This is a very hot article in Huawei internal forum.
The concept of internal volume has a rich connotation and is closely related to our lives. In order to popularize and spread the knowledge, I refer to the relevant information, and dedicate my personal rough understanding to my friends.
Involution, which corresponds to evolution, means evolution. Intuitively speaking, involution is “inward evolution, or circling”.
More broadly, all insubstantial consumption can be called involution. There are many low-level repetitive work in life, seemingly to improve, we all follow the steps, work hard, happy, but only in a limited internal scope, not outward expansion, the direction of work is inward convergence, rather than outward dispersion, which is called inward.
Try to explain with seven familiar examples.
- Meaningless leaning is involution. For example, the thousands of teacups placed on the desktop of the General Assembly Hall, looking horizontally and vertically at the side all into rows, spectacular! That is a lot of staff spend a long time with the rope one by one positioning tossed out. Relative to the content of the meeting and its significance, this strict and precise arrangement does not play a role, which is called inside the volume.
2, will be a simple problem complicated is inside the volume. For example, some units in order to implement the project decided by the higher leadership, but also to crown the whole decision-making process to make it look scientific, in order to cope with the audit and inspection, for this reason, a lot of trouble, engaged in a set of one set of research reports, invited a number of experts and scholars to make comments and suggestions, opened a review of the demonstration again and again, poor tossed some, in fact, the project has long been decided by the leadership of the board. These huge and busy work, costing money and time and effort to make simple problems very complicated, the purpose is only to make up the procedure, the so-called decision-making scientific circle drawn, which is a kind of internal volume.
3, in order to avoid blame, passive coping work is also an inside volume. Every major holiday or sensitive period of the first few days, lower-level institutions must respond to the call from above, the organization of large-scale production safety (or stability maintenance and so on) inspection. We all understand that most of the leaders may not even have the credentials of safety production, these inspections may not have any practical effect, but also have to use a lot of human and material resources to complete this fixed action, in order to be exempted from blame in case something happens, which is also a kind of internal volume.
4, with the expected goal of serious deviation from the work is also an internal volume. Many of the social creation of evaluation is the internal volume. Because these reviews consume a lot of human and material resources, but can not use these competitions to promote its expected work, can not achieve its original purpose, show components more than the substantive effect.
For example, a certain star of entrepreneurship competition, or a few provincial departments jointly engaged in science and technology innovation pioneer competition, etc. In fact, individuals will not start a business because of the competition, and technology enterprises will not engage in science and technology innovation because of the competition. The original intention of the competition is to promote personal entrepreneurship and science and technology innovation, but the actual role is minimal, this competition is of course internal volume.
5、Low-level imitation and replication are typical of involution. Micro-carving and micro-engraving are only formal art, and the content of their creation will only be less than normal size artwork, especially in terms of coloring, micro-carving and micro-engraving are fatally restricted, and the artistic connotation of micro-carving and micro-engraving cannot surpass normal art creation.
This deliberate micro-fabrication is a kind of in-volume. This is a kind of self-competition, a kind of pleasure in the self-imposed suffering, spending a lot of time, exhausted willpower, not only did not create new content, but also have to take a magnifying glass to see, exhausting.
6, internal competition that limits creativity is the systemic internal volume. For example, the rigid examination system severely limits students’ freedom to learn and grow. Students are forced to work hard within the syllabus in order to get high marks, which restricts the free spirit of students and stifles their creativity.
At the same time, in order to compare the high and low, the questioner had to make the exam questions bizarre and weird, such as so-and-so uprising who fired the first shot, who fired the second shot, who fired the third shot and so on the most boring exam questions, which is the internal volume.
7, in the same question endlessly digging research is inside the volume. Chinese research on many historical masterpieces is staggering, just a few books, a couple of hundred years countless scholars endlessly to dig, you can still whole what new things to it? But the research is still going on, and the fine can be even finer, endlessly.
Researchers have gone on and on, but the content keeps repeating the hype, the papers are copied and copied, and they keep using misinterpretation of the original and far-fetched supporting evidence to make new and different, in fact, they are all a pile of rotten meat in that pot, which is typical of the inner volume.
There are a lot of causes of the internal volume, we do not need to investigate deeply, and we do not need to exhaustively cite, otherwise they may also fall into the internal volume. A little from the two dimensions of the system and culture to understand a little.
Why do people fall into the dilemma of involution and cannot extricate themselves?
Prisoner’s dilemma theory provides a good explanation for this. According to the prisoner’s dilemma game model, under the pressure of the system, people are like prisoners in a dilemma, in order to their own interests, most people will choose to “cooperate” with the program, and very few people will choose to confront the system.
Therefore, people are happy to play a zero-sum or even negative-sum game with a small range of relevant personnel, the Hakka proverb calls this phenomenon “crotch inside the fist”, we compete with each other, exhausting work, no matter how hard you work, pay more, the total amount of benefits will not increase, or so little. Thus, it seems that the institutionalized internal competition is the first cause of the internal volume.
From a cultural genetic point of view, more than 2,000 years of imperial culture and eunuch culture domesticated countless “obedient people”. The core of imperial culture is to fool the people in order to facilitate their rule, while the most important feature of eunuch culture is to suck up to their masters and please them in order to obtain their favors.
Therefore, the Chinese people have been asked to obey since childhood, requiring them to sit, speak and act in a disciplined manner, and are accustomed to seeking their own place in the narrow interpersonal relationships, cultural genes determine the Chinese people are accustomed to internal competition, and the lack of courage to explore and innovate. Look at the reality of the brutal infighting in the official workplace, you can understand.
From another cultural point of view, the traditional culture to a certain stage and can not adapt to the new situation, it is easy to go astray, into a dead end, since it can not adapt to the new situation of foreign cultural challenges, have to dig deeper and deeper in the internal, looking for support.
China’s thousands of years of accumulated rules, rules, taboos is the internal volume. The feudal superstition is the inner volume to the extreme. Human nature is idle, if no new ideas, no new things to look forward to, will inevitably figure out something to toss, such as a variety of customs, such as micro-carving, micro-engraving and calligraphy, etc., to add a little life style. This is also one of the reasons for the inner scroll.
The inward scroll is a silent sadness. It slowly consumes our intelligence and youthfulness and smoothes out our personal sharpness. After falling into involution, for individuals, it is a silent and unconscious waste of time; for society or institutions, a large number of people silently do useless work, wasting resources, reducing the overall efficiency and weakening the external competitiveness.
Our country has the largest number of PhDs, professors and researchers in the world, but our competitiveness in science and technology innovation is very disproportionate, which is more or less related to the design of our education system and scientific research system. Countless talents are trapped in an involuted institutional environment and cannot extricate themselves, resulting in a huge and sad waste of talents.
The inner volume tells us that the surface of fine, complex, elaborate is not equal to advanced, much less advanced, it is only a self-deceiving illusion, a dark ignorance of the consumption, a sad spiritual parasite. Only out of the circle, standing on a higher level of continuous outward breakthroughs, innovation and creativity, in order not to let that exquisite, complex, seemingly particularly dedicated to the state of internal volume to plague us, in order to return to the upward burgeoning new normal.
Understanding the meaning of involution, we can consciously avoid falling into involution and reduce the waste and harm caused by involution.
Whether you are a decision maker or an executive, judge before you do something and avoid involution as much as possible. Society should encourage and promote an open and free competitive environment, and the goal of institutional reform should be placed on encouraging invention and creation and establishing a free mechanism with minimal constraints.
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