Chapter 9 Title IX Intellectual Honesty and Morality

Wang Shuo: I have no idea about Chinese intellectual groups, such as the academic school, the staff school, and so on. Lao Xia: Are you referring to the 1980s or 1990s? Wang Shuo: All in all, I always want to find someone who understands and sorts out the general idea. Old Xia: The group of intellectuals in the 1980s can be roughly divided into two groups: "civilian" and "inside the system", and "inside the system" can be further divided into "academic" and "quasi-bureaucratic". Wang Shuo: The ideological liberation movement broke through some taboos at the time, and monsters and ghosts came out one after another.

Old Xia: Under the banner of ideological emancipation, a large number of right-wing writers returned to society, and flowers blossomed as soon as they came back. At that time, there was a best-selling novel collection "Flowers Replayed", which were all famous works of rightists at that time. Like Liu Binyan, Wang Meng, Liu Shaotang, Cong Weixi and so on.The pinnacle of this group of right-wing writers was the 4th Congress of Literature and Art. After that, their works not only influenced the whole country, but also entered the power organizations in the cultural field to take real power.Liu Binyan's reportage, Liu Xinwu's novels, scar literature, reform literature, etc.These two groups of people have common characteristics, both are popular in the world with writing, and they are close to the top with power.Wang Meng finally sat down as Minister of Culture, Liu Xinwu was the editor-in-chief of "People's Literature", Wang Ruoshui and Hu Jiwei.Most of Liu Binyan and others were treated at the ministerial level, and the lowest was at the bureau level.

Wang Shuo: These people were the popular culture at that time. Old Xia: It was also due to the lack of social thought at that time. Wang Shuo: What about academic schools? Old Xia: The academic schools are also divided into several groups.Like Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, they followed the path of philosophy, aesthetics, and theoretical criticism, but Liu Zaifu later became the director of the Literature Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences and the editor-in-chief of "Literary Review", and became a quasi-bureaucrat.Their golden period peaked at the "New Era Ten-Year Discussion Conference" held in 1986. At that conference, Liu Zaifu and Li Zehou were praised as "theoretical popes." It is a "military parade" in the field of literary and art theory.Later, a dark horse was disturbed.

Bao Zunxin, Jin Guantao and others took the path of "series" enlightenment.The "Towards the Future Series" compiled by them has become the main source for a generation of young people to absorb new ideas. It has a great influence and is still fresh in my memory.Then it split internally. Another approach is the form of internal reference. The most influential at that time were Gao Ertai's "A Closer Look at Alienation Phenomenon" and Wang Xiaoqiang's "Critique of Agricultural Socialism". Has a strong liberalism. Wang Shuo: In addition to these legal knowledge gangs, it seems that "Today" is an underground folk publication.Their group had a great literary influence on young people.

Old Xia: Yes.The excitement when we read "Today" and some political articles when we were in college is still fresh in our memory.This group of people was a "folk faction" without any official color at that time.Among folk mimeographed publications, "Today" has the greatest influence. The reason why "Today" became "Today" is not because of how sensitive, profound, and talented these people are. Compared with young people from other provinces, they have "closer access" to a large number of internal publications that are difficult for outsiders to get access to. "Yellow Book", "Grey Book".One is philosophical, such as "Selected Materials of Modern Bourgeois Philosophy".One category is literary and artistic, such as "The Catcher in the Rye" and "All Quiet on the Western Front".There are also a group of Western modernist poems, such as Eliot's poems.There are also a number of "thawed" works from the former Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, such as "Revolution Betrayed", "New Class", and "The Era of Stalin". "People, Years, Life", "Thawing" and so on.It is particularly regrettable that Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" was also an internal reading at that time, but Hayek's real influence on Chinese liberal intellectuals began in the mid-1990s.This all shows that the "ideological emancipation" at that time did not have much liberalism.

Wang Shuo: Those people from "Today" are in Beijing and have the opportunity to get these books. It's different in your other provinces. Their "excellence" and "influence" are also a little bit of the favor of the Imperial City. Veteran: Yes.It is because they first possessed ideological and artistic resources that others could not possess, which is also a kind of abnormal phenomenon.Later, after the "Today" faction surfaced, it was recognized by the official publication "Poetry Magazine". In the youth poetry meeting held by "Poetry Magazine" in the early 1980s, there were several poets from "Today". The Poetry Group of the Writers Association, which is the authoritative body for national poetry evaluation.After the 1980s, the poets of "Today" have lost their creativity.Jiang He and Yang Lian followed Ah Cheng to seek their roots. Bei Dao hadn't written anything good in the 1980s.The only one who stood his ground was Munk.He and Bei Dao are the core of "Today", and they are the only two who stand up to the most severe moment. The text of "Today" not only breaks through the preaching literature of right-wing writers in terms of viewpoint, but also in form.

The theoretical defender of "Misty Poetry" is "Three Rising".The folk election campaign at Peking University in the 1980s was another group of folk intellectuals who became the earliest experiment for Chinese folk intellectuals to pray for the legalization of politics. Later, those who stayed in China among this group of people set up non-governmental research institutes. Wang Shuo: I remember that there was still a way in literature at that time, a panoramic reportage.At that time their momentum was very strong, as if they represented the last voice of the reformers.

Old Xia: The stuff of the 1980s, let’s not say whether its concepts are modern or not, now it seems that the tone of the savior is also problematic.Especially after CCTV made a feature film of "River Elegy", the commentary is all condescending preaching, and it is read with a recitative accent, which feels like the imperative style of the "Bible". His savior attitude: "God said let there be light, so there was light." As long as this tone appears, what seems to be read is the truth, the absolute truth.This tradition comes from Xia Qing's broadcasting, until now the leader-like face of the host of "Focus Interview".The articles at that time, from literature to theory, were mostly in the tone of the savior, and everyone wanted to be the savior and the pope.At that time, the society was known as the "Four Youth Mentors". The "Root-seeking Literature" and "Yellow Earth" series of movies at that time also had this kind of overlooked and lofty savior mentality.

Wang Shuo: I am particularly interested in academicism. Is it monolithic?Is there any difference between those who let go of foreigners and those who have not let go of foreigners and those who have completed their doctorates in China? Old Xia: There was no obvious differentiation among intellectual groups in the 1980s. The distinction between folk groups and institutional groups in the early 1980s basically disappeared in the middle and late 1980s. Except for very special people, most of the folk groups entered the Within the system, all have become quasi-official institutionalized knowledge power, but the division of intellectual groups in the 1990s was particularly obvious.In addition to the academic school and the staff school, there are individual cultural people who have broken away from the system. These people are completely independent financially. You are the earliest influential self-employed writer among writers.Others such as singers and movie stars.But soon, these people, including you, were integrated into the subcultural system—that is, the commercial operation system of popular culture that is gradually being formed.

Wang Shuo: I am quite familiar with the mass culture system. I live in it, and I have benefited from it, but also suffered from it.What I especially want to know is the difference between those who are Dr. Yang, Dr. Yang, Professor Tu, and Professor Yang. Old Xia: In the 1990s, the intellectual groups were divided. Some people went into business, and some people traveled across the ocean. Few continued to study.Moreover, the biggest feature of the intellectual circles in the 1990s was that economics became the dominant school, replacing literature and aesthetics in the 1980s.Foreign doctors like Hu Angang and Ye Shaoguang have identified the preferences of policymakers during the macro-control period, and produced a "national capacity report" to demonstrate the legitimacy of the central government's economic centralization from a comparison between China and the West.Said that China's current fiscal situation is strong local and weak central, and advocated strengthening centralization and improving the country's ability to extract financial resources.Ye Shaoguang later broke up with Hu Angang and directly linked the country's fiscal capacity and fiscal efficiency with the democratic system.There are also Fan Gang, Sheng Hong, Liu Wei, and Zhong Pengrong who are called the "Four Young Masters" in the capital. Their theories are mainly for the theoretical argumentation of the upper-level decision-making, and they also like to make TV shows.Then there are "new leftists" such as Cui Zhiyuan and Gan Yang who drank American foreign ink. They pay attention to the issue of equality in distribution.

Wang Shuo: I think most economists are like this. Veteran: Yes.current economist.The deadliest thing about economics is that in the face of such a chaotic and unfair economic order, they have neither a basic sense of morality nor theoretical innovation beyond policy, and dare not face up to the core problem of China’s economic predicament: the ambiguity of property rights And the impenetrability of power will soon mean the marketization of power. Since the birth of Marxism, there have been Marxists and leftists in the United States.They also criticize the current capitalist system based on unfair distribution, and how to achieve the greatest possible equality in the distribution of wealth through the reform of the current system. But the United States already has a well-established free market, while China's market is just getting started and distorted by power.Because the free market is based on the security of property rights.Besides, freedom in a market economy.Efficiency and distributional equality are always a paradox.It is impossible to demand equality of distribution while demanding freedom and efficiency.What the market demands is justice, not equality in distribution. Wang Shuo: Whoever has the closest relationship with power will pick the bigger one. Veteran: Yes.Outside this intellectual group, there are also a group of intellectuals who adhere to the orientation of academic freedom, such as Qin Hui, Liu Junning, Lei Yi, Xie Yong, Wang Dingding, He Qinglian, Zhu Xueqin, Zhu Dake and so on.He Qinglian wrote a book called "The Trap of Modernization", which dared to touch on practical problems and appealed to the moral concern and humanistic spirit of economics. This sparked a discussion.Some of them live in poverty, and some even have their teaching positions in jeopardy.The standard of living is very different from those of the conformists, who are still rich in academia. Wang Shuo: Do ​​you think this is also the case in academia—whoever is closer to power will have a louder voice? Old Xia: There must be, and it is quite common.There are two situations here.One is the staff-type intellectuals, whose voice is, in a sense, the voice of power.Li Yining, Hu Angang, Fan Gang, etc., their voices will become the mainstream of economics.Mr. Wu Jinglian is an exception. He is also an aide, but he insists on his independent critical position.The other is the school of followers, which is the main body of academic intellectuals, regardless of their majors.The academic circles proposed localization and standardization, Said’s Orientalism suddenly became popular, Sheng Hong in economics, Deng Zhenglai in sociology, Zhu Suli in law, Cui Zhiyuan, Gan Yang, etc., even the instructors of avant-garde literature in the 1980s Li Tuo also became a nationalist after returning from the United States.There are also people such as Wang Yichuan, Zhang Fa, Wang Yuechuan, and Zhang Yiwu who are famous for their research on Western modern aesthetics and postmodern theories, and they also talked about "Chinese subjectivity" and "Chinese otherness" at length.These academic intellectuals have a very keen sense of smell, and when they smell something, they rush forward, grasping Orientalism, and resisting Western cultural and linguistic hegemony, which coincides with resisting Western political and economic hegemony.Several booksellers have also caught up with this trend. A copy of "China Can Say No" has become popular both at home and abroad. It is said that Zhang Xiaobo, one of the planners of this book, is still receiving royalties. Wang Shuo: I heard that knowledge power was also proposed by Westerners.Does the West have no intellectual power? Veteran: Yes.The person who put forward knowledge power and language power is the French scholar Foucault. He is a strange man and is extremely subversive.There are three contemporary Western thinkers who have the greatest influence on people, Popper who proposed "falsification theory", liberal economist Hayek, and Foucault.He was recognized by Western philosophy and historiography through research.What sociology has forgotten, it has discovered knowledge power and a whole set of institutions. For Foucault, the fragments of history have become archaeological fossils of the Western institutional control over people.But intellectual power in China is different from that in the West.Western intellectual power.Language power has a separate evolutionary history, a whole set of independent knowledge systems and institutionalization of knowledge power (academies, research institutes, asylums. Hospitals, nurseries. Prisons. Barracks, factories, and biology. Geography, language Learning...), the more indirect and ambiguous the relationship between knowledge, language and political power becomes in modern times, so that knowledge and its institutions become a major independent power independent of political power and economic power.In China, however, intellectual power has always been married to political power, starting with the "supreme Confucianism" in the Han Dynasty. Wang Shuo: Is there really nothing good in Chinese tradition?Such as "four great inventions" and the like. Lao Xia: It is good to look at the Four Great Inventions in isolation, but in the context of Chinese culture as a whole.In the structure, good things cannot be sublimated and matured.The compass is used in China to measure feng shui, but once it enters the Western cultural structure, it becomes a magnetic phenomenon. Not only the discovery of the new continent in the ocean, but also the electromagnetism of Faraday and others, a complete set of modern concepts and modern science. Wang Shuo: For a while, New Confucianism talked about the East Asian economic miracle, which came from Confucianism, including Japan. Yu Yingshi, Du Weiming and others were "New Confucianism? Lao Xia: The economic miracles of Japan and the "Four Tigers" in Asia are not driven by Confucian ethics, but by the liberalization of the system.Behind Hong Kong is the United Kingdom and Taiwan.South Korea.Behind Singapore and Japan is the United States. The concept, system, technology, education, and market of the liberal world are the fundamental political power of the East Asian economic miracle. Like Japan, the "Meiji Restoration" was completed under the slogan of "Total Westernization".The economic take-off after World War II relied on US aid and the US market. Japan's social structure and political system after World War II have undergone overall changes, and the Americans wrote the constitution for the Japanese.Only after the fundamental change of the overall structure can Japan's own characteristics and Confucian ethics play a positive role.Yu Yingshi, Du Weiming and others all completed their academic training in the United States, and they also used Western methods and concepts to explain Chinese culture.Yu Yingshi's discussion of the capitalist spirit of Chinese Buddhist and Taoist ethics is just an application of Weber's Protestant ethics and capitalist theory.It's just a patchwork of materials from corner to corner, and it is not convincing at all to prove the emergence of Chinese capitalism in the Qing Dynasty.Yu Yingshi could not use this argument to overturn the fact that there was no capitalism in ancient China.Another example is Du Weiming, who together with Li Zehou advocated Chinese culture to save mankind. The 21st century is the century of the Chinese people.Let's put aside whether this narrow nationalist position can guarantee the justice of a scholar. We want to ask, why doesn't Tu Weiming, who has enjoyed all the blessings of the free world, return to the Chinese culture he nostalgic for?Not the mainland, but Taiwan and Hong Kong. Whether it is overseas Chinese scholars or domestic academics, their localization and standardization all use Westernized methods and concepts.A culture can't even find the concepts and methods to organize its own resources, how can it talk about localization? !Their language is also transliterated.Wittgenstein said that what kind of language you choose is what kind of thinking you choose, and what kind of thinking you choose is what kind of living style you choose.There is no theoretical fulcrum for us to move towards a modern free society in the Chinese tradition, and we cannot find a way, so what qualifications do we have to talk about cultural reconstruction? !For example, Zhu Suli, a professor of the Law Department of Peking University, has been talking about the localization of the rule of law in recent years, saying that there are customary laws in rural China, and that disputes are resolved by the authority of the clan.And grasp Zhang Yimou's "Qiu Ju's Lawsuit" and a movie called "Shan Gang Lord" to demonstrate his localization. How ridiculous, "A Lawsuit by Qiu Ju" itself is a big lie told by Zhang Yimou in the most realistic way. The fundamental problem of Chinese law is the spirit of legislation, from ancient times to the present.Law equals punishment.Without a fundamental shift in the spirit of legislation, everything else is trivial.As a legal expert, avoiding substantive issues and scratching the itch on side issues is simply ignorant of conscience. Wang Shuo: I personally left the system very early. I tried everything after I recovered as a soldier, but I ended up smashing everything I did, and finally I was forced to "code words".It is a problem to have other jobs, but "codeword" actually has a job, and he is familiar with it.The intellectuals of the academic school lost their jobs in the system. If they want to enter this system, they will beg for food and be decent. It's all very straightforward. Old Xia: Someone once told a joke.The factory raised wages, and a fitter quit because he was not raised.He comes to work every day, instead of getting on the lathe, he grinds his three-edged scraper with a whetstone under the watchful eyes of everyone in the workshop, and he doesn't speak when anyone asks him anything.When the workshop director saw him, he was scared. Knowing that this person was in a hurry, he was afraid that something might happen, so he tried a way to make up a spot and offered it to him.This is no different from those university professors who try to cheat, tear their faces, post small-character posters all over the campus in a hurry, and scold each other.The old Peking University and the old Tsinghua University cultivated a group of modern intellectuals. Later, through ideological remolding and various political movements, they became farmers, and they were cunning farmers.Einstein once said: "I do not believe that noble attitudes are better developed in universities and academy cities than in the shops of unknown and silent ordinary people." Wang Shuo: You mentioned Qian Zhongshu and others just now, and you raised the issue of honesty in life, intellectual honesty and moral responsibility. Why do I not feel that academic intellectuals have such things. Old Xia: If you are intellectually dishonest, you will not be morally responsible.The dishonesty of ordinary people is by no means as harmful as the dishonesty of intellectuals.Because intellectuals proclaim "social conscience".In fact, there are obvious profit motives behind the academia, and their baseness and stinginess are to cover up such motives and tell big lies for the slightest benefit. Some people's wisdom consists of petty cleverness, petty calculations, petty intrigues, petty tricks, using grandiose reasons just to catch half straws.The reason why you are double sieged by the orthodox and academia is for one reason, you are honest.Honesty is very strong and powerful, and a single truth is enough to make his historical view prototype for thousands of years.For example, Lu Xun read only two words from thousands of years of history: cannibalism. Wang Shuo: Here, there is no honesty in life, knowledge, or money, from top to bottom.It means that everyone cheats and cheats together, you give me a wink, I give you a glance, I dig you a trap, you give me a stumbling block. Old Xia: For example, Yu Qiuyu cheated with traditional culture, and a bunch of academics cheated with imported products. He made a long speech, but he didn't get into the topic, and he spent so much time talking about it.Whether it is talking or chatting with these people, the reason why they find it difficult and powerless is that they are dealing with an honest person. Human dishonesty, especially dishonesty in the intellectual world of academia, is almost a physiological state, which is what Foucault called "body politics".They call themselves "soul engineers". "Enlightenment", in fact their soul is the prison of the body, the trap of the society.Like some big names in the field of economics, catching up with the trend of localization and nationalism, insisting that Western culture is "evil", Chinese culture is "good", and the West advocates material things.Machinery, force, China advocates humanity, morality, and peace, so once China encounters the West, it will inevitably decline.He himself does not believe this rhetoric. He claims to be a Chinese disciple of Coase, an American institutional economist. This kind of lying is no different from the lying in "China Can Say No".Booksellers lie to make money, and Sheng Hong lies to make money and fame.I know a group of literati and poets in the 1980s who are now writing books. When I meet them, I feel depraved. Every day I make money, drink and prostitute. They feel so happy and happy.Fallen for real.And those academic hypocrites, they not only look at money, but also personal interests, not only to be confused with the decent middle class, but also with the representatives of conscience or something. Wang Shuo: Some people pretend to be grandchildren in public, but in private chats between friends, they still speak the truth after drinking. Lao Xia: This is a kind of dual personality. "Big names" like Chen Kaige, Fan Gang, and Liu Heng, when they are interviewed by CCTV, they will make generous statements like reciting newspapers, and they will scold them when they are eating and chatting with friends. Scolding, this is the basic survival skills of the Chinese people, not only gaining public benefits, but also maintaining personal dignity among friends in private, making people feel that they have no conscience.This is a kind of fear and cunning in life.Chinese people often say that foreigners are very stupid. In fact, it is not a question of IQ, but a kind of simplicity and honesty in life. "NO" means "No", and "Yes" means "Yes".Let's talk about narrow-mindedness and small tricks.Small trap, who can play the Chinese. If we want to stand among the nations of the world, or in the Guinness Book of Books, we can do nothing else, we must be number one in lying and cunning. Therefore, the problem of Chinese intellectuals is that they don't know what "honesty" is.Behind intellectual honesty is awe and humility as an intellectual. They talk about the ignorance of the masses at every turn.ignorant.numbness.The biggest blind spot of this type of intellectuals is not intellectual ignorance, but personality ignorance.Intellectual ignorance is not particularly important to one's moral stance, and an illiterate peasant can be very kind and honest.But once you become ignorant in being a human being, you will use your knowledge to be shameless and deceive others. The apex of this realm is arrogance.A Ph.D. from Peking University who came back from the United States actually said that Chinese economics will become the best economics in the world in the 21st century.This also caters to the trend that the 21st century is the Chinese century.There is no awe in my heart, only profit and fashion, and I dare to do anything except the fear of physical pain. The ignorance of the soul is the biggest blind spot. Wang Shuo: This kind of ignorance in the intellectual world is also a bit similar to those "ruffians" I wrote, "I am a hooligan, who am I afraid of!" Old Xia: Your hooligans at least have the self-knowledge of "we are also ordinary people", but they regard themselves as spiritual nobles to appreciate and love themselves.The academics and Wang Meng said that you "reject the lofty", which makes people feel ridiculous.Have we ever been sublime?Not even the minimum bottom line of being honest, isn't it too extravagant to talk about loftiness?Village girls talk about noble ladies and there is still a basis for humanity, but liars talk about honesty or nobility of character, and there is nothing.