Recently, Zheng Yongnian, former director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, published an article on the intellectual Vanity Fair.
In the article, he pointed out that if the intellectual circle continues to "go down", then China will soon face an era of total mental retardation.
A selection of Professor Zheng Yongnian's articles
In Chinese society, it has always been "striving for fame in the court, striving for profit in the city, and striving for wisdom in loneliness".
"Striving for fame and fame" is for politicians, "striving for profit in the market" is for businessmen, and "striving for wisdom and loneliness" is for intellectuals.
The root of today's intellectual tragedy lies in the fact that modern intellectuals have lost the situation of "striving for wisdom and loneliness", and have joined the "struggle for fame and fame" or "striving for profit in the city".
Fight for fame. In the past, it was "learning and excelling", and the goal of learning was to be an official, and there was no boundary between the two.
On the surface, knowledge is created by intellectuals (i.e., "scholars"), but it is never the subject of knowledge.
Now the goal of being a scholar has greatly surpassed that of being an official, and there is a boundary between the two.
Compete for the benefit of the city. At the institutional level, the social arrangement of "scholars, peasants, industrialists, and merchants" separated intellectuals from businessmen. Of course, on a practical level, the two often go together.
Now, however, the situation is different. Intellectuals are profit-oriented and money-oriented, openly walking together with enterprises, and various industries are "captive" a group of intellectuals who speak for themselves and advertise.
A striking example of this is the real estate industry. China's real estate can come to such an absurd point today, not only about real estate developers and local **, but also about a large number of intellectuals in the "captivity" of this industry.
In modern society, in addition to political power and business interests, intellectuals have found other means to compete for fame and fortune. For example, competing for fame over "fame", that is, becoming famous by hyping up existing "celebrities".
This phenomenon can be seen everywhere in the so-called "national studies", and the essence of national studies that people expected has not appeared, and those "cows, ghosts, snakes, and gods" have been flooded.
In the world, China today has the largest group of Marx research institutions and Marx researchers, because Marx has almost become the official "national study".
But if you read the products of these institutions and scholars carefully, how many people understand Marx. Marx is just their politics, just their job.
In the Internet era, knowledge has the conditions to "compete for fame and benefit the public". This manifests itself in at least two ways. On the one hand, intellectuals have gone to the "market" through the Internet, "commoditizing" themselves and their own knowledge.
On the other hand, the Internet has also contributed to the emergence of all kinds of "knowledge" (religious superstition, witchcraft, etc.) in all corners of society on the "academic stage", and there is a general trend to become mainstream, because the value of knowledge is measured by money and traffic.
Today's intellectuals are all competing for traffic, and for this reason, everyone is competing for vulgarity and flattery, and kitsch and traffic are undoubtedly positively related. What's even more unfortunate is that officials often equate "traffic" with social influence. It is not difficult to understand that even the official ** is the same as many self-**, and it is grandiose and kitsch.
Once in Vanity Fair, intellectuals lack the imagination of knowledge. How can a group of knowledge, without intellectual imagination, create knowledge?How can a country without knowledge creation rise?
It is precisely because of the importance of knowledge to the rise of nations and countries that the country has also invested a lot of financial and financial resources to cultivate key universities, build new think tanks, and attract top talents. But the reality is that the more the state invests, the bigger the Vanity Fair;The bigger the Vanity Fair, the more corrupt the intellectuals.
The circle of knowledge is going down, and so is the knowledge. If this direction cannot be reversed, then China will soon face an era of complete "colonization" of knowledge, an era of total mental retardation.
To a large extent, China has followed this direction since the May Fourth Movement, but today's acceleration is not what could have been imagined in previous decades.
The underlying causes of mental retardation in the population
Professor Zheng Yongnian expounded the causes of the era of the mentally handicapped from the perspective of the sinking of the intellectual circle, but the root of the problem does not stop there.
The contention of a hundred schools of thought is a necessary condition for the development of knowledge, and the current environment is becoming tighter, which is very unfavorable to knowledge, especially the generation of innovative knowledge.
If only one voice is allowed, it can only be a lie against the will.
Even worse than this are the so-called experts, or rathered meat horns.
In the past three years, some experts have continued to make thunderous remarks, some for eyeballs, and some for sycophancy.
Zhang Jie, who suggested that the agricultural tax be restored, Xu Xianchun, who suggested that low-income groups rent out idle houses, and Dong Fan, who suggested that farmers buy houses in the county town and then drive to farm.
Recently, it has popped up again, suggesting that the people work until Yao Yudong, who is completely paralyzed, and Zheng Bingwen, who has difficulty raising a baby, can ask for help from relatives and friends.
These so-called experts are leaders and senior scholars of major universities and research institutes, who have neither the courage to speak the truth nor the most basic humanistic feelings.
It is these experts who do not speak human words that exacerbate the mentally retarded and even anti-intellectualism of the people.
In fact, more than ten years ago, we had real experts, there was the dispute of the century between Zhang Weiying and Lin Yifu in the economy, and there were also Mo Yan and Yi Zhongtian among the writers.
But over the years, there has been less and less room to tell the truth, and the stakes have grown.
Professor Liu Jipeng, who has been singing all his life, was banned just because he said a few words of truth before retiring and persuaded shareholders not to enter the market before the system was not perfect.
Today's intellectual circles are exhausted, good bows are hidden, everyone who really has the ability to stop talking, and only Sima Chuck, Chen Ping, Li Yi, Jin Canrong, these jumping clowns are left on the Internet.
There is another point that cannot be ignored, that is, the official **anti-intellectual**, and now netizens no longer believe in the news, and they all read the comments directly.
The most frequent reply in the comments is what the three elements of the news are, and even directly asks when the plot will be staged. Behind the yin and yang weirdness is both dissatisfaction and helplessness.
It is true that many people have the ability to think independently, but most people are still misled by these positions of information.
Knowledge, like civilization, does not develop in a straight line, with twists and turns, but also counter-currents.
In the era of the mentally handicapped of the whole people, only by insisting on independent thinking can we see this Rakshasa Sea City clearly, and stand outside the mountain to see the mountain.