How to treat spectator behavior

Today, if you have some life experience and have seen a few so-called "spectators" phenomenon, it will not be a difficult thing. Whether online or offline! Of course, online "spectators" are a specialty of our Internet age. It provides a more convenient, freer and broader stage for everyone to fully "judge and comment".

The new era has given spectators a new presentation mode. Nowadays, watching "sheep killing" with "open mouth" is almost extinct, but if you happen to have the opportunity to catch the "sheep killing" scene, you will probably watch it. There will still be people. If you don’t believe it, look, no matter there is a traffic accident or any other casual accident on the street, there will always be people enthusiastically gathered around to watch and comment on it with relish.

To be fair, the onlooker phenomenon is not completely without positive effects today. For example, it has an active supervisory function for certain "public ethics" issues. There is no need to explain this. As long as you are on the Internet, there are few people who don’t understand the reason. Of course, the subsequent negative phenomena such as online violence are indeed worrying!

If the "spectator" mentality cannot disappear in human psychological activities, I think we can only optimize it as much as possible to make it less "evil"... The spectators in Lu Xun's works, specifically I don’t dare to define what it is, but I know the onlookers in life. We have a manager in charge of any funeral, wedding, or any other event here. One of the projects that the manager arranges for people is The guest is a smart person who is enthusiastic and can talk. All the relatives of the guest are received by the guest, but there is another kind of guest, that is, the neighbors of the Murakami Township Party give gifts to the host. The person who receives the gift writes the name of the person on one or two or three pieces of paper and gives it to the manager. The manager then gives these lists to one or two people or three or four people who are watching, and asks them to call people by the door. It is said that one is a visitor at a certain house. The visitor here means inviting the person who gave the gift to the host's house to have a meal. 1. Regarding the "spectators" in Lu Xun's works, let's first look at him himself to explain!

The masses, especially those in China, are always spectators of drama. If the sacrifice appeared to be generous, they watched a tragedy; if it appeared to be shy (hú sù meaning trembling), they watched a farce. There are often a few people in front of the mutton shops in Beijing watching the sheep being skinned with their mouths open, as if they are enjoying themselves. Human sacrifice can only benefit them so much. However, within a few steps afterwards, they forgot about their happiness...

This to-the-point text comes from Lu Xun's "What happened to Grave Nora after she left"! The penetrating depiction of "open mouth" has stuck with me for a long time.

2. Regarding the specific expression of "spectators" in the Lu Xun texts we have studied.

In Lu Xun's writings, "spectators" are a common topic. "Kong Yiji", "Mr. Fujino", "Blessing", "Medicine", all kinds of "spectators" are packed together in Lu Xun's various themes selected for us to "appreciate" in our Chinese textbooks. . Come to think of it, even if you can't remember them all, there are always one or two examples that still flicker in your student days.

"Mr. Fujino" writes:

After a paragraph is finished but before the end of get out of class, a few movies about current events are shown, naturally they are all about Japan's victory over Russia. . But there were Chinese people caught in it: I worked as a detective for the Russians, was captured by the Japanese army, and was about to be shot. There was also a group of Chinese people watching around me; there was also me in the lecture hall.

As for the "bad nature" of the Chinese people, Mr. Lu Xun's attitude was "sorry for their misfortune and anger for their inability to fight". The phenomenon of "spectators" is obviously part of this bad nature (from today's perspective, foreigners seem to be no exception. It seems that this bad habit is universal among human beings). In this paragraph, Lu Xun sharply exposed the faces of spectators in that era. , and even unceremoniously revealed that "there is another me in the lecture hall."

There is this description in "Blessing":

Some old women did not hear her words on the street, so they came specifically to hear her tragic story.

Until she started sobbing, they all shed the tears that stopped at the corners of their eyes, sighed, and went away satisfied, while commenting one after another.

Onlookers naturally have a passion for the misfortunes of others, and may even "come here specially" to see her "sobbing", although they will shed tears and sigh, in the final analysis What you want to get is that "satisfaction". What a cruel and cruel feeling it is to have a sense of satisfaction based on the pain of others!

Whether they are spectators watching Kong Yiji’s jokes; spectators watching the invaders executing compatriots; spectators watching the tragic experience of Mrs. Xianglin; or spectators watching the “lively” beheading of revolutionaries, the essence of spectators is They are ignorant and heartless, and they are all hateful, pitiful and insensitive who use the misfortunes of others to comfort their own misfortunes - "evil".

3. Regarding the characteristics of the times in which Lu Xun’s “spectators” lived.

The spectators in Lu Xun's works have the unique social characteristics of his time. Regarding the historical background of the evaluation of Lu Xun's works, I have provided a more detailed analysis in another answer to "Why did Lu Xun's "The Scream" not awaken the insensitive Chinese people?", so I will not repeat it here