The Fundamental Contradiction Facing College Students

The Fundamental Contradictions Facing University Students

I. Contradictions of Class Position and Identification

The contradiction between coming from the middle and lower classes (as most students do) and identifying with the bourgeoisie. This split severs their connection to and identification with their class of origin, cutting off the path to self-understanding. Children of peasants disparage the peasant class; children of proletarians disparage the proletariat. At the same time, they are curious about and admire various middle and upper strata: the small and micro bourgeoisie, bureaucrats, big capitalists, compradors, and so on. For example, many students from rural backgrounds have a low opinion of rural communities, peasants, and migrant workers, while seeing themselves as the cream of the rural crop, as Zhu Yuanzhang—oscillating between inferiority and conceit.

They sever their connection to ordinary working people, and to history, society, and humanity. The resulting identity crisis is one of the roots of existential crisis. See the earlier article “A Common Form of Confusion Among University Students: Existential Crisis.”

The fundamental contradiction of the small and micro bourgeoisie lies between the fact that they belong to the middle and lower classes, to the working class, and their reactionary insistence on opposing the proletariat, their addiction to exploitation and enslavement, and their willingness to struggle and sacrifice for meager assets and the existing order. Worship of capital; money fetishism. Liberalism on the surface, conservatism in practice. Opposition to bureaucratism on the surface, active training in the techniques of bureaucratism in practice.

Petty-bourgeois malaise: elitism, social Darwinism, consumerism, opportunism, speculation, hypocrisy, compromise, snobbery, and mercenary narrow-mindedness.

II. Contradictions Between Industry, Education, and Research

The alienation of the education system.

Disorderly competition within industry, the internal contradictions of capitalism, and structural unemployment.

The contradiction between the socialized development of science and individualized involution among researchers.

Ultimately, this is still the contradiction between socialized production and private ownership of the means of production.

III. Contradictions of Involution

1. The contradiction between the likelihood of ending up in the middle and lower classes and exhausting oneself in the pursuit of upward class mobility. With successive economic cycles, the localized monopoly profits on which the global petty bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy depend are continually buffeted, making it increasingly difficult to rise into the petty bourgeoisie. See the earlier article “Our Generation May Have Witnessed the Peak of the Petty Bourgeoisie.”

1. Contradictions involving the people around us: they are people like us, in the same circumstances and traveling the same path, yet they are also competitors in involution, vanity, peer comparison, and meritocracy. They are others who affect our sense of superiority and uniqueness. This creates internal contradictions in interpersonal relationships, while also leading us to project outward our internal conflicts, such as self-doubt and self-criticism.

1. The contradiction between the crisis-and-security model and patterns of thought cultivated by examination tournaments, and the patterns of thought needed by an ordinary person in a cyberpunk wilderness. That is, the contradiction between the exam-solver mentality and the mentality of an atomized individual in a cyberpunk world.

1. The contradiction between apparent fairness everywhere and unfairness everywhere.

IV. Contradictions of Discipline

1. The contradiction between bureaucratism and panoptic surveillance, on the one hand, and freedom on the other.

1. The contradiction between grand narratives and cyberpunk atomization.

1. The contradiction between a confused, rigid, alienated ideology and cognitive framework, and a humanistic general education.

1. The contradiction involving the discipline of “shoulds” and the “tyranny of the shoulds”—that is, the contradiction of superego versus ego.

1. The contradiction between conservatism and hierarchical authoritarianism, on the one hand, and humanism on the other.

V. Existential Contradictions

1. Freedom and responsibility: having an immature psychology marked by inferiority and conceit, yet possessing the greatest apparent freedom and responsibility for one’s life.

1. The contradiction between the fact of being ordinary and unexceptional and an intense resistance to and fear of being ordinary and unexceptional.

1. The contradiction between lacking a sense of existence and frantically striving to establish one.

1. Seeking identification and connection, while also seeking superiority and class distinction.

1. Meaning: craving meaning while accommodating oneself to the involution of an alienated society.

1. Loneliness: being among crowds, social currents, seas of books, busyness, and romantic relationships, yet feeling even lonelier—the loneliness of alienation. Longing for warmth, yet habitually remaining indifferent.

1. What appears to be an ivory-tower Eden is actually an assembly line, making it difficult to define the present or practice living in the present, and often leaving one immersed in the past and future.

1. The contradictions of living between the real world, the internet world, and alternate dimensions.

1. Seeking freedom and independence while remaining financially supported by others.

1. The contradiction between longing for ideal love and the reality of small and micro bourgeois matchmaking.

VI. Contradictions in Self Psychology and Object Relations

1. The contradiction between treating atomized individuals as statistics, symbols, tools, and objects, and each individual’s innate wholeness and need to develop their own subjectivity. This is the fundamental contradiction “between the self and the object.”

1. The contradiction in which a weak inner core and spirit, too many karmic obstructions, and too many distracting thoughts make it difficult to follow one’s heart and easy to follow the crowd, yet following one’s heart remains the only way.

1. The contradiction between seeking subjectivity and unconsciously objectifying and reifying oneself through socialization.

1. The contradiction between a fragile self and the greatest malignant narcissism and ambition.

1. Contradictions in object relations: contradictions in patterns of relating, ambivalent attachment; contradictions involving the false self, self-objectification, and idealized objects.

1. The series of contradictions within one’s family of origin.

1. The self is not only unable to receive healthy “selfobject experiences,” but is also disrupted by malignant “selfobject experiences,” while remaining caught in the fundamental contradiction “between the self and the object.” This runs counter to developmental psychology.

VII. Deepening Karmic Obstructions: The Contradiction Between Alienation and Humanism

In an alienated society, socialization is often a process of deepening karmic obstructions, a process of alienation and reification.

Innate wholeness is continually obscured by karmic obstructions, leaving one increasingly distant from the tranquility of the authentic self and the energy of the deeper mind. The contradiction between longing for self-cultivation and actually working against it. The contradiction between needing to seek within and actually seeking outside oneself.

The contradiction between deepening karmic obstructions and simple truth, goodness, and beauty—that is, the contradiction between alienation and humanism.

The contradiction of surface-level linguistic thought versus the deeper mind. See the earlier article “Zhuangzi’s ‘Discussion on Making All Things Equal’ and Marx: Returning from Surface-Level Linguistic Thought to the Deeper Mind.”

VIII. An Ordinary Person Bears the Complex Contradictions of the Entire World

An ordinary person carries complex contradictions and continually develops dialectically. See the earlier article “Mental Energy/Libido Determines Destiny.” Mediocrity is an extraordinarily complex form of suffering; an uneventful life contains extraordinarily complex intensity. As discussed in the earlier article “Most Individual Problems Are Problems of Humanity,” an ordinary Afghan girl or Afghan peasant bears the complex contradictions of more than a thousand years of Afghanistan’s history.

As discussed in the earlier article “Zhuangzi’s ‘Discussion on Making All Things Equal’ and Marx: Returning from Surface-Level Linguistic Thought to the Deeper Mind”: for the atomized individual in a cyberpunk world, the fundamental contradictions of brain and mind crystallize the contradictions brought about by the three great mountains of capitalism, feudalism, and bureaucracy in the contemporary world. Workers need to work and live, yet they must also adapt to the confusion and alienation of the outside world, becoming entangled in all kinds of contradictions.

Capitalism forces mental workers to awaken: contemporary capitalists want to hire not only a pair of hands but also a brain. This brings new challenges for workers. Yet it is precisely the contradictions described above that leave mental workers with splitting headaches. To resolve their psychological problems, mental workers must overcome petty-bourgeois karmic obstructions and work through their psychological issues. Just as physical workers’ occupational injuries drive the development of surgery, mental workers’ occupational injuries drive the development of the sciences of mind and brain. They must return to and awaken the authentic self in its innate wholeness to contend with the confusion and suffering of mental labor.