After reading a famous book, I believe everyone has gained a lot of knowledge, so it is necessary to write a review after reading it! But what are the requirements for reading the review? The following is an excellent review of "The Silent Majority" that I compiled for your reference. I hope it can help friends in need. Excellent reading review of "The Silent Majority" 1

This book was originally intended to be included in the weekly recommendations, but I accidentally wrote a little too much. The logic is not very clear and seems a bit long-winded and messy. I will say whatever comes to my mind. Please forgive me.

When I first saw the title of the book and listened to other people’s introduction, I mistakenly thought that the meaning of this book was that the Chinese people were too silent, and everyone chose not to speak out when faced with problems, so the author encouraged everyone to speak out. own ideas to encourage people to awaken their consciousness. After reading it now, I know that my understanding at that time was too simple. The Silent Majority is just an article in this book. There are many articles in the book that discuss other social issues. At that time, it was great just to think about these issues consciously, not to mention having the courage to write about them, which was very difficult. Wang Xiaobo said that he used to be one of the silent majority, but now he is no longer silent and wants to say something, but I don’t think he encourages everyone to say it. After all, one must have independent thinking ability, critical spirit and There are still a few people who dare to speak out, and most people just copy and paste what others say. So what matters is not whether you speak or not, but whether you think or not.

In fact, since ancient times, most people do not think. Some are unwilling to think, and some are incapable of thinking. Only in this way can society be stable. If everyone is "foolishly speculating" and thinking about the meaning of life and social problems, then society will be prone to instability, and the ruling class hates instability. Therefore, our nation has always been habitually silent. Our parents have taught us since childhood that we should be low-key and not be ostentatious in our actions. When we got to school, the teacher taught us that silence is golden, listen more and talk less, keep a low profile and bide your time, accumulate more and gain more. Entering society, more and more life experiences tell us that we must be cautious in our words and deeds.

Some people say that this is caused by the inferiority of the Chinese people, and they advocate Western civilization to dare to express themselves and speak their minds frankly. I don’t completely agree with this belittling statement. This is actually the difference between the two cultures, and there is no distinction between superior and inferior. Speaking directly has its advantages, and silence also has its advantages. Everything has its two sides.

Regardless of whether silence is a virtue or not, I believe silence is very powerful. It is not an empty silence, but a silence with its own thinking and resilience. As I mentioned in an article not long ago, I admire people who spend all their time talking doing things, which is cool. However, if you really have something to say, there is no need to hold back. Just like a man can shed tears if he has them, but if he doesn't have tears, he doesn't need to forcefully squeeze them out. Holding them in for a long time can easily lead to internal injuries.

In a sense, I can be considered a silent person, although I occasionally write essays, which is pretty cool. But in fact, people who actually read my articles should know that what I express is relatively neutral and my attitude is quite humble. I generally don’t say things that can hurt others. On the one hand, I hold diverse values ??and believe that few things are black and white. On the other hand, it’s also because I don’t want to argue with others. I have developed this since I was a child. The laziness of doing less is worse than doing more.

To be honest, my independent thinking ability is lacking in some aspects, so I was very moved after reading this book. Because I just finished reading "The Crowd", I have strengthened my understanding of some of the points mentioned in "The Silent Majority". For example, groups are blind and ignorant and do not judge and make decisions based on reason. Moreover, no matter how good an individual is, they can easily become stupid if they fall into a group. In addition, group opinions are also extremely contagious.

I think it is precisely because of this that Wang Xiaobo’s writings are not so inflammatory. There is no anger or shouting in his articles. He only talks about himself in a metaphorical and gentle way. He has his own thoughts and reasons, because he himself is very averse to brainwashing, so he is not trying to instill in you what he believes in, but to remind you that you should think independently. What he wants to infect is not a group of ignorant people, but to inspire rational individuals. When the number of these individuals reaches a certain scale, quantitative changes can also lead to qualitative changes. Therefore, such writers and articles can be regarded as catalysts for qualitative changes in society and play a great role in the advancement of social spiritual civilization.

But I dare not say that I like Wang Xiaobo, because I really do not have the qualifications. So far, I have only read his book "The Silent Majority", so I can't talk about this writer far. Like it. But I think his words are indeed well-founded and can inspire me to think. If it takes 5 hours to read this book, then I think it will take at least 50 hours to think about this book. Almost every paragraph is worthy of careful consideration.

Friends who really like Wang Xiaobo almost all have the same characteristics, strong independent thinking ability and critical spirit. This is an ability that is particularly important in today's era of overflowing information. If you don't have the basic ability to distinguish information, you can only follow what others say, or even be blind and rude.

This is why there are so-called "patriots" who burn down compatriots' cars, why there are Internet trolls who troll people without thinking, and why some meaningless things go viral inexplicably.

People who have the ability to think independently often choose to remain silent. Maybe they feel that it is useless to speak, or they feel that talking too much seems frivolous. Just understand in your heart. There are some people who look down on other people, look down on people who cannot think, and also look down on people who speak out their thoughts. Of course, this kind of aloofness or arrogance is also justified. It is everyone's right. I think this kind of true expression of arrogance should also be respected, and this kind of silence that may promote social progress should be respected.

But I still want to say a few more words about this. Many of us have learned the ability to think independently and critical spirit, but what we have not learned is respect for other people. What I say is from the bottom of my heart. Inward respect rather than superficial humility. Even if you are more independent-minded than others, know how to distinguish right from wrong, and do not follow the crowd, it does not mean that you are superior to others. I did not find in Wang Xiaobo's writings any anger towards the ignorant people, nor was there any cynicism from the moral high ground. In my opinion, people who have the ability to think independently are smart people, but only those who truly know how to respect others on top of being smart can be considered smart people.

A person I respect very much told me: Everyone must be respected. This was the first and most important lesson I learned from him. Nowadays, some people like to show off their authority, insult or embarrass others to achieve psychological satisfaction. In fact, this is a very ignorant and cowardly performance. They don't know that people avoid dirty things not because they are afraid of them, but because they are afraid of getting themselves dirty. Excellent reading review of "The Silent Majority" 2

Borges has a common saying. He said that when a writer writes, he always writes what he can write, rather than what he wants to write. something. The reason why I say it is an "ordinary famous saying" is that on the one hand, I think it reveals some of the indescribable mysteries of writing itself; on the other hand, I also feel that what Borges expresses is just a common sense of writing. Yes, I have no doubt that this is common sense, common sense that the writer himself ignores because he is obsessed with writing itself. We write for multiple purposes, but no matter how complex the purpose is, it will naturally lead to one aspect: we feel that through writing we can understand the unknown side of the world. But strangely, once we feel as if we have learned the secrets of the world, we often find that most of the seemingly profound things conveyed through writing are actually common sense. Since then, the ultimate purpose of our writing has changed: we originally thought we were discovering and delivering the truth, but in fact we were just expressing some common sense. All we do through writing is spread common sense. As I write this, I think of Wang Xiaobo.

The time I really started writing was when I entered university, starting from the university library. Some time later, I showed my writing manuscript to one of my teachers. To my great surprise, she praised most of my articles, but severely criticized an article about Wang Xiaobo that I was very optimistic about. At that time, I liked Wang Xiaobo's articles very much. In order to write that review article, I even went to the bookstore to buy Wang Xiaobo's collected works. For a college student who is usually very poor, such a luxurious book buying experience is naturally very rare. So you can imagine how much effort I put into this article, but this article alone was rejected. I was naturally very unhappy, but at the time I probably felt that my teacher didn’t understand Wang Xiaobo at all, so he made such a judgment, so I later showed her Wang Xiaobo’s collection of essays "The Silent Majority", hoping that she would learn from it. Give me some recognition for my article. But I never expected that not long after, my teacher took the initiative to ask me to talk. I thought she might have a new understanding of my article, so I excitedly walked into her office, but I saw her standing ready to talk to me with a serious expression. When I sat down a little uneasily, she started to say that it would be best not to read Wang Xiaobo's works in the future. How could I imitate something written by such a person? As she was talking, she opened the book "The Silent Majority" that I gave her. Many places in it were folded and marked. She pointed to a certain passage in the book and said, how could a writer write like this? He wrote about his early years of secretly pulling out valve cores from other people's bicycles and publicizing them, and he was very proud of it. Finally, she said in a concluding tone, how could such a writer with no sense of morality and social responsibility be a noble writer! Moreover, his writing style was very loose, mostly nonsense, not only repetitive in semantics, but also preached a lot. Vulgar values, I hope you don't learn such writing, learn more classical writers, imitate their writing, and so on. At that time, I was unable to argue with her gentle scolding. But I suddenly felt a little lucky again. I was lucky that I didn't show her Wang Xiaobo's novel "The Golden Age" at that time, otherwise she would have been charged with reading obscene novels.

Here I mentioned my teacher. What I need to say is that I have always had great respect for this teacher of mine. She was actually the teacher I respected the most during my college years. So although I cannot agree with her series of criticisms of Wang Xiaobo at that time, I have realized that we have different understandings of writing itself.

In the opinion of my teacher, writing is a very sacred thing. We discover, convey, promote and even preach the truth through writing, and improve moral awareness and social responsibility through writing. We must set a social model in writing and provide society with Develop a positive guidance. So from this perspective, she does not allow us to make mistakes in writing, does not allow immorality in writing, does not allow us to promote a purely personal value in writing, and must carry out the sacred obligation of writing to the end. In my opinion at that time, writing was a purely personal matter. The pain and pleasure of writing were all related to the individual. I cannot regard writing as a means of educating and promoting certain social ideas. What I "can write" and "what I want to write" cannot be unified. What I can write is nothing more than starting from myself as an individual, telling me and the stories behind me accumulated through limited reading; but there are too many things I want to write, and they are beyond the scope of what I can personally bear. . In this sense, I like Wang Xiaobo.

But there is no doubt that the current Wang Xiaobo has changed beyond recognition. He has changed from the Wang Xiaobo who repeatedly talked about the common sense gained from his own writing experience to the Wang Xiaobo who has been over-explained and turned into a myth. This is a very interesting change. When Wang Xiaobo was writing during his lifetime, he said more than once that he was telling common sense, but now we think that what he told is the truth. After a magnificent turn, Wang Xiaobo became a myth, so much so that ten years after his death, we (including me who wrote this article) are still sparing no effort to write articles to commemorate the greatness of his life and the glory of his death.

When he was in his seventies, Borges, who was blind, wrote a summary of his life. He said, I feel that I have written my best work. However, I do not think that my writing life is over. In a sense, my youth is more distant from me now than when I was young. Close. This is a humble and self-sufficient summary of his life by an old man who is famous in the world of literature. We do not think it is an exaggeration at all when Borges says, "I have written my best work." Of course, it is impossible for us to guess that Wang Xiaobo thought about his life in this way before his death. Actually, I don't think this is possible. Wang Xiaobo was probably in a lot of pain when he died, and it was impossible for him to think about this issue so leisurely. But what I want to express is that no matter how much Wang Xiaobo thought about this issue during his lifetime, his short life was a pity, and his writing was even more pity. There is no doubt that he can go further on the road of writing.

During his lifetime, Wang Xiaobo was very optimistic about his novels rather than his essays. But it was his essays that were quickly accepted by the public. Actually this is not surprising. For Wang Xiaobo, writing novels is a purely personal aspect. He likes to use wild imagination and fiction in his novels. In his novel world, fiction is equal to reality. When writing essays, he shows his public side and needs to assume morality and responsibility. But just as "what I can write" and "what I want to write" are not always consistent, the long-term anxiety and division made him overwhelmed. Mr. Zhu Wei, the editor-in-chief of "Sanlian Life Weekly" who once brought Wang Xiaobo's essays to the forefront of the public, once revealed that after writing Wang Xiaobo's essays, he could not bear the exhaustion of his writing inspiration and was in pain. I think it was Wang Xiaobo's favored essays that hurt him. What he actually yearned for was the life of writing novels. During his lifetime, he actually wanted to retreat from the public writing field to the private writing field. However, the social impact of his official writing or essay writing made him unable to retreat. When what you "can write" and what you "want to write" are never unified, this kind of split in the writing process will also lead to mental and physical split. This person who has not yet had time to write his best work will He passed away quietly in pain.

Schopenhauer once said that when we read, we are thinking with other people's thoughts. However, when reading Wang Xiaobo's articles, have we asked ourselves, are we thinking with his ideas? Look at Wang Xiaobo who has changed beyond recognition, who has been regarded as a master, who has been over-interpreted, I really I hope we can really think with Wang Xiaobo's thoughts. Excellent review of "The Silent Majority" 3

I have always looked forward to reading Mr. Wang Xiaobo's book, so I took this opportunity to read "The Silent Majority". Although I haven't finished reading it, I am convinced. Regardless of whether Mr. Wang Xiaobo has literary talent or not, his sincerity and humor are enough to make other evaluations immediately meaningless.

The title of this book is "The Silent Majority". As the title states, this book is about some social phenomena, thinking, and Mr.'s views on things, which not many people had ever expressed at the time - but at least they are very obvious now. To say it is obvious may be an exaggeration, because although I don't know if people have thought about Mr.'s point of view nowadays, they still show it as being ignorant and enjoying it. This can't help but make me feel disappointed and confused: Is Mr.'s view still too advanced, or has people's thinking not progressed over the years?

The first is to talk about "discussion".

The teacher said: "Most of the debates in our society turn from discussions about equality to one party's criticism of the other party. This is determined by the way the discussion is conducted. According to my observation, these discussions are not about who is right and who is wrong, but about who is right and who is wrong. It's about fighting over who is good and who is bad. Once the outcome of the fight is established, it becomes clear that the good guy is the bad guy and the bad guy is obvious. Of course, the good guy has something to say to the bad guy, not only to criticize, but also to expose." This phenomenon of discussion turning into criticism is very common nowadays, and it is difficult for both sides of the debate to sit down and talk about the issues as they stand. Talking about whether genetically modified genes are harmful will turn into questioning academic qualifications and experience, discussing gender equality will lead to people thinking there is a psychological barrier, discussing health care reform policies will lead to personal attacks without distinction of right and wrong, and so on. These people may not know how to find the answer to the question itself, but stick to their own knowledge and try to use all kinds of fallacies to refute the other party and discredit the other party. It seems that this is the purpose of some people's arguments. . It is a pity that although this truth is very simple, not many people can clearly realize this; even if they cannot defeat the other party, they are unwilling to admit that they are wrong, so they try to attack the other party in order to gain a moral advantage; unfortunately, there is no such thing as will gain a moral advantage. However, if the other party in the argument does not know how to resolve it and can only argue with him - this is no longer a discussion issue, and the argument between the two people ends here. It's just an ugly and time-wasting personal attack. If conditions permit, we might even get into a fight. Is it possible that people's cognitive level can only reach this point?

The other one talks about "practice": "There is a common thing about programming computers and solving geometry problems: if you are right, you will immediately know that you are right, and if you are wrong, you will immediately know that you are wrong. Just do it. You use Don’t be like Master Meng, who cultivates his awe-inspiring spirit and then feels that he is doing everything right... Some university students have another experience: he probably did not do any exercises correctly or compiled any programs correctly, but suddenly. He figured out a big truth and felt that he was right. Anyone who disagreed with him was just an animal. This sudden realization moved him so much that he felt that he didn't need any proof and must be very smart. ” This points out the superiority of practice over perceptual experience and thinking, and emphasizes the folly of ignoring reality. Among them, computer programming and geometry problems are both considered scientific categories, so the importance of scientificity is also emphasized. This reminds me of a lot of dregs in traditional Chinese medicine, just like Master Meng: if you think you are useful, you must be useful. You don’t need to think or question, and naturally you don’t need to do any scientific research to prove it. Not only that, although subjects like mathematics and physics cannot be done well without scientific literacy, the real fear is that if the views of liberal arts based on experience and words are made up without regard to reality and natural laws, it will be easy to convince oneself that it is right. -The so-called truth is not fixed and only one, and viewpoints that are divorced from reality are never tenable.

In fact, Mr. Wang wrote a lot, and the core content is to dare to tell the truth, respect facts, and not tell lies or empty words. This may sound like a slogan, but few people can do it. Complimenting people you don't know well, praising the opinions in the discussion without thinking, being afraid to raise objections, and not mentioning the problems of any person or organization will not help or improve you or the listener. It's the equivalent of filling a bowl of chicken soup and then spitting it out and inviting the listener to drink it - disgusting. I wish that lies and empty words would not exist and that people would be able to think through everything - but this is not the case. Lies and empty words only sound good and will not cause conflicts for the time being. This is true, but this is a short-sighted approach. If an organization wants to unite and develop, it will never advance by prevarication and compliments; if a person wants to improve himself, he must seriously think about what kind of person he is; if he wants to make friends, he must tell the truth from the bottom of his heart. In fact, it's not that people are so stupid that they can't think of what to do, but they just don't dare to do it because of their dignity. This is something slightly absurd - I can be absurd too, but I can't always be absurd. Those who tell the truth will become the focus of attack, and those who do practical things will become the center of impeachment. When everyone is hypocritical, people choose to be hypocritical in order to save themselves, and do not dare to stand up and say something true, but no one dares to If you tell lies, you will live a good life. This is China’s human society, which does not focus on logic or facts, but on interpersonal relationships. For the sake of a "harmonious" relationship, people also actively choose to remain silent - no one takes the lead in taking responsibility, so why should I stand up? What if I was the only one who stood up? So hypocrisy becomes the mainstream of the culture, and people don’t even realize the fact that they are hypocritical, but they fear and attack people who show authenticity, thinking that they are right and that they are alien - this is really sad.

Mr. Wang Xiaobo wrote what he said heartily, but the funny thing is that even if everyone has read Mr. Wang Xiaobo’s book carefully and knows what he said, it is difficult for two people to stand up. Tell the truth; people who tell the truth will still appear out of touch and lose their reputation; Chinese attitudes have not changed. Therefore, even if I am willing to express and act according to my own wishes, I have no hope that the Chinese people will change their lies in the future.

I just wonder, when these people are dancing in shackles under heavy regulations, are they enjoying the benefits of their insincerity?