Chapter 3 Revisiting Writing in the Countryside

In the last article "On Writing to the Countryside", I mentioned that writing occurs in a situation where people are separated by space and time in the process of communicating emotions and ideas.But I only said something about the space barrier in that article.Rural society is a face-to-face society. If you have something to say, you can express it face-to-face without resorting to writing.The meaning of this layer is easy to understand, but what about the time barrier?In this article, I want to extend this layer of meaning. The so-called time barrier has two aspects, one is the personal gap between the present and the past, and the other is the social gap between generations.Let me start with the former.

The difference between human life and other animals lies in his ability to learn.His behavior is not stubbornly governed by unlearned physiological responses.The so-called learning is the process of using a set of man-made behaviors as a model after birth to transform the instinctive way.The method of learning is "learning".Practice refers to doing it repeatedly, relying on the tempering of time to make a person accustomed to a new practice.Therefore, learning must break down the personal gap between the present and the past.This is due to a particularly developed ability of our human beings, the bridge in time, memory.In the learning process of animals, we can also say that they have memory, but their "memory" is on a simple physiological level.A little white mouse learns a shortcut in a maze, and what it learns is a new set of physiological responses.Unlike human learning, they do not rely on a system of symbols.Although man has many habits, in essence he is like a little white mouse walking a maze, but he often has an extra symbolic system to help him.The most important thing in the so-called symbolic system is the word.We are constantly talking while studying, abstracting specific situations into a set of concepts that can be generally applied. Concepts must be expressed in words, so we rely on words to make us go from special to general. It builds a bridge; it also allows us to go from the present to the future, and builds a bridge in a momentary situation.From this point of view, the contact between an animal and time can be said to be a straight line, while the contact between a human and time relies on concepts, that is, words, which is more complicated than a straight line.He has the ability to close his eyes and place himself in the "past" situation. The "present" of a person contains projections extracted from the "past", and the selection of time accumulates.

In an animal that acts by instinct, there will be no time barrier. His lifespan is a series of "presents".But this is not the case for human beings. The present of human beings is the accumulation of the entire "past" preserved by memory.If memory disappears and is forgotten, our "time" can be said to be blocked. Perhaps the reason why man has a memory is not because his brain is an automatic camera box.It is a fact that man has this ability, and it is because he uses and develops this ability because his "current" life must have the method handed down from the "past".I once said that human learning is learning from a set of existing methods.Only by learning this method can we live in the crowd.This set of methods is not an individual creation of each individual, but a legacy of society.The little white mouse does not learn from other mice. Each mouse has to gain individual experience from the process of "trial and error" in a specific situation.They cannot transfer experience to each other and learn from each other. People rely on their abstract ability and symbolic system to accumulate not only their own experience, but also the experience of others.The so-called set of methods passed down above is the accumulation of common experience in society, which is what we often call culture.Culture is the shared experience of society maintained by symbolic systems and individual memory.In this way, each person's "present" includes not only the projection of his personal "past", but also the projection of the "past" of the entire nation.History is not an ornament for individuals, but a practical and indispensable basis for life.If one cannot live without society, one cannot but study culture.Culture depends on memory, not instinct, so people must strive to develop their memory.We have to build bridges not only between the past and the present of individuals, but also between the generations of society, otherwise there would be no culture and no life as we enjoy it now.

I have said so many words, perhaps enough to point out the connection between human life and time.In this association, words are the most important bridge.Some people say that language creates people, which is absolutely true.In the Bible, what God said, there is something, and "saying" is the beginning of "being".Although this may not be true in the physical universe, it is true in culture.If there is no symbol system, there will be no concepts, and human experience cannot or is not easy to accumulate in time, and if we want to live, we cannot surpass animals. But the words do not necessarily have to be written.Text is a symbol that can be seen with the eyes, that is, a word.Words are not necessarily inscribed or written symbols, but can also be symbols spoken by voice, language."Words" are indispensable in all cultures, but "words" do not necessarily exist.I say this because the rural society I want to explain is generally a society without "literacy".In the last article, I said that country people have no need for words from the perspective of space, and here I want to explain the same result from the perspective of time.

When I said that we develop memory, it is because we need it in our lives.Among the uncultured animals, which cope with life instinctively, there is no need for memory.When I say this, it actually includes another meaning, that is, the degree of memory development of people is determined by their needs in life.Each of us, every moment, comes into contact with many and complicated outside worlds, but not all of them meet our feelings, and we have choices.We don't see everything that comes into contact with our eyes, we only see what we pay attention to. Our sight has a focus, and the focus moves according to our attention.The object of attention is chosen by us, and the choice is based on the needs of our life.We don't care about things that have nothing to do with our lives and turn a blind eye to them.The same is true of our memory. We don't remember all the past, but only a very small part of it.When I say remember, it is actually better to say recall later. "Ji" has the meaning of recognizing in the present for future usefulness, and "recalling" means thinking of past experiences for current relevance.In fact, it is difficult to predict the future use at present, and most of them recall the past for current needs.Sometimes this process is very laborious, so it is called "bitter memory".But in any case, memory is not idle, but practical, for life.

The range of memory required by a person living in a rural society is different from that of a person living in a modern city.Rural society is a very stable society.I have already said that he who lives from the clay cannot always move.What is born in one place grows in that place until it dies.The extreme rural society is Lao Tzu's ideal society, "chickens and dogs hear each other, old age and death do not communicate with each other." Not only do individuals rarely leave their hometowns, but the place where each person lives is often his parents' country. The result of "being born here and dying here" must be the stickiness of generations.Although this kind of extreme rural society is not often realized, we do have an unshakable intention throughout the ages. Otherwise, why do people who die outside have to transport their coffins to their hometowns and bury them on the ancestral tombs?Life is given to this soil, and after death, flesh and blood have to return to this soil.

As a result, people grow up not only among acquaintances, but also in familiar places.Familiar places can include a mix of people and soil for an extremely long time.The ancestors got acquainted in this place, and their experience must be that of the descendants.The long time is said in terms of genealogy, and it is said from the experience that everyone may have, but it is repeated in the same way.The same play is being performed on the same stage, and all the actors in this troupe need to remember are only one set of play texts.Their individual experience is equal to the experience of a generation.Experience does not need to be continuously accumulated, it only needs to be kept.

I remember when I was studying in elementary school, the teacher forced me to keep a diary. I thought hard on the pen, but in the end I only wrote the word "same as above".That's the truth, every day is "morning, class, game, sleep", what can I remember?The teacher ordered not to "same as above", and the pupils could only lie. Habits with deep physiological foundations that have grown up in a stereotyped life help us work in a rhythm of "rising at sunrise and resting at sunset".Memories are superfluous. "I don't know the coming of old age" is to describe the life of "forgetting the time".It doesn't matter if Qin died and Han prospered.In rural society, people are not afraid of forgetting, and they can forget comfortably.I only tie a knot on my finger when I am afraid of forgetting something out of routine.

The knot on the finger is the original form of writing, and its purpose is to use external symbols and use associations to help people's memory.In a constantly changing environment, we only need these external symbols when we feel that our memory is not enough.The change from language to writing, that is, from speaking words with sound, to knotting with rope, carving pictures with a knife, and writing with a pen, is due to the process of our life from stereotyped to indeterminate.Living in the city, people who come into contact with strange faces all day long need to hide a directory and address book in their pockets.An ID card with a photo attached to it in rural society is meaningless.There can be more than a dozen "Brother Wang" in a village, and you will never recognize the wrong person because of it.

In a society where the life of each generation is equal to the opening of the same film, history is also redundant, and some are just "legends".As soon as we talk about the history, we have to start with "creating the world"; if we don't start from here, isn't there only the "ordinary" present in the following?In urban society there is news; in rural society, "news" has a strange and absurd meaning.There are celebrities in urban society, but in rural society, "people are afraid of being famous, and pigs are afraid of being strong."If you don't be the first or the last, you have to follow the rules.This kind of society does not use the normal curve, but a set printed in a mold.

In such a society, language is sufficient to transmit experience from one generation to the next.When a person encounters a problem in life, he must be able to find an effective solution to the problem from an older person, because everyone is in the same environment and walks the same path, he goes first, and you go later ; Those who go later will follow the footprints of those who went first, word of mouth will pass on, and there will be no omissions.Can words be used there?There is no barrier in time, and it is very tight, and the entire culture can be passed on between parents and children. In this way, if China is a rural society, how can there be writing?My answer is that Chinese society is rural from the grassroots level, and Chinese writing does not occur at the grassroots level.The earliest writing was temple-like, and it has not been the stuff of our country people until now.Our writing has another background in which it occurs. What I need to point out in this article is that at this level, there is language but no writing.Regardless of the pattern of space and time, in this kind of rural society, in face-to-face intimate contact, people who live in the same stereotype of life repeatedly are not so stupid that they cannot read, but they do not use words to help them the needs of living in society.At the same time, I am saying that if the grassroots of the rural nature of Chinese society changes, only after these changes can writing be sent to the countryside.