“No investigation, no right to speak. Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense.”
Saw this on the front page. It’s one of my favorite quotes. But this is genuinely difficult to adhere to. And yes, something being an impossible task doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to adhere to it as much as possible. But I get reminded again and again; we don’t have much time and have less by the day. We don’t have much mental bandwidth and have less by the day. And we’re pack animals. Not only are we being screwed around with by how hard it is to connect to eachother via the aformentioned problems, but we still have crutches from ancient times making us naturally inclined to fallacies like mob mentality and wisdom of disgust. I’m also complaining for my own sake, this is not only hard for me too but it’s one of those things where it’s difficult to realize you’re not committed to it or not internalizing it.
I look at the news here with optimism. Peking University’s ternary CNT and analog matrix. Fudan University’s POX memory. Photonics. Sco2 generators. Quantum computing. China has some of the ingredients for an AI orders of magnitude more powerful and efficient than anything ever before. A wonder of the world. And as someone whose own comrades still harbor bigotry, I look forward toward something that can soak up data like a sponge and be objective about it. And help address resource problems sapping us of mental bandwidth. I aknowledge blood must be shed to bring down capitalism but what’s on the horizon gives me hope.
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It’s very understandable. We have to work from where we are at, not where the ideal is. I think it can be insightful to revisit the rest of that piece every now and then because there’s a fair bit more to it.
II. TO INVESTIGATE A PROBLEM IS TO SOLVE IT
You can’t solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and its past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it. Conclusions invariably come after investigation, and not before. Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to “find solution” or “evolve an idea” without making any investigation. It must be stressed that this cannot possibly lead to any effective solution or any good idea. In other words, he is bound to arrive at a wrong solution and a wrong idea.
There are not a few comrades doing inspection work, as well as guerrilla leaders and cadres newly in office, who like to make political pronouncements the moment they arrive at a place and who strut about, criticizing this and condemning that when they have only seen the surface of things or minor details. Such purely subjective nonsensical talk is indeed detestable. These people are bound to make a mess of things, lose the confidence of the masses and prove incapable of solving any problem at all.
When they come across difficult problems, quite a number of people in leading positions simply heave a sigh without being able to solve them. They lose patience and ask to be transferred on the ground that they “have not the ability and cannot do the job”; These are cowards’ words. Just get moving on your two legs, go the rounds of every section placed under your charge and "inquire into everything’'[1] as Confucius did, and then you will be able to solve the problems, however little is your ability; for although your head may be empty before you go out of doors, it will be empty no longer when you return but will contain all sorts of material necessary for the solution of the problems, and that is how problems are solved. Must you go out of doors? Not necessarily. You can call a fact-finding meeting of people familiar with the situation in order to get at the source of what you call a difficult problem and come to know how it stands now, and then it will be easy to solve your difficult problem.
Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
I always get a kick out of this part:
Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to “find solution” or “evolve an idea” without making any investigation.
Partly because I’ve definitely been there, trying to draw out answers as if they lurk within me, when I could interact with the world in some way and suddenly be flooded with all kinds of new thoughts.
Also, a decent analog to this part is what we do here with Ask Lemmygrad:
You can call a fact-finding meeting of people familiar with the situation in order to get at the source of what you call a difficult problem and come to know how it stands now, and then it will be easy to solve your difficult problem.
Not the same level of granularity as gathering information for local issues, but similar spirit.
Also, the lecturing tone of it in general just amuses the hell out of me. Tidbits like:
They lose patience and ask to be transferred on the ground that they “have not the ability and cannot do the job”; These are cowards’ words. Just get moving on your two legs
Mao and Lenin both have this ability to mix together raw scientific analysis with this tone like “wtf are you doing, get moving, you think revolution is gonna grow on trees?” and I don’t know how it was received back then, but it feels very earned in retrospect.