The utilitarian mentality of Contemporary Chinese Peasants

The process of modernization in contemporary China has broken through the blockage of rural society and created a prerequisite for the emergence of new ideas and new trends of thought. Recently, some research articles have pointed out that the rise of utilitarianism is the most popular among all kinds of thoughts under the background of social changes. It constitutes a distinct feature of contemporary Chinese rural social psychology, which is clearly reflected in all kinds of wishes, hobbies, beliefs, intentions, ideals and so on that flow through the minds of farmers.

In the article "the Historical Destiny of utilitarianism in China" written in 1987, the author has tried to demonstrate that for more than two thousand years, the thought of utilitarianism has not been despised more than ethical principles. It has shown strong vitality for a long time through people's daily social activities and social psychology, and has become one of the cultural heritages with a long history. In a sense, as a continuation, this paper mainly wants to discuss three issues: (1) the characteristics of social significance brought by utilitarian mentality to contemporary peasant groups; (2) the prevalence of utilitarian mentality has caused harmfulness that can not be ignored to the development of rural economy and the construction of spiritual civilization; (3) the homology of Chinese and Western utilitarian theories and the development direction of contemporary Chinese farmers' utilitarian mentality.

(1)

If we say that Chinese peasant groups have long been subjected to the external pressure and bondage of traditional ideologies such as justice, cheap interests and abstinence, then the pursuit of wealth and material interests has always been their internal impulse. With the change of social economic life and social conditions to a certain extent, this inherent impulse will become very obvious and openly challenge the traditional preaching by virtue of administrative power. Since the 1980s, the trend of commodity economy brought about by the reform and opening-up policy has been surging. In rural areas, the trend of commercialization takes the adjustment of rural relations of production as the starting point and rapidly extends to other fields. This fundamental change has shaken the cornerstone of values and codes of conduct established in the 40 years since the founding of the people's Republic of China, prompted people to have new views on real society and personal meaning, and re-sought to weigh and shape the objective yardstick of things. Re-seek to adapt to the new environment. The most sensitive response to this is the mentality of farmers. Based on their personal experience of participating in commodity production and commodity markets, they feel that the pursuit of personal interests is not contrary to social and public interests, because the basis of behavior evaluation does not lie in its motivation, but depends on its effect; in social communication, the satisfaction of self-needs and happiness by acting in accordance with one's own interests is the basic pillar for maintaining survival and development. Under the condition of commodity economy, in order to achieve personal happiness and Yi, the basic means and effective way is to obtain enough money and wealth, at the same time, the amount of money also maintains the individual's social status and social role. These understandings constitute the main characteristics of the utilitarian mentality of contemporary Chinese farmers.

Under the influence of this utilitarian mentality, the moral principles with asceticism and egalitarianism as the core in the "Cultural Revolution" lost their power and were put aside without hesitation. The farmers rejoiced at the propaganda that public opinion tools encouraged them to make great efforts to get rich. They take the pursuit of money, wealth and enjoyment as their personal pursuit and life goal, coruscating a great enthusiasm for labor. This utilitarian mentality not only successfully aroused the drive of contemporary farmers, it objectively plays a basic driving role in breaking the characteristics of natural economy, such as the self-sufficiency of material production, the average distribution of consumer goods, the closeness of product circulation and the inhibition of consumption. at the same time, it also gives some characteristics of social significance to the contemporary Chinese peasant group.

First of all, the utilitarian mentality makes farmers tend to pay attention to time efficiency.

Since the contact between China and the West in modern times, people have begun to understand the sense of urgency of the rhythm of time, but it is mainly limited to some coastal cities, and mostly related to the political and military situation. As for the rhythm of agricultural production and social activities in the mainland, it still follows the traditional seasons such as "Li Ji Yue Ling". Since the 1980s, the attention and pursuit of time rhythm and efficiency, as a derivative of utilitarian mentality, has developed rapidly in the vast countryside. The broad masses of farmers in the trend of commodity economy have personally experienced that the faster and shorter the repetition time of the same economic behavior and process, and the faster and shorter the alternation time of different economic behavior and process, the more advantageous it will be. In the same cycle, relying on hard work and effective management, we can achieve production and circulation beyond the usual frequency, thus obtaining benefits beyond the usual frequency. The tighter the rhythm of production and circulation, the stronger the awareness of time efficiency. "time is money" is the image summary of this state of mind. Farmers in the 1980s have tried to abandon the social mechanism of small farmers who are accustomed to the slow pace and use festivals to regulate economic production and social activities, and move towards the fast pace of industrialization. Even in the remote mountain and rural areas, we can see this trend. Some people have made a specific analysis on the time utilization structure of farmers of a production team in Zunyi, Guizhou Province. [1] it can be found that in addition to devoting as much time as possible to agricultural labor, we also pay attention to trying to spend less agricultural labor time in exchange for more labor output, and the annual empty consumption in the absence of practical significance is also reduced to a minimum.

Secondly, the utilitarian mentality urges farmers to break through the narrow scope of life and expand the space of interpersonal communication.

One of the characteristics of self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy is that dispersed family handicrafts and comprehensive families of small-scale agriculture constitute the core of rural society. As the saying goes, "every family guards the village business and does not go out with a white head." (poem of Bai Juyi) all people's activities are out of the scope of natural villages, and exchange and mutual aid are also centered on small market towns in the region. With the rise and development of contemporary rural commodity economy, farmers have become increasingly dissatisfied with the complete and backward level of self-sufficiency. They measure the satisfaction of utilitarian mentality by the amount of wealth income, and expect to get more money by increasing the opportunities of commodity exchange. As a result, the pursuit of money and wealth turned into concern in the external exchange market, prompting them to consciously break the narrow and limited scope of villages and the closed state of being confined to one place all the year round, and move to towns and cities. In this way, with the continuous expansion of the scope of activities and exchanges, farmers' horizons are increasingly broadened, and the breadth and density of exchanges with the outside world are also increasing, which directly contributed to the emergence of urban and rural economic networks.