Should we all just ‘lie flat?’
Perhaps the best way to respond to our frenetic consumer dance toward ecocide is to simply opt out?
Recently I read about the new “lie flat” movement in China. Lie flat (or tang ping) essentially means to “reject grueling careers for a ‘low-desire life.’” It sounds very similar to the voluntary simplicity movement of the 1970s and ‘80s* (work less, earn less, want less), and is being adopted especially by young Chinese burnt out from years of rigorous schooling and working 12 hours a day, six days a week. As one article describes: “tang ping is an action rather than a feeling — resolving to just scrape by, exerting the bare minimum effort at an unfulfilling job, as opposed to the futility of raging against the capitalist machine.”
Now, this may be an exaggerated trend picked up by the western media (including the AP, New York Times, BBC, and Guardian), or it may truly be a reflection of and response to the burnout felt by workers in China. Truth be told, there’s a fine line between the two anyway as media often heightens one-offs into memes and trends. But once you have popular Internet forums, famous Chinese novelists discussing the idea in well-known business magazines, and the Chinese government scrubbing all traces of tang ping from the Chinese Internet, then whether it was something or not, you…
