This article is the 706th original article published by Xijing Research Institute and the 665th original article by Dr. Zhao Jian.
If you believe what Jung said,The collective unconscious is the destiny of a nation, then we should believe that the future of a country will also be predestined. No one person, one fortuitous event, can completely determine the future of a country. The future is indeed in your own hands. The collective unconscious of countless people contains their own "good fortune" and "karmic retribution".
The ups and downs of the economy and the ups and downs of the economy will be interpreted in the great wave of the rise and fall of the country。I used to think that the national fortune was a very grand metaphysics and ethereal, and as a professional economic research, I should not pay attention to it. But after several years of turbulent waves, I suddenly discovered that the importance of national fortune can affect the daily life of every ordinary person. The modern economy is a whole, and the fate of each individual is closely linked.
National fortune is generally interpreted as the fortune of a country. But I'd rather think of it as yesThe fate of the nation。Like a person's fate, it is indeed a very metaphysical thing. "It's always fate, and it's not up to anyone." Fatalism can interpret everything, making everything helpless, nihilistic, cruel, and incomprehensible. The Greek gods had their own gods, and most of them were proud and aggressive, but they had to bow down to the gods of fate. No matter how brave you are in the struggle, you can't escape the luck. When heaven and earth come together, the heroes are not free. If nothing else, let's just say that the most basic human life, old age, sickness and death, whether you are the Qin Emperor and Han Wu, or the Tang Dynasty and Song Ancestors, even Solomon, the wisest and greatest king of Israel, sighed when he was old, ".The nothingness of nothingness, everything is nothingness
However, for real life, for the personal fate embedded in the national fortune, it is concrete and real. Over the years, we have truly realized that the direction of the national fortune is closely related to the personal life, career, wealth, as well as the burden, happiness, hope and confidence of the family (see "The Whirlpool of the Times: The Internal and External Conflicts of the Development Model and the Stirring of the Old and the New in the Centennial National Fortune", "Zhao Jian: Where is the pendulum of the national fortune heading when the epidemic reappears and the recovery slows down?"). "Zhao Jian: Credit, Debt and National Fortune", etc.). The dividends of the times will catch up if you catch up, and those who can't catch up can only do so, and even have to pay off the "debts" of the times. For example, if you buy a house at the highest point, you will buy ** in the last two years. A generation has its own destiny. The fortunes of a country can be grand and illusory, but the lives of ordinary people are concrete and real. Daily firewood, rice, oil and salt, supporting a family, elderly people, children's schooling, housing loans, car loans, credit cards, career prospects and stability, etc. A piece of paper can make tens of millions of people lose their jobs and evaporate trillions of wealth. The influence of national fortunes on the fate of individuals is in most cases underestimated.
In a period of economic upswing, national rationality, social tolerance and openness, and a positive and sunny mentality, it seems that the national fortune can help share the burden of some personal fate. There are more job opportunities, incomes are growing steadily, and family wealth is also rising. People's faces were filled with hope and happiness, as if everything was moving in a better direction. China's 1978, it was a spring.
However, in a period of economic downturn, unpredictable policies, uncertain directions, involution of work, struggles everywhere, and low social inclusion, everything began to turn the other way around. The ups and downs of the industry and changes in policies have caused many people to lose their jobs and family wealth to shrink significantly. People's faces are full of anxiety and uneasiness, and there is a lot of anxiety and worry about the future.
So who decides the fate of the country? I don't think it's a metaphysical question. A person's fate may be more predestined, but as a collective fate, the direction of national fortunes seems to be more traceable. "History is written by the people". Looking back at the history of more than a hundred years, it is clear thatWhenever we firmly move forward in the direction of modernization, it is an upward period for the country's fortunes。On the contrary, it is a period of uncertain national fortunes, and it is a period of hard exploration and great cost in the trial and error of hitting the southern wall. Modernization, turning an ignorant and backward traditional China into an open and civilized modern China, is an unstoppable fortune. Unless, most people are collectively locked in cognitive traps and information cocoons.
What is modernization? What is Chinese modernization? The year before last, I wrote a series of research reports for interpretation ("Zhao Jian: Understanding Chinese Modernization: Path and Choice", "Zhao Jian: Understanding Chinese Modernization: Civilization and Self-Reflection", "Zhao Jian: Understanding Chinese Modernization: History and Logic", etc.). The definitions of modernization and modernity have not been fully defined until now, but there is a general consensus on the kernel and the metrics. Modernization, in the final analysis, is to move from superstitious authority (theocracy in the European Middle Ages) and the worship of identity (family and blood inheritance) to respect for living individuals, respect for contracts and institutions, respect for science and reasonIt is a process of "emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts".。Specific metrics include:Industrialization, material life is highly developed; marketization, so that every humble subject can participate in economic decision-making, rather than just "planning committees"; Urbanization, from the local civilization of blood relations to the city, the children of peasant families have become citizens; Globalizationto carry out economic, trade and cultural exchanges with the whole world with universal values. EspeciallyModernization of national governanceIts essence is the rule of law, democratization, professional and distributed authorized governance, etc. The modernization of national governance can make the national fortune jump out of the "dynastic cyclical law"., which is also a kind of protection for those who have power. Otherwise, in a modern society, the traditional way of governance is still clung to, and everyone is not safe. How do national fortunes come about? Modernizing from outside forces in a native continental traditional country is not an easy taskIn the middle, we will inevitably experience a long contest between tradition and modernity, ignorance and enlightenment, barbarism and civilization。The fortunes of a country are determined by the collective subconscious of a countryThe modernization of this country also requires a process of getting out of the past dreams, and waiting for more and more people to awaken from the deep values of the subconscious of the pastand, more likely, to be awakened by artillery. From Humen to the Yellow Sea, otherwise you are still living in your own spring and autumn dreams. The national fortune was born from the earthquake and the crisis, but the process of childbirth was extremely painful, and it took a generation or several generations to bear the pains of transformation. However, the most painful thing is not waking up from a dream and finding that the world has changed, but waking up and turning over and falling asleep again. In the past, Iran, Chile and other countries have experienced such historical regression.
Lu Yao said that life is long, but those few steps are the most important. The same is true of the country, at the crossroads of fateWhether to continue to rise to the challenge and use development to solve problems in development, or to retreat and go perverse and avoid problems by denying development. It seems to be a choice, but in fact there is no choice, because all the "causes" are planted in the collective subconscious of this country, and the consequences are already doomed. Whether it is inflation or deflation, whether it is real estate or **, whether it is national debt or local debt, the living situation and wealth of individuals today,All the ruins and ruins are just projections of the collective soul of a nation。Is a refined and self-interested nation that lacks faith, ignores right and wrong, and does not care about social justice and public affairs except for money, worthy of the achievements of modern civilization that it has today?
Decision-makers at the top of the pyramid have the power to make the ultimate decision to turn the gears of national fortunes, so their cognition, vision, ability, will, and especially the true self-confidence of humility and inclusiveness are crucial to the fate of a country. Western scholars who study Chinese history have come to the conclusion that in times of crisis, there will always be a part of China that will stand up to protect the country and keep this ancient civilization alive. Today, China is facing the scarring effect of the epidemic three years later, the rapid aging and rapid decline of the population, the contradictions of the post-industrialization and post-urbanization era, and the long farewell to the era of real estate and large infrastructure, all of which indicate an ominous fate.
But,We should also see China's development achievements today, the world's most complete industrial system, super-large-scale economy, super industrial transformation capacity, high level of urbanization, the most university-educated human capital and engineer dividends, the most complete transportation, logistics, communication system and other infrastructure, especially the Chinese hard-working inner culture, are allThere is only one "good deck of cards" in the world
But back to the origin of the national fortunes,People are the center of national fortunesAll destiny is in the hands of modernity in the collective subconscious, not in the accumulation of steel and concrete behemoths. The author of "The Age of Nothingness" is the British scholar Peter. Watson said: In many countries, high-rise buildings, suits, cars, mobile phones and computers, all the seemingly modern life is just a delicate camouflaged "mimicry", and they may be beaten back to the prototype of traditional society at any time. This is the real crisis, the crisis of national fortunes.