News of the death of Mr. Zhao Zi Yang, the former General Secretary of Chinese Communist Party, spread over the Internet. He was famous because he was forced to step down after Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. I have no intention to discuss causes and consequences of that event, neither do I have any judgments on it. However, some theoretical analyses in terms of revolution do deserve some attentions. What I mean by “revolution” here is not judgmental, as a revolution can be anything.

Frustration theory is one of many theories which can partially explain the rise of revolution. It suggests that the confliction between the government (and associated dominators) and those dominated will get tenser over time, thus provoking a revolution. For example, in the Marxism, a revolution is caused by the confliction between working class and capitalists. However, this was not the case for the revolution at the beginning of 1900s in China, neither was the case for the 1989 event. To see this, before 1989, the great confliction was between those rich and those poor due to increasing income inequality. But it was the students who first stood up. The target of its fight was the corruption of the government.

One may notice that during the 1980s, the fast economical growth benefited the whole population. People were enjoying an open political atmosphere which one could not imagine 10 years ago. If life was getting better, why was there a revolution? Mr. Deng Xiao Ping didn’t foresee this during 1980s, even after the earlier sign of revolution such as 1986 UTSC event. One theory suggests that it is not the actual worsening condition but the widening gap of expectation and reality that provokes a revolution. The better condition you have, the higher expectation you may ask for. Furthermore, even though people are getting richer and more freedom, this friendliness of the political atmosphere acts like an invitation for those dissenters to fight. It encourages them to seize this opportunity to overthrow the government. In this sense, the Marxism revolution theory is plainly wrong.

Now here is another piece to consider. To succeed a revolution, one key element is to question the legitimacy of a government. Who can question the legitimacy of the government and who wants to question it? Obviously those know the government well. The reasonable candidates are intellectual groups.

Furthermore, those who want a revolution are those who can benefit from it. They are power hunters. This is the basic idea of power theory. The hunters’ interests are different from those of general population. They need the general population because they need followers and enough people to fight against government. This theory may sound astonishing at first, as Mr. Mao Ze Dong had claimed that “revolutionists can’t part with the general population just as the fish can not live without water.” Think carefully, this says that revolutionists need the general population to work for their purpose. It doesn’t take consideration of general population’s interests. History already told us, every successful revolution finally fell into the hand of intellectuals. In other words, the intellectuals were the leaders of revolution, not the general population.

Now looking at the later 1980s in China, it is clear that the intellectual groups deeply involved in planning this event. However, there was no one good enough and ambitious enough to lead the revolution. From the very beginning, it would fail. During the events, it constantly changed their focus; it never seriously questioned the legitimacy of the government except at the later stage. They lacked intellectual support from the majority of intellectual society. Furthermore, nobody knew what kind of benefits would be from the success of the revolution. Although they did motivate part of the general population, the lay men were of no use. To some extent, the general population were just free-riders. The post-event ruthlessness of the general population further testified this conclusion.

Retrospectively, is that event preventable? I don’t think so. With an open political atmosphere and peer pressure from eastern European countries, facilitated by the western society, the event would come without the death of Mr. Hu Yao Bang. Indeed, even before Hu’s death, people already gathered to plan something during the congress meeting.

Mr. Deng summarized nicely after the event: “the biggest mistake in 10 years renovation is the neglect of ideology.” With a tight control of intellectuals these days, the society is still stable despite the existence of much greater income inequality than before.

Chairman Mao was indeed wiser than Mr. Deng.

When two people decide to get marriage, both of them certainly envision a bright future. Thank God, most families start this way. They may think they love each other so deeply that they will go through life together, no matter whether life will be hard or good. Unfortunately, half of them will get divorced in a couple years. It’s just a plain fact.

What’s wrong with the marriage in modern society? Haven’t all modern young people thought carefully about family life before marriage? Is marriage itself detrimental to something? Well just like the old saying: “marriage is the tomb of love”. Without love, marriage won’t last long.

Marriage consists of two people interacting on a daily basis. It is reasonable that a good start to dissect the marriage is to examine people, ourselves.

“Know yourself”, requested the Greek Philosopher Socrates. Socrates didn’t have a modest wife. But his question is still relevant. The question “Who am I?” is so intrigue that many people get depressed when confronted with this question. As a matter of fact, people in severe depression get so absorbed into this question that self-denying causes him/her suicide. It is such a serious question that most of us don’t dare to ask ourselves this question very often. Incidentally, people generally think low of their worth of life, the self-esteem.

No matter what self-perception you may have, most of us will think we are smart enough to explain and predict our behavior. We always hear these types of assertions: “I know what to do. My gut tells me what to do. I will be responsible to the consequences”. Retrospectively, we also think what we have done is alright, responsible, and worthwhile. Is this true?

Unfortunately, our intuitions are often dead wrong about what we will feel and do. Take the marriage as an example again. People in love are primary focusing on the positives and playing down the hardship of future life. They think their love will last for ever. Needless to say, for quite a lot loves, they fade away before marriage. For those loves which do bring to a culmination, half of them will end after marriage. Statistically speaking, the predictability of our gut is way too low.

Furthermore, the unrealistic optimism, exemplified in marriage situation, make all young couple feel confident that their loves last for ever. When commenting other people’s marriage failure, we always say: “those guys have problems themselves. We are different from others. We are better than them.” It sounds like a joke: “everybody is better than average.” It simply overestimates the future.

Ironically, most people attribute their marriage failure to their partners. They downplay their wrong doings (if any), and emphasize that their wives are mindless, bad tempered, tasteless, or their husbands are disgusting, unfaithful, careless, lazy, so on and so forth. This is the self serving bias all human beings have.

Let’s leave this arresting reality for a moment and examine the so called happy marriage in which marriage do last to the end of life. Naïve people may believe that for a marriage with love, caring and sharing are the most important. Sadly reality is too murky and full of sin. One national survey have shown that 91% of wives and only 76% husbands credit wife did most of the grocery shopping. And husbands always underestimate the proportion of housework wives have done. Do you think there is no daily confliction in these families? Self serving bias is everywhere.

There are more to say about self. Here I give another example of our ignorance of ourselves, but for good purpose. When facing tragedies, people feel tremendous sorrow and think they will never recover. Well, most of us do recover, and quite some can do it in just a very short time. For a simple example, when two dating people break up, one of them may feel deeply hurt. However, most people get a fresh restart within a year. Survivors from disaster such as earthquakes or tsunami quickly recovered even though their relatives may die in the disaster. Evolution of self works pretty well in these situation.

Self-analysis is of no use, to some extent. Even if we do rationalize our behavior before we implement it, our actually behavior may still differ from what we have planned, and the consequence of our behavior are as unpredictable as those unplanned behavior. Our self-report is inaccurate. It is possible that our mental process of thinking itself may be different from the mental process of results. We may don’t know why we behave the way we do. We human beings are hopeless. Period.