Gentle Devouring

This book carries forward the metaphor of “eating people” in Lu Xun’s A Madman’s Diary, tracing a century of social change and examining how, after oppression sheds its cloak of violence, it evolves into the hidden, socially sanctioned structural depletion of modern society. The author acknowledges genuine progress in society’s material conditions and human rights, while pointing out that the underlying structures that reduce people to tools still remain.

Drawing on real-world cases, public data, and sociological theory, the book explores phenomena such as involution and overtime work, platform labor, social barriers, and self-exploitation. It reveals the cycle in which the oppressed unconsciously uphold the very rules that constrain them. It also clarifies the boundaries between concepts, distinguishing everyday hardship from structural harm and rejecting the idea that individuals are entirely to blame for their difficulties.

The book offers no feel-good promises of a dramatic turnaround. It faces the reality that individuals can hardly change vast structural forces, and offers practical ways to get by. Echoing the call to “save the children,” the work reflects on educational involution and generational discipline, urging individuals to break free from self-denial, preserve their dignity, and stop the logic of depletion from being passed on to the next generation.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.