There are many people asking me about my recent life situation. In the face of everyone’s concern for me, I remain indifferent, indifferent, at most giving a brief response or perfunctory reply. From the winter vacation to recently, I have never properly faced my ideological problems; my ideological struggle has slackened. Now, I want to talk to everyone about my living and thinking state from the winter vacation to recently, and use my own problems as a negative example to serve as a warning to everyone. I hope you can take it as a lesson.
First, I will talk about my theoretical study problem. My study of theory at home can be described as “few, slow, poor, wasteful.” I roughly calculated that I had about 11 days during the winter vacation to study theory. What did I study? Just one book—Introduction to Political Economy. How much did I study? Just the fourth chapter, which is about the same efficiency as I studied at the Zixuefu (School of Marxism). But everyone also knows that at home, the time available for studying theory is several times that at school. How did I do? I revisited the fourth chapter at Zixuefu and found many parts worth deep thinking, which shows that studying theory at home, I studied less, slowly, wasted time, was not serious, and lacked deep thinking. These days at Zixuefu, I experienced the difference between studying theory at school and at home. I found that whether in the classroom or in the library, in a public setting, I study more seriously, dare not look around, and don’t daydream very often. Although I haven’t made progress in these days, rereading the fourth chapter, my level of thinking was much deeper than when reading at home. When at home, especially alone in my room, I have a strong feeling of “feel at home” (meaning feeling as comfortable and free as at home, I think this word is very vivid). At school, my nerves are tense, but once I get home, I relax. The petty bourgeoisie’s free and lax habits start to manifest. I read for a while and then get distracted, either looking around or walking around my room, with very low efficiency. Why is the petty bourgeoisie so free and lax? Because they haven’t undergone the high organizational discipline in productive practice, while the proletariat, through wage labor and large-scale production, has developed high organizational discipline. The restrictions at Zixuefu also have a certain discipline, and studying time there is relatively short, which makes people cherish time more and utilize it well for study, so they don’t seem so free and lax. Secondly, the reason my study efficiency at school is higher is also because I still hold the hierarchical ideology in my heart, afraid of being looked down upon by others. Indeed, when I read at Zixuefu, I sometimes daydream, and I also recall some low-level fun with classmates. But why is my efficiency higher at school? Because when I daydream at school, I only dare to “stare at the book in a daze,” so others can’t see that I am daydreaming, and they think I am reading. At home, I not only daydream but also move very casually, sometimes looking around, sometimes walking around my room, very casual and lax.
In the later part of the winter vacation, due to slackening ideological struggle, I started to watch short videos for pleasure, especially during the days of New Year’s Eve and Spring Festival. I watched posts on forums for a long time, and my mind and body felt somewhat tired. Then I started to indulge in pleasure under the guise of “relaxation,” watching short videos, mainly vulgar jokes, “Bears Haunted House” ghostly videos, and game videos. In fact, when I am physically and mentally tired, I could watch some revolutionary proletarian art works, listen to red songs, watch movies—wouldn’t these be very good for relaxation? What relaxation does indulging in pleasure actually bring? On the contrary, it dulls the mind, causes the brain to degenerate, and makes people lose the ability to think. Ultimately, it’s because I have a “smoking addiction,” craving opium—spiritual opium—and want to indulge in low-level fun. Indulging in pleasure also fosters my lax habits. In the last one or two days of the winter vacation, I couldn’t continue reading theory books, so I took out reactionary detective novels to waste time. After returning to Zixuefu for a few days, my entire life and study situation showed a tendency of disorganization and lack of discipline. My original plan was to read and think about theory during class, rest in a quiet place after class to exercise, or go for a walk if not tired, and if not, read or write a diary to make full use of leisure time. I planned this in my mind, but I didn’t persist in executing it. In the first few days of school, I was again dazed in class, doing nothing, occasionally reminiscing about the vulgar pleasures I watched during the winter vacation, wasting time, enduring each class as if in prison. After class, due to the chain reaction caused by dazing in class, I didn’t want to study theory, didn’t want to exercise, wandered around the classroom, or engaged in some low-level fun with other petty bourgeois classmates, cracking vulgar jokes—just lying on the desk in a semi-sleep state.
About two or three months ago, I published an article exposing my fascist side, criticizing my pornographic thoughts, claiming I had “made a firm decision to purge my pornographic thoughts.” In the weeks after my self-criticism, my ideological state improved somewhat, mainly reflected in: firstly, the “disappearance” of my obsessive fantasies; secondly, I became more natural when interacting and talking with the opposite sex. Why was I not natural before? It was simply because of the deep-rooted and deeply embedded addiction to pornographic thoughts, causing “guilt.” Later, because I did not persist in ideological struggle, my pornographic thoughts gradually and bit by bit rebounded. It started with occasional fantasies, which increased because I did not criticize or oppose them, just let them be. Ultimately, it’s the old saying: I mainly relied on suppression to eliminate pornographic thoughts, without developing compassion for the suffering women, so I couldn’t eradicate them thoroughly. As the saying goes: “Pornographic thoughts don’t run away; these white bandits just hide in the mountains and forests. If not completely eliminated, they will eventually come back to attack.” Previously, Fenghuo suggested I watch the documentary “The Cost of Sex,” but I used “Now is the class period, not enough time” as an excuse to plan to watch it during the winter vacation. During the vacation, I hesitated repeatedly, always postponing “watching it in a few days,” until one day I couldn’t find it on Bilibili, probably it was banned. But even if it was banned, I could still watch it on foreign websites, just a bit more troublesome. Why did I keep making excuses? Ultimately, my so-called “firm decision to solve my ideological problems” was fake, empty, and a deception to everyone. I didn’t truly and completely “make a firm decision,” thus disappointing everyone’s expectations. This relapse of pornographic thoughts also created a dramatic scene in this incident. A few days ago, our Chinese teacher was teaching “A Doll’s House.” I wasn’t paying attention in class and didn’t know what question the teacher asked. Then I casually said, “It seems our class has no male chauvinism,” and a group of fascist male chauvinist students frantically shouted, “Society is progressing, women’s status is constantly rising,” which was disgusting to hear. I was angry. No male chauvinists? Actually, they are the biggest, darkest, and most vicious male chauvinists! Among the boys who said these words, some openly made vulgar jokes in front of girls, some bought second-dimensional dolls and touched their private parts, some stayed up late watching porn and masturbating, some played pornographic images and pink pictures of “Queen’s Guard,” and some even spouted extreme feminism, typical “perverted men who keep everything.” If women can’t get what they want, they get anxious and try to attract male classmates. Isn’t this the biggest male chauvinism? How is this different from Haimo in “A Doll’s House”? Both turn women into vases, view women as their sexual tools, and regard women as their private property. The only difference is that the latter openly states his thoughts (for artistic creation), while the former just doesn’t express it outright. After they get married, they will also be a big or small Haimo. Their laughter at Haimo is just a fifty-step difference from the others.
So, where is the dramatic scene? After I evaluated the male chauvinist in this incident, I had a question: how should I evaluate the “Lao Jiu” (old nine) involved in this incident? My initial judgment is: she only was deceived by society, didn’t see the suffering and oppression faced by women at the bottom, which led her to make such a wrong statement. At this moment, a satirical scene appeared. A thought popped into my mind: if it was my previous “Lao Jiu” who made such a statement, how would I evaluate her? I imagined myself in that situation and found I would unhesitatingly label her as “female thief” or “female adulteress.” Why? Because the current Chinese teacher “Lao Jiu” fits my “white, slim, young” aesthetic, so I would naturally be “gentler” to her, “lenient,” while the previous “Lao Jiu” didn’t fit, so I would treat her “more strictly,” dislike her more (of course, I also dislike her because she often spouts vulgar opinions in class to disgust me, and once she said during class that during the Great Leap Forward, many people could only eat bark and rat droppings, but her family had no vegetables, yet the rice was enough to fill their stomachs, and I knew why she could become “Lao Jiu” and go abroad to be a foreign slave, among other reasons, which I won’t list here). It’s clear that I am applying Marxism to others while practicing liberalism on myself. I criticize others for judging women with “white, slim, young” aesthetic standards, criticizing others as male chauvinist male chauvinists, but I don’t realize I am also a male chauvinist who judges women with the same aesthetic standards—what a irony! If I don’t solve my own ideological problems, how can I have the qualification and confidence to criticize others for the same mistakes?
