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.

The streets of Tokyo in a state of emergency are still crowded. Photo by Tian Yuxi/Bright Picture

　　[reporter connected] 　

　　When the Tokyo Olympic Games is in full swing, the situation of COVID-19 epidemic in Japan is deteriorating. On August 5th, 15,263 cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Japan, exceeding 15,000 cases for the first time, reaching a new high in a single day. Among them, there were 5,042 new cases in Tokyo, the host city of the Olympic Games, which was the first time that there were more than 5,000 new confirmed cases in a single day in this region, creating a new high for two consecutive days. As of press time on the 6th, there were 4,515 new confirmed cases in Tokyo that day. The number of new cases in other areas involved in the Olympic Games, such as Chiba and Kanagawa, has also hit record highs in recent days.

　　At an expert meeting held in Tokyo on the 5th, experts attending the meeting believed that the COVID-19 epidemic in Tokyo was rapidly expanding, with an average of more than 3,000 new confirmed cases per day in the past seven days, an increase of seven times in one month. Therefore, Japanese experts predict that according to the current growth rate, the number of newly confirmed cases in Tokyo will reach 6,129 on August 11th and 10,909 on August 18th. In fact, as early as before the Tokyo Olympic Games, Japanese nationals tried their best to boycott the Tokyo Olympic Games for fear that the epidemic would intensify. They believe that the entry of a large number of foreigners will inevitably aggravate the domestic epidemic situation, and for the safety of Japanese people, the Tokyo Olympic Games should be cancelled.

　　However, is the worsening epidemic situation in Japan really due to hosting the Olympic Games?

　　On July 8 this year, Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide announced that Tokyo was once again in a state of emergency, and the implementation period was from July 12 to August 22. This is the fourth time that Tokyo, the host city of the Olympic Games, entered a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 epidemic. This also means that the Tokyo Olympic Games was held in a state of emergency in Tokyo, which directly led to almost all the Olympic Games being held in the absence of spectators. Undeniably, during the holding of the Tokyo Olympic Games, some Olympic-related personnel left the Olympic site and went to public places without authorization, and were disqualified from participating in the Tokyo Olympic Games. However, such cases are rare after all.

　　The state of emergency is "not as good as once"

　　Unlike the anti-epidemic measures of "closing cities" in most countries, Japanese local governments only publish the list of those who violate the regulations to uncooperative people or enterprises. Most people call this "soft anti-epidemic". For example, the government requires restaurants that provide alcohol to close down, and restaurants that do not provide alcohol to shorten their business hours; Large supermarkets shut down on weekends and shorten their business hours at ordinary times; Shorten the business hours of museums and cinemas; People try to avoid going out, and enterprises try to work at home. Therefore, the Japanese media believe that the effect of the state of emergency is now "not as good as once."

　　In view of this, the Japanese government also wants to adopt the method of economic compensation to encourage businesses that respond to the government’s call to shorten their business hours, but it is reported that many businesses have not received the subsidies promised by the Japanese government. As a last resort, they had to save themselves to avoid missing the night economy in summer. The reporter observed in Tokyo that some restaurants that provided drinks before the epidemic chose not to provide alcohol to extend their business hours in order to continue their business. In order to attract customers, there are even merchants who post advertisements "You can bring your own drinks" at the door. The narrow restaurant was crowded in the middle of the night, and there was no tension in the epidemic. Experts pointed out that the emergency measures tend to be loose, and they are encountering "drug resistance", and their inhibition on the COVID-19 epidemic is gradually weakening.

　　In addition, due to the recent intensification of the epidemic, medical resources in Tokyo and other places are becoming increasingly tense. The Japanese government announced on the 2nd of this month that, in principle, only severe patients and patients with high risk of severe illness can be hospitalized, and patients with moderate symptoms and mild symptoms are required to be isolated at home, and only when their condition deteriorates can they be hospitalized. A confirmed patient told reporters that because of his mild condition, the doctor asked him to go home and isolate himself. When the patient asked the doctor if he could go to the supermarket to buy food, the doctor’s answer was yes.

　　In the summer, people concentrated on fleeing from the "epidemic area"

　　According to Japanese media reports, during the obon Festival from August 6 to 15 this year, the air ticket booking rate of Japanese airlines increased compared with that of 2020, especially the air ticket booking rate of domestic routes in Japan increased significantly, among which ANA increased by 48% and JAL increased by 49.4%, which was nearly 50% compared with the same period in 2020. It can be expected that after the Bonin Festival, Japan will probably usher in another wave of epidemic peak.

　　In view of this, the governors of Tokyo Metropolitan Area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, saitama and Chiba) held a video conference this week to study the prevention and control measures of the epidemic and jointly appealed to the people not to travel in summer. At the meeting, the Japanese medical community agreed that the "Delta" mutant strain, which is spreading faster and more infectious at present, is the dominant epidemic in Japan. It is hoped that the people in the four places "should not travel or return home in principle during the summer vacation, and try to postpone the travel plan as much as possible". In addition, the governors of the four places also pointed out that people aged 20 to 39 with high epidemic rates should not drink alcohol or have dinner together on the roadside, and reminded people aged 40 to 59 with high risk of severe illness to pay special attention.

　　Young people are not interested in vaccination.

　　Vaccination with COVID-19 vaccine is one of the effective measures to fight the epidemic at present, but the vaccination rate of Japanese people lags far behind that of major western countries. According to the data of official website, the official residence of Japanese Prime Minister, by the end of July, about 43% of the population in Japan had received at least one dose of vaccine, and about 30% of the population had completed two doses of vaccination. Among them, among the elderly people aged 65 and over in Japan, the proportion of completing one dose of vaccination exceeded 86%. Due to various concerns about vaccines, the proportion of young people vaccinated in Japan is not high.

　　Some analysts believe that the mentality of "anti-epidemic fatigue" produced by Japanese young people is particularly obvious. Under the comprehensive effect of the Olympic Games and summer holidays, they have gone out of their homes and resumed their daily social activities, which directly leads to the fact that the number of people in an emergency has not decreased significantly compared with usual. This also gives more room for the spread of the menacing Delta mutant strain. In an interview at the end of July, Tarō Kōno, the Japanese minister in charge of administrative reform in charge of coordinating vaccination work, said that the proportion of young people in recent new infections is rising, and it is more important to improve the vaccination rate of young people than the vaccination rate. He said, "even if we slow down the vaccination rate a little, I think it is ok. What we need more is to reach out to young people and make them feel the need for vaccination."

　　(Guangming Daily, Tokyo, August 6 th, Guangming Daily reporter in Tokyo Zhang Guannan)