The involution corresponding to evolution is evolution. Intuitively speaking, involution means "evolution inward, or circling".
Broadly speaking, all meaningless consumption can be called involution. It is a phenomenon that a social or cultural model reaches a certain shape at a certain stage of development and then stagnates or cannot be transformed into another advanced model.
Many low-level repetitive tasks in life seem to be striving for perfection. Everyone works step by step, works hard and enjoys it, but only works within a limited internal scope and does not expand outward. The direction of work is inward convergence, not outward divergence. This is called involution.
Explain it in detail with seven familiar examples.
1, meaningless Excellence is involution.
For example, thousands of tea cups on the table in the Great Hall are arranged vertically and horizontally, which is very spectacular! This strict and accurate arrangement is ineffective compared with the content and significance of the meeting. This is called involution and repetition of meaningless work.
2. It is involution that complicates simple problems.
For example, in order to implement the projects decided by the superior leaders, some units have to make the whole decision-making process look scientific to cope with the audit and inspection. To this end, they have gone through hardships, made a set of feasibility study reports, invited a group of experts and scholars to make suggestions, and held review and demonstration meetings again and again. In fact, the project has long been decided by the leaders.
These huge and busy jobs consume money, time and energy, and make simple problems very complicated, with the purpose of programming and drawing the so-called circle of scientific decision-making. This is an involution.
3. In order to avoid responsibility, passive coping is also a kind of involution.
A few days before major festivals or sensitive periods, subordinate institutions must respond to the call of superiors and organize a major inspection of production safety (or stability). As we all know, most leaders may not even have a certificate of safety production, and these inspections may not have any practical effect, but they still need to use a lot of manpower and material resources to complete this fixed action, so that they can be excused in case something goes wrong. This is also an involution.
4. The work that seriously deviates from the expected standard is also complicated.
Many evaluations created in society are involuted. Because these competitions consume a lot of manpower and material resources, they can't use these competitions to promote their expected work, and their original intention can't be realized. Show elements are more than real effects. For example, the so-and-so entrepreneurial star contest, or the scientific and technological innovation pioneer contest jointly organized by several departments in a province, and so on.
In fact, individuals will not start businesses because of competition, and technology companies will not engage in technological innovation because of competition. The original intention of the contest is to promote individual entrepreneurship and technological innovation, but the actual effect is minimal. This competition is of course an infield.
5. Low-level imitation and replication are typical involution.
Micro-sculpture and micro-sculpture are only formal arts, and their creative content will only be less than normal-sized works of art, especially in coloring, which is fatally limited, and their artistic connotation cannot exceed normal artistic creation. This deliberate exquisiteness is an involution. This is a kind of self-competition, a kind of asking for trouble, consuming a lot of time and exhausting willpower. Not only did I not create new content, but I also had to look at it with a magnifying glass, which was exhausting.
6. Internal competition that limits creativity is a kind of institutional involution.
For example, the rigid examination system seriously limits the space for students to study and grow freely. In order to get high marks, students are forced to study hard within the scope stipulated in the syllabus, which limits their free spirituality and stifles their creativity. At the same time, in order to compete, the questioner had to make the examination questions bizarre, such as who fired the first shot, who fired the second shot and who fired the third shot in the uprising. This is the involution.
7. The endless research on the same problem is involution.
China people's research on many historical masterpieces is amazing. With only a few books, countless scholars have been digging endlessly for a century or two. What new things can be produced? But the research is still in-depth, and the refinement can be more detailed and endless. Researchers wave after wave, but the content is constantly hyped, the papers are constantly copied, the original works are constantly distorted, and far-fetched evidence is used to be unconventional. In fact, it's just a pile of rotten meat in that pot, which is a typical involution.
Involution is a silent sadness. It slowly consumes our intelligence and youth and smoothes our personal spirit. After falling into involution, it is a silent and unconscious waste for individuals; For society or institutions, a large number of people are doing useless work silently, wasting resources in vain, reducing overall efficiency and weakening external competitiveness.