Involution, an online buzzword, originally refers to a phenomenon that a cultural model cannot be stabilized or transformed into a new form after reaching a certain final form, and can only become more complicated internally. Through the Internet, many college students use it to refer to irrational internal competition or "voluntary" competition. Now it refers to the phenomenon that peers compete for limited resources and make more efforts, which leads to the decline of personal "income-effort ratio", which can be regarded as "inflation" of efforts.
According to the Baidu index data analysis platform on August 25th, 20021year, the average daily search index value of "inner volume" is 16999, and the average daily search index value of moving volume is 14886, with the highest peak value of 88726 (May 30th, 20021year).
meaning
Peer groups compete to make more efforts to compete for limited resources, which leads to the decline of individual "income-effort ratio".
Everyone is talking about involution. What exactly is involution?
What is involution? When a lot of energy and energy are invested in limited resources, it is called involution with diminishing returns.
"involution" is an academic term, which is often used as "involution" in academic literature. Economist Wei Sen believes that the concept of involution was first used by the German philosopher Kant in his book Critique of Judgment. Two anthropologists put forward the concept of involution. One is Alexander Aleksandrovic Gordon weiser, who called a cultural model "involution". After it reached a certain final form, there was no way to stabilize it or change it into a new form.
The other is clifford geertz, who proposed in the book "Agricultural Involution: The Process of Ecological Change in Indonesia". When he visited Indonesia, he found that Java lacked funds, limited land and administrative obstacles, which made it impossible to expand agriculture outward, resulting in the increasing labor force constantly filling the limited rice production, and the internal agriculture became more sophisticated and complex, forming a "growth without development". Gertz used "agricultural involution" to summarize this process.
The reason why "involution" has attracted the attention of academic circles in China is that Huang Zongzhi borrowed the concept of "agricultural involution" from anthropologists in his works such as Small-scale Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, Small-scale Peasant Families and Rural Development in the Yangtze River Delta, etc. when analyzing the rural situation in China in the past few centuries. He used the concept of "agricultural involution" to explain that labor-intensive labor brings about diminishing returns in a single working day, which shows no development and growth. "The essence of involution lies in the high intensity of labor input on unit land and the decreasing marginal return of unit labor, and" over-dense commercialization "has appeared since modern times.
Generally speaking, in the past, the discussion of "involution" in academic circles was basically carried out at the institutional and cultural levels. From the perspective of institutional change, change can be summarized into three typical forms: evolution, revolution and involution. Evolution refers to a continuous, driven, divergent or evolutionary social change. Revolution is an intermittent, sudden or drastic change and replacement of social system, which develops by leaps and bounds from one social system to another; And involution is a social system or a system that involves, entangles, maintains itself and replicates itself at the same level in a certain historical period. Compared with evolution, involution shows no improvement in self-repetition. If climbing a mountain is used as a metaphor, evolution is like taking a winding mountain road, spiraling upward, shortening the distance from the top of the mountain; The involution keeps circulating at the foot of the mountain or halfway up the mountain, and it will never reach the top of the mountain.
Now it refers to the phenomenon that peers compete for limited resources and make more efforts, which leads to the decline of personal "income-effort ratio", which can be regarded as "inflation" of efforts.
Endless competition, fierce competition
Popular background
In order to compete for limited resources, the personal "income-effort ratio" drops.
Explosion: The word involution has appeared frequently recently, so what does this involution mean?
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In the second half of 2020, several pictures were refreshed: some people were reading while riding a bike, some were using a computer while riding a bike, and some people's beds were full of books ... The students who were "using a computer while riding a bike" were called "Wang Juan" and boarded the hot search. "involution" became popular, and college students used it to refer to irrational internal competition. These photos were first circulated among the principals of Tsinghua Peking University. Later, popular words such as "watching computer while riding a bike" and "Tsinghua Wang Juan" appeared in hot searches, and related emoticons also appeared in many social software for college students.
"Use a computer while riding a bike"
An explosive online article entitled "Grades are King: The Prisoner's Dilemma of Young People in Top Universities in China" played a role in fueling the situation. Talking about the present situation of Tsinghua and Peking University, the author of the article concludes with anxiety: "The smartest young people in China are facing a common dilemma: in the extreme competition, success overwhelms growth, peers PK each other and are exhausted." It's not that today's children are melodramatic, nor do they blame their sense of competition for developing too early. Educational arms races such as "contempt chain training class" and "school district room qualification competition" are really "involution" worthy of vigilance.
Word application program
Citation example
In fact, even if the media in all directions spread the anxiety of involution to you, you don't have to take it to heart, just smile and let it "roll over". For example, the hot words such as "women's rights", "depression" and "PUA" that we played badly were over-consumed, leaving only labeled, emotional and demonized chicken feathers. Personally, if you dare to make changes through the wind and waves, then let go boldly; If you are content with the status quo, you can "fish soberly" in the comfort zone. Not everyone has to grow up to be a uniform winner in life. (Henan Daily, September 24, 2020)
We are too focused on putting all the sources of the meaning of life on concrete things, pinning on the real world, and involution quietly sweeps through our lives, bringing mental anxiety [1 1]. (China Youth Network 202 1 May 21)
People in the workplace feel that the current employment environment has changed. At the beginning of 20021,Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security further released 18 new occupation. Relevant statistics show that from 20 19 to 202 1, Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released four batches of new occupations, with a total of 56 skilled personnel. Many young people began to bid farewell to "996", get rid of the "involution" of the workplace, and shift from the mainstream employment platforms such as the original Internet giants to new occupations. (China Entrepreneur 202 1 08 13)
Stars, capital and platforms have their own needs and gains. Stars are famous, the capital market attaches importance to it, and platform traffic rises. They made a lot of money, but their fans became "suckers". This traffic-oriented gameplay has high profits and quick results, but it is actually just a "flood irrigation" of capital in traffic, which will only spawn bubbles and create false prosperity. Moreover, when the traffic of homogeneous stars is divided up and the number of fans cannot be increased through heterogeneous content and works, the phenomenon of "involution" of fans will inevitably occur, and it is difficult to avoid the incredible chaos of "pouring milk". (CCTV 2021August 22nd)
Implication of involution
Derivative word
Social involution, a popular phrase on the Internet, means that when some social resources are limited, but more and more people compete for it, everyone gets less and less, but pays more and more, and lives more and more tired [9].
Outer volume, a popular network word, originally meant to compete by expanding new resources outward, but now it can mean that everyone pulls each other to stop inner volume.
social influence
Deviation of meaning
When the concept of "involution" is used, its original meaning will shift. We can see that the communicators of popular words have the concept of * * * enjoyment, which enables them to perceive the consistency of internal state. The reason for this result is that one of the ways to realize the enjoyment of reality is to adjust your own angle and make it close to others. Everyone has a gregarious motivation. The stronger this motivation is, the more he will adjust his point of view according to other people's point of view in order to gain a sense of reality. Most of the time, people don't go into the extent to which this kind of * * * enjoys the reality, but in fact, it is difficult to make an objective judgment based on personal subjective feelings. Therefore, the stronger the sense of reality, the more likely it is to stimulate and enhance people's empathy. The more individuals agree with the existence and unsurpassability of involution, the more they will enter the state of involution, thus objectively strengthening this reality.
negative impact
Confusion about the future and the present has caused many college students to fall into involution. In 20 19, a survey conducted by Peking University Institute of Education showed that 29.2% of the undergraduates surveyed had neither a clear self-development plan nor independent academic participation, and 32.8% had a clear self-development goal orientation, but their actions lagged behind. In undergraduate colleges, nearly 42% students have no clear career plans for the future.
win an honour
On February 4, 2020, 65438 was selected as one of the top ten buzzwords in 2020 through Chewing Words.
Social assessment
The healthy development of modern society depends on the forging of healthy and upward work ethics, and personal efforts and struggles also need the settlement of the spiritual world. The increasing pace of work and life may cause stress, but people's mental state should not be involved. Only by creating more development opportunities for young people, further improving social security and paying more attention to people's pursuit of meaning and justice can we avoid being confused by involution and face the future with more enthusiasm [4]. (Comment by Yu Shengfeng, Associate Professor of Beihang University)
Confronting involution is a challenge, both for individuals and for the whole society. Students themselves need to understand "what kind of person I want to be"; The makers and executors of educational policies, as well as parents of students, need to think clearly about "what kind of talents our educational goal is to cultivate" and "what kind of people we want to see our children become". (Yang Chen, Associate Professor, School of Journalism, Renmin University of China)
Involution expresses an endless cycle that consumes more energy. In fact, as a counselor, I can personally understand this kind of competition and a certain degree of comparison psychology, but in the process of communicating with students, we will more hope that students should consciously think and not let themselves enter this gyro-like infinite loop. (Comments by Yu Hanyu, Counselor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University)
The word "involution" has spread among the public, especially among young people, because the social phenomenon it describes has aroused their heated discussion. Through the mirror of "involution", young people not only see themselves and their lives projected into it, but also see people with the same fate and situation as themselves; They are all dissatisfied and helpless about being involved in the status quo. This phenomenon is called * * * enjoying reality in social psychology. * * * The same "involution" feeling forms a social atmosphere, and people * * * feel the same pressure and choose the same "involution" lifestyle. (People's Forum Online Comment)
On the social level, there is only one way to deal with involution, and that is to take the road of scientific and technological innovation and improve labor productivity. In the era of rapid development and rapid progress, involution in some fields and a few industries is inevitable, but don't use "involution" as an excuse, because it is the driving force and opportunity for change. Quitting from stagnant industries and places with few opportunities is another village. (Henan Daily Review)