Today's social protests have surged, and more and more society, regardless of the level of economic development or political systems, has experienced social protests.In fact, for any society, the social protest movement is not a question of whether it will be, but when it bursts out and what form broke out.
The tide of social protests today is compared with the world of social protests in the late 1960s.Indeed, social protests in that era also spread all over the world, occurred in developed countries (such as Europe and the United States), and also occurred in developing countries (such as China).Social movement (such as China).However, after all, the times are different. Compared with the previous wave, today's social protest situation is more severe, the background is more complicated, and the impact is longer and profound.
How to understand today's wave of social protests?Most people point to the macro background factors, that is, the disparity and social division of the rich and the poor caused by globalization and technological progress.Indeed, according to world inequality reports, from 1980 to 2016, the population of the first global revenue is the first 1%population. Their total revenue growth is more than twice the total growth of 50%of the lowest population growth.The development of globalization and science and technology is an important guide for the expansion of the gap between the rich and the poor.Globalization creates a lot of opportunities to accumulate wealth at the top, but at the same time, it has led to the majority of middle -level people to face more severe competition.
These macro backgrounds are extremely important, but it is not enough to understand the complexity of today's social protests.
The most significant point is to compare with traditional society. Today's social protest can be said to be a protest in the wealthy era.From the perspective of which perspective, the era of poor people in the traditional sense has passed because of poor revolution.Today, there are few social protests due to the hunger of the people.
Although the income difference is huge and socially differentiated, poverty is a relative concept in most society, not an absolute concept.In fact, most people participating in today's social protests come from the middle class.They have time and energy to participate in social protests, and have enough material guarantee.This allows social protests to continue.
Wealth is manifested in many aspects
Wealth is not only manifested in material, but also in many other aspects.The first is the wealth of knowledge.In today's world, in order to promote the development of socio -economic development, all governments have invested resources into the cultivation and training of human resources.In more and more countries, the people have received excessive education, that is, learning non -use.Educating resources is to promote economic development, but there is no necessity between education and economic activities.
Citizens of many countries have been educated, but the country does not have the conditions to provide work and employment that is compatible with education.This leads to excessive education.Education is excessive, and people's expectations of themselves naturally increase.When the actual employment market cannot satisfy its expectations, young people have taken the street.For many young people, it is much easier to go to the street to protest than finding a good job.
Wealth is more in terms of technology.With the widespread application of smartphones, all literacy today will not have great difficulties to use these technologies, such as receiving and sending information.To a large extent, the language of all social media is a populist language, which is easy to understand and accept that even those who only receive the lowest education.The impact of the use of social media on social protests will not be excessive.
First of all, in social media, social protests are manifested as no significant organizers, and even no organizers, because social media itself has become an organizer, or everyone can become organizers, that is, they can play the organizer by sending information.Essence
Secondly, the so -called fake news can mobilize the real news.People can create any fake news on social media.But it is precisely because of fake news that it is more authentic than real news whether it is a manufacturer or believers.
Third, the social media of one person, one or one -person machine is decentralized and decentralized.Differentians have contributed to today's social protests as the situation of recruitment and lingering. It has huge liquidity, which has caused guerrilla war between protesters and protesters (often the government).This new type of society protest is more difficult to master than the traditional social protest.
The information society has also led to the leap in people, especially young people, and the young group has endless options when they have not developed their own ability to think.In the virtual field, they can easily choose a consciousness of themselves or their own groups.Although this consciousness and reality are far away, they are convinced of this.Historically, the progress of human consciousness is accompanied by their material progress.However, the era of social media has completely changed this situation, that is, consciousness is far from material.
Furthermore, in the era of social media, people have increasingly no memory ability. Everything, including consciousness, is instant consumption, and everything is fleeting.The leap of consciousness is often strengthened by excessive education.
All these new factors determine the characteristics of today's society protest.Of course, people can understand protests in contemporary society from all aspects, but from the perspective of protests and rebellion, the following two are particularly significant.
One is the generation rebellion, that is, all the things built in the history of the older generation in the older generation.Historically, intergenerational breaks can easily lead to intergenerational rebellion.The intergenerational break refers to the differences between the young groups and their parents or grandparents in terms of belief, politics and values.
The protests of young people in the United States and Europe in the 1960s are frequent, which is very different from their quiet generations.This has contributed to intergenerational research in social sciences. People understand social protests by discovering different languages, thinking, work attitudes, and behavior methods in generations.Let's understand all these different formations between generations.
Compared with the 1960s, the intergenerational break in the social media era was even more profound and severe.There are systems and institutions (such as clubs) that contribute to intergenerational breaks in traditional society, but it is rare, but in the Internet era, the construction of this system and institutions is an easy matter.Different clusters in social media are the institutional institutions of young people themselves, and few people are supervised, and they are in a complete freedom or anarchy.In this state, different groups freely construct their own individual and group languages, construct their own identity through language construction, and freely regulate and explain the reality by identifying.
The material break at the macro level mentioned earlier laid the foundation for the contemporary thought break.From a material level, many young groups are broken and manifested in all aspects, such as income differences, welfare, raising elderly people (East Asia), fiscal expenditure, debt, etc.In traditional society, in general, the older generation has accumulated wealth for the next generation, but contemporary society, especially the implementation of one -person and one -vote, the situation is just the opposite, that is, the old generation began to eat the future and increase the burden on the future generation.
Here, for young groups, the older generation is often manifested as vested interests. They have the right to vote or other aspects, and for power, the politicians have to make various rights requirements or even unreasonable requirements for the older generation.Comparative, this will inevitably transfer the burden to the future generation.For example, today's countries around the world are getting more and moreMany government borrows, and many countries have debt (whether they are internal or foreign debts), and these debts mean a burden on young people.
The difference between young and older
Various factors have contributed to the difference between the older generation and the younger generation, and the technical factors such as social media and other technical factors make the younger generation easily distinguish between themselves and the elderly.
This difference and isolation are politically aggressive in politics.The main body of political radicals is anti -construction, although many times are often reflected in everything established by the anti -old generation.The main manifestations of political radicals in the contemporary times are the rise of populism.The rise of populism has both the motivation of elites and the motivation of society.As far as elites are concerned, they mainly come from elites outside the system, or elite people who are in the system but are dissatisfied with the existing system.
In a society with a democratic society or the election system, the one -person and one -vote system has pushed the elites outside the system to the peak of political power.Outsiders try to redefine the source of the legitimacy of political power and how to use their power.In essence, outsiders are anti -systems, and they are often in a serious opposition with the establishment of elites.
As far as society is concerned, different social groups provide the foundation of populism.But if you think that only the bottom of the society or the poor is the foundation of populism, it is very wrong.If there is no elite mobilization, it is difficult for the poor to become populist.As discussed earlier, many of the contemporary social protesters are not poor, and they are rich in all aspects.For example, in the United States, before Trump was elected president, not many people would think that white people would also become the foundation of populism.
Like elite populists, social populism is also anti -building, and many people even hate the system.The wide use of the slogans of democracy, freedom, justice, justice, equality, etc., which make these traditionally hard -to -value value performed very cheap.
However, at the actual level, these values are only the protesters that demonstrate their behavior legitimacy and reflect their moral superiority. How many social protesters really understand the things behind these values?As long as it can be connected or even equivalent to the anti -building system, any value can be used by social protesters.Therefore, in many occasions, rebellion for rebellion has become a significant feature of contemporary society protests.
Social protests have contributed to the open opposition between the establishment and anti -construction, and often cause a large -scale social turmoil.In terms of experience, if considering the macro socio -economic background of this wave of social protest movements and educational and technical factors such as education and technology, people can expect that the social protests will continue for a long time.Political economist Albert Hirschman once proposed the theory of pendulum on the social protest movement, that is, the social group was flowing between the private sector and the public field, causing social movements.Once people stay in the private sector for a long time, they will have desire to move towards the public domain, which has caused social movements; but once people stay in the public domain for a long time, they want to flow in the private field. If it is from the public field to the private sectorThe flow means the decline of social protests.
Hichman described the social protest movement in the 1960s.It is not easy to find a equilibrium point between the public field and the private sector today, because today's social protest movement is not the result of the micro -choice of groups as Herhmann, but the imbalance of structural elements (globalization globalization (globalizationThe results of technological progress, social differentiation, etc.).Before these structures reached a relatively balanced, social protests were difficult to calm down.However, in order to achieve the structural balance in these aspects, the structural reforms of each country are required.This is the biggest challenge facing the governments of the world today.
Faced with a new round of social protests, governments in some countries have proposed to establish a new social contract between the government and society.Indeed, as British thinker Edmund Burke said in the 18th century, social contracts were not only between the government and the people, but also between different social groups, between different generations, and between history and reality.
Without any social group, whether it is a vested interest group or other, it is impossible to hold other social groups to sign contracts with the government.This social contract means that the self -discipline of vested interests (whether in power or social groups that controls the power of political discourse), and the vested interest groups have no restricted power and claims, and can only stimulate the greater rebellion of the younger generation.
However, in reality, this wave of social protest movements is far from new social contract issues.The sustainable development of exercise is more likely to lead to fundamental institutional changes.Today's social structure requires a political system that is highly concentrated and highly scattered.Concentration does not refer to personal authority, but a concentration of the system, not a comprehensive concentration, but a selective concentration to ensure the existence and continuity of sovereign countries.In addition, many social problems (including unemployment) caused by technological progress also requires solutions at the national level, and the market is increasingly unable to solve these problems.
It is still difficult for people to imagine a world without sovereignty.In fact, because of globalization, the concept of sovereign state is strengthening.At the same time, various local identity (including group identity) is also strengthening, which requires decentralization and autonomy.
Historically, the political system that meets these two conditions is the empire and feudal system.However, it is difficult to imagine that today's world can return to the empire or feudal system.What will happen to the new system?This requires people's political imagination.
(The author is a professor at the East Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore)
The article only represents personal point of view
