Pursuit Of The Meaning Of Life

The rapid development of urbanization in China has led to the continuous flow between the rural and urban areas,which not only has left a large number of rural left-behind population,but also caused a profound impact on the rural traditional lifestyles and cultural values,and further brought a huge impact on the lives of the aged people in the rural areas.Due to the physiological and psychological weakness of the rural elderly,it is difficult for them to fully adapt to the rapid and profound economic and social transformation.Their aged economic support,life care and spiritual comfort all fall into predicament with various degrees,and their psychological anxiety and depression are increasingly severe.The individualization of rural society,the utilitarianization of rural interpersonal relationships,and the aggregation of social and individual risks further crack the identity consciousness of the rural elderly,erode their social capital,and weaken their life confidence.The“religious fever" in the rural area that began at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century,has drawn attention from the government and academia.On the one hand,the national economy grows rapidly and people's living standards improve continuously,while on the other hand,the phenomenon of religious belief is constantly emerging.Among the newly-increased religious believers,the elderly tend to be significant and become an important group in the"religious fever".The phenomenon of co-development of economy and religion has been unable to obtain all reasonable explanation from the traditional "Religion Opium Theory",and it is necessary to construct or apply new theories for more practical interpretation.That is to say,it is necessary to proceed not only from the Chinese society's politics,economy,culture and psychological structure of people,the new development environment of religious belief in rural area,the economic development's impact on rural society,the inheritance and promotion of rural traditional culture,as well as the impact of economic and social transformation on the psychological structure of residents in rural area,etc.,to explore the reality and psychological causes of the rural elderly's choices on believing religions,but also from the legal religions' solve of life predicament and mental and psychological satisfaction and support,especially the deep influence on reassignment of individual value,social relationship construction,and rebuilding life confidence of the rural elderly,to mine the external and internal motivation on religious belief,then to summarize the religious belief choice mechanism,and finally,and to achieve the deep and accurate understanding of the religious significance for the rural elderly.There are two sources of quantitative data on the religious belief of the aged people in rural area:one is based on the survey data of religious belief of 980 rural aged people in Qufu;the other is the survey data from the 2015 CGSS(Chinese General Social Survey)by Renmin University of China and 2016 CFPS(China Family Panel Studies)by Peking University.The qualitative documents about the religious belief of the aged people in rural area are mainly from the unstructured interviews of 50 elderly people in Qufu.The main research methods adopted in this essay include literature research,participation observation,unstructured interview,and statistics analysis.Through literature analysis,the fact is found that most of the studies on religious belief in China's rural area are from the perspective of Religious Anthropology,and the studies from the perspective of Sociology of Religion are reiatively few.Research on religious belief of the rural elderly is insufficient,and the results are mainly concentrated on some external factors that affect religious belief,such as difficulties in life and lack of guarantees.The deep analysis of religious belief for the life significance of the aged people in the rural areas are in great shortage,causing the lack of depth in researches.Through the observation and participation of rural religious practices,the author obtained a vivid live experience of rural religious life,increased the understanding of the rural elderly's motivation and meaning of choosing religious belief.Unstructured interview helps to lay aside the surface understanding of external factors that affect the rural elderly's religious belief,and helps to get the subjective rational cognition through "transference”.The statistical analysis of the survey data from Qufu,the national social survey data,and relevant rural religious information from survey data of large-scale left-behind elderly people in some regions,can not only provide a general overview of rural religious belief from "face",but also help to get a more objective and comprehensive understanding of various motivations of the rural elderly's choice behaviors in religious belief.It is believed in this essay that the main motivation of the rural elderly to choose religious belief is to pursue and reshape the individual life meaning,which mainly reflects on three aspects.Firstly,because of the decline of individual authority and the loss of individual values of the rural elderly in the individual era,the elderly found the awareness of individual identity,and further realized the assignment of individual value.Secondly,because of the fact that the social capital with personal authority,interpersonal trust,and cooperation norms as its main content,does not increase along with the economic growth and social development,the aged people in the rural areas building up their individual authority,strengthen interpersonal trust,reinforce communication standards and further strengthen and enhance social capital through religious belief,through which they rebuild family relation,interpersonal relation and power relation.Thirdly,because of coping with the risks from life and individuals among the aged people in the rural areas.The life risks include the insufficiency of basic security concerning families,society and public service as well as shortage of public security.The individual risk include the decline of physical functions,the health risk concerning discontinuation of mental support and unbalanced inter-generation ethic,and the family ethic risk concerning loss of individual dignity.By means of the reasonable application of risks,the rural elderly wish to realize "ontology security",to maintain family values and reserve the return of the next life through religious belief,and to cope with the increasing life and individual risks.The innovative significance of the three aspects lies in research findings and conclusions religious belief of the aged people in rural areas in this thesis.First,it discussed and expounded the internal value of religious belief in the construction of the life meaning system of the aged people in rural areas.Second,it clarified and revealed the potential mechanism of religious belief in rebuilding the social relations of the rural elderly.Third,it concluded and proposed the mechanism of religious belief selection for the elderly in rural areas,namely the "refusing and attracting”mechanism.The first chapter of this essay is the introduction of the essay,mainly introducing the research origin,research significance,research status and problems,research position and research methods.The second chapter is the introduction of status situation of the religious of the aged people in rural area.The third to the fifth chapters are the key content,mainly introducing the meaning and significance of the religious belief of the aged people in rural area.The sixth chapter is the conclusion,which summarizes the main findings and viewpoints,and discusses some related religious issues and issues on caring the aged people in rural area.Overviews about the chapters are as follows:Chapter I:Introduction.The start points are illustrated from the highlighted religious problems in social development,the rapid development of religious belief in rural area,the increasing phenomena of religious aged people in rural area,the research necessity of "life significanc" of religion for aged people in rural area,etc..The research status are presented from the general research of religious belief in China's rural area,research of religious belief in China's rural area after the opening-up,and the evaluation of the existing research,and the main research questions and core concepts are defined.The standpoint of this essay is mainly the discussion about the "actual" content of the rural elderly's religious belief,but not the "ought-to-be" content.Chapter II:Current Situation of Religious Belief among Old People in Rural Area.This chapter mainly contains the development background of religious belief in rural area,the general situation of religious belief in Qufu's rural area,the discussion on motivation analysis and choice mechanism of religious belief among old people in rural area,and explicitly points out that the general logic in the rural elderly's choosing on religious belief lies in the general decline of health condition,the unbearable pressure of internal and external pressure and the timely appearance of religious belief,the choice mechanism lies in the "institutional refuse" of worldly system and "belonging attraction" of religions.Chapter III:The Re-endowment of Individual Value.Based on individualization theory,this chapter expounds the performance of individualization in rural society and the process and consequences of individualization of rural people,analyzes the influence of individualization in rural society on the rural elderly's individual authority and value,and discuss the religious beliefre-endowment of individual value to the rural elderly from the aspects of arousing identity consciousness,improving of ability of independent life,and reaching spiritual belonging.Chapter IV:Reestablishment of Social Relation.The influence of differentiation of family,interpersonal,and power relations on the rural elderly' s social capital from the rural society's relation structure is investigated from the perspective of social relations structure in rural areas,while the mechanism of religious belief on the reconstruction of family relations,interpersonal relations and power relations in the rural elderly is discussed through the analysis of the path of interaction between social capital and social relations and from the aspects of individual authority,interpersonal trust and communication norms.Chapter V:Remolding Life Confidence.In this chapter,based on the life and individual risks facing by the rural elderly under the background of modernization and the studies on risk and rationality theories,it is concluded that the aged people in rural area are facing the external life risks and internal individual risks,so they wish to reach the“ontology security",maintain family value,and.realize the reservation of payment in the next life.Chapter VI:Conclusion and Discussion.In this chapter,the essay is summarized from two aspects,namely the general assessment of the current situation of religious belief among aged people in rural area and the significance of religious belief to the living of them,and related problems are further discussed,which are the recognition of rural religious belief's status,the assessment of rural religious belief's function,the establishment of the attitudes towards rural religious belief and the principles on caring aged people in rural area.