Chapter 59 13. History

The first head-on collision with history was when I was 22 or 3 years old. At that time, I was studying at the Central Party School, and my mind was full of traces left by a very positive education. For example, what should a great person do?How should they behave?What should a good person be like, and what should a bad person be like?There is a fixed pattern.But there are two things that made me doubt history, and I found that the greatness that people see may not be so great, and it is somewhat unreal, and the real thing must be behind the greatness.From then on I began to study the other side of greatness.

I first started doubting ancient times in 1982, when I was studying at the Central Party School. The school has two reading rooms: one is the party periodical room, and the other is the internal materials (internal reference) reading room.At that time, I looked at the internal reference according to the level, and many materials could not be found in other places. All the materials in the reading room of the party magazine reflected the dark side and problems of society, so I suddenly felt that, except for what we read from the "People's Daily" Besides the positive stuff, there's so much real stuff going on here!I began to doubt, and gradually I formed the habit of looking for historical materials in the internal periodical room, and kept reading various internal references. These materials made me know that the world is originally composed of two complementary sides, one is propaganda, the other is internal reference.

I realized that in the course of history there were real truths and wrongs that I didn't know.In this way, I overturned my previous understanding of right and wrong. From then on, I began to pay attention to the other side of greatness. During the discussion, I did find a lot of greatness that disappoints, greatness that makes people despise, greatness that makes people not reverence, greatness that makes people unwilling to follow, and greatness that makes people not follow. Greatness no longer admired. Later, when Liu Chuanzhi and I went out to climb mountains, I joked that a great man is like standing on a mountain, the sun is shining on him, he looks at us, all of us think he is going up from the sun, but in fact he is from He climbed up from a shady slope, that is to say, a great person does not lose sunshine just because he climbs from a shady slope.History tells me one thing. Nothing seems to hinder greatness. Greatness is just a result. We often only see the flower. As for where the flower comes from and how it blooms, we don’t know.

It is indeed a great pleasure to observe the other side of greatness.