月度归档： 2023 年 12 月

Ethics in the Conflict of Modernity is a book published by the famous ethicist Mai gentile in the late nineties, which is an authoritative exposition of his philosophical thoughts. In this book, Mai gentile thinks that although the modern welfare state has made up for the disadvantages of capitalism to some extent and improved the living standards of most people, it has not fundamentally eliminated the greater disadvantages of capitalism, which often makes people tired and go astray in satisfying their desires, making it difficult to fully balance their interests and maintain a real cooperative life. Mai gentile hopes that people can think and study these problems, understand their social life, know how to negotiate and make correct moral choices, and become practical rationalists.

In this night when countless people revel in consumption, we hope that more people can understand the call of Mai gentile, examine their own desires and pursue a truly happy life.

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Mai gentile

Mai gentile: Modernity Suitable for Modern Moral Existence

What is the subject’s desire? How are these desires felt and expressed? How are they related to the subject’s practical reasoning? These problems have changed within the social and cultural order and between different social and cultural orders. Biological needs can be constant, but the objects to satisfy desires will be very different. In Edo in the 19th century, people ate sashimi to satisfy their appetite. In Bologna in the 19th century, people’s appetite was satisfied with salsa sauce. Today, Londoners, who have gained the advantages of many families, also appreciate these two delicacies. But no matter in the past or now, the way people learn to eat at the beginning of their growth will change greatly later. Other needs and demands will also undergo the same transformation. In different social and cultural order, people’s ways to meet their needs and demands run through all kinds of life, with different family and professional roles and corresponding goals, aspirations and hopes. As we mentioned earlier, our desires are always closely linked with our emotions, habits and beliefs, which show different forms in different lifestyles. If we want to understand what is the legitimate reason of desire, we must explore the various functions of desire in those lifestyles, which have the characteristics of the social order and cultural order in which we live, and this is the social order and cultural order of modernity. In this quest, we can mainly consider some obvious problems. Opportunities and hopes, security and poverty, regrets and lamentations, aspirations and other issues all show unique modern forms.These problems come from the continuous transformation of work and are the result of the development of economic modernity since the 18th century.

We start with the question of opportunity and hope. The social and cultural order of modernity, no matter what its form, is the result of long-term economic growth and technological innovation. This long-term nature seems to be indefinite, while the growth is sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes continuous, sometimes disrupted, sometimes deliberately shaped, but in more cases it is unplanned. This growth often provides new types of jobs, sometimes provides people with new opportunities to become managers and professionals, and sometimes brings rich returns to those who can dominate others’ work and occupy their surplus labor value, which often makes workers tolerate the slow growth of wages. As a result, a new system has emerged and the old system has been transformed, and perhaps the most obvious result is that schools have become places to train children and teenagers into labor. In these changes, new types of inequality, new forms of class differentiation, new contradictions and struggles, and new goals of desire and ambition have emerged. We only consider three examples of different types of desire subjects. First, workers in the 19th and 20th centuries were generally employed in mills and factories. These workers are realistic. They mainly want to improve their lives and those of their families. They never want to leave the working class. Secondly, the contemporaries who pursued social and economic success (regardless of social background) had skills, imagination and luck, and wanted to go up through the class system to achieve the success recognized locally at that time. Finally, there are contemporary people with money aspirations. They started from some resources and pursued unlimited wealth. The past and present are not satisfied with this statement.

The first kind of stories are about working-class individuals and families, both of which are the political backbone of the trade union movement throughout its history. Such stories often illustrate the necessity of taking collective action. The second kind of stories provide material for novelists and some sociologists, from which we can study the career structure of the bourgeoisie and see the changes of people at all levels of management, such as engineers or lawyers or newcomers in accounting becoming big coffee in this industry. The third kind of stories are sometimes fables of the rich, but they often record cases of habit addiction, which is an addiction to money. These stories all tell the experiences of some individuals, families and groups. Their life motivation comes not only from ambition and hope, but also from fear of frustration and failure, fear of long-term unemployment and poverty, fear of being unable to get rid of the painful work pressure and fear of debt burden.

With these hopes and fears in the macro sense, individuals have formed the forms of love and hate, harmony and hostility, which make their specific desires, tastes, emotions and habits diverse, such as eating this and not eating that, spending time with these people instead of those people, doing things in this way instead of that way, and being willing to stay here instead of there. Only three types of life are mentioned above, but other types of life are also obviously subject to the hopes and fears brought by capitalism and technological modernity. If all these are carefully studied, we need to describe people’s living situations in large quantities, explain how the subject makes choices in specific situations at each stage of his life, and how to weigh the various objects of desire, that is, regard the satisfaction of some desires only as a means to satisfy others, think that some desires have a high priority compared with others, and may painfully or happily re-examine some of his past choices. If these subjects can reflect on how to best balance their desires and lives, what intellectual, moral and social resources do they have?

In fact, they always lack some urgently needed resources, partly because their thought patterns reflect the characteristics of their living situation and partly because of the constraints of their living situation. Let’s talk about the latter first. The common point of their living situation is that they have changed in different degrees due to the influence of capital flow. At first, capital flow may be creative and productive, or destructive, or both. When capital flow can promote the development and application of new technologies, its role is obviously creative and productive, which will lead to new forms of work, such as iron and steel smelting industry in 18th century, German chemical industry in 19th century, or American information technology industry in 20th century. Capital flow is also very destructive. For example, people in a very mature and stable production mode find that their products have no market, so they suddenly and unexpectedly lose their jobs, have no source of life, and sometimes cut off the way out of their whole lives. However, no matter what people’s living conditions are, the key problem of individuals and their families’ desires lies in the relationship between the salary income they earn and the prices of goods and services they pay. People can’t just think about "what I or we want" or "what I or we should get", but what I or we can afford.

When answering the latter question, people need to constantly evaluate the object of their desire and compare its market value, because the market will change according to the demand. But demand is to satisfy any desire that may exist, and it is the need of self-recognition when people happen to have enough money in their pockets at a certain time and place, whether these needs are real needs or not, and whether these desires are the desires that the subject should satisfy. Economic growth requires people who are engaged in productive work to become consumers. In this way, people who provide goods and services to these consumers shape consumers’ tastes, make their products the object of consumers’ desires, and make consumers feel that anything the economy requires them to consume is their own needs. Therefore, these producers and consumers must be able to distinguish between what is of real value to their lives and prosperity and what is the value induced by the market. However, the market society makes it difficult for working-class and middle-class people to think and negotiate together, which is necessary for them to make the above distinction in their daily decision-making. Why do you see it?

To answer this question, we first need to study the conflicts that have occurred in a long and tangled history, in which there are many obstacles, but as a result, they have promoted economic growth or provided the market with necessities of life. From the protection of traditional rights in the British enclosure movement in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the hand-loom workers’ opposition to the use of mechanized looms to maintain their survival, to the radical trade unions’ actions to demand higher wages and better working conditions, and to the protests of urban community organizations and organizers in Chicago and Boston in the 20th century. Many things in this history should have left a deep impression on us. One of them is that people trapped in this kind of conflict can easily express clearly what they oppose rather than support, and can find all kinds of unjust things sharply and accurately, but they can’t clearly explain the influence and function of these unjust things on the correct understanding of the concept of justice. Therefore, in the face of this constructive and destructive change of modernity, ordinary people trapped in this conflict can rarely think and find an appropriate alternative concept about the direction that social and economic changes should take for themselves, so that they can more fully evaluate the ideas that various political movements have firmly believed since the 18th century.

The problem here is that modernity is used to expressing itself in its own terms, which makes it extremely difficult for people to think about modernity without these terms, so they never leave these terms, and these terms exclude the most needed concepts in radical criticism, making them useless. Therefore, we need to explain the distinctive institutionalized activity patterns and thinking habits in those activity patterns, which enables us to answer two different questions, one is about the specific form and deformation of desire in the context of modernity, and the other is about the way of thinking about our activities and life, which is quite different from modernity, but it is an indispensable element to understand modernity. But before trying to make this explanation, I’d like to make a cautious remark, especially for readers who resent my negative views on modernity.

As far as it has experienced a series of social and political freedom and liberation movements against autocracy and oppression, the history of modernity is indeed a real and admirable history of progress in some key aspects. As far as its great artistic and scientific achievements are concerned-from Raphael to Roscoe, or from Palestrina to Schoenberg, and from Copernicus and Galileo to Feynman and Higgs-the history of modernity is indeed a real and admirable history of progress. What I have said here and elsewhere is not meant to slander. However, this same modernity constantly produces new forms of oppressive inequality, new types of material poverty and spiritual poverty, new setbacks and new misleading of desire. There are many very different stories about modernity, all of which are true, but they all need a unique political and economic framework as the premise.

Ethics in the Conflict of Modernity: On Desire, Practical Reasoning and Narration (Watchman)

Author: Alasdair gentile.

Publication date: May 31, 2021

Press: Renmin University of China Press

Original title: "Mai gentile: We must distinguish what is of real value to our life and prosperity"

Read the original text

Practical education is an important way to cultivate talents. Postgraduate training units around the country have actively explored and worked hard to develop, and combined with the characteristics of disciplines, majors and regions, they have formed a number of brand projects of practical education, and trained a number of outstanding talents who can be of great use and shoulder heavy responsibilities.

2023年12月12日，由教育部学位与研究生教育发展中心指导，《中国研究生》编辑部、全国高校研究生党建和思想政治工作联盟、洱海流域农业绿色发展研究院联合主办，中国农业大学、云南农业大学支持，以“在学习与实践中成长”为主题的“研究生成长与发展研讨会（2023）”在云南大理洱海流域农业绿色发展研究院召开。

会上，中国人民大学、中国农业大学、复旦大学上海医学院、华中师范大学、湖南师范大学、西南交通大学等校作主题发言。《中国研究生》特刊出相关文章，以利实践育人工作经验的交流与借鉴。

（中国人民大学“治国理政”计划二期研究生在山西长治实岗锻炼）

2022年4月25日，习近平总书记在中国人民大学考察调研时强调，要坚持扎根中国大地办教育。中国人民大学牢记嘱托，坚定不移地走好建设中国特色、世界一流大学的新路，着力构建实践育人体系，积极引导广大青年全面深入贯彻习近平总书记“用脚步丈量祖国大地，用眼睛发现中国精神，用耳朵倾听人民呼声，用内心感应时代脉搏”的殷切嘱托，在行走中国大地的生动实践中深刻体悟中国式现代化的伟大成就，努力成长为德智体美劳全面发展的社会主义建设者和接班人。

China Renmin University’s "Governing the Country and Politics" on-the-job training program (hereinafter referred to as the "Governing the Country and Politics" program) aims at cultivating "governing the country and politics" talents, combines students’ ability training with internship and employment, and combines serving students’ growth with attracting talents and talents from local areas, and strives to build an interactive platform for two-way understanding and two-way selection between students and central state organs, local party and government organs, central enterprises and local enterprises and institutions, so as to effectively build a real link between students and society. Guide students to understand the working mode and specific requirements of party and government organs, enterprises and institutions, consciously combine their personal ideals with the needs of the country, adhere to the concept of "integrating knowledge with practice", temper the political character of "taking responsibility for others", exercise the power of governing the country, and strive to grow into a new generation worthy of the heavy responsibility of national rejuvenation.

Since its inception in 2022, the project has been carried out in two phases, and students have been organized to go to Ningde, Fujian, Zhengding, Hebei, Minning, Ningxia, Lankao, Henan, Jinxian, Jiangxi and other places for 6-8 weeks of on-the-job training, and 176 graduate students have been trained.

First, carry out the plan of "governing the country" under the guidance of thought.

(A) adhere to the "education for the party, education for the country" initial intention.

Carry out the correct political direction and value orientation throughout the whole process of postgraduate backbone education and management, persist in inheriting the red genes, continue the red veins, pay attention to improving political judgment, political understanding and political execution, and concentrate on cultivating talents for the party and the country. First, strengthen political orientation in the registration and selection process. Pay attention to comprehensive quality, make overall consideration of the political consciousness, scientific research progress, comprehensive ability and employment willingness of graduate students, and give priority to students with rich social work experience and outstanding student leadership who are willing to work in grassroots party and government departments after graduation. The second is to adhere to the principle of "matching people with posts" in the post arrangement. Considering the students’ professional background, research direction, career planning and the situation of the post-setting area, we should fully communicate with the responsible units related to on-the-job training to determine the job position, clarify the job responsibilities, formulate the training plan, and establish a two-way work assessment system between the on-the-job unit and the project team to ensure the training quality. Third, pay attention to the feedback of project effect in the final evaluation. Improve the evaluation system and carry out the evaluation of the results of the project, including the appraisal opinions of the on-the-job training units, the self-evaluation questionnaire of project members, the publication of on-the-job training results, etc. Pay attention to the comparison before and after, test the students’ indicators before the project starts, compare the scores before and after the project based on the evaluation indicators, observe the changes of students’ comprehensive quality, especially their political literacy, cultivate the ability of graduate backbone to see things politically, and comprehensively improve their political literacy.

(B) adhere to the "meet the needs of the development of the cause of the party and the state" orientation.

Focusing on the needs of the development of the cause of the party and the country, we will establish a full-chain talent training mechanism of "learning, research, refining and understanding", which integrates course training, discussion and exchange, practical training and experience summary. The first is "learning", carrying out course training and strengthening knowledge reserve and work cognition. Invite experts, scholars and grassroots alumni inside and outside the school to share their experiences around the topics of clean politics, official document writing and official etiquette, so as to help students enrich the theoretical knowledge of social governance, enhance their understanding of China’s administrative system and national conditions, and enhance their public service capabilities. The second is "research", organizing discussion and exchange, and gathering experience and wisdom. Organize students to visit Jinxian, Jiangxi, Changzhi, Shanxi and the grass-roots public departments in Beijing, organize seminars regularly in groups, sum up learning experience, exchange learning experiences and carry out scenario simulation. The third is "refining", carrying out on-the-job exercise and practicing excellent skills. Students go to local governments, enterprises and institutions at the grass-roots level for practical training, accept the grass-roots experience of "real knife and real gun", observe, experience and analyze the operation mechanism and management mode of party and government departments with their own eyes, accumulate vivid experience and temper their excellent skills. The fourth is to "realize", sum up experience and improve the effect of educating people. A research group is set up by individuals or teams to encourage students to carry out special research and form research reports based on their actual work experience. The project team is connected with the National Development Institute and the First Academy to promote students’ participation in the research work of school think tanks.

(3) Adhere to the goal of "cultivating a large number of high-quality talents with both ability and political integrity"

Adhere to moral education, implement the whole process of training and guidance, and strive to cultivate new people of the times who are responsible for national rejuvenation. At the beginning of the project, the old students served as counselors for the new students, playing the role of "mentoring", guiding the students to be familiar with the project, giving full play to the autonomy of the students, and realizing self-management and self-education. During the practice period, the on-the-job unit designated a special person as a grass-roots tutor to be responsible for the training and assessment, and the school organized colleges to go to local places for mid-term visits in batches to communicate with local organizations and receiving units to fully understand and guide the students’ work. After the exercise, summarize excellent reports and training cases, do a good job in publicity and summary, evaluation and commendation, and do a good job in tracking training and service guidance; Attach importance to the cooperation between schools and places, build a talent training base together, maintain the continuity and long-term nature of the project, and enhance the comprehensive influence of the project.

Two, with the effectiveness of the project, service personnel training and local economic development.

Since the implementation of the "governing the country" plan, it has achieved remarkable results in practical education and played a certain role in promoting the high-quality development of local economy.

(A) to guide students to strengthen their youthful ideals in grassroots experience.

The first is to truly enter the grassroots. Students have experienced the transformation from "students at school" to "people’s public servants" in practical work, and have a detailed understanding of how to "manage politics" in specific work such as rural revitalization, industrial development and grassroots party building. The second is to help improve quality. Through interviews, conflict mediation, theoretical preaching, report writing and other ways to gain insight into social conditions and public opinion, grasp the pulse of the times, and achieve an all-round improvement in comprehensive quality. The third is to guide firm ideals. By going deep into the grass roots, practicing deeply, and savoring the "ups and downs" of the grass roots among the masses, the students have accumulated valuable work experience, further strengthened their determination to serve the country and contribute to society, and better defined their future career development plans.

The evaluation results show that all members have gained different degrees of positive feedback during the on-the-job training. Nearly 90% of the students said that the experience of participating in the "governing the country" project is of great help to their career planning, and their personal horizons have been greatly broadened. About 60% of the students said that this experience has further deepened their understanding of the theory they have learned.

(B) to promote the deep integration of theoretical teaching and practical education

Grassroots is the best classroom, and practice is the best teaching material. The program of "Governing the Country and Governing the Government" allows the project students to walk out of the ivory tower and go to the grassroots level, to weather the storm, see the world and strengthen their bones and muscles in the "melting pot" on the front line, and to truly understand the national conditions, social conditions and people’s feelings in the "social classroom". In the fields of rural revitalization, in the front-line posts of party and government services, the project students sink into the front line in the actual post exercise, practice, stand with the people and work together. Take root down, find real problems based on grassroots reality, seek upward, and give full play to professional advantages to solve practical problems. Students turn the facts at the grass-roots level into first-hand materials for academic research, and write the research results as answers to the times to improve people’s livelihood. They really study problems and real problems in grass-roots practice, lay a solid foundation of knowledge, practice excellent skills and temper moral cultivation in discovering, studying and solving problems, which effectively promotes the deep integration of theoretical teaching and practical education.

（三）挖掘实践成果助力地方经济高质量发展

习近平总书记寄语广大青年要“同人民一道拼搏、同祖国一道前进，服务人民、奉献祖国”。学员在基层岗位上接受基层实践导师的指导，主动接触地方发展战略，关注地方发展难题，利用自身专业优势，积极为地方发展建言献策，助力地方经济高质量发展，让青春在奋斗与奉献中绽放绚丽光彩。“治国理政”计划项目成果丰硕，其形式包括工作报告、工作手记、课题研究、数据收集、宣传报告、调研走访等，内容涵盖信用评级、普惠金融、共同富裕样板村、文明城市建设、文化产业推广、纪检督察、综合治理、案件审理、党建、宣传等工作。多个项目成果被地方政府采纳，多地发来感谢信肯定同学们的工作与付出。

项目学员工作期间的署名报道刊登在学习强国、新华网等主流媒体，工作事迹及座谈会发言等被《光明日报》《新京报》《福建日报》等媒体宣传报道。

三、以坚定步伐，优化“治国理政”计划育人模式

未来，中国人民大学将持续优化“治国理政”计划育人模式，推动实践育人体系走深走实。

First, improve the collaborative linkage mechanism between schools and localities. Coordinate the mobilization of social resources, optimize the multi-level and multi-form cooperation mode, further build a comprehensive practice base to meet the needs of students’ "national conditions practice, academic practice, ideological and political practice and employment practice", build a bridge for students to approach and serve the grassroots, and promote resource sharing, talent co-education, mutual promotion and common improvement between schools and places.

Second, strengthen the promotion mechanism of practical achievements. Strengthen the propaganda of typical tree selection for outstanding students, and tell the story of "governing the country" program students exercising at the grassroots level. We will promote the exchange and mutual learning of practical experience among colleges and universities, focus on refining the experience and practices of the "governing the country" plan, and strive to build a leading benchmark practice brand that is dynamic, long-term, accessible and can be promoted for colleges and universities across the country.

Third, continue to improve the practical education system. Adhere to the "five educations", comprehensively build a training system with the characteristics of the National People’s Congress, which is suitable for improving students’ social research ability, gather the majestic power of "educating people for the party and educating people for the country", take the plan of "governing the country and governing the country" as an important starting point to implement practical education, promote the organic integration of the first classroom and the second classroom, further guide students to combine theory with practice in practical training, practice excellent skills in grassroots experience, temper political character, and strive to cultivate people who are worthy of the heavy responsibility of national rejuvenation.

(The original text was published in the November 2023 issue of China Graduate School. )

Original link:[China Graduate] China Renmin University: Learning to "govern the country" in practical training.