If we don’t use big words, will we not be able to speak?

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “NOWNESS Now” (ID: NOWNESS_OFFICIAL).

Author | Uneven bars

Edit | Waffle

Typesetting | Jasmine

What does “up value” really mean?

During this period, “Internet industry black talk” has become a joke among many people. Although concepts that can be explained clearly in everyday language, foreign words are forced to be translated, collaged words are forced, and a new way of speaking is even produced from this.

Under the deconstruction of many paragraphs, the absurdity of these black words is obvious. However, many people reluctantly pointed out that the prevalence of black language is not due to the whim of certain people or groups, but is closely related to the inherent attributes of the industry, such as the status quo of monopoly by giants, differentiated competition, and so on.

At the same time, this kind of “black language thinking” is not limited to the Internet, but reflects the current people’s common language organization. As long as we observe the public opinion field and our own chat records, we will see that even in daily life, we tend to use abstract terms to express our state and feelings. In other words, “supreme value” has become everyone’s conditioned reflection.

Why did we start fighting with templates?

If the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates travels to this day, he may be pleasantly surprised to find that his phrase “a life without reflection is not worth living” is gradually occupying the spiritual world of contemporary people. Even the most trivial details of life must be put on a layer of perspective and a meaning must be extracted.

Nowadays young people have mastered a set of critical vocabulary: Parents are not parents, so they should talk about “native family”; love can’t be said to be love, but it should be called “intimate relationship”; the family problems of gossip female stars should rise to “The Oppression of Women in East Asian Societies”. In short, everything we see and encounter comes fromIt is an abstract and universal system, and by cognizing this system, it seems that the essence behind the problem can be grasped.

In this case, the individual’s subtle feelings and differences are placed in an irrelevant position. People are eager to put their lives in a larger theoretical “basket” in order to get the feeling of being seen and understood. For example, a person may be at a loss because of an unsuccessful relationship, but as long as the problem is divided into “East Asian society” and “male hegemony”, a strange sense of distance will arise, as if a scholar is talking about his own fieldwork.

On the other hand, “knowledge” has been elevated to an unprecedented height. Some academic concepts, after being disseminated through the mass media, soon permeated our daily lives-the “introduction” comes from the ecological research of the American anthropologist Giltz, and the “discipline” comes from Foucault’s analysis of the power structure. , And “native family” is a psychological term.

The problem is that these concepts are derived from the summary and refinement of social phenomena, but they cannot be pushed back to restore our lives.

The biggest illusion of young intellectuals, is that they have knowledge

In the field of science, even the most controversial issue is discussed strictly in accordance with the “axiomatic” method. Researchers acquiesce in a series of basic axioms, reach a consensus on the connotation of many terms, and then start arguments based on this.

For the “female gaze” proposed by Laura Mulvey in the 1970s, it comes from the reflection and criticism of predecessors such as Freud and Lacan. It is by no means a thigh. the concept of.

However, in the daily “value” process, we lack a basic consensus on the terms used. For example, the “inner volume” that once occupied the center of social topics has a different meaning in almost every dialog box. In this case, the word involution is almost impossible to enhance people’s cognition of themselves, others, and social situations, let alone lead to actions and changes. Generally speaking, any serious rational discussion should have two conditions: distinguish facts and opinions, feelings and judgments. This is also an ability that requires specialized training. However, those empty words are always entangled with personal experience and emotions, which makes it difficult for us to distinguish whether these concepts can really accurately summarize our situation, or are they merely satisfying the needs we want to express .

A group owner who has operated a knowledge-based community once said that it is generally difficult to produce nutritious content in the discussion of “classification” in the group. Although many people are keen to use this term, they areI don’t know how to divide it, and to what extent it is “solidified”. Therefore, most of the remarks made are based on my own experience and ended up with my own feelings, turning into a tragic meeting.

Since “supplied value” cannot enhance our understanding, what is its significance? Does it merely represent our vulnerability and anxiety?

What does “upper value” bring?

Just as the seemingly ridiculous “black word” has its underlying mechanism, “the upper value” is also related to the current living conditions of people. At least, in this era of general uncertainty, everything is linked to concepts to make our lives seem more regular and better understood.

From the perspective of epistemology, the thinking mode of “upper value” itself comes from the preference of human beings, such as “rational animals”, towards certainty and regularity. This is an ideological tendency that began in agricultural civilization and was carried forward during the enlightenment period. Nowadays everything is changing rapidly, but the individual mind is extremely limited. Our need for certainty is not weakening, but increasing.

We can’t deal with the endless problems in our lives that have no precedents to follow. Instead, we should divide our lives into categories and put them into the “basket” of concepts that scholars have long established.

There have been countless convincing explanations for “intimacy” or “native family”; and the anthropologist Xiang Biao’s “reconstruction of proximity” allows you to buy breakfast next door It’s also very important feeling. In this way, we can avoid letting our limited rationality collide head-on with the infinite uncertainty of life, thus bringing us a sense of security.

©️Evelyn Bencicova

However, this “illusion” will not keep us happy. In the process of “valuing”, a large number of concepts we have appropriated cannot be used to explain and transform life after all. Perhaps, recognizing and accepting our finiteness in front of the world, and on the basis of this finiteness, clarifying what we can and cannot change is the first step for us to become stronger.