Chapter 4 Big goals, modernization and "literary tune"

Now many officials and scholars do not understand the military, do not look at today's real world from the perspective of competition, and talk about "literary and artistic accents" every day. It is hard to say that they have big goals.Not long ago, I saw on the Internet that a young and promising ministerial-level cadre was "shuanggui". I suddenly remembered that I met this person at a friend's birthday party. He left a deep impression on me. He sang very well. At that time, some friends said that the official had engraved the songs he sang and gave them away.From this, I thought of the word "literary tune".

The atmosphere "inherited" throughout the 1980s is that everyone likes to dazzle others with literary and artistic qualities, which is romantic and misleading.In the more than 100 years of China's modernization, first the upper echelons of the Qing Dynasty were not noble and ruined the opportunity for modernization, and later the upper echelons of the Kuomintang repeated the same mistakes of the Qing Dynasty, but they all have one characteristic, that is, according to the saying of the post-80s generation: "Literary tune" is too heavy .In fact, current officials and scholars also have this problem.The enlightenment of scar literature, coupled with the subsequent export processing trade and the accumulation of wealth from the sale of land in advance, it seems that modernization has come, and the upper class and elites have begun to "literary tune" again.No matter how you look at it, there is a feeling of reincarnation. Many elites always say that Chinese society can no longer repeat the pattern of "rebellion-corruption-rebellion", but if the upper class continues to be so "literary and artistic", how can it be avoided?Some people have proposed that democracy is the key to solving problems, but democracy is a means, a means to achieve a "big goal", not an end.Democracy without "big goals" as a background must be a democracy full of "literary and artistic accents".

Thinking about it myself, this "literary tune" is not only related to the imperial examination system in China's feudal society, but it may also be related to the cultural boom in the 1980s.At that time, everyone was reading foreign classics. If you didn’t know obscurity poems and popular foreign classics, you would be looked down upon just like you don’t know what computers and blogs are now. Very serious.I have talked with many friends, and they don't know how the "literary tune" at that time has continued until now.Of course, many upgraded versions have also been derived during this period, such as political "literary tune", social science "literary tune", financial "literary tune" and so on.

In short, this kind of "literary tune" has not only become an official way to avoid the structural contradictions between China and the West gradually exposed in the process of modernization, but also a way for intellectuals in the field to realize their "political ambitions". It is becoming more and more obvious. I remember once I was doing a PK program on Phoenix Satellite TV, the content was "Does China want to build an aircraft carrier?"As a result, such a technical question has completely turned into a competition of "literary tunes".A well-known professor who didn't understand the navy, aircraft carrier, or shipbuilding engineering at all, said in a historical "literary accent" that China cannot build aircraft carriers.At that time, I was really angry and funny, and suddenly felt that as long as people who have been soaked in the "literary tune" of the 1980s, why are they so self-righteous?In the reality of rapid modernization and industrialization in Chinese society, why don't they know how to learn something new to face it?

For a while, I was particularly addicted to collecting old books from the Republic of China. I remember seeing the photo of Lin Huiyin and Xu Zhimo with the Indian poet Tagore after he came to China. The photo was published in the newspaper and named "pine, bamboo, plum". It seems that Lu Xun also ridiculed this photo, to the effect that the Japanese have already occupied the Northeast, and they are still "literary tunes" there.This financial crisis has already shown that it is impossible for China not to engage in business wars in the future, and it is not ruled out that it may face wars. Young people are aware of it, but many people in the previous generation just can’t get rid of their "literary accent". It makes people feel very delayed.This is most obvious in the media field. Many young editors and directors know that their leaders who graduated in the 1980s like "literary tune" the most. Young people don't like to read more and more. Fortunately, with the Internet, they have created another style of writing on the Internet, which is getting farther and farther away from the "literary tune".I once asked a young man what he thought of the "literary accent" of that generation, and he expressed his understanding that the information processor in those people's brains was equivalent to the central processing unit of a "286" computer, and it was too late to process the daily incoming data. With so much information, it is natural and unnatural to return to the "literary tune" they are most familiar with. Today's young people have grown up with the country's material and cultural changes, and their information processors have already With the changes and upgrades of the times, young people process information much faster than the previous generation, and it is easier to see the essence when looking at problems.I think this young man is embarrassed to expose the self-satisfied "literary tune" quality of the previous generation.

Is the "literary tune" that has run through the reform and opening up to the present the crux of China's modernization?In fact, China's reform and opening up began with literary reflection for young people at that time. "Scar literature" became a literary craze in the whole society after the effect of reflection was magnified. At that time, China and the United States joined forces to fight against the Soviet Union, and Western literature would naturally flood into China, which had been closed to Western culture for many years. .At the same time, China's economic decentralization and concessions (national fiscal revenue fell from 37.2% of national income in 1978 to 19.1% in 1989), turned the huge electromechanical processing capacity built for the war in the past 30 years into " The civilian production capacity of "making up for living debts" has released the field energy of "liberating human nature" in literary reflection in material life in a short period of time. In the mid-1980s, people who had just tasted the sweetness of their material life were not satisfied, and began to turn their attention to more "modern" foreign goods. In addition to smuggling, the country began to use foreign exchange to import a large amount, which undoubtedly intensified this situation. The temperature of literature heat.During that period of time, the "Literary Tune" left a deep imprint on a generation.It should be said that the illusory material foundation at that time deeply solidified the spiritual culture of "literary tune" in the minds of that generation.

Since the 1990s, we have parted ways with the West politically, but economic ties have continued. "Sea Turtle" economists have appeared one after another, and the mainstream intellectuals who have dominated discourse in the 1980s are unwilling to leave the stage. All kinds of "literary tunes" came out.The crux of the problem is that this kind of "literary tune" was not born in the context of a business war between a late-developing country and a first-developing country, but in the context of self-reflection and blind embrace of the West, so it will A society that is increasingly divorced from reality cannot explain the real society.Therefore, in the eyes of those who look at the world with an outdated "literary accent", the dissatisfaction with the West arising from the potential economic structural competition between China and the West after the 1990s is all Boxer-style extreme nationalism The sentiment is ignorant and backward, and it is bewitched by the government, including the recent behavior of young people in the "Olympic torch incident". Many people who are still in the "literary tune" of the year still think so.This is actually ridiculous. Are those young people who have studied abroad and have a good knowledge structure really the reincarnation of the Boxers?Don't they really know how those young people mocked their outdated "literary accent" on the Internet?Who is more foolish?That's right, the theme of the Chinese revolution came from the bottom, and the bottom does have problems with the bottom, and isn't this historical choice precisely because the top is not noble, playing "literary tune"?At the beginning, the upper class thought that China could be modernized by singing "Literary Tune", but in the end they gave up the initiative of dynastic transition to the lower class. It is the same now. A country with a peasant population of more than 900 million is also not capable of singing "Literary Tune". "Ambulation" will be able to complete industrial and political modernization.

Of course, I am not completely denying the role of "literary tune", but as a country that is blocked by Western warships and merchant ships and forced to modernize, as a country that has been imported into industrial civilization by violence, what is needed? What kind of "literary tune"?Those young people who have an understanding of the gap between China's actual industrial technology and the West, after venting their dissatisfaction, what kind of "literary tune" do they need?What would they think when they saw the officials say "China-U.S. friendship" helplessly, while enduring the humiliation of the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, and Bush's meeting with "Tibet independence" and "Xinjiang independence" bigwigs?From now on, they will experience the pain of China's economy being hijacked by American finance. This pain is likely to become the deepest and most unforgettable memory in their lives.Will this kind of memory be wiped away by the current "literary cavity" that is divorced from the real world and complacent?

I remember reading a book called "How Society Remembers", and at the beginning of that book, I wrote this sentence: All beginnings contain elements of memory, especially when a social group makes concerted efforts to start anew. This is especially true whenIf China has gone through the financial crisis and is preparing to start again, what kind of memory factors will there be for the young people who gradually become the backbone of society at that time?Is it the memory of "two bombs and one satellite", or the memory of the current "literary tune"?The main body of cultural choice is always the public. Although the preferences of the intellectual elite have an influence on the public, if this influence is too divorced from reality and too spineless, can it not be abandoned by the public?Look at the "riots" that originated in Greece and spread to Europe a while ago. Why did those young people smash more than 100 banks?How much of the memory of the French Revolution is contained in their actions?For China, what do young people think of now?In fact, the current popular "literary tune" is nothing more than an attempt to make young people "say goodbye to the revolution", but as far as China's current socio-economic structure and historical memory are concerned, the situation is likely to be exactly the opposite.

In fact, the top management understands very well that it is now necessary to transform the passion of young people derived from revolutionary memories into the driving force for modernization.The general secretary’s speech in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of reform and opening-up started in 1840, which is essentially the same thing, but the problem is that this meaning will change after being deconstructed by the “literary accent” of those who hold the right to speak If you have a baby, you will completely lose the "technical content". This is exactly where young people who are eager to have "big goals" feel angry and helpless.In this sense, whether left or right, there is a problem of getting rid of the "literary tune".