First, the roots of nature. Without form, there is no formalism, and form is the natural basis for the expansion of formalism. But judging from the development of things, everything needs its existing form. Without form, content cannot be expressed, so the existence of form is natural and objective. Because of this, formalism has a natural foundation for expansion.

Second, the root of human nature. People's demand for things includes two aspects: first, the demand for content; The second is the demand for form. Of course, people will pay more attention to the demand for content in essence, but the demand for form also exists objectively and cannot be ignored. Because of this demand, people have a passion for formalism. In this case, the supply of formalism depends on the comparison of marginal costs and marginal benefits brought by formalism. When marginal form income is greater than marginal content income, people's supply of form is greater than that of content. When the marginal cost of form is greater than the marginal cost of content, people supply more content than form. When people provide more forms than contents, formalism will flood and expand.

Third, the root of knowledge. Form is external and content is internal. In this case, people often need to understand the form before they can understand the content. This situation also provides a knowledge base for the expansion of the form. Such as education and knowledge level, education is the form, knowledge level is the content. The level of knowledge is often difficult to identify by other means, so it needs to be identified objectively in the form of academic qualifications.

Fourth, the source of information. The information root here is different from the knowledge root. Knowledge root refers to formalism caused by incomplete and imperfect cognition of the whole world, and information root refers to formalism caused by information asymmetry. Different people will have different information about the same thing, which will lead to different actions. For example, in economic life, consumers and producers generally have different information about products. In this case, producers often make up for the lack of content by adding some forms. For example, the over-packaging of products is a typical example.

The institutional origin of verb (abbreviation of verb). In the absence of an open, just and fair institutional environment, people will pay more attention to the pursuit of form. On the one hand, due to the lack of effective institutional constraints, in order to prevent mistakes, people will further improve the enthusiasm and initiative of individuals to understand things. Because form is the outer packaging of content, it is objectively necessary for people to pay attention to form. On the other hand, the opaque system also aggravates the phenomenon of information asymmetry, and also gives birth to the demand and supply of forms. For example, centralization tends to breed formalism.

Sixth, cultural roots. The soul of culture is values, and people's behavior is always bound by specific values. Therefore, different cultural structures will inevitably lead to different action frameworks. A culture that pays attention to honesty is bound to lack formalism; On the contrary, a humanistic environment lacking honesty will inevitably produce more formalism. In China, face culture is a hotbed of formalism.

Formalism should be treated differently. Formalism that is harmless to social development or has a certain positive effect, such as some academic schools of formalism, can advocate free growth and standardize development. However, formalism that is unfavorable or seriously harmful to social and economic development, such as red tape in real life, image engineering in work and going through the motions, must be resolutely opposed and eliminated. Of course, in essence and overall, content should be the most important thing in anything, form should serve content, content is the purpose, and form is a tool after all. So in general, on the premise of ensuring the content, try to reduce all kinds of formalism, especially some unnecessary formalism.