Chapter 13 Separation of name and reality

We regard rural society as a static society just for convenience, especially when compared with modern society, static is the characteristic of rural society, but in fact there is no completely static society, and rural society is only more different than modern society. It's just slow.Speaking of becoming slow, the main meaning is the speed of change, but different speeds also cause differences in the way of change.In this article I will discuss the ways in which rural society has undergone very slow changes. When I discussed the nature of power above, I have proposed three ways, one is tyrannical power arising from social conflict, the other is consent power arising from social cooperation, and the third is elder power arising from social succession .Now I would like to propose a fourth kind of power, which occurs in the process of drastic social change.Social succession refers to the flow of characters in a fixed social structure; social change refers to changes in the social structure itself.These two processes are not in conflict, but exist at the same time. Any society will never suddenly change into a completely different form from the old structure one day. The so-called social change, no matter how fast it is, is also gradual. , said at a time, is always a small part of the overall structure.Hence the two kinds of rights arising from these two social processes must also exist at the same time.But their ups and downs are interrelated.If society changes slowly, the power of the elders will become more powerful and become faster. The phenomenon of "father not father, son not son" will occur, and the power of elders will also be reduced.

The social structure itself has no need to change.Some scholars, like the Spengler I mentioned above, regard social structures (a major part of culture) as being similar to organisms, like our bodies, with stages of youth, growth and aging.I don't want to accept their view, because I think that social structures, like other parts of culture, are man-made, and are used to obtain the satisfaction of life's needs from the environment.The change of the social structure is what people want it to change, and the reason why it wants it to change is that it can no longer respond to people's needs.It's like we write with a pen. Both the pen and the characters are tools, and the purpose is to use them to convey our meaning to others.If the target we want to communicate is the British, Chinese and brushes cannot be effective tools. We have to use other tools, English and typewriters.

So social change often occurs when the old social structure cannot cope with the new environment.A new environment has emerged, and what people encounter at first is that the old methods cannot obtain effective results, and difficulties occur in life.People don't give up on old methods without realizing they don't work.The old way of life has the inertia of habit.But if it can no longer answer people's needs, it will eventually lose people's belief in it. It is meaningless to hold on to an ineffective tool, which will cause inconvenience in life and even suffer losses.On the other hand, new methods are not existing. Someone must invent them, or someone must learn from other cultures, import them, and have to go through experiments before they can be accepted by others and complete the process of social change.When the old and the new are changing, there will inevitably be a period of confusion and confusion. During this period, the mind is full of tension, hesitation, and anxiety.Here comes a "cultural hero", who can come up with ideas, be able to organize new experiments, and gain the trust of others.This kind of person can dominate the masses who follow him, and a kind of power has been produced.This power is not the same as tyrannical power because it is not based on exploitative relations; it is different from consenting power because it is not authorized by society; of.It is caused by the current situation, and it cannot be named. It is called the power of the current situation.

This kind of situational power can often be seen in early civil society.In the wilderness, people often encounter unusual circumstances, and they need talents with methods, that is heroes.In war, it is also an extraordinary situation, and such heroes also stand out.Modern society is a rapidly changing society, and this kind of power is also on the rise.The most interesting thing is that this kind of power is most clearly expressed when a backward country is rushing to modernize.I think we can look at the nature of power in the Soviet Union from this perspective.British and American scholars classify it into the category of tyrannical power, because it is dictatorial in form; but from the standpoint of the Soviet people, this dictatorship is different from the tsarist dictatorship. If we adopt the concept of current situational power It seems that it is relatively easy to understand its essence.

This power is least developed in settled societies.Rural society is the most stable society when its social structure can meet the needs of people's life, so it is also a society with few "leaders" and "heroes".The so-called stability is relative, and refers to becoming very slow.If I just say "very slow", the sentence is not very clear, you must tell how slow it is.In fact, Confucius has already answered this question, and his answer is "No change from the father's way for three years."In other words, when social change can be absorbed in social succession, we can call this society stable.

The "filial piety" that Confucianism emphasizes is actually a means to maintain social stability. The interpretation of filial piety is "no violation", that is, to recognize the power of the elders.The elders represent the tradition, and following the tradition will not violate the teaching of the father.But the representatives of the tradition are going to die, and they themselves will enter the position of elders in the course of time.If the rate of social change is slow enough to be equal to the rate of generational change, there will be no conflicts between parents and children, or between two generations, and the tradition itself will slowly change, and the leadership of the elders can still be maintained.There is no need for a "revolution" in such a society.

From the perspective of society as a whole, if a leading class can keep up with the speed of social change, this society can also avoid the chaos caused by social change.The UK is a good example.Many people envy Britain for being able to carry out various fundamental reforms without bloodshed, but many ignore the conditions that allowed them to do so.In the past few centuries, Britain has been in a leading position in terms of the culture of the entire world, and it is the hometown of the Industrial Revolution.However, the leadership in British society is the most adaptable to changes in the environment. The rate of environmental changes and the rate at which the leadership adapts to changes are matched to avoid bloody revolutions.Whether the UK can maintain this record depends on whether they can maintain this cooperation.

The rural social environment is fixed, and at the rate at which my father changed his Tao three years after his death, social changes will not cause conflicts in personnel.In the sphere of personnel, the elders retain their authority, and the younger ones accept traditional rule in unviolated standards.No "opposition" takes place here, nor is it tolerated by elder powers.The power of the elders is based on the role of enlightenment. Enlightenment is knowledge versus ignorance. If the culture passed on is effective, those who are taught will have no need to oppose it. If the culture passed on is invalid, the education will be lost at all. meaning. "Against" doesn't happen in this kind of relationship.

Tolerance, even reward, and opposition can only occur in the power of consent, because the power of consent is established on the contract, and whether the person exercising the power abides by the contract is a problem that must be monitored at any time.And objection, or dissent, is a necessary step in obtaining consent.Under tyrannical power, there is no opposition, only resistance, because opposition is already included in the relationship of tyrannical power.Therefore, tyrannical power must suppress resistance, and opposition cannot be tolerated.In current power, opposition occurs in different answers to the same question, but sometimes, a society cannot experiment with many different solutions at the same time, so there is a struggle between different solutions, which can also be called "cold battle", Propaganda war to win the people's followers.In order to seek merit, everyone who is confident that they can solve the problem will feel that other solutions will distract the masses' attention and support from their own solution, thus creating "ideological control" that cannot tolerate opposition.In the battle of ideas, the main front is the front, and opposition becomes confrontation.

Going back to the rural society under the power of the elders, it is said that opposition has been diluted by time and has become a "comment".The commentary is to maintain the form of the elders' authority and inject changes into the content.In the history of Chinese thought, apart from the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States period, when social changes were rapid, there were scenes of ideological battles where a hundred schools of thought contended. Since they settled on one statue, they also seek to adapt to social changes in the way of annotation.The way annotations are changed can cause a huge separation between name and reality.Under the authority of the elders, the traditional form is not allowed to be opposed, but as long as the form is superficially recognized, the content can be changed by commentary.The result is inevitably duplicity.Anyone who grew up in an old-style Chinese family understands how the will of the parents is distorted despite the apparent innocence.Hypocrisy is not only inevitable but necessary in this situation.Dogmas or orders that cannot be opposed but are impractical can only be distorted to save face.Face is the integrity of the surface.The distance between name and reality increases with the speed of social change.This distance would not occur in a perfectly fixed social structure, but in fact a completely fixed society does not exist.In a society that is changing very slowly, the power of the elders occurs, and this kind of rule cannot tolerate opposition. If the society changes at an accelerated rate, the method of distorting the original meaning of the commentary will be inevitable.As a result of relying on the emperor to order the princes, position and power, name and reality, words and deeds, words and deeds, theory and reality, all tend to be separated.