The Debate Between Humanities and Sciences, Kaisen's Law, and Spiritual Struggles#
date: October 30, 2022
slug: 7
status: Published
tags: Weekly Report
type: Post
1. The Romance of Humanities and Sciences#
While surfing, I came across a quote:
"Our journey is among the stars and the sea," this is the romance of the sciences;
"The road never imagined," this should be the pursuit of us humanities students!"
According to the educational system in our country, humanities students and science students are generally responsible for the cultural and technical aspects of society, respectively. From practical experience, this division is gradually becoming unsuitable for the trend of integration between humanities and sciences in modern society, leading to the need for educational reforms.
As the world's largest industrial country, China needs a large number of continuous technical talents on the path of industrial upgrading. The lack of high-end technical workers has become a consensus within the industry. However, our vocational school system, which is quite outdated, has students mainly from the worst-performing group in the region where the school is located. With poor student quality, the training results are naturally unsatisfactory. The lack of vocational school students and the surplus of university graduates have gradually proletarianized the intellectual class.
Of course, the proletarianization of the intellectual class is the trend of socialist countries, but due to the lack of emphasis on practice in our country's universities and the great employment pressure caused by the inflation of academic qualifications, there is a lack of high-level technical talents while the number of ordinary university graduates is excessive, resulting in an awkward situation.
At first glance, the number of humanities students and science students is not significantly different, but the admission rate for science students is an order of magnitude higher, making it much more difficult for humanities students to find employment. In our society, there has always been a view that "humanities students are useless," and "one of the reasons why Southeast Asian countries have fallen into the middle-income trap is that there are too many humanities students."
The binary division between humanities and sciences actually originated from the introduction of Soviet-style education in 1958, which emphasized high output and a specialized talent structure and training model. This division has persisted for a long time in high school, limiting the understanding of humanities and sciences to the basic knowledge taught in high school (another common bias is that many people think that those who study humanities couldn't handle science subjects). However, in today's universities, this division is no longer reliable. The disciplines now have a tendency to intersect, and the integration of humanities and sciences is already common. For example, psychology, psychotherapy, and social psychology belong to the social sciences, but experimental psychology, psychological statistics, and physiological psychology belong to the natural sciences. Similarly, economics and finance involve a lot of data analysis and computation. Even history has become quantified. Even philosophy, which is considered useless by the general public, requires some schools to study functional analysis, advanced algebra, and partial differential equations. Although the three major systems of human knowledge (natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities) do not have a hierarchy, they collectively contribute to the enlightenment of human civilization. However, in a materialistic world, we have a consensus that the economic growth of modern industrial society is mainly contributed by science and technology, and in terms of intuition, that is purely in the field of science and technology. When the top talents in this field make breakthroughs, they can release economic benefits the next day, make the cake bigger, and even change the mode of production. At this time, we need some disciplines to study the rules of the existing fields, focusing on how to divide the cake, or delve into the civilization structure, aligning the development of the human spirit with the material society.
==The economic growth of modern industrial society is mainly contributed by science and technology, and in terms of intuition, that is purely in the field of science and technology. When the top talents in this field make breakthroughs, they can release economic benefits the next day, make the cake bigger, and even change the mode of production. At this time, we need some disciplines to study the rules of the existing fields, focusing on how to divide the cake, or delve into the civilization structure, aligning the development of the human spirit with the material society.==
- Science and technology talents can expand the boundaries of the incremental market, but talents themselves are cultivated within the existing social market. Humanities students should study the rules of the existing fields to make the entire society operate more smoothly.
- Another function of humanities students is to "delve into the civilization structure, aligning the development of the human spirit with the material society." Taking our country as an example, the essential function of humanities students in China should be to "tell the Chinese story and do cultural work." Essentially, it is about doing ideological work. Unfortunately, since the reform and opening up forty years ago, it seems that humanities students in our country have largely followed Western theories in the field of ideology, gradually retreating and even inviting trouble. It was not until recent years, when China's hard power came up, that they reluctantly gained an advantage in internal propaganda.
Doing ideological work is not inferior to teaching humanities students mathematics, statistics, and programming:
In university, it requires reading more books and gaining insights into the structure of society. For example, studying philosophy to enhance one's ability to think critically and discern, which is an internal skill. Then, learn other "external skills" and feel more comfortable. Of course, it is not about being superficial, but about echoing and inspiring the people's imagination of a better life. At this time, you need to put aside your sense of superiority and focus on cultural work.
In summary, humanities students rely on two things: people's hearts and the chaos and order of society. When the country is poor and weak, studying medicine cannot save the Chinese people. First, a group of young intellectuals need to call for a new culture and a new life, transforming the spiritual outlook of the nation, and then explore the path of industrialization. However, in today's normalized nation-state, we have many deficiencies in both the existing fields and the ideological field. A major reason is that China's humanities and social sciences lack their own methodology. Even those prominent social and economic scholars on the surface struggle to make progress without relying on the Western neoliberalism or Keynesianism. The monopoly of Western capitalism on the humanities knowledge system is similar to that of lithography machines.
So in the end, we lack a certain confidence and precedent to build an unimaginable path, to achieve fair distribution internally, to stand up against capitalism externally, and to create a completely new system. This may be the urgent task for humanities to make a breakthrough.
2. Kaisen's Law#
If a social problem affects a large population, exists for a long time, and spans multiple countries or regions, then it is almost certain that a solution cannot be found at the level of the superstructure and can only be solved through the development of productive forces. The degree of "certainty" is directly proportional to the population affected, the duration of the problem, and the breadth of its scope. The larger these three variables are, the greater the possibility that the social problem cannot be solved under the current conditions of productive forces.
In simple terms, don't think, "Oh, how come no one thought of this solution in the past thousands of years, but I thought of it, I'm a genius." It's like discovering a principle of plane geometry that is not written in textbooks, and the most likely reason is that you have read too few reference books or papers. If you find yourself smarter than the ancients in solving a social problem, either the method is not feasible, or the change in productive forces has made the previously infeasible method feasible.
At the same time, it is also necessary to dialectically see that some past difficult problems have become solvable with the development of productive forces and society. At this time, we should also keep up and seize the opportunity. This is the interaction between social consciousness and social existence. We must not use the theory of productive forces as an excuse for inaction. We need to analyze specific problems from a materialistic perspective.
3. My Own Spiritual Struggles#
After partially disconnecting from the internet, my spiritual struggles have decreased by more than half.
The factors currently continuing to trouble me are:
- Phonophobia; specific sounds trigger anxiety
- Unhealthy sleep patterns
Among them, phonophobia causes the most severe internal struggles.
Possible solutions that come to mind:
- Wear noise-canceling headphones and a hood
- Desensitization therapy
- Rationalize behavior and increase tolerance