Today, those worthy The lesson taught in my mind is either simplified to a diagram of electronic energy level transitions, or degenerated into a Hamiltonian that looks like a cat's nose. It is undeniable that schools tend to become a breeding ground for boredom and anxiety, full of unsatisfied desires and needs everywhere. It seems that the bondage of the school is originally a kind of disease, and the medicine to cure this disease is to resort to rebellion. It can be seen that rebellion may mean a search for a place in society.
With the increasing diversity of social culture, movies are more and more keen to show the cruelty and absurdity of youth through depraved and nihilistic themes, and show the embarrassing situation of school education by writing rebellion. Peter Weir’s "Dead Poetry Society" is a more typical example. Prior to this, there were French film avant-garde Jean Vigault’s "Performance Zero" (1933) and the British film "Freedom Movement" main director Lin Lin Sai Anderson's "If" (1968). "If" is filled with the indifference of contempt for authoritarian authority, the desolate form of youth, and the repressed inner frenzy, I have to remind me of Stanley Kubrick's horrifying "A Clockwork Orange", if Saying that society and the system’s alienation of people is the theme of the latter, then in the same youthful and cruel image of the former, the questioning of the system has become a more personal self-exile. It is this complete self-exile that has made "If" a more shocking aspect.
The rebellion in "If" is by no means only aimed at the British education system at the time. The school is just a metaphor. In fact, it is a microcosm of Western society at that time. At the end of the 1960s, a wave of "rebellion" started from the "May Storm" in France, spreading the radical "Left" thoughts across European countries. Anderson's innovative spirit of experimentation and courage to challenge the limits of the world was tacitly recognized by the Cannes jury and won the Palme d'Or in 1969.
As far as I am concerned, writing this article was inspired by the British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
In 1958, Berlin delivered a famous lecture entitled "Two Concepts of Freedom" at the "Zicheli Social and Political Theory Lecture" at Oxford University. In the article, he divides political freedom into negative freedom and positive freedom.
The so-called negative freedom means that one’s actions are not subject to interference from others, or “no coercion”, but “freedom from...”. The concept of negative freedom begins with Hobbes, passes through Locke, Bentham, and finally to Mill. It contains the belief: "I am free to the extent that no other person or group interferes with my actions." This That is to say, only when others prevent you from achieving a certain goal, you can say that you lack freedom, or that you have been coerced. In other words, coercion is not a reasonable restriction, but refers to some people deliberately interfering within the scope of a person's freedom of action. Its performance in education is the school's improper intrusion into students' private space. In "If", in order to train students to be "standard British in line with tradition", the school formulated a whole set of old rules and bad habits and coldly enforced them, which violated the students' negative freedom.
And positive freedom stems from the individual's desire to become his own master, which is "to be...free." That is, I am my own master. If I am not controlled by any external forces, then I am free; when others hinder my freedom, I can force others to obey my will. Obviously, the acquisition and maintenance of this kind of freedom may be premised on the deprivation of the corresponding freedom of others. It is precisely because positive freedom overemphasizes the self-realization of individuals that a society that advocates positive freedom tends to become a perfectly competitive society. The extreme situation is that individuals completely ignore the basic rights and will of others in order to realize their own will. Many surreal scenes in the film, such as Chavez and others, after discovering the munitions in the basement, unscrupulously shot the attendees at the lecture, reflecting the violent conflicts that may occur when students are pursuing positive freedom.
If I use Wang Xiaobo's brushwork, I should put on a patch like this: I'm so piercing and attaching the meeting, and you might think I'm overwhelming. For this, I must admit that I did expose it to the Savage. If this article has misled anyone, then I must first apologize. But since I think of such an interesting connection, I can't help but not tell it. After all, this is my negative freedom.
November 12, 2009
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