Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Chapter 3

Don’t read Zuo Zhuan

"Zuo Zhuan" and "Shi Ji" are my favorite historical books. Why don't I read them? Reading them will affect my confidence. This confidence is hard-won. I have been educated by the state for so many years. I have learned the social development history since I was a child. I know that human beings are improving every day and the system is getting better and better. The Spring and Autumn Period recorded in "Zuo Zhuan" is, according to the textbook, a transition from slave society to feudal society. Listen, it is slave society and feudal society. It is several stages away from our current system. It is older than the old society and ancient times. It is simply dark.

I remember someone was voting for their "favorite era". Some said the Song Dynasty, some said the Han Dynasty. When I was asked this question, I answered the Spring and Autumn Period. As soon as I said this, I immediately repented. I use computers, take penicillin, bathe in tap water and the sunshine brought by socialism. How can I admire the barbaric and difficult ancient times? It's nothing more than reading Zuo Zhuan too much. It can be seen that even if it is a good book, there are reasons not to read it.

Interestingly, people in the Spring and Autumn Period were not like us, who felt that they were living in a prosperous era and laughed dryly in their dreams. Especially the scholars in the late Spring and Autumn Period, such as Julian, sighed and were dissatisfied with society. From the Spring and Autumn Period to the Warring States Period, a large number of scholars, influenced by this dark psychology, have been looking for a way out of the system. At that time, a common concept was that mankind had fallen from the golden age, so You Li was not as good as Wen Wu, the Three Kings were not as good as the Three Dynasties, and according to Lao Zhuang and others, the Three Dynasties were not as good as the earliest Wu Huai and Ge Tian. Confucianism advocates the use of rituals to regulate human nature little by little in order to achieve great harmony, while Victor has no confidence in any system and advocates a rush to disperse. They are also idealists, but in the opposite direction of us.

After Confucianism formed an alliance with the state, there was no longer any institutional ideal. For more than a thousand years, the ancients had no imagination or expectation for the future. The political clock had actually stopped, and the daily lives of officials and citizens remained unchanged. Everything was taken for granted. Those benevolent and ambitious people, while patching up the cracks and leaks, dared to think, but they were just the old tune of the saints. This is very different from us.

We are the opposite of the ancients. We worship time and firmly believe that no matter what aspect of human life is, it will get better and better as time goes by, and it will get better automatically. The modern times are better than the ancient times, and the contemporary times are better than the modern times. No matter how we mess around today, it can only produce good results, because the future is naturally better than the present. We have the ability to actively change our lives, and we never hesitate to use this ability, because we believe that change is good.

But think calmly, the progress of mankind is reflected in the positive aspects, such as the development of technology and the improvement of concepts. In the Spring and Autumn Period, people had almost no way to survive if they got pneumonia. Even before that, people even ate human flesh. These changes are practical and mark the real progress of mankind. On the negative side, it is the institutional reform that people often place high hopes on, that is, while organizing society, let the organization itself make less trouble and not become the host.

If we have natural confidence in the latter, we are too optimistic about the future. For example, we know that the worst absolutist countries did not appear in ancient times, but appeared again and again in later generations, and each time was worse than the previous one. A very appropriate example is Hitler's fascist Germany. There was no condition for such a country to appear a thousand years ago.

This is not to say that the minds of the ancients were good. Take China as an example. In ancient times, the state power could not control the entire lives of the people, and the bureaucratic system only managed to the county level. This was partly due to the constraints of the clan system and partly due to the lack of technical and economic capabilities to support the mobilization and control of the entire population. Therefore, the emperors of ancient times would lament that their ambitions were difficult to achieve and that their lives were too early to catch up with the future prosperity.

I often criticize the ancient imperial system, but this does not mean that I think people in the Tang, Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties had a hard time. Life in ancient times was hard and unfair, and personal rights were subject to countless interferences. Fortunately, the interference at that time was rough, and although you couldn't afford to provoke it, you could occasionally avoid it. Most of the gentry and officials who held power knew some moderation, which came from their education and their social connections that were much more extensive than today.

Besides, there are other details. When reading Zuo Zhuan, the most attractive thing is the temperament of people in the Spring and Autumn Period, which is strong and gentle, straightforward and graceful, as Zixia said, "When you look at them, they are solemn, when you approach them, they are warm, and when you listen to their words, they are stern." The daily life of the Spring and Autumn Period is probably not desirable to anyone; but today, you may find such friends as people in the Spring and Autumn Period, but it is difficult to find such enemies.

Some people describe the temperament of the people in the Spring and Autumn Period as "noble". I tend not to say so. "Noble" has become a trademark now. Once it becomes a trademark, it must be mass-produced and sold. Although it may not be noble, it is definitely expensive. On the contrary, the people in the Spring and Autumn Period were noble in some ways, but not necessarily expensive. The common people in "Zuo Zhuan" are also very calm, as if their lives have some room for maneuver in many aspects. This reminds us that although there was severe oppression in the Spring and Autumn Period, the direction was single, and it was not squeezed in from all directions to make people a round nation.

Don't read Ram

Of the three commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals, the one we are most familiar with is the Zuo Zhuan. The other two, the Gongyang Zhuan and the Guliang Zhuan, are less famous. But in terms of their status in ancient political philosophy, the Gongyang Zhuan is actually higher than the Zuo Zhuan. The Zuo Zhuan is a history book, while the Gongyang Zhuan is a political science custom-made by Confucian scholars for the Han Dynasty.

The powerful people who rebelled at the end of the Qin Dynasty called for the revival of the old and the continuation of the old. When they seized the world, they sat down and never mentioned the past again. Liu had nothing to be embarrassed about, but the Confucian scholars who cooperated with the imperial power had a little theoretical embarrassment. According to Gongyang School, Julian had no confidence or interest in Zhou. When he wrote "Spring and Autumn Annals", his original intention was to make laws for the future kings. This is called "using the Spring and Autumn Annals as a new king", which is a major purpose of Gongyang School. There is a more vivid description in the Wei Book: "Julian looked up to the will of heaven, looked down to observe the changes of the times, and looked into the future. He foresaw the infinite and knew that Han would succeed the great chaos, so he made a law to remedy the chaos and taught it to them." In this way, the Han Dynasty replaced Qin and established itself, which fulfilled Julian' prediction and was justified.

The cooperation between Confucian scholars and the emperor was like the cooperation between a fox and a lion. One thing that Confucian scholars were proud of was that they had tamed the lion. More or less, the lion was proud that the fox could manage the grassland for it. As for the gains and losses of each party, it was also a muddled account. If it were based on Julian's teachings, such cooperation would never have been formed. If Julian had come down from the underworld and met the emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties, neither of them would have bought into it. Dong Zhongshu, the first master of Gongyang School, transformed Confucianism. This new Confucianism was actually only superficially similar to Julian' classical Confucianism. It was closer to the School of Names and the Five Elements. Roughly speaking, the formal contract between the imperial power and Confucianism was signed by Emperor Wu of Han and Dong Zhongshu, and the role of Gongyang School in it was not small.