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Article | Workplace Anthropology Laboratory

The box office of the movie "Reverse Life" is climbing. This movie starring Xu Zheng and Xin Zhilei is not so much about the decline of the middle class as it is the first step in "cross-circle communication".

The movie successfully aroused emotions at the beginning. The middle-aged programmer who graduated from a prestigious university and works in a large company, the delivery man who is trapped in the system, and the middle-class people who have elderly parents and young children to support, as well as sudden illnesses and high mortgages, made me wonder if it was going to move towards the cool drama mode.

But fortunately, the film finally breaks away from the mode of "the lower classes fighting each other and striving to become the upper class". The deliverymen shuttling through the streets and alleys gave us some inspiration on how to open the map of life.

Life is a 3D map, not a one-way street

I have heard more than one friend say this, making a New Year's resolution every year: "Tomorrow will be better. My life shouldn't get any worse, and this year my luck will turn around."

But every year I find that there are more weird things this year than last year, and the bottom line of life has dropped a little bit.

Good students cannot afford to lose in life, so they start to work hard on internships from college and gain great experience in order to get a good first job. With a good first job, they will have a second job, and their life curve will keep moving upward from then on.

Life has breakpoints and fluctuations, which is the norm. The emphasis on perfect resumes, like the perfect persona under the filter of social media, makes one generation after another of working people anxious and lost. In the era of rapid economic growth, people can take it for granted that "one year of promotion, three years of manager, five years of director" is natural.

But in recent years, two or three years without promotion and two or three months of gap (window period) are not new. The question of "Is it illegal to have a gap period in a resume?" continues to be a hot topic. During the ups and downs of the cycle, everyone also realized that to move forward step by step without losing a single point is the level of an Olympic champion.

Change your mindset, free your life from the "single-threaded" mode, live a more three-dimensional life, and you will not always expect "tomorrow will be better", but will find that good things are around the corner.

The so-called living a more three-dimensional life is to restore oneself to a lively and layered person, with three-dimensional thinking ability and multi-dimensional action power. The key to the deliverymen's leading position in the film is that in the "point-to-point" linear path planned by the system, they can use a global perspective to judge what kind of orders can be accepted and what kind cannot be accepted, and they also know how to maintain appropriate connections with all kinds of people in order to pass the level.

The hidden levels of life are often opened in such diversity and multiple touchpoints. OpenAI researchers Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman wrote a book, "Why Greatness Can't Be Planned", reflecting on the "goal dependence" that is prevalent in elite society, emphasizing that it is "aimless" exploration that achieves innovation. Personal opportunities often come from an "unexpected" touchpoint.

People who get rid of "point-to-point" thinking and live a three-dimensional life tend to have a more global perspective, are able to look at problems beyond a single plane, are curious, do not get stuck in a rut, and are not easily stuck in a dead end.

Turn on the treasure hunt mode and replace the "life curve" with a "3D life map". When you look up and see the streets and alleys, more possibilities will emerge.

Solving the problem of social poverty

How to break free from point-to-point communication and live a more three-dimensional life, both the middle class and deliverymen need to face up to social poverty.

I asked a friend, where do you think the turning point of Gao Zhilei (Xu Zheng) in the film occurred? His answer was: when his father forgave him for delivering food and he got the support of his family. —— Family, lovers, close friends and other close relationships are the key forces that support us through adversity.

The traditional marriage model may not be suitable for everyone, but young men and women in large factories are confused about how to build a new intimate relationship order, so they have to shout out the slogan "Oppose love-brainedness and focus on making money."

In addition to the lack of close relationships, social poverty is also reflected in the lack of interaction with the local community. The waiters of small business owners in the community, the couriers who knock on doors every day, and the tenants working in large Internet companies may meet each other every day in the same community, but few of them remember each other's names, and they will not meet at community activities such as "community owners' association" or "community square dance competition". They cannot establish social relationships locally, so their lives are naturally monotonous and not three-dimensional.

Some people say that social interaction is now completely online, and there is no need for such meetings. But online social interaction is more like a "social game". I suspect that online social apps may further exacerbate the social poverty of socially disadvantaged groups. There are three reasons:

One is that social apps allow more social traffic to flow to users with "perfect personalities". And those who participate in them will always feel that "the next one will be better". The fast-swiping photo stream brings freshness, but also exacerbates the sense of emptiness of "wanting but not getting", making it more difficult for ordinary profiles to obtain social resources.

Second, social apps are weakening "empathy" and "listening ability", which are the key to high-quality social interaction. Online social software is designed with users in mind, and the user experience experts of Internet companies will try their best to protect your emotions and avoid anything that makes you uncomfortable and impatient. But reality is always full of bumps and bruises, and the formation of deep offline relationships requires interaction and adjustment between two people. People who flip the table when they disagree with each other obviously have difficulty making friends offline.

Third, social software exacerbates social isolation. Social poverty and social isolation go hand in hand, and algorithms exacerbate this isolation. Algorithms only give you what you want and like at the moment, satisfying your immediate happiness, but not caring about what kind of connections can bring long-term value. In interest groups, everyone can find partners who share the same hatred of the enemy while eating instant noodles, but it is difficult to find friends who are willing to give honest advice. Socializing in the stratosphere has companionship value, but only socializing in the stratosphere will exacerbate the gap between the rich and the poor.

More cross-circle dialogue

Some critics say that the film’s solution to the dilemma of the middle class and deliverymen is still “volume”: “Grab the most orders and pay off the loan better”; “Develop a route planning app so that deliverymen can deliver the food better and faster.”

This movie is indeed overly dramatic, but it seems a bit too much to ask a movie to provide a systematic solution to social problems. Delivery drivers and the middle class discuss the way out of their difficult lives, which is a rare dialogue between the circles at present. There shouldn't be such a thick separation between the middle class and the delivery drivers.

The so-called middle class is actually a member of the working class, and food delivery workers should also be members of the city's safety net. This job should become more professional and more secure, and they should be given systematic vocational skills training, as well as corresponding medical and educational support. This is not only the responsibility of the food delivery system, but also the responsibility of the whole society, and it will benefit us all.

At the end of the movie, Gao Zhilei gave up on maintaining the house with a high mortgage, and the family moved back to the neighborhood that had the flavor of their childhood, enjoying the fun of eating around the fire. They didn't mind calling the movers and delivery men colleagues, and they no longer had a tense "client face".

Some people say that this is a traditional routine of the Spring Festival Gala skit where a family happily makes dumplings. But this is the precious part of the movie. Without this scene, the plot of "developing a new product and being valued by the previous company again" would be vulgar and embarrassing.

Seeing this, my answer is: when we have the ability to connect across circles, "class slippage" seems like a false proposition. When we learn to live every moment well, there will be fewer "critical moments" in life that we cannot afford to lose.