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by toomuchtodo 1789 days ago
It's crucial to mention the recent "lying flat" movement along with this idea.

"The “lying flat” movement was jumpstarted in April when a post on Baidu titled “Lying Flat Is Justice” went viral on the platform. A manifesto of renunciation, the post shared the author’s lessons from two years of joblessness. The extraordinary stresses of contemporary life, the author concluded, were unnecessary, the product of the old-fashioned mindset of the previous generation. It was possible, even desirable, he argued, to find independence in resignation: “I can be like Diogenes, who sleeps in his own barrel taking in the sun.” Discussions about “lying flat” picked up pace in May, as young Chinese, over-worked and over-stressed, weighed the merits of relinquishing ambition, spurning effort, and refusing to bear hardship."

The TLDR is that younger Chinese are burned out the with idea of working themselves to death at a chance for success, and as has happened with many first world countries, the cost of what is deemed success (homes, children) is too damn high.

https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/the-lying-flat-movement...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-lying-flat-took-chinas-ove...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-lyin...

https://qz.com/2019322/why-lying-flat-a-niche-chinese-millen...

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/lying-flat-gains-t...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/the-low-desire...

1 comments

Lying flat is not related to tutoring directly.

Of cuz, one can say that tutoring crams the students so that they are dilussioned of the value of education and further the societal doctrine.

But it simply is not a good reasoning...

Lying flat is a symptom, as is for profit tutoring and the Chinese government banning it. The root cause is the culture [1] [2] and socioeconomic conditions [3] [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

[2] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/RAMJ-03-...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/china-s-h...

[4] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/cost-having-child-china-...

The description of “students joining Lying Flat Movement” sounds very like symptoms of burnout so I think it is fully related.
Sure, among 10s of millions of students, you can find such instances. News reporting are always focus on outliers, exceptional, and plain attention grabbing cases.

I just talked to my friends back in China, they don't say anything about students being part of the movement.

What I’m saying is I don’t think it’s a “movement” as in some conspired extremist movement. If it was a movement the Chinese population is also suffering a “Mass Sleep Movement” every 8PM to 6AM.

Burnout from stressful non-physical office works is a well established concept, though not yet widely agreed to also happen on kids.

Basically if you keep a person in an office to attend meetings and conferences for 12 hours a day for 5-10 years, some functions of the brain ends its life and the person won’t be able to take on certain tasks. That’s what it is IMO.