Wang Yuanhua： the psychological mechanism of ＂frozen layer＂ accumulated in ＂four winds＂

Recently, the meeting of the Standing Committee of CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection proposed that to selflessly correct "four winds", we must clearly realize that "four winds" has a deep habit, and it can be said that Rome was not built in a day. If "four winds" is the tip of the iceberg on the water surface, then the invisible "frozen layer" below the water surface is the "collective unconsciousness" with intertwined institutional ills and dark human nature accumulated for thousands of years. Mencius once said: it is impossible to surpass the North Sea by relying on Mount Tai; It is not for the elderly to break their limbs. The actual situation is that some leading cadres do not understand the actual situation, and they are not as unwilling to go deep into the grassroots and the masses as they are to "break their limbs for the elderly", but as difficult to go deep into reality as they are to "carry Mount Tai over the North Sea". This may be unbelievable, but it won’t be surprising if we can make a deep analysis of the distortion of officials’ human nature caused by the official standard.

"Power worship" breeds "morbid conceit"

The "power worship" formed by thousands of years of official-based feudal autocracy has been deeply rooted in the bone marrow of national collective consciousness, forming a "collective unconsciousness", which is an unavoidable feature of China. Today, despite the market economy in China for so many years, government power still dominates and dominates the allocation of market resources, and officials, especially leading cadres who hold power, have a prominent position, and politics is still a popular choice for many young people. There is a fable in the west: a donkey walks on the road with an icon on his back, and people pay homage to it one after another, and the donkey holds its toes high. But officials are not as stupid as donkeys. He knows very well that people worship not himself, but the power he holds. Have the right to go to weddings today; If you have no right tomorrow, you will be left out. Therefore, he is full of the fear of the world being cold and insecure, and the common struggle for power and profit in officialdom makes him feel a sense of no belonging and wandering. Now, his "official anxiety" is getting worse and worse.

In order to get rid of this fatal "basic anxiety", he needs to gain a sense of identity, superiority and importance through accumulated "self-idealization". Similarly, he is also very eager to get continuous success to prove that he is different from ordinary people and superior. He needs to make important speeches at conferences and small meetings to prove that he has a "high theoretical level"; He needs to constantly appear in various occasions, on TV and in newspapers to prove his "indispensability"; He needs to constantly push through the crowd and dare to make a decision to prove that he is "always right"; He needs GDP, major projects, indicators, rankings, applause, flowers, praise and word of mouth … Over time, he will be intoxicated with the "ideal image" he and others have jointly created, and "morbid conceit" has become the foundation of his survival. Is all this true or illusory? Is it a "pass" or an "epitaph"? He doesn’t know, or more accurately, he is afraid to know. Anyway, gradually, he became headstrong, arbitrary, bossy and overbearing.

Bureaucracy is the product of "morbid conceit"

People who are driven by "morbid conceit" do everything to pursue their own "Excellence", and he has not realized the relevance with the facts. For him, the most important thing is the "ideal" itself, and everything else is irrelevant. The alienation from reality makes his "ideal image" as unreal and fragile as a paper house, and any weak wind can blow it down. Therefore, an important feature of "morbid conceit" is "avoidance".

Such a situation is not uncommon. A more extreme example is the absurdity of the grain yield of tens of thousands of kilograms per mu during the Great Leap Forward. If so many officials really don’t understand it, it is really unbelievable today. However, if you are familiar with the specific background of "whose satellite was put higher" at that time, you won’t be surprised.

Although it seems to people with normal thinking that selective "ignorance" is ridiculous. However, from the perspective of "morbid conceit", selective "ignorance" comes out of his inner real needs, which is not absurd, but also the only choice that conforms to the internal logic. The foundation of "self-idealization" is fiction and fantasy, which is very precarious, just like ice cubes can’t stand the sunlight and contact with reality. It is because of the great danger that he faces that he has great fear of the actual situation. In the actual situation, he is so fragile and vulnerable.

Faced with the great threat from the actual situation, the only thing he can do is to mobilize all his efforts to fight a well-defined "idealized self" defense war: the "positive image" that conforms to "idealization" must be vigorously promoted, while the "negative influence" that violates "idealization" must be resolutely suppressed. The reason why he likes to talk empty talk is because empty talk has no "correct nonsense" with any actual content, which can show his "consistent correctness"; The reason why he went to the grass-roots level to take a cursory look at the flowers, and newspapers and TV reporters swarmed around, was because it could ensure that he could filter out the harmful "actual situation" when he "went deep into the grass-roots level" and "went deep into the masses" The reason why he is above others is because he is far away from the lower classes and the truth, which can give him a sense of security … Being divorced from reality, from the masses, from understanding the actual situation, and from caring about the people’s pain is a selective ignorance inevitably caused by "morbid conceit". Only bureaucracy can build a fortress to defend "self-idealization", and it can also make him wear armor against threats from reality.

Formalism is rooted in "obedience to authority"

With the master of bureaucracy, there will inevitably be slaves of formalism. On the other hand, the pandering of formalism is an ill omen, which encourages the proliferation of bureaucracy. Why is bureaucracy and formalism inseparable?

There is a famous "Milgram Experiment" in the West. This experiment reveals "obedience to authority": when an individual enters the authority system, there will be a process of psychological reorganization. "I" is no longer the "I" who can act according to personal consciousness, but the "agent" of authority. In this agent state, "I" no longer pays attention to the legitimacy of behavior from the perspective of human nature, but only pays attention to how to meet the expectations of authority.

What are the expectations of "authority" in real life? Henny once revealed the important neurotic characteristics of the "morbid conceit": because of the "disparity between his ideal self and his true self" and the need to overcome anxiety, "he constantly expects others to affirm him, including asking others for approval, praise and flattery". However, because "ideal" is the product of imagination, there is a huge disparity between "reality" and "ideal", the greater the authority he has, the more difficult it is to get rid of the fear that "authority" is fleeting like a mirage, and the more and more he needs to rely on others’ "obedience to authority" to continuously gain a sense of security to consolidate and maintain his "authority".

Ye Gong in ancient China was a dragon. He felt safe and comfortable when he hooked a dragon and chiseled it, but once he met a real dragon, he was scared to lose his soul, lose his five colors and walk away. The metaphor of this fable is that out of instinctive fear of unpredictable factors in reality, people often have a tendency to replace ferocious reality with fictional "truth". In reality, the bureaucratic "Ye Gong" hopes that everything can be under his control and the threat to "authority" from unpredictable factors in reality will be eliminated. Formalism, however, has its "action" but no "reality". It is an artificial "dragon", gentle, amiable and ferocious. It is made according to what Ye Gong wants, and it is also a dragon that Ye Gong can control and control.

There is no dragon in the world, and our ancestors created the "dragon" because of the psychological needs of Chinese people to seek authority protection by obeying authority. Officials often say, "Everything I have is given by the organization." This sentence is exactly right. For him, "organization" is a huge authoritative system, which can give you everything or take everything from you. His superiors have the power to choose and seize. As an official attached to the system, in the long-term competition for survival of the fittest, he realized that one way to survive is to be "only superior" and take "obedience to superiors" as the standard. He will think that the art of politics is the art of "implementation"; The most useful skill he boasts is that he can "understand the feelings thoroughly" and "find out the leadership intention".

The authoritative system of "organization" is manipulated by people. Sometimes, the "authority" of the organization is the embodiment of the personal will of the superior competent officials, especially the "top leaders". If the superior leadership is bureaucratic, then the organizational authority is likely to be bureaucratic will. Surrender to the bureaucratic will, he can only impress the leaders with all kinds of formalistic practices of ostentation and extravagance and imposing manner in order to appeal to their interests. He knows that because it is not important to do a good job, it is important to leave a good impression on the leaders. In order to maintain a high degree of consistency with leaders in terms of ideology and action: when studying major decision-making arrangements, when the "top leader" puts forward a motion, he will never put forward different views, but will spare no effort to prove the rationality, scientificity and feasibility of the leadership motion; When the superior leader arranges to carry out some activities, he will listen to the wind, mobilize all manpower and material resources as props, and strive to make it vigorous, colorful and perfect in every detail to meet the inspection of the leader and the inspection of the superior department; When a superior leader needs achievements such as GDP, he will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, exhaust the resources and encourage others to make GDP and other figures shine …

It is this kind of blind obedience that gives up conscience, goes against reason and ignores reality, which makes formalism more and more fierce and contributes to the popularity of bureaucracy. Just as it takes two to make a clap, many major decision-making mistakes are caused by arbitrary and unprincipled blind obedience.