The Secretary for Education, Yeung Run-hsiung, wrote an article in November criticizing the "lying-level doctrine" for advocating a negative mentality, which can easily cause depression and hinder social progress in the long-term. Zou Bingen, the principal of Li Zongde Primary School of the charity fund, pointed out that in recent years, students have committed suicide because of insufficient self-worth. After the development of industry and commerce, it is believed that hard work and striving to make progress are values that must be upheld. Therefore, it is necessary to re-instill the idea of "hard work" in young people.
However, when "diligence" is regarded as the opposite value of "lying flat", it seems to highlight the misunderstanding of "lying flat".
"Lying flat" is actually a way to cope with the pressure of society and the people around you. It advocates that people can choose to be infertile and live a low material desire. The starting point is to refuse to be someone else's money-making machine and exploited slave, and spend more time to do it. Meaningful thing.
When the growth rate slows down and the labor market becomes saturated, "involution" begins to form, which may eventually trigger social "flatness" (photographed by Jiang Zhiqian)
As far as Hong Kong is concerned, in the 1950s and 1970s, there was a huge manufacturing industry that required a lot of manpower. At the same time, the economy was developing rapidly, and the working population could really do more and earn more.
In the 1990s, Hong Kong experienced a second economic transformation. The growth of the financial, commercial and service industries made up for the decline of the manufacturing industry, and the future development also focused on the commercial and service industries.
Under neoliberalism, the role of the state is slowly retreating, the power of trade unions has been weakened, the degree of privatization of enterprises has increased, and the social welfare system has weakened. Whether it is economic entities or individuals, most of them choose to resort to the market. More "freedom", so we need to make a lot of choices, but the freedom we have is to a large extent only the freedom of consumption, but we lack the freedom to choose our way of life...