhol and his famous saying "the business that makes money is the most And thus the rise of "good art"—in all walks of life.But that's all there is to it? Gore Vidal wrote an article called "Love to Fly", which tells the story of his own experience in the early days of the American aviation industry.At the end, Gore Vader said: "The development of science and technology today is really amazing. We sit in front of the TV and watch Saturn's halo gradually disappear, and we can also speculate about the unknown planets on the edge of the Milky Way. What a wonderful thing! However, in the process, we have lost a lot of human factors, and it is impossible for us to have the lofty hopes of people who lived in that strange age that believed that flying would create a unified world. We have not Can create a perfect world."

In contrast, I feel like we have more to lose than that generation of Americans.We lose the desire to change even our little world around us.We can always see depressing precedent.Liang Qichao is a top-notch talent, thousands of times stronger than my generation, but it has no effect on this country.Hu Shi is also a first-rate talent, but he has written so many articles, but it is useless.You can only say that "one who is useless is a scholar", although in every world that has created a splendid civilization, such as modern Europe, the core driving force for progress always comes from a group of scholars.So what's the problem?We often say that the problem is beyond the scope of our solution.

So we put our flags to rest, admitting that the world is immutable, we just need to work hard to make money, and even a stupid internal system in our company or unit cannot be changed.Some people call it "cynicism". I don't think it matters what it is called. The important thing is that we do it. Not that the people of the past were not like this, but the great people were not.Mr. Hu Shi was only 26 years old when he returned to China, and he was as old as Han Han now. There have been many failure examples of sages before him. He still quoted Erasmus’ words to the crowd when he returned to his motherland, the Netherlands from Italy: “We are back , everything will be different.” At that time, China was much older in some parts and younger in others.Today we are in a more prosperous civilization, but we don't hear a similar clear voice anymore.

It’s so easy these days to think that “everything will be different” is just a dream, which in my opinion shows how smart we are.Indeed, Hu Shi’s role in changing China may not be as great as that of Shi Yuzhu—many people admire the latter’s business model based on capturing the weaknesses of human nature, and even call him a “genius”.The way I see it is that if this is genius, then the world is going nuts, and my job for the rest of my life is to spit on it and enjoy the only fun it can have. In fact, Kevin Carter is just a freelance journalist who is heavily in debt and does not even have a fixed salary. Applying Chinese standards, he is a fake reporter without a press card.If this passer-by dared to interview our small coal mine, he would have been kicked out by a random stick.But like those who take carpenters and bricklayers to perfection, he is the essence of humanity, and we are not, and neither are most famous CEOs.Some people have bright minds, are greedy and courageous, and are quick to act, while others have out-of-the-box personalities, with pitfalls and preoccupations, they are completely different outstanding people.What we have learned in our life is greed, but what we have lost is individuality. When we were looking for various opportunities in expensive office buildings in Chaoyang District or Pudong, we never reflected on how bad our life is. Use Al Gore In Vader's words: "We've lost a lot of the human element."