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This article was written out of a sudden impulse. I had originally meant to dash off two paragraphs in one go, but the more I wrote, the more awkward it felt; in the end, I not only wrecked the thing, I couldn’t keep going either. But since, before I knew it, I had written more than seven thousand characters, I might as well post it. For archive purposes only.
Emotions or attitudes, like thoughts and speech, are part of each person’s “freedom.” I have the right to worry myself sick, and I also have the right to be carefree. But just like other most basic “freedoms,” when we reveal our emotions or attitudes in a certain setting, we are not completely without constraint. For example, a person may have a great sense of humor and laugh at everything he sees, but if he is a judge presiding over a trial, he cannot make jokes at will, much less burst out laughing at the moment of sentencing. Or again, a person may be gloomy, irritable, and ready to blow up at the slightest thing, but if he is a receptionist at a government service window, helping citizens handle their affairs, he cannot casually display impatience and has to greet people with a smile. Or again, a person may be rather loose and flirt with everyone she sees, but when she is a kindergarten teacher leading children in games, she cannot just go wild…
Of course, a person’s temperament will determine whether he chooses to enter certain settings, or to choose certain professions. For example, someone who is particularly reclusive will avoid lively parties; someone who is very irritable may simply not apply for a job as a waiter. But in any case, we should be able to understand the existence of “scene switching” — when we enter a certain setting or take on a certain role, we often need consciously, purposefully, to rein in our emotions.
When enforcing the law, one needs seriousness; when receiving guests, one needs enthusiasm; when raising children, one needs kindness; when reading, one needs calm; at a party, one needs exuberance… The same person can very well switch back and forth among all kinds of different emotions, and this does not destroy the unity of his personality. Although habits formed in a particular situation often “spill over” into other aspects of life, so long as a certain tension is maintained, a person’s “different facets” can coexist harmoniously.
If a thief, seeing the police officer who arrested him stern and unsmiling, unbending and unwilling to compromise, then starts worrying about the officer’s family members, that is obviously stupid: when that officer is sitting at the table or beside the bed facing his wife and children, of course he will be completely different from how he appears to a thief. Or, if you see someone being loud, reckless, and half-mad at a party, and then start worrying about his teachers and classmates, thinking that with such a character how could class ever be taught properly, that is obviously also worrying needlessly: his exuberant demeanor will obviously not be on display in the classroom.
Most people will no doubt understand everything said above. But when facing intellectuals, the majority of people, including some intellectuals themselves, forget the boundaries of emotions and attitudes, and thereby fall into enormous misunderstandings.
Many people will say: So-and-so intellectual, you’re always full of complaints, always criticizing this and that — aren’t you tired? If you’re so dissatisfied with life, why not emigrate sooner rather than later? And if you are satisfied with life, why must you express dissatisfaction?
They do not understand: just as seriousness is the duty of law enforcers and enthusiasm is the duty of service providers, “dissatisfaction” is precisely the responsibility of intellectuals. Just as a judge must remain serious before a defendant, and customer service must remain enthusiastic before customers, the role of the intellectual, when he turns toward the “public sphere,” is to maintain “dissatisfaction.”
If one does not understand this principle, one will make a fool of oneself. It is like insisting on making a judge laugh in court, and then, if the judge does not laugh, accusing him of a defective personality and an extreme mindset: everyone else is laughing out loud, so why are you always keeping a straight face? Likewise, there are many people who insist on forcing intellectuals in the public sphere to sing praises; everyone else is grateful and happy, so why are you always grumbling?
Does a judge not know how to laugh? Perhaps the judge, seeing the idiotic behavior of both sides in a dispute, can barely restrain himself from laughing out loud. Yet if he laughs heartily after leaving the bench, privately, that is no problem; before the parties involved, especially in the courtroom itself, he must hold it in properly. This is not because he lacks the ability to laugh or lacks sensitivity to what is funny, but because his duty, his mission, and the environment in which he stands require him to show others only his serious side.
Are public intellectuals incapable of gratitude, incapable of enjoying life, incapable of praise? Not necessarily so. They may love life and love their country even more than ordinary people; their family life may be even happier and more satisfactory than that of ordinary people. However, before the public, especially when dealing with public issues, they should not be singing paeans or lavishing praise, but must display the facet of “dissatisfaction.” One could say this is the “professional ethics” of the “public intellectual.”
Those who do not know the inside story, seeing that a public intellectual is always criticizing the status quo in public but enjoying life in private, may not be able to accept it and think you are double-faced. But who isn’t multi-faceted? A serious judge also has an exuberant side at home; a brave soldier also has a weak side; a comedian can also be depressed; a people’s teacher can also tell dirty jokes… As long as they control the boundaries of their emotions, this multifacetedness is in fact perfectly normal. It can hardly even be called “hypocrisy,” because in different situations, the corresponding emotions may well be genuine outpourings of the heart; even if they are somewhat controlled when expressed, they are still not fabricated.
So the key question is: are the above analogies valid? And why, for intellectuals, is “dissatisfaction” a responsibility?
This line of reasoning is not really all that complicated: 1. “Dissatisfaction” is something a healthy and harmonious society needs; 2. In addition to expressing concrete dissatisfaction with specific problems, there also needs to be a “raised” or generalized, totalizing criticism or venting directed at the public sphere; 3. Such criticism needs room to be carried out “in public”; 4. The people best suited to launch criticism of public problems in public spaces are, precisely, intellectuals.
1. Society needs dissatisfaction
In a society where everyone is satisfied, where all you hear are songs of praise and all you can hear are paeans to merit and virtue, and not a single word of dissatisfaction with the status quo, is such a society truly beautiful? Such a society is either heaven or hell, either “1984” or “Brave New World”… In any case, it is not real. Perhaps if we went to some primitive tribe, we could see a world like this; but in modern society since the Industrial Age, “dissatisfaction” has already become a normal component of society, and even one of its main driving forces.
The very rise of the idea of “modernity” originally stemmed from dissatisfaction with “the ancient.” Dissatisfaction with ignorance drove the Enlightenment; dissatisfaction with backwardness fostered reverence for what was advanced. Dissatisfaction with the status quo gave rise to yearning for the future. When individuals are dissatisfied with life, they seek self-improvement; when society is dissatisfied with reality, it pursues progress. This is the main theme of the entire modern world.
I often criticize elsewhere the endless pursuit embedded in modernity. But when we criticize modernity, criticize the prevailing atmosphere of unbridled desire, is that not itself an even greater “dissatisfaction” with the status quo? Whether supporters of modernity or critics of it, all share the emotion of “dissatisfaction.” “Modernity” is an irreversible event; from then on, we can no longer pretend to be ostriches and say that my own thought is locked inside a closed world.
Even in ancient society, “dissatisfaction” was a component in the construction of society. As the saying goes, “Observe Heaven’s will through disasters and auspicious signs, and observe the people’s sentiments through songs and customs.” In ancient China there were special institutions or systems that gave rulers at the top a chance to hear the people’s dissatisfaction.
From the pre-Qin period to the Northern and Southern Song, China always had a tradition of remonstrance officials. Some officials were specially responsible for collecting dissatisfaction from below and offering criticism to the emperor and the chancellor. Of course, after the Jin and Yuan dynasties, emperors became barbarized and bureaucrats became servile lackeys, and the tradition of remonstrance officials was abandoned; from then on the Great Qing Dynasty enjoyed songs, dances, and peace and prosperity. But in any case, taking the Tang and Song as examples at least, a prosperous ancient country was also capable of facing up to the existence of dissatisfaction.
Perhaps in a communist society dissatisfaction can truly be eliminated, but even if so, that would still only be a distant prospect. And the proposal of communism originally arose from Marx’s dissatisfaction with the status quo of capitalism. And the passage from capitalism to communism is not something that can be accomplished overnight; therefore, in the process of striving to realize communism, there ought to be dissatisfaction at every moment. Moreover, according to Marx’s design, in the ideal society one person can “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and engage in criticism after dinner,” which shows that even communist society still has to make room for critics.
Whether from the standpoint of Enlightenment thought, ancient Chinese thought, or the logic of communism, “dissatisfaction” is a real presence, and properly allowing dissatisfaction to be expressed is a need of a healthy society.
Of course, exactly how dissatisfaction is institutionalized and conveyed varies from system to system: whether through freedom of association and demonstrations, or through a remonstrance official system, or by becoming a critic or revolutionary — the positioning differs — but the capacity to accommodate “dissatisfaction” is a common feature of a healthy society.
Since “dissatisfaction” is a real presence and can provide the driving force for progress, the wise course is naturally to think of every possible way to guide the expression of dissatisfaction. The foolish course is to treat it as harmful trash and ignore it, but even then, someone should warn of the existence of that harmful trash and reveal its boundaries and effects.
2. Rising to the level of the whole
So, are we supposed to analyze only specific problems in specific ways, and only need dissatisfaction with specific local problems, with no need to rise to the level of the whole, especially no need to be dissatisfied with the culture and system as a whole?
In many cases, a “treat the matter as the matter is” attitude is appropriate, but even that requires “treating the matter as the matter is”; it is not as if in every situation one can only ever do that.
Many people with strong nationalist sentiments ought to be the easiest to understand the significance of “raising the level.” Because they are precisely the best at this kind of “raising.” For example, some honor may obviously have been achieved by one specific person or a few specific people, but nationalists will think one should “first thank the country,” and must believe that these concrete, local honors are bestowed by the nation as a whole.
This logic is not without reason, because each person’s growth and life are all influenced by the overall environment, and this broad background that is difficult to dissect into individual contributions is also the “condition” that makes personal achievement possible.
But the problem is that if one agrees with this logic, one should also agree with the following perfectly symmetrical conclusion: just as behind concrete and individual honors there is the support of the nation and the guarantee of the system, behind concrete and individual ugliness there is likewise the influence of the nation and the indulgence of the system.
For those who feel averse to nationalist discourse, this logic in fact needs to be stated more explicitly.
In One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse’s critique of the way of thinking in the industrial age centers precisely on this “operationalist” mindset of treating specific problems specifically. This kind of thinking appears rational, but it cuts off the critical dimension altogether. For when people analyze specific problems, they often already take some overall framework or inertia for granted, tacitly accepting the reasonableness of the whole reality.
Therefore, for critics like Marcuse, this seemingly irrational, generalized, total dissatisfaction is the most worthy of preservation and revelation. Otherwise, humanity would all become “one-dimensional,” completely dominated by the logic of modern science or modern technology.
On the opposite side of the critical school, if we look from the standpoint of scientism, we can also accept this “raising,” because the scientific method always requires moving from the specific to the general, from the individual to the universal, by induction. Ordinary people may only focus on the concrete problems around them, but “scientists” have the mission of inducing and summarizing, raising individual problems to universal problems, and inducting general properties or laws.
In short, whether from the standpoint of reflecting on science or from the standpoint of scientism, dissatisfaction directed at the overall system or the general status quo ought to be accommodated; the only difference is whether this raising is a step outside the system for reflection, or an induction within the existing order.
3. Why express it in public?
So, if there is dissatisfaction, can’t one just quietly report it to the “superior” and be done with it? Why bring it out in public? Isn’t that just stirring up trouble?
Aristotle said that man is a political animal, and that life in the polis accords with human nature. This may be somewhat exaggerated, or perhaps only suitable to Western culture. But if we look around the streets and lanes of China, at banquets and drinking parties, at Beijing taxis and the like, what people most love to chat about at length is not precisely national affairs? If at a dinner table people discourse freely on the affairs of the state and not a single complaint is heard, and everyone is instead beaming with joy and singing praises, is that normal? Complaints and grumbling are the most normal of social moods; this is not to say that a few old fellows at some random dinner party, after a couple cups of old liquor, are about to plot rebellion.
Beyond being a normal way of venting emotion, the significance of expressing dissatisfaction in public lies first of all in the logic of “democracy.” Democracy means letting the masses replace the emperor in holding power, but how do the plural masses hold power? That is a complicated question, and I won’t discuss it much here. But at the very least, no matter how the masses exercise power, like an emperor they ought to understand information before exercising it. Ancient emperors heard the people’s dissatisfaction through channels such as the Yuefu and remonstrance officials; and now, if we want the masses to hear their own dissatisfaction, then of course we need public exchange among the masses themselves.
We said that in addition to dissatisfaction with specific problems, there also needs to be dissatisfaction with the overall system and culture, and that dissatisfaction impels us to seek improvement; but how are we to improve the overall system structure or the cultural atmosphere and the like? Is it really the case that one person or a small clique has the right to control the direction of the system’s improvement? In a modern state, the masses have become the emperor, and the direction of the entire system is ultimately decided by the people as a whole. Therefore, since the decision-makers are the masses, dissatisfaction naturally also needs to be conveyed to the masses.
But what if you do not accept “democracy”? What if you think “stability” is what matters most, and if everyone is allowed to express dissatisfaction casually, with all sorts of random noise and trend-driving, won’t society descend into chaos?
Then let us set aside the logic of “democracy” for the moment and speak solely from the logic of “maintaining stability”: does controlling the channels through which dissatisfaction is expressed, allowing expression only upward to superiors, really help social stability?
Not necessarily. This method may be stabilizing only for the position of the vested interests, not for the stability of society as a whole.
For example, is North Korean society stable? Of course, from the standpoint of wealthy countries, being stably poor is probably a kind of stability. But from within North Korea itself, the lives of the poor are still precarious from day to day. Being stably poor, and therefore stably unable to resist, so that the rulers can sit securely on their mountain of power — is that social stability? By that logic, primitive tribes would probably be the most stable of all. But if the stability we seek means that people, while becoming wealthier, can steadily protect their wealth, and can steadily maintain a dignified spiritual life while coming into contact with ever richer new materials and new cultures, then a simple and crude elimination of the expression of dissatisfaction is of no benefit.
The stability we are discussing presupposes development, which is to say that new situations keep appearing and new policies keep being issued; under such conditions, which is more conducive to stability, open exchange or restricted speech? Of course, I do not wish to argue that restricting speech will necessarily intensify instability; I only want to say that there is no necessary connection between them.
For instance, when those in power issue new stock-market policies such as circuit breakers, one scenario is that everyone is buzzing with discussion and criticism is everywhere, many people openly express dissatisfaction with the new policy, and then the market fluctuates greatly and keeps hitting the daily limit down; another scenario is that hardly anyone criticizes it, everyone praises it in unison, all saying the bull market is surely about to come, and yet the result is still massive market fluctuations and repeated limit-downs. Which of these two situations is actually more stable?
If both of the above situations are equally unstable, then what difference is there between them? Have the beneficiaries and the victims changed? In the first scenario, ordinary people also come into contact with critical voices: some believe the critics, others still believe the praise-givers, but they also foresee market divergence, see the risks, and thus have more opportunity to avoid them in advance. In the latter scenario, ordinary people remain kept in the dark, unable to understand the principles behind the policy, while the experts unanimously say it is good; then ordinary people fail to perceive the risks, and only a very small number of insightful people who can independently research and judge are able to foresee them. The result? In the first scenario, both ordinary people and insightful people have a chance to avoid risk, whereas in the second scenario, ordinary people who cannot independently research and judge become the biggest losers.
Of course, this is only one example. In other situations, letting the public be exposed to too much negative information, to the point that they fall into panic or riot, may well intensify the losses suffered by the public. But in any case, all I want to say is that restricting the public expression of dissatisfaction will always relatively benefit privileged classes, but it will not necessarily always harm ordinary people.
From a liberal standpoint, I hope for the complete liberalization of speech and the elimination of all controls. But even from the logic of maintaining stability, there is reason to encourage the public expression of dissatisfaction to a moderate degree.
4. Who steps forward
We said that a healthy society should leave institutional space for “dissatisfaction.” But this public space for expressing dissatisfaction is not a completely neutral Cartesian space isotropically extending in all directions; it should also have a certain structure.
It is not the case that all dissatisfaction expressed by all people in all contexts ought to be amplified equally. That is neither possible nor harmonious. In fact, different people do indeed have different “discursive power” on public issues.
Government agencies naturally possess powerful discursive power, but they are clearly not well suited to expressing dissatisfaction with the overall state of affairs. The mission of government is administration, which requires them to act with a pragmatic, operable, and precise attitude. Moreover, the government is often the object toward which overall dissatisfaction is directed (though not always), so forcing them to engage in “self-criticism” is rather hypocritical.
Entertainment celebrities also wield enormous discursive power, leading the trends of popular culture, but their influence is more emotional and incendiary, and is not really suited to being the main mode of expression. Of course, popular culture is indeed a very important platform for voicing dissatisfaction. Many times, in order to avoid falling into the instrumental-rational mindset of a “one-dimensional” society, it is necessary to rely on the power of emotion and aesthetics to awaken the people’s self-consciousness. Popular culture such as rock and hip-hop carried a spirit of rebellion in their respective eras. It is much like how, in ancient times, folk ballads were the most important channel through which ordinary people expressed dissatisfaction, a necessary complement to the so-called “rational” channels.
The most crucial expressers are intellectuals.
In “On Fake Brands,” I already discussed how intellectuals are always mocked, deemed ignorant of the grassroots and unable to speak for ordinary people. But the problem is that the grassroots themselves are not a monolithic mass of identical people: there are urban people and rural people, southerners and northerners, textile workers and construction workers, service workers and livestock breeders… If intellectuals do not understand the sufferings of the grassroots, does that mean an unemployed female factory worker understands the sufferings of an old peasant in the countryside?
To step outside one’s personal limitations and look at a problem, the only broad avenue is “doing scholarship.” No matter how many experiences an individual has, how many ways of life can one possibly experience? Researchers across history and across the world have continuously gathered and synthesized one another’s findings; only by standing on the foundation of texts and materials is it possible to transcend one’s personal limitations and obtain a certain perspective of universality and generality. Although intellectuals still cannot entirely escape their own limitations, only by grounding oneself in texts can one have the confidence to speak beyond one’s personal standpoint.
For ordinary people, “transcending one’s personal standpoint” is merely an option rather than a necessity; for intellectuals, however, it truly is a necessity. For the ordinary individual, when he is studying and researching, he too must transcend his personal standpoint. In a sense, what we call an intellectual is less a fixed profession than a state— the state of learning knowledge and studying knowledge.
But professions such as scholars, researchers, and teachers can be said to be professional “intellectuals,” because they do not study or research only occasionally, but make study and research their vocation. Thus, what counts as a right for others becomes a duty for intellectuals, because you are professionals, and you are duty-bound.
I do not hide the fact that I have what might be called an “elitist” tendency, but here I am not emphasizing the responsibility of “elites” as such. For example, if you are a business leader or a political leader, you of course belong to the elite, but you may not necessarily be an “intellectual.” What I am emphasizing here is only the responsibility of intellectuals.
The reason this responsibility falls on intellectuals is precisely because they “do not decline a duty that comes to them.” If you do not shoulder it, then who is more suitable to do so? If society always needs someone to voice dissatisfaction, then besides intellectuals, who else is more suitable to be the expresser? Hand it over to politicians? Or businessmen? Or entertainers?
Of course, with great power comes great responsibility. Before the rise of mass media, intellectuals possessed greater discursive power; their views and statements could exert tremendous influence. In that context, the “responsibility” of intellectuals became all the more prominent. This is why the West has long had the tradition of viewing intellectuals as the “conscience of society.” But to speak frankly, the power of intellectuals has long been greatly diminished in the present era, so to assign them responsibilities according to the traditional standard is indeed somewhat inappropriate. But the problem is that although intellectuals’ power has been diminished, the power that has replaced it is hard to simultaneously fulfill the mission of the “expresser.” What, then, is to be done?
Thus many intellectuals have abandoned public responsibility, buried themselves in the ivory tower, and concerned themselves only with scholarship, no longer speaking in the public sphere. This is understandable, for if there is no power to begin with, responsibility naturally vanishes as well. The exception is some researchers in the sciences: because “scientific experts” still enjoy a certain degree of influence in some fields, I believe scientists still bear some responsibility to engage in proper scientific communication. As for humanists, whether they should still proactively shoulder their traditional mission depends entirely on their own self-awareness.
However, even if one may not be obliged to voice dissatisfaction, intellectuals still at least have one responsibility: to maintain their independent standpoint rather than becoming a fair-weather friend. For “independence” is not the responsibility of intellectuals, but their basic definition; what it means to do scholarship and research already requires an independent and free standpoint.
The standpoint of intellectuals may not be purely rational, but as intellectuals, their emotions should also maintain a relative independence.
As intellectuals, one must have independent emotions. By independent emotions I mean that one should not curry favor with those above, nor should one be swept along by the masses.
For example, when you see that public opinion is overwhelmingly unified around one view or one attitude, and you cannot see the opposing arguments, you should keep your distance from it, and at the very least refrain from joining in before making a full examination. Then, even if you think this view is very correct, as obvious as 1+1=2? All the more reason to keep your distance. For one thing, if it is such a simple truth, why has it suddenly been whipped up into something the whole crowd is incensed about? Why is there a need to denounce opposing views that are not even worth refuting as though facing a great enemy? Before you have clarified the reasons behind all this, there is no need to join in. For another thing, since it is a simple truth, there is no need for intellectuals to go out of their way to help promote it.
The attitude intellectuals should take when speaking in public is similar to the attitude they should take when conducting academic research. Doing scholarship also requires dissatisfaction and criticism. If you have no objection whatsoever to the current conclusions in the field, if you unreservedly agree with all the views already held by others, then there is no need for you to speak. Every valuable paper is bound to be critical: it arises from the author’s dissatisfaction with the existing work on the issue by predecessors, and therefore seeks to publish new work. If a scholar merely babbles like an infant, repeating truths already known to everyone, then what use are you?
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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