The first time I knew the word "involution", I saw my friends forwarding an article entitled "Life Breakthrough under Top University Exams", and they all said * * *, so I began to examine the phenomena in daily life. It turns out that many things that we take for granted have actually alienated into abnormal involution.
1. What is involution? Many people may not know the specific meaning of "involution", so let me give a simple example: in an open-air performance, everyone can sit quietly and enjoy the program, but there are always people who want to see the scene on the stage more clearly, so they choose to stand on the stool, but the people behind them can't see it clearly, so the people behind them will stand up from the stool one after another, and more and more people will gradually get off the stool. This meaningless internal friction is called "involution".
In fact, "involution" is not a new word in recent years. It appeared very early, and was put forward by American anthropologist Gordon weiser, then introduced and revised by China scholar Huang Zongzhi. Now it is also a very controversial word.
Involution has two symbolic factors: first, limited resources. The resources in our living and learning environment are limited, so everyone can't develop indefinitely, and they are all limited by external boundaries. Secondly, it is the marginal income decline caused by meaningless internal friction, that is, people will feel that they have gained more income when they pay extra at first, but as they pay more and more, the income will continue to decline. The figure below vividly illustrates this point.
For college students, "involution" can be interpreted as: because the educational resources and environmental resources of each school are limited, students constantly increase their investment in order to strive for better resources, making their efforts more detailed and structured, thus leading to irrational competition and ultimately diminishing marginal benefits.
Second, the embodiment of college students' involution (1) is forced to become "slash youth". I believe many people have heard of "slash youth", a very popular online hot word in today's era. The so-called "slash youth" refers to young people with multiple identities or occupations. For example, we often see people introducing themselves as "I am a student/writer/musician", and these "diagonal lines" represent people's different identities.
"Slash youth" itself is not a derogatory term, it represents a diversified lifestyle, that is, young people nowadays can choose more than one life direction, they can develop in an all-round way and choose a more colorful life.
For example, as "slash youth", some college students can not only achieve excellent results in their studies, but also lead their team members to participate in various competitions and win the championship in their own club activities. This kind of college students know themselves very well, they can take part in different activities according to their interests and become an excellent "slash youth", which is worth learning.
However, under the social background of involution, some people themselves do not have the ability of "slash youth", but they are forced to split themselves into two halves. They want to do many things, but they can't do anything well, which has a negative impact on their lives. They are trapped by the social background, and under the pressure of false all-round development, they keep moving forward and climbing. I can't finish my homework, but I want to take part in other competitions, and in the end I get nothing.
Analysis of the reasons, first of all, is that their energy is not enough to support so much work, and they can't reasonably allocate time for study, life and extracurricular activities, so that they can't concentrate on completing each task, which leads to excessive dispersion of energy. Secondly, being a slash youth must be based on the personal interests and abilities of each college student. If college students' personal qualities can't meet this requirement, they will be forced to step into the virtual door of slash life, which will only make them "draw water with a sieve" instead of "fully blossom" their lives.
In fact, this can't be entirely blamed on college students. Nowadays, the social pressure is increasing, and the assessment methods for college students are becoming more and more complicated. People no longer pay attention to the theory of achievement, but pay more attention to the all-round development of students. This direction is undoubtedly correct, but it also inevitably brings more and more pressure to college students.
(2) The false "master of time management" said above that college students must take part in various activities if they want to promote their "all-round" development and improve their comprehensive quality. However, the more activities you take part in, the more time and energy you will spend. However, how much energy you pay does not mean how much income you can get, so there will inevitably be invalid investment. How to measure their own investment standards and how to get the maximum benefits should be a focus of contemporary college students' thinking, rather than increasing their time investment without thinking.
Many college students have complained, "I feel that I am busy every day, but I sit down and think about it, but I don't know what I am busy with or whether I have gained anything." The reason for this phenomenon is that college students want to strive for more resources in a limited time. Everyone wants to be or is forced to be a "master of time management". They hope to attend classes during the day, participate in club activities in the afternoon, and have dinner with their classmates at night to complete the indispensable socialization in college life. But is it really possible? This ideal is beautiful, but the reality is that they are forced to run a worthless and meaningless time race, which runs counter to our goal of cultivating college students.
There are many classmates around me. When they see busy classmates around them, they will feel very anxious and feel as if they are doing nothing, so they start to work blindly. However, no one really calms down to think about where their actual ability lies and whether this activity is conducive to their own development. They are just "busy for the sake of being busy", and in the end they are just sleepy, dizzy and have dark circles under their eyes every day.
Let me mention a classic case that everyone is familiar with: the teacher assigned a paper assignment of only 2,000 words, but when all the students got the assignment for the first time, what they thought was not how to improve the quality of the paper, but how to add up the number of words to 654.38+100,000 words. It seems that through this kind of ineffective writing, an empty "writing castle" can be built, so as to establish a good image in the minds of teachers and get high marks. The reality is that the so-called "castle of words" is just a "castle in the air" and can't stand scrutiny at all.
(3) Helpless "social talents"
I don't know when someone will always say in your ear, "when you go to college, you should make more friends and know more people, especially some brothers, sisters and teachers." It is an indispensable human resource for your future growth. " As a result, college students not only started involute in academic performance and science competitions, but also started involute socially!
The social personality of college students can be roughly divided into three types:
The first is "positive extroversion". They often choose to take the initiative, try to show their strengths in various occasions, constantly challenge others, ignite the surrounding competitive atmosphere, create pressure on others, and thus gain higher social status and psychological advantages.
The second type is "passive experience type". They are college students who are forced to participate in social activities. They don't want to participate in social activities at all, but people always push them. On the one hand, they don't want to communicate with others at all. Every time they take part in activities, they should make great efforts to carry out psychological construction in order to get out of their closed doors. On the other hand, they are eager for the benefits brought by social interaction and a large number of friends. They are contradictory and painful, but they have to socialize.
The third is "dark destructive". They are committed to destroying all good interpersonal relationships and creating invalid anxiety and pressure for others. For example, when you review, he will come to you and say, "Oh, why are you reviewing here? I have read this book three times. " Isn't it irritating?
The above three social personalities are not all negative. The first two have positive effects to a certain extent, but the last one is something we need to try our best to avoid. In the socialization of university life, we should pay more attention to our own development rather than blind socialization. But don't shut yourself off. If you think that a person has really brought you a lot of troubles, then you should try to open your heart and make more friends. However, if your current social life is complicated and chaotic, which affects your normal study life, then you should restrain yourself accordingly, reduce social time and make more friends.
Third, the harm of college students' involution Every college student is deeply affected by involution, which has the following manifestations:
(1) is getting worse and worse. In today's society, we can often see the news that college students suffer from depression. On various social media, we can often see friends declare that they are suffering from anxiety. The most common content in the circle of friends is no longer sharing the joy of success or the beauty of the journey, but the frequent occurrence of negative words such as "hair loss again" and "liver is not moving". It can be seen that the health status of college students is getting worse and worse in the huge competitive pressure and endless involution.
For many people, when it comes to "health", the first reaction is health, as if you don't have a cold or a fever. But in fact, mental health is also a problem that deserves our attention.
In today's society, everyone is desperately trying to become a "master of time management", but not getting effective rest for a long time will make them highly nervous and cause anxiety and depression. Everyone is eager to be a "social expert", but this will make some students who are not good at socializing have social phobia. If these diseases are not properly guided, they may lead to bad events on campus and destroy the pillars of our society and the flowers of our motherland.
(2) Bad competition hinders social development. In the continuous development, colleges and universities have formed a set of their own unique competition rules. The appearance of involution has broken the original rules, led to bad competition and affected the development of college students themselves.
For example, in the competition, people want to get excellent results, they will take many bad measures, such as stealing data, plagiarizing papers, monopolizing information and so on. Although these methods will help competitors get false results, they will seriously hinder those competitors who abide by the rules from getting their due results, which is a very unfair phenomenon.
Bad competition can also lead to "prisoner's dilemma". The prisoner's dilemma originally refers to the fact that two arrested gangsters give up cooperation under the condition that cooperation can produce the greatest benefit, which eventually leads to zero-sum phenomenon.
Extending to our college life, we can often see that college students' competitors want to share information with each other to save time and cost and make progress. But now, for the so-called involution, everyone is unwilling to share their information, which leads to a lot of bad time consumption and blind competition.
(3) The quality of talents has declined. All colleges and universities should aim at cultivating moral integrity and improving the comprehensive quality of college students. However, many colleges and universities only pay attention to students' academic performance, employment rate and other objective indicators, but ignore the cultivation of students' internal outlook on life, values and world outlook. So that there are many involution phenomena now, which obviously runs counter to Lide Shu Ren's goal.
Involution makes the interpersonal relationship between classmates worse, resulting in the cruel law of the jungle and the law of the jungle in the ivory tower that should be warm. Many college students began to walk a tightrope, breaking away from convention and striving for high-quality resources for themselves. The so-called "showing great virtue, observing public morality and being strict with private morality" should be the foundation of every student's life, but now it has become the extravagant hope of some people.
Moreover, because bad competition increases the time cost and development cost of college students, what could have been completed in one year now takes two or even three years to complete. Blindly becoming a "slash youth" makes students' basic abilities fail to meet the requirements, which eventually leads them to have no housekeeping skills and can't find their favorite jobs, thus failing to better build our society and motherland and losing a large number of outstanding talents in vain.
Fourth, how to get out of the cage of involution? All college students don't like involution, but every college student is forced to involution. How to solve the current involution phenomenon requires not only the efforts of college students themselves, but also the full support of the whole society.
(1) Optimizing the involution of university resources is one of the fundamental reasons, that is, the educational resources and environmental resources of universities are indeed limited and unevenly distributed. Therefore, in order to compete for more resources, students must pay a lot of extra or even ineffective time and energy. Therefore, in order to reduce involution, we must optimize from the source, and the rational allocation of university resources has become a key step.
First of all, we should be fair and just in the distribution of material resources. For example, in the distribution of scholarships, grants and other material rewards, we should strictly follow the relevant procedures, forbid anyone to go through the back door or step on the red line, and prohibit any illegal behavior, so that students who really deserve rewards can get the rewards they deserve. Only in this way can we avoid the phenomenon that "bad money drives out good money"
Secondly, we should also pay attention to the development of spiritual resources. Educators should pay more or even ideological attention to students, avoid paying too much attention to some students and ignoring others, and try to be fair and just subjectively. For all subjective evaluation projects, reliability and validity should be evaluated, and the third-party evaluation or peer review system should be implemented to minimize subjective deviation and improve scientificity and objectivity.
Result justice and procedural justice are both indispensable key procedures to promote the effective allocation of resources. Therefore, in the future development, major universities should simultaneously solve the problem of involution among college students and alleviate the contradiction of involution among college students.
(II) Carrying out Psychological Counseling In the involution environment, the mental health of college students has become a topic of widespread concern in society, and most students spend their time on campus. Therefore, our universities and society should pay more attention to students' mental health and actively do psychological counseling. This can be achieved in the following two ways:
1. Establish a psychological clinic. Colleges and universities can provide students with an active way to ask teachers for help. In this way, students who feel anxious and have a knot in their heart can actively communicate with their psychological teachers, relieve pressure, correct the wrong beliefs of blind competition, and thus promote the excellent development of their mental health.
2. When teaching, university teachers can subtly convey the idea of healthy competition to students. Let students change their mentality and ideas slowly under the influence of this kind of values. For example, when assigning a paper, the teacher can clearly put forward the upper limit of the number of words in this assignment, and the words exceeding this upper limit will not be counted in the grade, thus guiding students to focus on improving the quality of the article rather than meaningless words.
(3) Students actively help themselves. With the continuous efforts of society and universities, college students can also actively carry out self-help actions. When completing each task, we should seriously consider whether this is what we need, whether it can enhance our ability and enrich our experience. The so-called "think twice before you act".
In daily life, we should always pay attention to our physical and mental health, pay attention to healthy competition, always remind ourselves not to cross the line in competition, and pay more attention to quality when completing tasks, rather than blindly piling up quantity.
The phenomenon of involution among college students does appear, and each of us should not cover it up or ignore it, but should face it squarely and actively find ways to solve it. When solving these problems, we should also pay attention to:
1. Not all competition can be explained by "involution". Don't expand involution, which will hinder the healthy competition among college students and dampen their enthusiasm.
2. College teachers should not use the word "involution" in any occasion, thus reducing their workload. If there are other problems among students that can't be explained by involution, we should pay more attention to them to promote their healthy development.
The general secretary once said: "The value orientation of youth determines the value orientation of the whole society in the future." I hope every college student can break out of the encirclement of involution. Remember that everything in the world is uneven and polymorphic, and this is precisely the source of happiness.