Zheng Yongnian: Personal will and responsibility to resist with the group

The epidemic is not only a test of the system, but also a test of nationality.(Reuters)

In any society, when a large -scale epidemic occurs and diffuses, resistance is a group behavior; without the efforts of the group, individuals will appear extremely small in front of the epidemic, and the world will become hopeless.However, if group resistance is effective, in the end, it must be implemented to everyone, personal will, and personal responsibilities of everyone.Therefore, the epidemic is not only a test of the system, but also a test of nationality.

After the spread of coronary virus disease in 2019, China entered a state of mobilization in the country.Here people see both hope and sorrow.The hope of hoping is people's organization. Whether it is the formal government system or informal volunteer, once the organization is organized, people show infinite power.Fully fight against the epidemic, their efforts and the spirit behind them are the world's attention and amazing.

The sad side is at the individual level, and the free will and responsibilities of people outside the group that is highly organized by a highly organized group; what can be seen everywhere is to minimize their responsibilities, or even have no sense of personal responsibility.Individual responsibility, an individual who is infinitely magnified, seems to be resistant to epidemic, but other people's affairs.

The lack of individual responsibility is extremely obvious in social media during the epidemic.Social media can be said to be like a amplifier, moving the authenticity of society to the platform.On the one hand, the social media platform reflects things that cannot be reflected by traditional media. Although not so complete, it also provides some very valuable information for the relevant parties. As long as people are careful enough, they can always find useful real information;On the one hand, social media also showed the ugly noodles of humanity naked.There are some platforms to consume various extreme events to pursue traffic. Moralization and demonization are abound, and even manufacturing or spreading rumors.

Although most social media originally intended to spread the facts, the social media showed more hustle and bustle and collective excitement, and even regarded the sorrow of others as their own source of entertainment; despite the scolding, they were all accusing others infinitely.There is no self -reflection.In addition to creating a kind of atmosphere, sorrow or joy, or anger or panic, it is not only no good for resistance, but it can not be left in the end, which can not cause any changes that the anger claims to achieve.

The performance of the people in front of the crisis

How to understand this crisis and people's performance in front of the crisis?The crisis is group, but the group crisis is the result of the choice of everyone in this society.The sum of the choice of each person not only creates the current situation that people see, but also determine the future trend of this situation.In fact, at such a crisis, personal will and choices based on personal will are enough to affect the overall situation.At this moment, no individual can force another person to choose, but everyone's individual chooses to determine the nature, development path and future of this crisis.

Dr. Li Wenliang's choice is a good explanation.When Li Wenliang's choice, it is a rational and honest choice of ordinary people. Perhaps only for the safety of family members, colleagues, and friends, the information about the epidemic is public in the circle of friends.He did not want to make a publicity and want to be a special character; on the contrary, he just felt that sending this information to the circle of friends was based on the responsibility of the person he cared about or the choice of morality.Any choice not only has a price, but also results.As far as Li Wenliang is concerned, he does not want to be a hero, but as a result, he becomes a hero in people's minds; he does not want to save the world, but at least save many people in the world.

Conversely, the initial stage of the epidemic, other insiders, including local officials, disease control officials from local to central government, scholars at elite universities, etc. What choices did they make?If all these groups are responsible for acting and personal will like Li Wenliang, and spread the information of the epidemic in any way, the current situation may be very different.However, they made their choices.Local officials may be restricted by various systems or policies, maybe in order to maintain their own position, or actively restrict information dissemination in accordance with the rules.

Disease control officials and university scholars chose to write articles and contribute to international publications.These groups can find a lot of reasons to demonstrate that their choices at that time were correct or rational.No one will question the difficulties of their choices and believe that their choices have to have their own reasons.However, in any case, it is still necessary to point out that in the initial stage of the epidemic, they lack the responsibility responsibility and responsibility -based personal free will.

No matter what kind of society, any choice needs to be restricted by the environment (including culture, systems and policies).The so -called choice refers to the choice in front of various environments.The United States is regarded as the most typical free and democratic society. In the eyes of many people, there is almost perfect freedom of speech, but why does the United States still need to whistle and protect the institutional arrangement of whistle?This illustrates from one aspect that no matter how freedom and freedom, any society has external constraints.However, it is just a convenient excuse for choosing not freedom because of external constraints. In essence, there is still a lack of free will and responsibility.

Responsibility and responsibility of individual social individuals

Britain is the birthplace of liberalism.In the early days, freedom means responsibility.Freedom is in terms of self, and the responsibility is to relative to the self, or the group outside the self.Even if people attach great importance to freedom of speech, they are responsible and boundary. Many western countries have the law of anti -defamation, that is, to show the social responsibility of freedom of speech; and this social responsibility must be a member of social members who enjoy freedom of speech.Performing and being guaranteed by the legal system.

But for many people, the freedom of institutional restrictions is far from enough.In modern German philosophers, the freedom of personal will, and the freedom of will only reflects the individual's freedom.By the philosophy of Nietzsche, it emphasized that his own will has reached a peak.In Nietzsche's view, only with strong personal will can personal freedom at all.Nietzsche's philosophy is condemned by traditional liberalism. It is believed that overly emphasizing the emergence of personal heroism that leads to personal heroism can bring disaster to the world.However, the freedom of personal will has been carried forward in the existentialist of France (especially in Sartre, Camus, etc.).

Existentialism emphasizes the existence of the essence of the precedent, that is, it is better to say that it is the result of the product of social constraints.The essence of human existence is not determined by God or God, so people must be liberated from the oppressive and spiritual traditions in terms of spiritual destruction and pursue their true existence.Being a hero or a loser is the result of their choice.

Furthermore, no matter what choices you face, choice is free.Even if you encounter a lot of constraints, people can nothing more. If some external constraints are deficient, they are not as terrible. People can still make their own choices.From this perspective, if a country falls into a collective crisis, everyone in this country is responsible for it, not just the responsibility of several leaders or decision makers.

Simply put, society is a community, and each individual is responsible for; it is not only doctors, government officials, and volunteers who are responsible for resistance.Whether it is a direct participant or indirect participant, whether it is insiders or outsiders, the choice of each individual determines the resistance movement that has been called war.

The choice made by Li Wenliang, local officials, disease control officials and scholars leading to today's epidemic situation; similarly, the choice of each member of Chinese society will determine the process and ending of the war of resistance.The key here is responsibility and responsibility.The choice of extreme selfishness and responsibility, the results are completely different.

At the time of crisis, no external constraint can promote the choice of people as Dr. Li Wenliang, not the choice of local officials, disease control officials and scholars.People can also believe that many people will continue to make the latter's extremely selfish choice.But fairly speaking, people's judgment of the ending is also fair.Regardless of the official evaluation, people have made the conclusion on Li Wenliang, local officials, disease control officials and scholars.

Personal choice has an impact on society

In other words, as long as people are people in society, individual choices will inevitably have an impact on society, and society's judgment on individuals is based on its impact on the society.In other words, the relationship between personal freedom (selection) and responsibility is to deal with the relationship between yourself and society, or Yan Fu's relationship between Yan Fu.

When Yan Fu translated Mueller (now translated Mill) with classical sentences, he translated the title of the book as the theory of power in the group. Carefully think about it. This translation is very interesting.From the perspective of Yan Fu, groups, groups, and social domains; those who have themselves, their own private areas; that is, the public and private areas must be distinguished and clear.In the example of this book, Yan Fu explained that he used the meaning of the four words of his own power world, saying: Freedom, who wants to do whatever he wants.If someone lives alone outside the world, is there a restriction on its freedom?For goodness and evil, everything is uprising. Who is restarted?But since entering the group, my free people are also free, so that unlimited restrictions, they enter the power world, and conflict.Therefore, it is said that people must be free, and they must take the freedom of others.This is the torque of the university, and the gentleman is also the same as the world.

In other words, the individuals of society and this society have their own power, but their power has its own boundaries.Everyone has the right to exercise his freedom, and its boundary is not to infringe on the freedom of others.If it hinders the freedom of others, society has the right to sanction him.In other words, the exercise of personal freedom must take into account the interests of society (group).

Throughout China in modern times, Yan Fu said that the permissions of the group are not only difficult, but it is difficult to do, and it is even more difficult to unite.Mr. Sun Yat -sen saw the difficulties caused by the extreme self -interest of the Chinese people in the early revolution in the early revolution.Because the Chinese people were scattered in the sand, Sun Yat -sen turned to the power of the organization.

It is not difficult to find that from the Kuomintang to the Communist Party, relying on the power of the organization to construct the main political line of the new country, this country has never changed. The difference is that it depends on who has stronger organizational power and more competitive.Although Sun Yat -sen's ideal is a society that realizes his own power, he does not think that this ideal will fall from the heavens. To this end, he designed a gradual Chinese political development roadmap.

Organization must involve the concentration of power, and the concentration of power will inevitably affect the internal distribution of power in the internal distribution of power, that is, the form of decentralization.Since modern times, power concentration has been a major trend worldwide, because the difference between the system and traditional countries of modern countries lies in the concentration of modern countries.However, the degree of centralization within the world in the world is so different, so that people call some politics as democracy and other politics as an autocracy.

Of course, there are still quite a lot of society, and its power cannot be concentrated at all. The society has always stayed in an anarchy, and even the state of the failure of the country.It is also obvious that democracy and autocracy are not as some scholars say, the products that a small number of politicians are selected, but the result of the choice of most people.Whether a society can have sufficient decentralization (or democracy) depends on whether most people in this society can achieve the balance between their own power in the selection process, that is, the personal freedom (choice) and responsibility responsibilitybalance.Only when the personal freedom based on responsibility is realized, there is hope for decentralization or democracy, because at that time, the concentration of power loses the foundation; otherwise, this society will never escape the centralized system.

The crisis exposes the real face of society, it reviews everything in this society and torture everything in this society.Since the spread of coronal virus this time, on the one hand, it is manifested as organized resistance, and on the other hand, it is anarchy without responsibility.Although more and more people have high expectations of the transformation of the social system in the post -crisis in the post -crisis, the actions of social group behaviors will eventually lead to the most realistic collective choice.In a word, in the absence of citizens with responsible responsibility, is there any other alternative options in addition to highly concentrated organizationalization?

(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