Chapter 625: Chapter 397: The Hypocritical Civilization (4500 words, seeking monthly votes)_2

Those without property tend to not think about anything directly, since it’s all after they’re dead anyway, and they don’t care too much about it, they just do what they need to do.

The middle class may add another consideration – not to leave any offspring, so as not to let their descendants suffer. As for themselves, they try to spend all their money just before they die.

The upper class still sponsors space projects and remains enthusiastic about the future.

Now let’s change the question to a thousand years later.

The vast majority of people give very straightforward answers.

A thousand years? What is that? What does it have to do with me? My ashes won’t even see that day.

Just dealing with present bills, work, and business is enough to make me feel at a loss. Why would I worry about something a thousand years later?

Are you crazy?

Harrison Clark wasn’t surprised by this result at all.

This is the normal thought pattern of people.

He himself had similar thoughts during his earlier two travels to a thousand years later.

Just living in reality is already tiring enough, who has the time to care about what will happen after death?

But the scholar on stage mentioned some interesting phenomena.

People of all classes have similar views about the ten-year doomsday, but at the hundred-year and the thousand-year marks, some people show obvious differences.

These people say they will work harder, try to create more value, and make a desperate attempt.

The number of people saying such things isn’t large, but there are still some differences between them.

For example, some big businessmen and politicians talk beautifully, but their words reveal strong hypocrisy. Their essential intent is to gain immediate benefits, such as money and fame, through self-packaging.

Another group of people give more constructive answers, immediately starting to think and continually asking questions about the form in which this “doomsday” will arrive, how to avoid it, and how to confront it.

Most of these people are scholars, successful scholars at that.

The expert on stage eventually concluded: “I spent five years completing this social experiment, and the result isn’t very optimistic. I believe that only when the crisis is far away, those who are well-off, have considerable knowledge, and possess extremely high personal moral qualities will consider the rather illusory sense of responsibility.”

“But when the crisis is imminent, almost everyone quickly falls into the fear of the end of the world, and we will see the collapse of social order. Streets will be filled with gunfire and flames, robbery will become a job, and the lives of fellow human beings will not be respected. Our population may decline by at least half before the real doomsday.”

This scholar’s view is quite pessimistic.

Harrison Clark, who has witnessed the end-of-the-world scenarios several times, didn’t refute him.

First of all, the doomsday the scholar assumes does not actually exist.

According to his description, it is an unstoppable doomsday in the first place.

However, what Harrison Clark saw in the future proved that when technology is advanced enough, everyone can be well-off and receive higher education without having to fight for resources. As long as they have enough time for mental preparation, even if facing an unstoppable and predictable doomsday, mankind will still give it a try, also known as not giving up until the last moment.

In addition, this economist from the University of Oxford made another mistake.

His experimental sites and questionnaire survey sites are both limited to Europe and North America, with the vast majority of respondents being native English speakers.

This scholar overlooked the Chinese-speaking population, which accounts for one-fifth of the global total population.

Therefore, his seemingly reference-rich largescale social experiment is also biased.

Harrison Clark intuitively believes that if the same question is asked to Chinese-speaking people, the answers might be quite different.

A person’s worldview is highly related to their childhood environment, the education they receive, and the type of native language they speak.

Human thinking needs to be based on the medium of language.

The principles and philosophies in people’s minds are not empty concepts, but rather a series of self-conclusions and theories based on different language structures.

These theories form a person’s behavioral norms and determine the direction of their thinking and decision-making when confronted with various choices.

When people who speak different languages face the same problem, they often show completely different coping styles.

Chinese and other languages differ greatly in pronunciation, written text structure, sentence expression, logical structure, and emotional display.

Chinese is a fast language that tends to focus on precise expression and is relatively concrete.

English is a slow language that leans toward metaphorical extensions and is relatively abstract.

Chinese speakers tend to focus more on the present moment, which seems realistic.

English speakers are more likely to focus on the future. Knowledgeable, highly emotional native English speakers often focus on the future as well. European and American scholars’ performances when facing the “doomsday problem” didn’t disappoint.

Unfortunately, the majority in this world are still ordinary people with relatively limited knowledge.

Therefore, ordinary English speakers can easily immerse themselves in the intensified fear generated by abstract thinking, leaving no time to consider any sense of responsibility.

According to Harrison Clark’s estimation, ordinary Chinese speakers might behave quite differently from their English-speaking counterparts.

It’s not to say that the proportion of Chinese speakers would change, but the proportion of people who focus on the future and the present moment would be higher.