Dear Students, Parents and Teachers,
Good morning! Once again, we ushered in the moment when the parting bell rang. Three days ago, the solar term had reached the summer solstice, and the sun reached the Tropic of Cancer of the earth, and then began to move south, thus starting the midsummer of the year; And in a few days you will be packing your bags and ready to start a new phase of your youth. Congratulations on completing your studies, and I wish you to keep your heart and let your future life bloom with your own brilliance!
All of you are liberal arts students, and there may be a puzzle in your heart that is difficult for us to face: that is, what is the point of studying liberal arts? Isn't our discipline a joke compared to many disciplines, especially the so-called hard skills STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)? Internet celebrity Mr. Zhang Xuefeng said in a live broadcast: "Liberal arts are all service industries, what is the service industry? It can be summed up in one word: 'licking'. "Of course, the liberal arts are not all useless, and if they are useful, they have emotional value, like a vase or a dessert after a meal. I really don't want to say that some people can't become Internet celebrities if they don't cater to the lower parts of human reason. Mr. Zhang Xuefeng admitted that he was also a service industry practitioner who licked the uncles. After he lowered himself, it seemed logical to pull Liberal Arts down. The important thing is not Mr. Zhang Xuefeng's remarks, because if he is not in position, he cannot invite the world to spoil, and the traffic will not come up; Importantly, Zhang Xuefeng can be seen as a symptom of today's popular mood, which seems to show an existential crisis in the liberal arts.
So, is it really pointless to study liberal arts? Let's start by looking at two noisy news stories in May this year. One of the protagonists is Ms. Xuan Jing, the former vice president of public relations of Baidu, whose views are very sharp and straightforward, such as "Employees break up and leave their jobs, I approve them in seconds, why should we consider employees' families?" There is also a much more famous Mr. Liu Qiangdong. He said, "Anyone who has a bad performance for a long time and never fights is not my brother." "It's not a brother, it means you can be fired. But in 2018, he also clearly said, "JD.com will never fire any brother." "The irony is that these two universities are both liberal arts, but I suspect that they didn't study well, and the liberal arts are human learning, but the human flavor here is gone, and what they encourage is wolf nature, performance is king, and profit is in charge. I admit that I am suspected of picking soft persimmons here, and it is safer and cheaper to criticize private enterprise figures. In fact, there is no shortage of entrepreneurs with feelings I know, some have gone to Daliangshan to teach for many years, and some have spent millions of dollars to build a stage for dozens of marginal musicians for free - it's a pity that good things don't go out and won't be on the hot search. Of course, the words of the two business elites above also had a social impact that could have made them uncomfortable: Ms. Xuan Jing was forced to resign under pressure, and as for Brother Qiang, who is still strong after all, I guess he didn't feel the need to apologize. But netizens will ask such questions: What is a brother? Is it that you are a brother when you are needed, and if you don't help me make money desperately, you won't be my brother? The underlying logic of Ms. Xuan Jing and Mr. Liu Qiangdong is, in the final analysis, the cold capital logic of input and output. Here, the criterion for judging things is efficiency and wealth, which is commodity fetishism. The nineteenth-century British critic Arnold nicknamed the Philistines "Philistines" to those who were keen on it, that is, those who regarded money as an end rather than a means in life: "We call the Philistines, those who believe that a prosperous life is a proof of great happiness, and that they are those who are determined to get rich with one mind and one way." "It's hard to say that these are all the evils of capitalism. We already have it. For example, since the Shang Dynasty changed the law, the people of the Qin State have long advocated the kind of KPI doctrine of the first knight. In fact, our ancients have always been wary of the concept that wealth is happiness. The famous words of Confucius are well known: "Wealth and nobility are like clouds to me." Zhuangzi commented on people who are controlled by material desires in this way: "Those who lose themselves to things and lose their nature to the vulgar are called upside down people." But it is very likely that the people of Qin will not be able to hear such a harsh and different voice. Later, they even burned books and pit Confucianism, almost completely eliminating their own humanities. Obviously, for the soldiers who obeyed the performance plan designed by Shang Ying, they killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and they did not realize their cruelty, but regarded themselves as heroes and heroes. In the same way, it is precisely because of the existence of the liberal arts, the existence of many long-standing knowledge systems for the study of human culture, experience, and values, that the performanceist nature of the two cases we have discussed earlier becomes visible.
Gauguin's famous painting: Where Do We Come From? What are we? Where are we going? 》。 In a sense, the humanities are all about answering these questions on a continuous basis. It is, first and foremost, a break from the consciousness of the everyday, which allows us to withdraw from our unnoticed lives, so that we can re-examine society, history, and the self from a different perspective. The humanities not only help us to understand social facts as objectively as possible, but they also move us through images, musical notes, stories, logical deductions, and so on, leading us to rethink: What is a good life? What is a just society? How do we recognize the complexity of our feelings? What is the meaning of aesthetic taste? In short, in Kant's words, the humanities are trying to approach the question: what is man. A society that does not respect the humanities is a society without the breath of the soul and without the brilliance of humanity, a jungle of the walking dead and the jungle of the jungle. In terms of disciplines, science and engineering are concerned with facts and utility, but humanities are concerned with values. In this sense, the humanities are a beacon that shines on the world of sampa and a compass to identify the key points of life.
Gao Guin
Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? 》
There are those who advocate the uselessness of the liberal arts and take pride in it. They will say: in a house, the most useful thing is the toilet. However, the guests liked to discuss the landscape paintings hanging on the walls. Such an argument may be courageous. But in reality, the liberal arts are not useless, they develop critical thinking, aesthetic ability, an awareness of the diversity of experience, and humanistic care. In reality, these human qualities can often play a decisive role. Career studies have shown that humanities majors tend to possess communication and analytical skills, and many of them are better equipped for leadership work. My early student, Shen Hong, whose master's thesis was Foucault's View of Literature, is now teaching in the Department of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. When undertaking government projects to design housing allocation programs for the homeless, her colleagues are responsible for the algorithms, providing the technical means, and she provides directional advice on what is fair and reasonable. In fact, the more advanced AI technology becomes, the stronger the society's thirst for the humanities. The humanities are a redemptive light for the kingdom of the future to cast into the real world.
Unfortunately, in this world of quick success, the humanities seem to be too slow to monetize. Throughout his life, Confucius failed to persuade the monarchs to accept his ideas of benevolence, and his contemporaries preferred to praise his wealthy and powerful disciple Zigong. There is a widespread belief that knowing is true knowledge, and people think they understand the social world in which they live and do not need professional advice from humanities experts. And that's not all. The Philistines we mentioned earlier were in fact the mainstream of society for Arnold, and he even classified himself as a Philistine. In other words, the foundation or driving force of our society is material interests. Bourdieu argues that the cultural production field follows a logic that is reversed from the mundane, and that it is a systematic rejection of the rules of the social game, that is, the disregard for the utilitarian values of money, power, and even honor. The critical thinking that the humanities encourage, which is inherently alienated from society. Adorno argues that art is the antithesis of society, and in the same way that we can say that the humanities are the otherness of society. Of course, in the past, humanistic education, whether it was the Six Arts of the Zhou Dynasty or the Seven Arts of Freedom in the Western humanist tradition, was only aimed at cultivating aristocrats. It used to be a state apparatus for the reproduction of the ruling class. But today, as the humanities of social criticism, it presupposes its distance from the social world to a certain extent. So how can we expect it to be strongly supported by society? But in a fundamental sense, the humanities rebelled against objectification and exalted human dignity, warmth, and freedom, in order to move towards a more ideal society. Every social critique of the humanities is, in fact, a hymn to society. But society may not welcome it wholeheartedly. It was only after Jesus was persecuted to death that people began to realize his greatness, and Lu Xun knew that his sales were inferior to that of Mandarin Duck and Butterfly Pie, and even his mother would rather read Zhang Hatshui. The crisis in the field of humanities is in fact a permanent crisis that will be difficult to eliminate. We can even say that in fact, the most beautiful things such as kindness, love, and beauty are often accidental, instantaneous, and therefore the most vulnerable. But the most mysterious thing about human nature is that their great strength lies in their vulnerability. Because what has no price to identify and no benefits to exchange can mean the light of the spirit, the nature of freedom, and the higher order of our lives.
Dear students, we should be proud to be part of the liberal arts students! We should not only enter the society, become a member of the society, become the builders of the society, but also go out of the society, become the other of the society, and become the critics of the society. If society refuses to listen to us for a while, this should be a reason to motivate us to fight stronger, and such a battle is bound to be a protracted battle with no hope of winning in the end. T.S. Eliot said, "If we look at a cause with the broadest and wisest perspective, there will be no such thing as a losing cause, because there is no such thing as a successful business." We fight for a losing cause because we know that our defeat and disappointment may be the prelude to the victory of our successor, even if that victory itself is only temporary; We fight more to keep something alive than to expect anything to win in the end. "May our students fight endlessly to keep the humanities alive! Entering the battle does not mean that we have to charge into battle, even if we maintain a close relationship with the logic of Vanity Fair, maintain our true temperament, and avoid being harmed by external objects, these can be understood as a fighting posture. Because at this time, we are resisting the temptation of materialism, that is, defending the dignity of the human person and the integrity of the heart. Zhuangzi said well: "The sun rises, the sun rests, and the mind is at ease between heaven and earth." "At this point we have ourselves: we are freed from the manipulation of performanceism and we are free of spirit. Students, the above is my learning experience in the humanities adventure, and I would like to encourage you together!
Thank you!
Article source: Wen Wei Po, WeChat public account "Chinese Department of East China Normal University"