After raising colorful succulents, contemporary college students have opened up a new way to raise them. Under the prevention and control of the epidemic, they filled their own hands-on skills and created a variety of "new pets" with the abandoned express box. From the puppy who just started to pursue cute carton, to the kitten who followed, college students with wide brains were immersed in the enthusiasm of carton creation. However, is the craze for carton pets just a boring pastime for college students in epidemic prevention life? Or are young people exploring new social ways? Devote your heart to the original inanimate carton pet, as if Poincare, who was obsessed with "electronic pets" a long time ago, reappeared. What is the inner desire of young people behind this?

author　| taming dusk

read and edit　| Time

edit　| Peninsula

source　| zhizhu. com

"College students are raising something very new."

After raising colorful succulents, contemporary college students have opened up a new way to raise them. Perhaps it has been hit by the failure of feeding again and again, and this time they will focus on "things that will never die".

Under the prevention and control of the epidemic, they filled their own hands-on skills and created a variety of "new pets" with the abandoned express box.

△ The cute "paper dog" made by netizens comes from coconut (Little Red Book)

From the adorable puppy in the carton at the beginning to the kitten in the carton that followed, netizens lamented the worrying mental state of young people on the one hand, and appreciated the practical ability of college students on the other.

College students, with their brains wide open, found a new way of living in the enthusiasm of carton creation, and then this wave will never return in an increasingly outrageous direction.

△ "Carton loong" made by netizens

Adhering to the spirit of "innovation first", groups of college students started new operations: lifelike loong, cute Gary the Snail in Spongebob, and various elves in Pokémon.

As if the next second, they will take out the fairy ball and say to others, "It’s you, cardboard box Pikachu!" "

△ The cardboard box Pikaqiu made by netizens comes from: POI. The point of interest of Bai Bailu (Little Red Book)

There are also "flying puppies" equipped with high-end technology; And the "cardboard box dinosaur" drifting in the bedroom.

In this paper dog carnival, everyone’s enthusiasm for participating is getting higher and higher, and the results are getting richer and richer, which provides a new expression for youth under the epidemic.

△ "Flying" paper dog equipped with drone, from Xiaochai Popcorn (Tik Tok)

However, is the craze for carton pets just a boring pastime for college students in epidemic prevention life? Or are young people exploring new social ways?

Devote your heart to the original inanimate carton pet, as if Poincare, who was obsessed with "electronic pets" a long time ago, reappeared. What is the inner desire of young people behind this?

The Creation of "Hands" —— "Fantastic animals are here"

Carton puppies were originally a way for college students to entertain themselves under the prevention and control of epidemic situation. These most creative and energetic people, under the limited conditions, re-created the abandoned cartons, which started a trend carnival of manual creation.

"Invigorating" is one of the epitome of contemporary young people’s pursuit of individuality and uniqueness. When these carton pets become a popular symbol, batches of "magical animals" naturally become the material carriers of their innovative spirit and pursuit of individuality.

△ The "carton pet" of a large family comes from urgency.

(Little Red Book)

At the same time, college students’ love for "magical animals" also comes from psychological compensation, which is short of reality. Due to economic conditions, family factors and other practical problems, many young people are in a state of helplessness about keeping pets.

Who hasn’t imagined that after a hard day, going home to touch their "hairy children" and watching their lazy and lovely posture, the whole person has also been cured.

△ "Carton Cat" eats online, from Wu Yang (Little Red Book)

Nowadays, carton pets provide poor college students with a new way out: you can get a "Bai Piao" pet through your own hands. Why not? Of course, it could be a bunch of pets.

Moreover, their love for "magical animals" does not stop at the level of playthings. They will carefully prepare appliances for these pets, such as feeding basins, pet toilets and so on.These wordless children are endowed with humanity and the meaning of life. They are cared for, remembered and equally devoted to their feelings, which has become a new anthropomorphic choice.

The Response of "Mutual Sight"-"Social Determination"

In fact, college students don’t just regard these carton pets as their private collections. When they can’t get in touch with more living children due to realistic conditions, they transfer their original feelings about living things to these creations. They find out new ways of entertainment by dealing with "dogs" and derive a new way of socializing.

As a result, walking dogs in groups on the playground, online marriage for their paper dogs, competing whose pets are cuter,Together, these have become a group social consensus and cultural participation. Everyone tacitly agrees with this silly but cute way to create a free space that is not disturbed.

△ Students who are walking "paper dogs" on the playground

Of course, many people exclaimed, "It’s hard not to doubt the mental state of college students". Similar to the popular "crazy literature" at present, when young people face realistic difficulties and anxiety, interesting responses are not only the unique cultural characteristics of our generation, but also the emotional expression of taking pains.

In the process of walking the puppy in the cardboard box, we are eager to have more real contact with our friends and try to fill the loneliness from reality.

At present, many young people are trapped in the predicament of being eager for socializing, afraid of loneliness and anxious. Just as Zhou Guoping said, "Loneliness is a human destiny. Love and friendship can’t eradicate it, but they can soothe it. "

Through the intermediary of carton pets, we broke through the unreality of "being a netizen", gained face-to-face social opportunities, and vented our depressed emotions in love and friendship.

△ Contemporary college students fancy walking dogs

Therefore, in the seemingly absurd dog walking and marriage, it seems that human beings have given pets the opportunity to socialize, but isn’t this our own current "social determination"?

We transfer our emotions to these "paper children", making it a mirror for us to look at ourselves. In a slightly childish way, I shook hands with a lot of uneasiness and helplessness for a while.

My dear cardboard box puppy is not only an artificial toy, but also a fragment of self-expression.

△ A variety of "carton pets"

To paraphrase a line from The Resolution to Break Up: "The best way to be a person is to borrow a part of him and communicate with him in this world."

When we were young, our emotional sustenance for toys and our special feelings for diaries in adolescence are all reflections of our lives. At some unspeakable moments, their silent companionship seemed to say, "I can be your cover when you are a deserter."

When we were children, we would exchange toys or secrets to get the chance to make new friends. Nowadays, the cardboard box puppy has also become the middleman in our new social relationship, connecting our lonely souls at one end and the response of the world at the other.

"Soul" Resonance-"Love, Life, Robot"

The function of creation lies not only in making the entity, but also in giving the subject meaning.

In mythology, God created the world and human beings, which reflected human’s desire for ability and anchored the rationality of human existence in a religious sense. In the early society, the worship of fertility by human beings gave rise to the blood and emotional ties that lasted for thousands of years. Then in the industrial society, people’s "creativity" began to swell wildly, and we constantly made new products and extended people’s value.

Today’s carton puppy is also a kind of creation in a sense, which is different from the coldness of instruments and the abstraction of artificial intelligence.It is directly related to our hands, resonates with our social interaction, and slowly combs our "fried hair" in the process of our creation.

△ "Love, Death and Robots" third season excerpt

Facing the era of information explosion and technological expansion, we need more than material satisfaction. Human beings have achieved an unprecedented material miracle, but at the same time, they feel unprecedented loneliness and self-doubt in the rapidly changing cyber landscape and the lack of real communication.

Before, people were crazy about "electronic pets", trying to find a dose of cyber medicine that can soothe loneliness in virtual electronics, but the reality is that this "non-physical" experience is only a dream after all, and it can’t meet our real needs.

△ "electronic pet" representative

In the face of this accelerated era like "drum washing machine", perhaps a silent puppy is also a good choice for us.

　"People should have illusions about love and eternity."

Similar to the emotion of the hero Theodore in the movie "Her" to Samantha, an artificial intelligence partner, human beings try to obtain a long-term relationship through advanced technology, and pin their emotions on the virtuality that transcends symbols and imagination.

But soon, T-Bag found that this emotion of fact contact is very dangerous, and the emotion lacking the object will ferment unconsciously, and eventually people will fall into a void of nothingness.

△ Selected stills of the movie "Her"

Unlike the carton puppy, he is not a "perfect companion" created by high-end technology; He may not be good-looking, let alone intelligent and feedback, but in the process of our creation, they have an indelible bond with us, as if they have become a part of our soul, or at least a part of my life.

In the rapidly changing adult world, stability is a scarce resource."The Little Prince" wrote: "You are always responsible for what you domesticate, and you are responsible for your roses." College students transfer their flowing emotions to these lovely "eternal pets", trying to draw a unique ending for emotional stability.

There is a saying in Love, Death, Robot: "There is a universe in the gravel." Although we can never escape the fact of loneliness, we can always find an adhesive to make up for the gap in the soul for a short time in creation.

△ "Love, Death and Robots" third season excerpt

This time there is no "death", but a constant search for the possibility of "life". Although the interactive relationship between love and creation is always flowing, and perhaps the cardboard box pet can’t be our eternal emotional support, human beings have gone out of various ways in the process of soothing lonely souls.

Raising flowers and grass, raising cats and dogs, or the meta-universe constructed for us in the near future are all attempts to enrich the spiritual world of mankind.

Therefore, the cute and absurd carton puppy is not a plaything without a story.

We put a soul that pursues freedom in his heart, and when he takes shape, he will regenerate a universe of his own.

(Image from the Internet)

　　

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.