XX后

不知不觉间——不对，也许是我后知后觉——70后，80后，90后这样的字眼渗透了网络文化。一瞬间，千千万万人被盖上了XX后的帽子，有的人感到自豪，有的人感到不满。一瞬间，我已经不是一个十八岁的成年人；我只不过是众多脑残，非主流，不懂人间苦的小屁孩之一。我觉得这现象很可笑，却怎么也笑不出来。韩寒说，“作为我本人，非常讨厌以年代划分作者，每个优秀作者都是个性鲜明的人，哪能分类。”我是读了他的这句话，才真正喜欢上他的文字。不仅仅是作者，每个人都是个性鲜明的人，怎么能以年代给一群的人贴标签。哪个年龄段的人里没有脑残，非主流，不懂人间苦的？这世上什么人都有，有因为生活艰苦而异常早熟的小学生，也有到四十不惑还不明事非的“成年人”。将人以出生年代分类不但没有逻辑，也很不尊重人——是的，人。我是理解的，我经常也有想说“啊，如今的小学生如何如何”的冲动。我觉得我是成熟的，而比我年龄小的人是幼稚的，不开窍的。但我会控制这种话的不成熟，不理智的冲动。我的原则是只针对个人，不针对群体。我希望人与人在还未与对方接触前（通过面对面接触，文字，影像，或其他媒体），能假设对方是像你一样有逻辑，有思想的人。如果在接触后你发现这个人连傻子都不如，那是这个人的问题。但是如果在完全不知道这个人的情况下，就因为你看见这个人的个别同龄人做过的一些事，就认为这个人无药可救，那么真正无药可救的其实是你。

如果你津津有味地用着像“70后，80后，90后”这样充满偏见与无知的字眼的原因不是以偏概全，而仅仅是因为你属于某“XX后”群体的话，那你同样也是可悲的。其实，“XX后”给我带来的感觉不是偏见与无知，更确切地说是“傲慢与偏见”。我觉得每当一个人不加思索地将自己称为XX后时，他就像豆瓣上网友逗逗豆豆给我的回复里写到那般：“从批评别人中，我们获得的不仅仅是口舌的快感，还能强化在一个群体的身份认同感和归属感，强化作为一个个体的生存体验。而且，如果你站在道德的制高点上对别人指手划脚，确实能获得高高在上的优越感。”我对自己的期望是可以从自身的努力来找到归属感，优越感，成就感等等（当然，认同感需帮助）。我实在不明白，以年代将自己或他人盲目地归类对自己或是对他人究竟有什么用处。偶尔说说也罢了，但是总是看到听到就有点不正常。我希望这世界还没无聊到这种任何人都能被轻易贴标签的地步。我希望我是Leila，而不是XX后。

Fight Club and more

So today I watched Alejandro's favorite movie Fight Club and had an extended conversation with him afterward, as usual. I must admit that he noticed a lot more substance in the movie than I did. For example, the big thing we talked about was Project Mayhem. AT first I viewed it as merely organized acts to release pressure accumulated in daily, boring life. But only after his kind reminder did I remember hearing something about the Project Mayhem's objective being "destroy the beautiful and restart the world."

Okay.

I paused for a moment because 1) I did not see it coming and almost believed for a second that this objective is kind of beautiful in itself; 2) something just sounds intrinsically wrong to me and I could not point it out at that very moment. And then I realized what it was. I've seen this before. I've seen lines like that before. Notably, in Death Note. Raito is this teenager who by accident gets this death notebook that by writing down names of people he can kill them any way he wants. Raito begins using it extensively when he decided to kill prisoners who he deems undeserving of life. He called himself Killer, and gradually more people began to worship him, making him feel like god. After a while, to evade prosecution, he began killing non-prisoners...and then entirely innocent people...

Yes, the Noah's Ark idea of the world being so dirty and ugly that it has to be rebuilt is not a novel one. But the problem is, who determines that? I think the only person that knows whether the entity "world" is ugly is God, and I doubt anyone in the mundane world has the omnipotence of "God." Of course, people are entitled to their opinions but it becomes dangerous when one (this can be individual or a collective group) begin to thinks that his opinion constitutes the ultimate truth and everyone else must follow his through whatever means possible. Seriously? How do you know your opinion is any more true or right than mine? Plus, how can anyone claim to be so knowledgeable that he knows what the entity "society/world" is like exactly in his limited lifespan? I bet some of those people who literally traveled everywhere around the world and met more kinds of people than any of us had cannot even make a definite claim about whether the world is good or bad. In fact, I believe that the more you see or experience, the more you'll realize the complexity and multiplicity of life and "society."

Anyway, going back to Alejandro's argument. He believes that life should be a simple, uncomplicated connection to nature, without the influence of technology, extraneous material, etc. Okay, that's fine. But what is not fine is that he believe EVERYONE's life should be like that and the world is ugly because everyone's life is NOT like that (and therefore world is better off being "rebooted"). A beautiful vision suddenly turns into a ridiculous presumption. What if my belief is that our lives have become so much better off with all the technology...for example, technology exempts many of us from spending the majority of time working for subsistence and liberates many of us to do things that we like. Without technology, we will all have to work our ass off to just produce merely enough to eat, let alone pondering about whether or not the world is beautiful. So, is Alej's or my vision the "right" one? Who can tell? God can. But does God exist? No. So no one can.

Just like what I said to Alej, the only person you can change is yourself. You can advise, convince, or even force other people to do certain things, but you can't CHANGE them. If there is a particular style that one is so fond of, then make conscious efforts to change yourself and live that lifestyle. Mr. Rogoff had a huge impact on me. He once asked the class, how can you be both pro-life and pro-choice? The answer is: refrain from abortion yourself, but accept others' decision to do whatever they want with their body.

I think if someone neglects the effort to change on his own part, then it is easy for that person to fall into the vicious cycle of useless whining about others while not doing anything constructive himself. I don't remember if I had mentioned this before, but my utopia is called a world of "mutual understanding." The mutual understanding includes respecting others' opinions and cultural differences while holding onto your own beliefs. Leke and I once had a debate over something that I don't even remember, but I remember I said that America proves that at least some people can live harmoniously while have differing opinions about almost everything. Everyone need NOT to think the same to live together harmoniously. You don't have to lose your own identity to live in peace with a group of people who all hold the same belief that's a direct opposite of yours. Understanding, sympathy, and compassion--these are all we need to live peaceably in this world. After all, we're all citizens of the Earth.

再谈韩寒。

有人说韩寒应该来美国这类的地方来开开眼。我曾经也这么想过。但是很显然他并不是对什么自由国家的理论不了解，正是因为他很清楚自由是什么，他在中国的存在才显得更有意义。时代造就人，有的人生不逢时，有的人就像韩寒一样被时代造就了。确实，韩寒的那一套要是放在美国的话基本就是COMMON SENSE， 但韩寒所竭力提倡的那些事，如果不在中国说，就没有意义了，而正是因为他在中国勇敢地说出了这些早就该有人说的话，他才会被这么多人追随。韩寒不需要去美国等地开眼，他就属于中国。

恶习。

不看美国总统的演讲不知其实美国也有像类似中国那样的恶心。比如现在正在进行的奥巴马的State of Union Address——奥巴马每讲十个字就有十秒钟的掌声。我到底是听奥巴马的演讲还是给他的掌声？不能歇着点吗？我已经记得不大清楚了，不过去年奥巴马的另一个演讲更夸张，每讲十字全体人（除了老弱病残）就会起立鼓掌十秒钟。真是烦死我了。我相信鼓掌的本意是为了表示自己1）对演讲者的赞同2）对演讲者的钦佩。如果鼓掌，甚至起立鼓掌只不过是一个机械性的运动，那鼓掌与不鼓掌还有什么分别？真是莫名其妙。但是不需要看太久就可以看出来这些有规律的起立鼓掌不是因为这些议员饿赞同或发自内心的敬佩，而仅仅是因为某种无聊的传统。这让我想到十二国记里阳子说的一段我非常非常喜欢的话：

“人，当真正感谢和尊敬对方时会自然而然地低下头，那种用地位来强迫别人低头以维持自己尊严的事是错误的......以适度的礼仪对待他人，那是理所当然的事，是否这样做，取决于个人的品质，这并非什么严重的事！”

The Fifty-Cents Party

Before going into the actual subject, please allow me to reminisce a bit.

I moved to New York from China shortly after my birthday in 2003. The time I spent in New York was not a pleasant one. I was the only Chinese person in the entire sixth grade, and the few friends/people-I-know were upperclassmen so we didn't get to know each other that well anyway. I didn't really speak English so I didn't really make any non-Chinese friends. In addition to that, there were bullying (which I bet every new Chinese and even non-Hispanic/White student went through) and cockroaches in the kitchen. I was very lonely. The only thing I have was internet and the few friends that I made over the internet not long before. I was losing contact with my elementary school friends primarily because we all moved on. There was nothing to talk about between us anymore.

I remember during that time my mom used to hide the laptop...I don't remember for what reason...but I found the laptop and everyday after school, I would take it out and go on the internet, and then just before mom came home, I would put it back exactly the way it was, as if nothing had happened. Although I stopped playing online games during that period, I had nothing to do but surfing on the net (I don't really have real homework, and I barely study for anything; once, I even brought home a test because I didn't know what it was) I felt like if my life were deprived of internet at that time, I would have had absolutely nothing to do. My pastime was centered around 163's online community; I had no where to go or socialize in the real world.

So one day, I asked 一龙, one of my friends I made over the internet, something like what does he do when he's not on the internet. He said: "I hang out with friends." I was shocked. I could not imagine what it was like to have friends to "hang out with." In fact, before I came to America, I only went shopping (for my farewell gift) with my friends only once. I never hang out. Now I think about it, I never had real friends. I was shocked. I was shocked at how lonely and pathetic I was.

And then everything changed as I moved to Fort Lee. I began making friends. Real friends with whom I talked about things and go to places with (although usually just the library and its surroundings). My English was improving so I actually began studying and working for classes. I stopped going on QQ (Chinese equivalent of AIM) as often and then gradually I stopped paying attention to Chinese affairs. I don't remember what I devoted most of my time to during that time (7th and 8th grade)probably because it was nothing important. But I think I missed a lot. I missed the emergence of Hanhan, the coinage of new terms like the Fifty-cents Party, and so many other things that people are so familiar today but I only recently got to know what they are. Things I should have known long time ago but did not know until now. I was out of touch with both Chinese popular culture and the American.

I don't know exactly what brought me back to the Chinese internet community...probably douban.com, a website for book, movie, drama, and music reviews. I read other people's reviews from which I get learn about things. And then, the first time in quite a while, I logged on to QQ again, and began chatting with the same old friends again (the internet ones). I am still not completely satisfied. I still feel something is missing. But I don't know what it is. Relatively speaking, my life right now is good. At least I handn't gotten the feeling of constant loneliness in quite a while. I'm glad.


Now, the Fifty-cents Party. This is a nickname for a group of people who are hired by the government as "internet commenters." Basically, they go on various news websites and popular forums and comment in support of the government or the government's policy. For each comment they get fifty cents Yuan, hence the name. This is supposed to be an "underground" organization that the commoners should not know, but everyone knows (interestingly a local government once publicized a news that they just hired 600 internet commenters as if trying to brag about their feat to the higher administration; that news was immediately spread to major news websites but its links were shortly made invalid. Haha.) I just learned about this recently from Hanhan's blog although I should have known that long time ago.

Anyway, I finally understood why the tone of some "netizen"'s comments on particular issues are so inconsistent with the usual tone and position. For example, regarding the Google's threat to withdraw from China, the opinions I saw when the news just got out were rage--the netizens' comments I saw on various forums were generally more mocking and sarcastic of the government and more sympathetic toward Google. The majority of them seem to prefer Google to Baidu (the Chinese search engine); in fact, some of them seem to detest Baidu. Just a day or two ago, the official Chinese statement came out, condemning the US for hinting that its internet isn't open and such. And the comments of this news in 163.com were mostly things along the lines of: "Get the hell out of China, Google! We don't want you here! I always use Baidu." And pages after pages of comments were filled by words like these. After a while, I read so many that I really don't know which are the true supporters of China's policy and which are just the hired internet commenters' talking.

A popular Chinese blogger wrote that hiring internet commenters (in the name of directing public opinion in the right way) is a bad strategy because government isn't able to see what the real public opinion is anymore. It's fine to monitor public opinion, but it's harmful to the stability of the government if the government is ignorant of what the people really think. I can't agree with him more because I am already feeling this frustration. What percent of the public is truly in support of Chinese government and what percent wants China to negotiate with Google so that Google stays? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.

Give Me Education or Give Me Death!

This is something that I wrote half an hour ago for the newspaper...it doesn't have EVERYTHING I think about education...but yeah..it's a piece of writing whatever..

----------------------
Give Me Education or Give Me Death!
By Xinyi Lin

Recalling from personal experience, it seems that everyone has something to complain about the American education system: “students nowadays are only concerned with pop culture,” “we need to have better teachers,” and “the education system is too test-oriented.” More than once have I heard people comment that the American high school graduates are underperforming in colleges and the students from our public schooling system are far behind in academics than those from other nations, namely China, Korea, and Japan. I am not here to refute or affirm any of these specific assertions. For simplicity’s sake, let’s just skip the cause(s) and jump to the conclusion that our education system is not perfect.

The presence of a problem obviously calls for a solution. Although the problem with our education (that I purposefully skipped) is numerous and diverse, there seems to exist a tendency in the reactions of the leaders of the nation: from Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy to Obama’s Race to the Top, these education “reforms” all place an heavy emphasis on measuring student performance in standardized tests. Recently, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, says that she will urge her members to adopt a form of teacher evaluation partly based on students’ achievement on standardized tests. HOLD ON! Are we looking for a magical cure for a problem far too complex? Has the “administration” run out of imaginative ideas so that the only thing it can think of is to demote students to numbers? To demote education to statistics?

Well, if education is not statistics then what is it? I believe that education is an unending process toward achieving enlightenment. It is not merely the procurement of knowledge (let alone getting an A on math tests) although knowledge is probably necessary to most human beings engaged in this process. In those rare occasions during schooldays when I remotely feel I am being educated, my entire world seems to open up, revealing a vast, unexplored terrain of thoughts to which I so eagerly embrace. This type of feeling usually doesn’t surface at all during testing days. In fact, I believe that when one considers the essence of education, the term “testing” should be the last to come to mind.

I am not supporting the eradication of “testing” in schools; actually, I am pretty good at unimaginative things like that and without it I would have never been inducted into the National Honors Society considering that I am a fairly unimaginative, poorly educated person. Instead, my solution to the education problem is a cliché that I mentioned in the beginning of this article: we need better good teachers. Good teachers are like catalysts in chemical reactions, shortening our path to enlightenment instead of lowering activation energy. I expect a good teacher to inspire, not instruct. I expect him to teach from his heart, not from his books. A good teacher goes beyond the curriculum and teaches his students what it takes to be a thinking human being, not a test-taking machine. But I also understand the difficulty on the part of the teachers because we live in a society that makes a fetish of protocols, guidelines, and other “objective measures” such as standardized testing scores. So yes, we need better teachers, but I don’t blame the teachers because they are chained to the current rigid, bureaucratic schooling system as much as we are.

Now, please allow me to express my most sincere optimism regarding education in my typically unoriginal way:

God bless America.

批评：个人 vs 群体

在豆瓣上看见了叫做逗逗豆豆的人对于坂上之云的评论后产生的一个讨论。。。我觉得也是对我关于8090还有群体vs个人等的想法的一个很好的summary。

---------------------------

逗逗豆豆，

“在娱乐化的节目影响下，我总觉得，青少年会变得不会思考，懒于思考，不能严肃，爱好粗浅。以娱乐为导向的电视和网络宣传，型塑建构一种思维方式和生 活习惯，就是追求刺激与快感，对深入思考与人类的终极问题不以为然，道德底线沦为比基尼，羞耻这个词最终会被清除出人类语言。 ”
　　
　　不管是小孩，青少年，成年人，还是老年人--人都喜欢以高高在上的方式批评不是属于自己那一类的人。成年人喜欢说青少年怎样怎样。。老年人喜欢说成年人怎样怎样。。。思想上的成熟性是不分年龄的。你就像那些钟情于将人分为70后，80后，90后等的人一样愚蠢和肤浅。

----
@葱头鹰

您说的现象是存在的，
　　确实很多人喜欢批评不是属于自己那一类的人。但是否高高在上，不能一概而论。因为每一类人都有自己的立场和思维方式么，批评不同意见不同行为 者很正常很普遍。从批评别人中，我们获得的不仅仅是口舌的快感，还能强化在一个群体的身份认同感和归属感，强化作为一个个体的生存体验。而且，如果你站在 道德的制高点上对别人指手划脚，确实能获得高高在上的优越感。
　　至于我，你引用的话中，我无意于批评别的群体，只是陈述一种看法--青少年是民族的未来，在铺天盖地的娱乐化节目包围下，非常不利于他们的成长。
　　将人分为70后，80后，90后等说法和做法我也是很不舒服，以前我是很抵制这种说法的，因为我就是80年代生人，80年代的人千奇百怪，所以有人把我归在80后一类，让我很不舒服。但是日久，也就不想辩白了。
　　愚蠢和肤浅的确是我的缺点，但是我勤于思考，希望能有所改观。

---

逗逗豆豆，

谢谢你非常诚恳的回复。我还真是没想过从批评它人中一个人得到的不仅是自我满足感还有“身份认同感和归属感”。。。

我并不是反对批评。我也并不否定娱乐化节目在青少年身上的影响。也许是我的意见有些偏激，但第一，我觉得批评个人是合情合理的，批评一个“群体”则是件很不公平的事情，第二，将所谓的恶性”成长“完全归咎于外来因素也是不公平的。

你也是同意”人千奇百怪“的，所以如果就因为个别--甚至很多属于某”群体“的人--做一件事而就将那一整群的人（青少年，比如）给骂了，是完全不符合逻辑的事。所以我对于将人划分成70后80后等感到非常的不舒服。比如，你怎么就能确定“娱乐化节目”没有带给任何“青少年”一点好的影响？其次，你怎么就能确定青少年就是唯一的受害群？难道青年，成年，老年人里就没有因为娱乐化文化而变得低俗的吗？逗逗豆豆你又是怎样免俗的？因为你比“青少年”们年长吗？我想你也不会否认这世上有在思想上非常成熟的小孩，也有在思想上非常像小孩的成人。

所以，我的第二点的意思就是，我认为一个人是否低俗没思想是完全取决于个人的。如果你对低俗的“娱乐化节目”感到津津有味，每分每秒都想看，每分每秒都不想做其它的事情，这完全是你个人的原因。没有人逼你。就算你看某低俗节目的原因是整个学校都在看某低俗节目，而如果你不看你会跟他人没话说，那还是你的问题。青少年不是婴儿，他们是有自主意识的。我认为是否看低俗节目，是否被那节目所影响是完全在一个人掌控之中的。总而言之，最重要的一点就是，一个人低俗没关系，但是说自己低俗是因为别人或者什么铺天盖地的低俗节目影响了你是很不负责任的。再来，只要勇于承认缺陷并加以改正。。。甚至不改正都没关系。。。我觉得只要是敢于面对自己的缺点，敢于说“这是我自身的问题”，不将问题推给他人的人都是值得欣赏的，但我没看见过几个会诚心说这些话的人。