Master, is the street really rotten?

Now I feel more and more that people actually live in their own stratosphere.

The stratosphere is a horizontal atmosphere. In this atmosphere, things only change in the horizontal direction, and it is rare to see changes in the vertical direction. So gradually, the information you receive is more and more single, and you are more and more like the people around you, but you mistakenly think that these homogeneous things are the whole truth of the world. After a long time, you will have a cognitive locking effect on things outside the stratosphere.

Years of social science training have made me highly alert to those who ignore data and research and only use "my friends", "my classmates", "my family" and "my side/surroundings" as arguments to demonstrate the essence of society. They should be suspicious.

In order to reveal the social essence and operating law, it depends on in-depth research. It is field investigation, qualitative research and quantitative analysis. Not the life of my classmates or my best friends.

In other words, my classmates, my colleagues and my relatives can all be used as examples and introductions, but they can't be used as arguments, let alone to demonstrate the nature of society.

I first realized that I lived in the stratosphere after I went to college. In high school, "my classmate" and "my friend" were both urban only children. Only when I went to college did I get in close contact with my classmates from all over the country and even rural areas for the first time. It turns out that so many families are not only children. Later, according to the data of the fifth census, the number of only-child families in cities is actually less than 60%, while that in rural areas is only 15.36%. Especially in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai, the one-child ratio can reach four or five times that of the western region. But in my hometown environment, I can't feel this data.

In addition, due to my family background and academic background, there are indeed many highly educated people around me. Looking around, there are all graduate students. Therefore, in this small circle, "graduate degree" has nothing to brag about, but there are other chains of contempt, such as fighting for the first degree, fighting for school rankings, fighting for returnees or local products, which makes people very anxious.

Until the junior high school reunion at the beginning of one year, I met an old classmate who stayed in our hometown to work. At that time, I got an on-the-job master's degree from a double-non-university (domestic 300). While eating, he always said proudly, "Hey, look, all the students in our class are very promising, and they have been admitted to graduate schools!" " ..... In fact, it was quite embarrassing at that time, because several students here had excellent academic qualifications, and he kept saying, "Let's be graduate students ..." Everyone laughed without saying a word.

After this incident, I began to reflect. I haven't seen this classmate for more than ten years, and everyone is no longer a circle. It's just that there is no master's degree in his circle. He is one of the most progressive and cultured people around him, and I don't need to laugh at him from above.

In fact, this classmate is really not bad. He is doing cabinet business in our hometown. Being your own small boss is really not short of money. Employees recruited by companies like him can be employed in junior colleges. It can be said that there are only a handful of masters around him. So this degree is already an extremely eye-catching aura for him. Enough for him to prove that he is not rich.

This is the locking effect of being in different circles on people's thinking

Poverty not only limits your imagination: just like a peasant woman working in the field, she can only imagine that Empress Dowager Cixi can have a sugar triangle to eat every day. Empress in the East Palace scones and empress in the West Palace rolls onions.

Abundance can also limit your imagination: so there are often various "why not eat minced meat" in life. As an actor once said, he had only one million cards in the most difficult time, which was very scary. I saw a street interview in a first-tier city on a short video and asked, "Will you marry a girl with only 200,000 family savings?" As a result, a boy replied, "Is there anyone with only 200,000 savings at home now?" ……

Even in the same class, people's imagination of different circles is subject to mindset: for example, even in the same class, their imagination of certain occupations is subject to prejudice and mindset. Such as grass-roots civil servants, police, doctors.

You know, China is an extremely vast country, and the society is sinking. There are a large number of cities, counties and towns along the 2345 line. Not only do different classes have cognitive divisions, but even in the same class, different geographical locations and different occupations, the stratosphere has been formed.

Middle-class families in Beishangguang VS middle-class families in fourth-tier cities; Southeast coastal countryside VS central and western countryside; City practitioners VS individual industrialists and businessmen; Teachers from top universities VS teachers from ordinary universities ... Do you think they can see the same world?

Just like I have two college classmates, one works in Zhang Yu Normal University (a public teacher) and the other works in Zhejiang University (the Thousand Talents Program). It is particularly interesting to observe the circle of friends of these two people. They are all university teachers, idle people and social animals. A perfect control group.

So you will hear at the same time "University teachers are very idle", "University teachers are under great pressure to die unless they are promoted" and "University teachers are high-income groups" and "University teachers have low incomes". It is only because even the class of university teachers, key universities VS ordinary universities, universities in developed areas VS universities in backward areas, senior titles VS junior titles, and liberal arts VS science are completely different ecosystems.

Everyone is telling the truth, but not all the facts.

Many cities, counties and towns along the 2345 line are still hungry for undergraduate talents. Even the university where I used to work has been recruiting junior college students in stomatology. Yes, this is what Hu Zhi despises. Every year, students' employment destination is mostly Fada county and town in Jiangsu and Zhejiang metropolitan area, and the salary is also good. I think such a huge number still has the significance of sample learning.

If your eyes are only on the North-Guangzhou-Shenzhen quasi-link, then you can only adapt to high involution. However, you must add a qualifier to say that graduate students in some industries in North, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are bad streets (although I don't like this adjective), otherwise it is misleading!

On the contrary, several of our doctoral friends who have returned to China have chosen to settle in cities that they think are livable, such as Chengdu, Kunming and Huizhou. It may also be because everyone is in their thirties and their understanding of life is different from that in their twenties. I once wanted to get ahead and turn the world upside down, and finally realized that "life" is the only answer.

Life is your own. The pain of our life often comes from our concern about whether we are glamorous in others' eyes and want to be the winner in others' eyes. Living in a comfortable small city is what they think is their greatest failure.

Then when it comes to master's degree, even in the sinking prefecture-level cities, it is far from the degree of rotten streets.

Transferred from Zhihu

Author: Russell

Link: /question/4 14676448/ answer/1534517612.