In the past, almost every New Year’s Day began with the usual wish for a happy New Year and hope for the new year. But for the New Year 2021, my response to my friends is: It is a bit of a stretch to talk about happiness and hope at this time of year. Peace and health are the most real. Peace used to be a constant, but now it is rare. Nonetheless, I wish you and everyone you care about a peaceful and healthy 2021! Keep your mind peaceful, relaxed, and laugh at the world.
Many of my friends replied with the same feeling and also said: although it is not easy to be happy, try to find tiny things in life that make you happy; 2021 may not be good, but we must live well; hope is to confirm that suffering will not last forever, and the more we realize the depth of darkness, the more we yearn for the redemption of light.
Russell, a British philosopher who lived to be nearly 100 years old, was asked in the year of his death what he felt most like saying if his words were seen in a thousand years. He answered: Believe the truth. Never be influenced by what you would prefer to believe, or think people would be more beneficial to society if they believed it, but simply examine, what is the truth. The truth, truth, is the truth, is the truth. John Ruskin, a 19th century British writer, also said, “The greatest thing that man has ever done is to tell the world plainly what he has seen.” This is what everyone can do, but it is the greatest thing.
The last opinion poll of HKUPOP in 2020 shows that over 59% of the respondents said they were unhappy with their lives in the past year, with a net happiness value of negative 45 percentage points, a record low since the survey. Correspondingly, people’s satisfaction with Lam Cheng and the SAR Government are both negative 40+ percentage points. Looking ahead to 2021, the poll shows that 39% of the public say it will worsen, which is still negative 6 percentage points compared to those who think it has improved.
I am a bit more pessimistic than the average poll. Suffering may not last forever, but when it will end is quite a long way off, I’m afraid. To say that suffering will not last forever is to give people some reason for hope. In fact, what people experience more quickly is the world of “Animal Farm” and “1984.” The most profound insight from 2020 is that, regardless of the source of the epidemic or whether the totalitarian system is exporting the virus, the reality seems to be that if people are accustomed to a system that “maximizes the power of the state,” then the results of the forced fight against the epidemic must be better than those of the “individual. If people are accustomed to a system that “maximizes the power of the state,” the results must be better than those of a system and society that “maximizes the rights of the individual,” and the economic recovery from coercion seems to be faster.
Another insight is that even in a liberal democratic rule of law system, the phenomenon of media reversion to the sidelines, which is only about profit and the end, without regard to facts and by any means, has disappeared, and the American example of freedom of the press, which used to be revered, has disappeared. Money can make the devil push the mill, the interests are far and wide, justice is always no match for power, and people who embrace freedom can hardly see the end of their suffering.
Lu Xun said, “Despair is the same as hope.” “Vain and delusional” is a Buddhist term, which means “false” when there is no reality, and “delusional” when there is no truth. Not true, not real, that is, delusion. Despair and hope, both of which exist only in the mind, are not real, but even in despair, one must hope because one wants to live. Existentialism believes that even if one is pessimistic and desperate, one must actively master the existence of life and live each day faithfully in one’s beliefs.
I agree with Brother Lian Yi Zheng’s opinion in his article last weekend. In fact, neither the American Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is obliged to necessarily help Hong Kong people, nor is it obliged not to abandon them. However, judging from the unprecedented escape doors offered by the UK, US, Australia and Canada to Hong Kong people, after 2019, the tendency of public opinion in these countries is to recognize that Hong Kong people are the same as these countries in terms of their values, morals and cultural perceptions; whereas these countries have adopted diametrically opposed policies in treating the entry of mainland Chinese in the past year.
Therefore, as long as Hong Kong people hold on to their insistence on “maximizing individual rights,” then the “second reunification” of coercion and intimidation will inevitably result in the “return of people’s hearts and minds” going in the opposite direction.
If nothing can be done, then laugh at the world and see all kinds of ugliness as a joke. History always repeats, “the lower pride and the upper flattery” of the people, usually inevitably escape the fate of the rabbit.
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