1. Anxiety and Confusion in the Age of Involution
In this era filled with competition and anxiety, "effort" seems to be one of the most frequently heard words from our childhood to adulthood. From sayings like "Only by tasting the bitterest of the bitter can one become the best among people" to "Heaven rewards the diligent," effort appears to be the only path to success. However, with social changes, more and more people are beginning to question this belief: Is effort really worth it?
In modern society, involution has become a widespread phenomenon. People seem trapped in an endless race: competing in work, studies, and quality of life. Especially against the current background of economic downturn, with global economic growth slowing and social mobility becoming increasingly limited, individual effort is unlikely to bring the rapid, significant returns it once did. Social structures are undergoing profound changes, and the quick-rising "copies" of success no longer apply to most people.
We must acknowledge that changes in the external environment aren't entirely within an individual's control. Rationally, we know this isn't simply "my problem" but an issue with the entire socioeconomic environment. Emotionally, however, we find it difficult to truly accept this. This conflict between emotion and reason intensifies the burnout feelings among contemporary young people. On one hand, they know their efforts might be futile; on the other hand, they cannot let go of their obsession with effort, leading to mental exhaustion and confusion.
2. The Psychological Mechanisms Behind Effort
From a psychoanalytic perspective, effort is actually our attempt to control the external environment. The outside world is full of uncertainties and uncontrollable factors, while human nature craves security and control. When we believe that "success comes through effort," we're essentially trying to transform passivity into activity, giving ourselves a false sense of control. In psychoanalysis, this behavior can be viewed as a narcissistic fantasy: I can change my fate through effort; I can control everything.
But the reality is that the external environment is often chaotic and uncertain, making us feel helpless. To cope with this helplessness, we use effort as a narcissistic protection against external chaos. Especially for individuals in abusive or deprived environments, they often try to gain a sense of control through effort, to achieve victory in competition and the resulting possibility of survival—this reflects a denial and concealment of their own powerlessness. We hope to improve our situation through effort rather than questioning the external environment itself.
3. What Are We Really Striving For?
When reflecting on the purpose of our "efforts," we often don't clearly understand what we're pursuing. On the surface, we often say we're pursuing success, wealth, and fame, but these are superficial answers. For us Chinese, we deeply know from our cultural traditions that fame and fortune are "floating clouds"—they cannot bring true satisfaction. However, despite recognizing that these pursuits are ultimately insubstantial, it remains difficult to truly let go of our attachment to them, like in the "Song of Enlightenment" from "Dream of the Red Chamber":
"Everyone knows immortals are good, but only fame and rank cannot be forgotten. Where are the generals and ministers of ancient and modern times? Only mounds of wild graves overgrown with weeds!"
This is because many emotional factors are intertwined, especially shame and the pain of being compared unfavorably. When we discover others are more successful or excellent than us, the emotional impact of this comparison often makes us feel humiliated, as if we're not good enough, even feeling that we've lost our value of existence. These emotional roots can be traced back to our early relationships, such as attachment to our mothers. Often, our inner emotions tell us: if I'm not good enough, my mother won't have a place for me in her heart, as if I don't exist. This deep sense of insecurity and longing for love and recognition drives us to continuously strive, pursuing external fame and fortune, as if attaining them could fill the emptiness inside.
In this process, fame and fortune gradually become symbols of power. Our desire for fame and fortune is actually a desire for a sense of control, especially when we feel we cannot obtain unconditional love, power becomes a substitute. Like the characters in Jin Yong's novels who become lost in the pursuit of power, they go mad for power because it brings them a sense of control and security. But the problem is that people only crave power when they cannot obtain love. This desire for power is essentially compensatory behavior for the absence of love.
Therefore, what we need to reflect on is not just the pursuit of fame and fortune itself, but the deeper emotional needs. What we ultimately need is the ability to self-soothe, good internal objects, finding inner security and the feeling of being loved. If we cannot realize this, we will fall into a vicious cycle of constant external pursuit, continuously using fame and fortune to fill our inner emptiness. However, the more we strive, the more we pursue fame and fortune, the emptier we feel, even developing "impostor syndrome," feeling that everything we've achieved isn't because we're intrinsically valuable, but merely because of those external labels. All this makes the pursuit of fame and fortune a kind of "heading north by driving south" pursuit.
4. The Traumatic Origins of Effort
In reality, the more chaotic, disorderly, or even erratically abusive the environment, the more likely an individual is to feel a lack of self-worth, thus generating thoughts like "I'm not good enough, I need to work harder." This psychological state can, to some extent, be compared to "Stockholm Syndrome": when faced with oppression and powerlessness, individuals instead blame themselves, trying to gain a sense of control and security through effort.
As Fairbairn described, in an environment full of oppression and chaos, individuals tend to internalize problems as their own inadequacies rather than issues with the external environment. This cognition prompts us to use effort as a coping mechanism, and this effort often evolves into a struggle rather than truly constructive effort.
Struggle, as I've discussed in podcasts, means individuals are in an extremely uncomfortable state—they know they're uncomfortable but lack clear judgment and choices. Consequently, they force themselves to "do something" to alleviate inner anxiety and unease. However, this "doing something" is usually aimless and without strategy; through constant busyness, individuals obtain a temporary sense of fulfillment and self-comfort, but this busyness often doesn't truly solve problems and instead gradually distances them from their goals.
This ineffective effort is actually a traumatic response, essentially temporarily filling an inner void. This temporary sense of occupation makes us feel as if we're doing something meaningful, but in fact, the busier we are, the more we struggle, the more helpless we become. This vicious cycle causes us to repeatedly engage in ineffective efforts without achieving substantial progress.
In psychoanalysis, this phenomenon can be viewed as repetition compulsion, where individuals repeatedly engage in the same behavioral patterns when facing trauma, trying to control pain or situations through this repetition. But in reality, repetition compulsion only further reinforces trauma and doesn't truly bring change. Prolonged exposure to this state leads to learned helplessness.
5. Lying Flat or Learned Helplessness?
In the current social context, more and more young people are experiencing deep feelings of burnout. When facing the powerlessness of reality, they choose to "lie flat," a state that seems like giving up on effort. However, lying flat doesn't always mean truly stopping or reflecting. More often, it manifests as learned helplessness, where individuals gradually lose their sense of control over the environment after long-term inability to cope with external pressures, completely abandoning effort.
There's a fundamental difference between learned helplessness and true "lying flat." True lying flat is a form of self-awakening, an active choice made after deeply understanding external systems and one's own state. It's not forced withdrawal but a rational decision based on cognition of the environment and self—an effective way to pause, reflect, and adjust. Learned helplessness, conversely, is a traumatic response where individuals lose control over their lives after being crushed by external pressure, no longer attempting any action. This emotion might superficially appear as "lying flat," but it's actually a more passive state where individuals are in extreme inner powerlessness, unable to find a path to liberation.
6. Conditions for Effective and Ineffective Effort
When discussing when effort is most effective, we need to recognize that effort works best in simple systems. Simple systems are characterized by predictability and linear relationships, with clear rules and causal relationships. In such environments, input and reward show a direct correspondence. Therefore, learning methods like "doing practice problems" or "grinding levels" in games are typical simple systems with fixed rules and paths—as long as you follow the rules, effort can achieve expected results.
This is why the phenomenon of "small-town test-takers" has become a label for an era to some extent. Many people have been trained from childhood in a clear examination system, diligently doing practice problems and taking exams, forming a student mentality: master the rules, work hard, and ultimately exchange effort for grades or rankings. This kind of effort is useful in relatively closed, controllable systems because the rules are stable and linear.
However, after entering society, many systems in the real world aren't so simple. We face complex systems full of emergent properties—new, unpredictable behavioral patterns that appear as the system grows. Complex systems are characterized by high variability, complexity, and uncontrollability. In these systems, effort doesn't always bring obvious rewards; sometimes, effort may be in vain.
In such complex environments, mere effort isn't enough. Instead, we need higher-level cognitive abilities to observe the changing patterns of systems and understand their major principles. These major principles, similar to the "principle of gravity" in the physical world, provide us with some guidance for dealing with complexity, but they don't tell us exactly how to proceed step by step. In complex systems, it's difficult to predict the future through simple calculations or conventional means—no one can know exactly what to do next. Therefore, blindly repeating the "rules of effort" from simple systems is often ineffective in complex systems.
The problem is that many Chinese people have been trained in these simple systems from childhood, forming a "small-town test-taker" mindset. When they enter complex social structures, they either continue trying to simplify complex systems into something like practice problem systems, attempting to solve problems by mastering so-called "patterns," or they become completely lost, not knowing how to cope. This situation is very similar to the description in "After the Imperial Examination": in a complex environment, traditional effort paths suddenly become ineffective, and new coping methods haven't been established, leading to an inability to adapt. Similarly, "data self" and "gamification" are attempts to simplify complex systems through external design, but they are essentially forms of self-discipline and alienation.
7. Systemic Change and Effective Effort
Therefore, when facing complex systems, what we need isn't mechanical effort but flexible observation and adaptation abilities. Effort is effective in simple systems, but in complex systems, we need to transcend simple linear thinking, accept uncertainty and complexity, and cultivate more comprehensive coping abilities.
However, truly effective effort isn't simply self-compulsion or directionless struggle. Effective effort should be based on clear cognition of internal and external systems, finding actions that can bring systemic change. Psychoanalysis helps us recognize that we need systematic thinking, breaking out of existing inertial systems to seek paths that truly bring transformation. All this depends on the continuous expansion and updating of our mental models.
We understand the complex world through mental models. Mental models aren't just cognitive frameworks for the external environment but also internal tools that help us establish connections with the environment and provide effective solutions when dealing with complex problems. Learning new knowledge and elevating thinking levels are important ways to expand mental models, which is why we need disciplines like psychoanalysis as models for understanding ourselves and our environment. Only by establishing more complete mental models can we effectively understand complex social phenomena, whether about love, class, or other life issues.
For instance, in a podcast, Jian Lili once mentioned that more effective effort involves dialoguing with people whose thinking is more expansive than our own, breaking through our cognitive barriers. This kind of systemic change is truly efficient.
From a broader social perspective, whether effort is useful also involves the complexity of the entire system. Modern society's development is slowing, and class solidification is increasingly serious. For example, the British documentary series "Up" shows a thought-provoking reality: opportunities to cross social classes are becoming increasingly rare. Changes in social status are more determined by initial statistical conditions rather than merely through individual effort.
This is why many people are beginning to realize that effort doesn't necessarily bring ideal results. From a systemic perspective, individual effort cannot truly shake the entire social structure. And our continued obsession with "effort" often stems from our inability to step outside our own systems. The significance of psychoanalysis lies in helping us recognize the need for "second-order change"—re-examining our behavioral patterns from the perspective of the system itself. Real change isn't achieved through blind effort but by stepping outside the original system for self-reflection and adjustment.
8. Pause and Examine Oneself
From a psychoanalytic perspective, often the hardest thing isn't to make an effort but to stop. Stopping means you need the "capacity to be alone," facing inner anxiety with the ability to self-soothe. Only after truly stopping do we have space to observe and decide; as the saying goes, "Only after stillness can there be tranquility, only after tranquility can there be deliberation, only after deliberation can there be attainment."
I once heard my teacher say: "The depressive position doesn't represent moral superiority; it's just more sustainable from a systemic perspective." And this is the state we hope to ultimately achieve through mental development.