Online Class Notes (Mike)

How to not get involved in Neijuan?

Vocabulary

brightness (n) 亮度

involution (n)

rat race: extreme and competitive

malicious (adj.) 恶性的
malicious software

benign (adj.)  良性的

anthropologist
anthro- human, people
anthropology (n) 人类学

coin a term 造出一个名词

ensnare (v) being trapped in a net, 被诱捕

flagellation (v) 鞭打

ultimately (adv.) 最终地

acceleration (n) 加速

perpetual-motion 永久运动的，永不停歇的

buzzword (n) 网络热词

mediocre (adj.) 平庸的，质量一般的，二流的，平凡的，中等的，普通的

mythology (n) 神话
myth (n) 神秘

jealousy (n) 【负面的】嫉妒的，猜疑的，戒备的，有防备之心的
envy (v) – envious

nuance (n) the subtle, small difference between two words,

jargon (n) 行业黑话，行话

let alone 更不用说
He never finished high school, let alone going to college.

synonym (n) 近义词 – be synonymous with
antonym (n) 反义词

scratch (v) 刮，擦
scratch one’s back

lose one’s mind 抓狂

unforeseen (adj.) 不可预测的，
We need to save some money aside for unforeseen events like accident, economic recession, unemployment, etc..

to lower my consumption level/range 降低消费的水平/范围

tighten one’s wallet

inflation rate 通货膨胀率

The exchange rate is at an incredibly low level/number,

unprecedented (adj.) 史无前例的
This summer, many European cities were experiencing ~ heat waves.

drought (n) 旱灾，干旱

energy crisis 能源危机

Japanese Yen

NATO：North Atlantic Treaty Organization
The expansion of NATO brings challenges to Russia.
北欧的扩张给俄罗斯带来了挑战

to bite more than one can chew 贪多嚼不烂

What’s happened.
What happened

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz coined the term “involution” in order to describe the agricultural system of historical Indonesia. Indonesia’s society, he argued, was growing without progressing.

Societal rules, tenancy relationships and labour arrangements became ever more complicated, but all these changes failed to produce anything new.

The Chinese term for involution, neijuan, which is made up of the characters for “inside” and “rolling,” suggests a process that curls inward, ensnaring its participants within what the anthropologist Xiang Biao has described as an “endless cycle of self-flagellation.” Involution is “the experience of being locked in competition that one ultimately knows is meaningless,” Biao told me. It is acceleration without a destination, progress without a purpose, Sisyphus spinning the wheels of a perpetual-motion Peloton.