An Inquiry Into Circumstances And Constructions Of Lei Feng's Spirit In Perspective Of The Theory Of Cultural Memory

In 1963, the older party and state leaders such as Mao Zedong successively wrote the inscription and called on "learn from Comrade Lei Feng", then movements of learning from Lei Feng came into vogue on the land of China. Marked by the rise of mass activities of learning from Lei Feng and the establishment of the Lei Feng's anniversary on March 5, Lei Feng's spirit becomes the cultural memory of the Chinese nation.For more than 50 years, China has experienced different historical periods, which is magnificent as well as up and down. The spirit of Lei Feng also changes at times in the course of inheritance and development, suffering varying chances and challenges, which has had both the enthusiasm of the special age and the loss of reform and opening up as well as market economy. In different periods, the connotation of Lei Feng's spirit has been rewritten and reconstructed, therefore, the different cultural memories have been constructed; At the same time, the cultural memory in different times also contains the distortion and reduction of memories as well as the danger of instrumentalization. Today, we are going through social transformation and cultural diversity. On one hand, there is a worrying phenomenon that can't be denied. Moral decline and moral loss rise, doubt and indifference spread. The function of Lei Feng's spirit in the identity of subject and sense of identity has been challenged unprecedentedly. On the other hand, people call for the return of Lei Feng's spirit and hope to reconstruct and form the social climate of mutual love, sincerity, friendliness as well as simplicity. The spirit of Lei Feng which has been laid to rest for a time increasingly shows the shining light in the new era.The spirit of Lei Feng is the real existence of "cultural memory". Based on the theory of cultural memory, this paper tries to analyze the formation and evolution, identity crisis and construction path of Lei Feng's spirit in the new era through three parts, including the prototype and continuation, distortion and weakening, reestablishment and strengthening of Lei Feng's spirit. In my opinion, the distortion and weakening of Lei Feng's spirit manifest mainly as the political tendency, misreading, market impact, marginalization crisis and international challenge of Lei Feng's spirit. Admittedly, the spirit of Lei Feng is weakened, or even plunged into a crisis of self-distortion, and becomes a tool to erase the Chinese revolutionary culture. To solve the problem, some constructive suggestions have been put forward to reestablish and strengthen Lei Feng's spirit as follows:focus on value reconstruction to realize modernization; adhere to the media mission to realize authenticity; strengthen culture identity to realize normalization; develop social education to realize popularization; promote integration of civilizations to realize globalization; improve self-cognition to realize stability of Lei Feng's spirit, etc. On one hand, it's the necessity of the inheritance and development of traditional virtue and historical culture at present; On the other hand, it's the motivation of the development of spiritual civilization in China and the world.