Chapter 4 differential pattern

From the perspective of rural workers, the biggest problem of rural elders in China is "selfishness".Speaking of selfishness, we will think of the saying "everyone sweeps the snow in front of his own door, and don't care about the frost on other people's house".No one dares to deny that this common saying is more or less the creed of the Chinese people.In fact, it's not just the country people who hold this attitude, it's the so-called urban people, why not.The one who clears the snow in front of his own door is considered a remarkable person with public morality. Ordinary people dump their rubbish on the street in front of their door, and it's over.The back door of people in Suzhou often leads to a river, which sounds like the most beautiful thing in the world. The Venetian of China is in the pen and ink of literati, but I think there is nothing dirtier in the world than the waterways in Suzhou.What can be poured into this kind of small river ditch that is not very smooth, and many people don't need to have toilets at all.Knowing that people wash and wash vegetables in this river, I don't think there is anything that needs to be self-made.why? ——This kind of small river belongs to the public.

When it is said to be public, it almost means that everyone can take advantage of it, and has rights but no obligations.As small as a yard shared by two or three families, the public corridors are usually covered with dust and dust, and weeds are growing all over the yard, and no one wants to pull them out. The toilet is naturally even more difficult to get in.No family is willing to meddle in "nosy", and whoever is not used to it will have to serve others for nothing, and will not get a half-hearted thank you.So like Graham's law, bad money drives out good money, so public morality is driven out by selfishness here.

Judging from these things, the problem of selfishness is much more common in China than ignorance and disease.Now it has become a target for foreign public opinion to attack us unanimously.The so-called corruption and incompetence are not about the absolute ability of each individual, but relative, and it refers to the individual's service and responsibility to the public.It's not that the Chinese are bad at business. As long as you look at the business achievements of overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, who doesn't pay attention to Westerners?The Chinese are not incompetent. For their own affairs, they are more capable than people in any other country when they grab money and buy horses.Therefore, the so-called "selfishness" here is a question of how to draw the boundaries between self and others.Our traditional rowing method is obviously different from the Western rowing method.Therefore, if we want to discuss the issue of privateness, we have to consider the whole social structure.

Western society is a bit like we bundle firewood in the fields, several straws are bundled into a handful, several bundles are bundled into a bundle, several bundles are bundled into a bundle, and several bundles are bundled into a pick.Every piece of firewood belongs to a certain bundle, tie, and handle in the whole pick.Every piece of firewood can also find the same handle, tie, and bundle of firewood, which will be clearly divided and will not be messed up.In society, these units are groups.When I say that Western social organizations are like bundles of firewood, I want to point out that they often consist of groups of several people.Groups have certain boundaries. Who is in the group and who is outside the group cannot be blurred, but must be clearly distinguished.People in a group are one group, and the relationship with the group is the same. If there is a distinction between groups or levels within the same group, that is also stipulated first.I use the bundle of firewood as an analogy, but there is one thing that does not fit well, that is, a person can join several groups, but it is of course impossible for a certain piece of firewood to be included in several bundles of firewood. This is the difference between a person and a firewood.I use this metaphor to think concretely about a pattern that allows us to see the relationship between people in social life.We might as well call it the group structure.

The family is a well-defined group in the West.If a friend writes to you that he is coming to see you "bringing his family," he knows very well who is coming with him.In China, this sentence is very vague.In Britain and the United States, the family includes him and his wife and minor children.If he only came with his wife, he wouldn't use "family".In our China, "He Di Guanglin" is common, but few people can tell what kind of people this "Di" word should include. Speaking of our words, the word "home" can be said to be the most flexible. "Family" can refer to one's wife alone, "family" can refer to a large number of uncles and nephews, and "own family" can include anyone who wants to be drawn into one's circle and show affection.The scope of our own family is scalable according to time and place, and it is so large that it is innumerable. It is true that the world can become one family.

Why is the name of our most basic social unit so unclear?In my opinion, it shows that our social structure itself is different from the Western pattern. Our pattern is not a bundle of clear firewood, but a circle of pushes that occur when a stone is thrown on the water. Ripple out.Each man is the center of the circle through which his social influence pushes out.What is pushed by the ripples of the circle is connected.The circles used by everyone at a certain time and place are not necessarily the same. The most important kinship in our society is the quality of throwing stones in concentric circles.Kinship is a social relationship based on the facts of birth and marriage.The network formed from birth and marriage can be extended to include infinite people, past, present, and future characters.In our common saying, there is "one meter is three thousand miles", which means this. In fact, three thousand miles just refers to its vastness.This network is like a spider's web, and it has a center, which is itself.Each of us has such a net of kinship, but no net covers the same people.People in a society can use the same system to remember their relatives, only the system is different.A system is an abstract pattern, or a categorical related concept.When we use this system to identify specific relatives, everyone recognizes them differently.We all have parents in the kinship system, but my parents are not your parents.Furthermore, no two people in the world can recognize the same relatives.Although two brothers have the same parents, each has his own wife and children.Therefore, as far as the network of social relations connected by kinship is concerned, it is individual. Each network has a "self" as the center, and the center of each network is different.

In our rural society, this is not only true of kinship relations, but also of geographical relations.The modern Baojia system is based on a group structure, but this is incompatible with the traditional structure.In the traditional structure, each family takes its own status as the center and draws a circle around it, which is called "neighborhood".It is a mutual aid organization in daily life to invite wine for happy events, to send red eggs for the birth of a child, to come out to help funerals and carry coffins for funerals.But this is not a fixed group, but a range.The size of the scope also depends on the power of the center.Neighborhoods of powerful families can spread throughout the village, while neighbors of poor families are only two or three neighbors.This is the same as our circle of relatives.For example, in the Grand View Garden of Jia’s family, aunt Lin Daiyu, aunt Xue Baochai could live, and later more, such as Baoqin and Xiuyun, anyone who could attract relatives could be accommodated.But when the power changed, the tree fell and the monkeys scattered and shrank into a small group.When it reaches the extreme, it can be like Su Qin returning from poverty, "Wife does not consider her husband, and sister-in-law does not consider her uncle." The differential order pattern in the traditional Chinese structure has this kind of flexibility.In the countryside, a family can be as small as a small country, but for the rich landowners and bureaucrats, it can be as large as a small country.The Chinese are also particularly sensitive to the inconsistency of the world, precisely because this flexible social circle will be enlarged or reduced due to changes in the central forces.

In Western societies where children live at home as adults and have to pay their parents for board and lodging, everyone recognizes the boundaries of groups.Those in the group have certain qualifications.If you are disqualified, you have to get out of this group.In them, it is not a question of human affection, but a question of rights.In Western society, what is fought for is power, but in ours it is about building relationships and talking about friendship. With "self" as the center, it is thrown into the water like a stone, and the social relationship formed with others is not like the members of a group, where everyone stands on the same plane, but like the ripples of water, pushed out circle by circle , the farther you push, the thinner you push.Here we encounter the basic characteristics of Chinese social structure.What our Confucianism pays most attention to is human relations. What is human relations?My explanation is the sequence of ripples that occur in the group of people who have a social relationship with myself. "Shiming" also says "lun" under the word "lun", and the hydrology has ethics." Mr. Pan Guangdan once said: All the meanings of "lun" as a common denominator are interlinked, "commonly expresses order, category, and order some meanings." (See Pan Guangdan's "Shuo Lun Zi" and "Social Research" Issue 19)

The ten ethics mentioned in the Book of Rites and Sacrifice, ghosts and gods, monarchs and ministers, father and son, high and low, closeness, honor and reward, husband and wife, political affairs, elder and younger, upper and lower, all refer to differences and so on. "Do not lose their ties" refers to the difference between father and son, distance, closeness, and estrangement.Lun has a different order.From what we read now, how can specific social relationships such as ghosts and gods, monarchs and ministers, father and son, and husband and wife compare with abstract relative positions such as high and low, closeness, distance, and upper and lower?In fact, the most basic concept in our traditional social structure, the discipline in the network formed by the interactions between people, is a differential order, that is, lun.In the biography of the Book of Rites, it is said: "Kiss relatives, respect, elders, and men and women are different, so they can't be compared with those who reform the people." It means that the structure of this social structure cannot be changed. Just use this frame to do.

What Confucius paid the most attention to is the push character of water ripples and waves expanding outward.He first admits a self, and then promotes the self and others' self. For this self, he must overcome it with etiquette. Self-denial is self-cultivation.Follow the rules of the concentric circles, and you can push them outward. "Essence is established and Dao is born." "He is a person who is filial to his younger brother, and those who like to offend their superiors are rare, and those who are not easy to offend their superiors and like to make troubles are rare." From oneself to home, from home to country, from country to world, it is a road. .The Doctrine of the Mean regards the Five Ethics as the Dao of the world.Because in this kind of social structure, from oneself to the world is pushed round and round, so Mencius said that he is "good at pushing."

In this flexible network, there is a "self" as the center anytime and anywhere.This is not individualism, but egoism.The individual speaks to the group, and the molecule speaks to the group.Under individualism, on the one hand, there is the concept of equality, which means that all members in the same group have equal status, and individuals cannot infringe on everyone's rights; A sub-right to control an individual.These notions must presuppose the existence of groups.There is no such thing in our traditional Chinese thinking, because what we have is egoism, and all values ​​are based on "self" as the center. Egoism is not limited to Yang Zhu, who plucks out a hair but does nothing to benefit the world, and should even include Confucianism.The difference between Yang Zhu and Confucius is that Yang Zhu ignores the relativity and flexibility of egoism.He was too determined to bite one of himself; Confucius would push himself and others, but even if he let it go to the world, the center is still on himself.The Master said: "Government is based on virtue, such as the North Star, which lives in the house, and the stars arch around it." This is a very good metaphor of the differential sequence pattern. It is always the center, like the Big Dipper that does not move in all seasons, and all other People, turn with him.Confucius is not like Jesus. Jesus had a group beyond individuals. He had his kingdom of heaven, so he could sacrifice himself to complete the kingdom of heaven.What about Confucius?otherwise. Zigong said: "If there is something that can be given to the people, how can it help the people? Can it be called benevolence?" The son said: "What is it that is benevolent? It must also be holy! Yao and Shun are still sick? A benevolent person wants to establish himself and establishes others. To be able to master others, and to be able to get close to them, can be called the method of benevolence.” In Confucius’s moral system, he would never leave the center of the pattern of differential order, “A gentleman seeks from himself, and a villain seeks from others.” Therefore, he could not love the world like Jesus, and even loved his enemies. The man who killed him begged God for forgiveness—these were not self-centered.What about Confucius?Or say: "How to repay grievances with virtue?" Confucius said: "How to repay virtues? Repay grievances with sincerity, and repay virtues with virtues." This is the level of differential order, and Confucius will never relax.Confucius did not deal with all situations with a small self like Yang Zhu. He expanded or narrowed the scope of morality according to needs.He is not like Jesus or China's Mo Di, who can't be taken away once he lets go. Once we understand the scope of society that can expand and contract, and can expand and contract, we can understand the problem of selfishness in traditional Chinese society.I often feel: "In traditional Chinese society, a person can sacrifice his family for himself, the party for his family, the country for the party, and the world for the country." This is different from "university": In ancient times, those who wished to manifest their virtues in the world first ruled their country, and those who wanted to rule their country first regulated their families, and when they wanted to reg The world is flat. They are the same in terms of organization, and the only difference is the introverted and extroverted lines, positive and negative views. .This is very different from Western societies where rights and obligations are clearly distinguished. You can sacrifice your family for yourself, and your family for everyone... This is a de facto formula.In this formula, what if you say he is private?He couldn't admit it, because when he sacrificed his family, he could do it for his family, and the family was public to him.When he sacrificed the country to seek the interests and rights of his small group, he was also doing it for the public, for the public of the small group.In the differential sequence structure, public and private are relative terms, standing in any circle and looking inward can also be said to be public.In fact, this is also the case when Western diplomats fight for the interests of their own countries in international conferences, at the expense of world peace and the legitimate interests of other countries.The difference is that they regard the country as a group that surpasses all small organizations. For this group, both the upper and lower sides can sacrifice, but they cannot sacrifice it to complete other groups.This is a modern national concept, which does not exist in rural society. In Western society, the group of the country is an obvious and only distinct group boundary.The people who are in the state have nothing to escape from this group, like a bundle of fagots, they have to make the state an institution for the benefit of each member, so they have a revolution, a constitution, There are laws, there is Congress, and so on.In our tradition, the limit of the group is the vague "Tianxia", the country is the home of the emperor, and the boundary has never been clear, but it is just a circle of social forces pushed out from the center of oneself.Therefore, the only thing that can be done is the self. Self-denial has become the most important virtue in social life. They will not restrain the group so that the group will not invade the rights of individuals.In this differential order pattern, this problem does not occur. In the pattern of differential order, social relations are gradually extended from one person to another, which is the increase of private relations, and the social scope is a network composed of individual connections. Therefore, all social morality in our traditional society can only be Meaning happens in a personal connection. ——I will discuss this point in the next chapter.