The year of Gengzi, the great plague.
Pestilence, disaster, has never coexisted with the history of mankind ……
–Breaking the Cocoon
When the clock struck 2021, a message from [CCTV News] popped up, instantly unnerving:.
“According to statistics from Johns Hopkins University, as of 12:22 a.m. EST on the 1st (1:22 p.m. Beijing time on the 2nd), the cumulative number of confirmed cases of New Coronary Pneumonia in the United States exceeded 20 million, reaching 200,071,149 cases, with a cumulative total of 346,408 deaths. The United States has the highest cumulative number of confirmed cases and cumulative number of deaths in the world.”
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s Tribute to 20 Million Confirmed Diagnoses – America Doesn’t Resist Because It Believes?
Why do I shudder when the U.S. has 20 million confirmed cases and I live in the land of China where the number of cases can be controlled to a few “occasional” cases per day?
The reason is cruel, because in this era of “globalization”, any geographic public health crisis is likely to be not only their disaster, but will probably escalate into a global disaster, just like John Donne’s poem.
“No man is an island, sawing alone in the sea.
Each one is like a little piece of clay, connected into the whole land ……
So ask not for whom the funeral bell tolls, the bell tolls for you.”
Yes, although as people who happen to grow up in the “peace era”, the ever-rich material life, the rapid development of society, we slowly began to have a belief that the future will always be bad and not bad blind optimism.
The reason for this is actually very simple, because living in a peaceful China, a small number of people carry the weight forward, for the majority of people to block almost all the wind and rain, so that we are wrapped in a “information cocoon” securely, convinced that the way we live, is the ordinary life of “everyone”.
(Information cocoon: also known as the echo chamber effect, simply put, is that a person can only hear what he or she “believes”, and with his or her “believe” constantly strengthened, so that his or her life is trapped in the cocoon like a cocoon “cocoon” (cognitive framework) phenomenon.
(For example, in various information APPs, after a period of time, the ones you like to follow and the ones you don’t like to black out, the ones left behind are “people” with the same values as you, and after you get used to them, you will feel that most people in the world think the same as “me”.
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s gift of 20 million diagnoses – America does not resist because of faith?
But is this really the case?
In January 2020, the U.S. military attacked Baghdad International Airport, the capital of Iraq, with three missiles, and the Iranian spy king, Suleimani, was killed by a fixed click, and the news of “World War III” spread.
In January, the desert locusts from Yemen crossed the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the west and started to ravage Somalia and other East African countries, and it took less than a month for Pakistan to declare a state of emergency, and famine hung high like the sword of Damocles.
Or this January, along with the arrival of China’s largest annual Spring Festival reunion, a “new crown plague” sweeping the world, suddenly came to us so “natural” ……
For thousands of years, when mankind thought that the three “devils” that are most feared in our genes – war, hunger and pestilence – were perfectly solved, it came in an unexpected way within just one month of the beginning of 2020, and instantly shattered all our optimistic hopes for the present and the future without mercy.
The “information cocoon” that had been implicitly planted in almost everyone’s mind seemed to be quickly pulled out and tried to be broken through, just as when I once again saw the “non-resistance” passive face of the “new crown epidemic” in the United States, and no longer gloated with something like.
“Foreign countries” have nothing to do with me; or I think “his country” does not care about “his own people”, so what am I worried about; or as long as we Chinese are safe, foreigners will die. …… The nationalistic scenario of “War Wolf”-style emotional catharsis, and so on.
Rather, when they start to sigh with anxiety and worry, although they still can’t do anything, they will try to understand the new “information” (cognition) that they couldn’t get in the “cocoon room” in the past.
This book, “Breaking the Cocoon”, which was released in January 2021, is a review of the past year’s thinking on some issues of “China and the world” by Dr. Shi Zhan of Peking University. It was like an interesting experience of breaking through the “information cocoon”. @ Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s Gift for 20 Million Diagnoses – America doesn’t resist because of faith?
A New Year’s gift of 20 million diagnoses – America doesn’t resist because it has faith?
Truth be told in the past year, programs such as.
“universal immunity” (people whose resistance will save their lives if they die enough)
‘”The new crown does not exist” (as long as when it does not exist, “I” will not get sick).
“Wear a mask only if you are sick” (several European countries explicitly prohibit the wearing of face masks, such as Austria prohibits people from covering their faces in public places without a valid reason, and violators will be punished with 150 euros.) ……
And so on foreign strange “jokes”, really let us very incomprehensible, not only because of a different culture “information cocoon” cognitive differences, but also a kind of people themselves “skeptical of life” values of a huge impact.
Yes, in our opinion, they are very silly and desperate, and even think that their IQ is negative, otherwise why is it that they continue to insist on the “suicidal” diagnosis of 20 million cases of non-resistance when the most direct example – China’s basic success in fighting the epidemic and the current “occasional” growth of a few cases – is in front of them?
Is it because the city will lose its job and cannot live, so they prefer to take the risk of diagnosis?
Is it because most of those who die are senior citizens and “survival of the fittest” is the natural selection of society?
Is it because the “top” don’t care about the average person, and the “bottom” don’t care about the possible diagnosis, and care about getting their next meal?
And those who can not declare the various reasons, in fact, in the end it is difficult to explain this “universal” consistent behavior.
Perhaps, as the author Shi Zhan understands in “Breaking the Cocoon” – faith is one of the “most primitive” explanations for the non-resistance in the United States.
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s Gift of 20 Million Diagnoses – America’s Non-Resistance because of Faith?
As we all know, the United States is a very young federal state, and the original founding spirit of the country was basically derived from Puritanism.
For the United States, which has “no history,” the values of religion (Puritanism) and monotheistic thinking have always served as important “chains” that have held this seemingly loose “commonwealth” together, and are, so to speak, one of the important cornerstones of their “unity” to this day.
(The following book is recommended as a brief historical framework that can be briefly understood, click to go directly to it.
Free Trial Reading
What You Must Know About American History
Zhang Hongwei
Publishing/Literary Fiction/Contemporary Fiction Finished 310,000 words
The Calvinism (also called Puritanism), which slowly evolved after Calvin’s reformation in 1536, is an upgrade from the Reformation and still rules the “entire” spiritual order of North America.
At its core, or beliefs, is a non-monotheistic tradition (like the Chinese tradition, which is generally a polytheistic culture.) in a purely Jewish creationist ethic. It is difficult to understand the core belief that “God who ‘created something out of nothing’ is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good”.
Simply put, they believe that God created the world without needing anything, without relying on anything, by his own will. Instead of relying on some pre-existing materials (artifacts) to “create” the world, as we know in the “myths” of Nuwa making clay and Pangu splitting the earth and sky.
Therefore, for the American believers (Americans), who are almost universally religious, faith must be unconditional because God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good.
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s Offering of 20 Million Confirmed Diagnoses – America Does Not Resist Because of Faith?
To give an extreme example.
“When the crimes were revealed, many people questioned whether it was worthwhile to believe in a God who would not even save the Jews who claimed to be “God’s chosen people”.
But the Puritans (such as the philosopher Wittgenstein) would argue that the more you are in this situation, the more you must be devout in your faith, knowing that you are going to die soon, and that it is only right to remain unshaken in your conviction.
If your “faith” is only to live, and if God cannot save your life, you do not believe, then is it “God” you believe in, or is it the benefit you get from “God”?
If you believe in “God” because of the benefits, that means that your heart is actually determined by external substances, so philosophically speaking, you are no different from an animal in essence.
Even knowing the “logic” of their beliefs, I think this statement would be unbelievable to anyone who is a follower of a non-monotheistic culture, such as the Chinese, but this is precisely the underlying spiritual structure of their belief in creationism.
In a nutshell, they believe that their faith should be unconditional, so that the heart is not determined by matter, and so that there is true freedom, that is, in this creationist context, God is the master, and she gives the individual free will, and the individual has to master and create his or her own destiny.
Therefore, politics under the Puritan ethic must be individualistic, not collectivistic. This individualism does not recognize that “nation” or “state” determines one’s value, but that the value of the individual can only come from God’s direct gift to the individual, who is independently responsible to God and to himself.
Breaking the Cocoon: A New Year’s Gift of 20 Million Diagnoses – America does not resist because of faith?
Protesting against the “home rule” and marching.
So, with this understanding, we can understand why the United States has maintained a consistent attitude toward the “new crown epidemic” over the past year, which can be broadly summarized as the deeper reason for non-resistance.
Because of their individualism, they believe in freedom and responsibility for themselves, but the point is that as multiracial Americans, they have different understandings of what is “safe” (i.e., what is most important to them).
Some feel that freedom is the most important thing, that “freedom is better than death”, and that sealing off a city is detention, which is against the law.
Some feel that money is important because they can’t live without it and infection is a “possibility”.
Some felt that the epidemic was not that serious and that “I” did not see many people dying.
And, there are those who simply feel unhappy that they have no place to eat, drink and be merry ……
The point is, for them, no matter how serious the epidemic is, as long as “I” have faith and I can take responsibility for myself, then I should not be restricted by external material things, including “home orders”, “city closures”, “wearing masks”, etc. to make “me” feel uncomfortable and challenge what “I” believe in (values), etc.
Seeing this, I probably “understand” the anti-intellectual behavior of the United States more, although based on the increasingly magical reality – the rising number of diagnoses and deaths (human lives), understand, but still do not agree.
Even worry about reaching the tipping point, they will not make some more “heartless” behavior, such as the smuggling of patients to China, after all, in the “globalization” of today, if the “happy land” (China) to become the only, then in the face of continuous disaster, can really be spared?
Let’s leave the answer to the future.
The “Cocoon” of “Breaking the Cocoon”
I think, very often, a book should bring us not only an output of a point of view, but also give everyone different thoughts (nutrition) through this, even if the point of view is not “perfect”.
Yes, “Breaking the Cocoon” is a good reading experience, and even at this point in time, it has solved my confusion to a certain extent, and some of the interesting chapters are very surprising.
For example, the multi-layered understanding of the land order and the sea order, the vivid examples of common law and statutory law, as well as domestic manufacturers do not hesitate to go to international exhibitions, the purpose is not to get international “recognition” (gold-plated appearance), but to grasp the industry’s cutting-edge technology and product direction, so as to layout their future production …….
Breaking the Cocoon”: a New Year’s gift to confirm the diagnosis of 20 million – the United States does not resist, because there is faith?
In conclusion.
If you are confused about the “situation” today, or interested in political economy, then I recommend this latest book by Shi Zhan, “Breaking the Cocoon”.
Overall, it is worthwhile to start the year 2021 with this book.
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