Xu Ming sometimes felt that he must be a transparent person in front of his master's eyes, at least in a translucent state, because he found that even many of his secret inner activities could not escape the master's eyes. He felt a little embarrassed, but he also developed a heartfelt awe for his master, and he felt that he had indeed learned a lot of things from his master that were not in books.

A busy day has passed. In the dead of night, when Xu Ming was quietly alone, the last thing he did before resting was to take out his diary and record his experiences and feelings for the day, and the process of recording was also the process of positioning himself.

On the title page of each of his newly opened diaries, Xu Ming would write the same line: At any time, for any reason, we must not deviate from the correct course of life and the ideal track. Like a captain who insists on writing a nautical diary, he controls the ship of his own life, and the diary is the basis for him to make sure that he does not deviate from his ideal goal every day.

This habit has not changed since the university years. If one day he feels uneasy inside, it must be that the diary is not finished. No matter how late it is, before he lies down at the end of the day, he settles down, turns a new page, and writes down his new experiences and thoughts.

Xu Ming considers himself an idealist. In his daily work and life, he is interested in the meaning, relationship and possibility of things, and his judgments about things are based on his personal values.

He likes to be true to himself, is open to new ideas, and is always thinking and searching for the meaning of existence. He believes that a good job should be a meaningful job, not a simple routine job, and not just a means of earning a living. He advocates harmony and is reluctant to pursue his own development in a competitive or fragmented environment.

The university campus is the campus of youth, when a couple walks hand in hand, when the roommates are all trapped in the castle of love, Xu Ming is still alone. He knew he had been someone else's target, but he didn't have a goal himself. Because he does not want to be a captive of affection, nor does he want to be a hunter of affection. In the great garden of youth, he considered himself neither a bee nor a butterfly, but a little joyful bird that stayed for a short time, and that he was only a passing visitor to the place.

His four-year college life is more like a diver, entering an ocean that he has long longed for, in the ocean of knowledge, Xu Ming dived into the world of the bottom of the sea, exploring, discovering, absorbing, and when he harvested rich treasures and surfaced, his college life has also become a thing of the past.

After entering the court work, he really realized that society is a real classroom. Books can't give you answers, and theory can't solve your own problems, but society can help you, and practice can tell you. He clearly knows that in order to gain a foothold in society, he must re-understand himself, reposition himself, and re-find his position.

Like many of his peers, he was the only child in his family, and his parents wanted him to return to them and marry and have children as they wished. They look forward to being like thousands of parents, teasing their grandchildren and enjoying family fun. This is a traditional culture recognized by generations of Chinese and continued to be practiced from generation to generation, and it is also the gene that the Chinese nation can continue to pass on from generation to generation.

Of course, Xu Ming also believes that the younger generation has no reason to deny this tradition, and as a generation that carries on the past and opens up the future, they are willing to accept such a tradition. What they deny is not marriage per se, but marriage without love. What they reject is not the inheritance of life and cultural traditions, but the family model of the agrarian era of childbearing for the sake of childbearing.

While studying marriage law, Xu Ming also read through Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is a grand narrative of the development process of human history by Engels on the basis of historical materialism, showing the periodization of human history, the family organization and institutions involved in each stage, and contributing a new political starting point, perspective and logic to political science.

During his university years, Xu Ming liked to dabble in many fields of social sciences and explore social issues related to some contemporary hot topics. After following Dongfang Siyi to engage in family trial work, he naturally paid more attention to the changes in the form of human marriage and family.

As a high-level life, human beings are also inseparable from the laws of the life cycle of birth, old age, sickness and death. The phenomenon of human life cycle makes us unable to support ourselves when we are born, nor can we continue to rely on our ability to maintain the normal needs of life after old age and decay.

When human beings evolved from individuals, clans, and tribes to primitive societies, slave societies, and then to feudal societies, the basic mode of human beings to achieve the continuation of life cycle through intergenerational transfer is to provide different degrees of security through families, clansmen, and various social organizations that have developed later.

The main model of this guarantee is based on private ownership and on the basis of the family. In the traditional agrarian society for thousands of years, in addition to the family lineage, the main goal of giving birth to offspring is to train a new labor force, which is an inevitable need for production development and livelihood security.

The modern state has gradually established a basic social security system, and many functions that could only be performed by families and clans in the past have been provided by the state to a certain extent. For example, the establishment of the basic system of social endowment insurance is the most basic one. In the past, the traditional model of raising children and preventing old age in Chinese has been gradually realized by the social system. The purpose of giving birth to offspring has evolved from a low-level need in the past to a higher-level spiritual need.

This kind of change has provided a basic material basis for the change of modern people's concept of marriage and family, so that the function of marriage and family is more inclined to spiritual pursuit, and the organizational form of marriage and family is more based on the needs of human nature and the needs of love.

The younger generation, which has received good higher education, has basically shaken off the shackles of a lifestyle in which food and clothing are the basic material needs, and has become a new generation with emancipated minds. They have the conditions to begin to accept the influence of various new trends of thought, and they have the conditions to choose their own way of life according to their own understanding of life, as well as their pursuit and goals in life, which is an inevitable part of the process of human civilization.

In their view, marriage is not just to give an account to their parents, marriage is not just to pass on the lineage, but to keep love and understanding by their side. There is no fixed standard answer to marriage, and young people have more choices, and they know what kind of person they have chosen, that is, what kind of life they have chosen.

Partnering for life-raising marriage has been disdained by more and more young people. They are looking for more ways to build an ideal life that they are satisfied with. They came together more because of their careers, and more because of their reluctance. They believe more in fate, believe in pheromones, rely more on emotion, rely more on trust, and understand and need the companionship and growth of the soul.

In Xu Ming's view, marriage is not to conform to his parents, nor to conform to secular society, but to find a trustworthy and close person for himself. Everyone will have a kind of psychological dependence, with their own home will be like a boat on the shore, the place of peace is home, no one does not need love, no one does not need companionship.

Xu Ming has personally experienced the practice of trial of marriage and family cases for more than three years, and usually pays attention to the extensive investigation and analysis of contemporary marriage and family-related materials, so it is becoming more and more obvious that in contemporary life, marriage has entered an era of coexistence of idealism and pessimism, which is the inevitable appearance of the concept of family and marriage in the period of social transition.

According to a census from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China's single adult population reached 240 million in 2018, and more than 77 million adults lived alone. Some expect the number of adults living alone to rise to 92 million by 2021. The marriage rate peaked at 9.92 per thousand in 2013 and has been declining year by year since then, reaching 7.3 per thousand in 2018. The divorce rate continued to rise, from 0.9 per thousand in 2002 to 3.2 per thousand in 2018. The data clearly shows that there are relatively few marriages and more divorces.

The large number of single groups has brought us a big question mark, why do more and more people choose to be single? According to a social survey conducted by a national newspaper Xu Ming, among the more than 200 million adult single people in China, 30.1% of single women are afraid of marriage, and 19.3% of men are afraid of marriage.

Why do people not only look forward to having an ideal marriage and family, but also become a family that is afraid of marriage? The reason for this contradictory phenomenon should not be found solely from those who are afraid of marriage, but should be more from the external constraints and influences of the social environment.

With the development of social productive forces, the material wealth of society has grown massively, and the independence of people has been continuously improved. Marriage is no longer a "necessary" form of material existence, but the result of a "want" in a spiritual pursuit. This is a phenomenon brought about by social progress, and it is also the inevitable result of social progress.

People's expectations for marriage are synchronized with spiritual needs and expectations for love, companionship, understanding, and support. The ideal marriage should have the sense of belonging, identity, and value that it needs, and it is the end of loneliness on the spiritual level, rather than the satisfaction of food and clothing on the material level.

As one netizen said, "I am not so poor that I have to rely on marriage to solve the problem of food and clothing, nor am I rich enough to find a person who is the right person to tie the knot." If there is no really suitable person to appear, I would rather not get married, I am willing to wait, even if it is later, I am willing to wait, waiting for a result in my mind. This has undoubtedly become a relatively common social psychology.

Idealism is not exclusionism, and fear of marriage is not true non-marriage. It's just that I didn't meet the right person, and I didn't meet that standard in my own psychology, whether it's a married person or a divorced person, it seems to have something to do with it.

For single people, many people are not married, not because marriage is not important to them, but precisely because they value marriage too much and would rather be single than reluctant.

(Next Notice: Chapter 80: The Siege of Poverty)