Chapter 18 our personality ideal

During the period of Emperor Heng of the Han Dynasty (147-167), Chen Fan served as the prefect of Le'an. It is said that there was a commoner named Zhao Xuan under his rule, and the townspeople praised him for his filial piety.When his parents passed away, it was customary to stay in mourning for three years, either at home or next to the tomb of Jielu. This Zhao Xuan actually kept mourning for more than 20 years, and he has been living in the unsealed tomb passage. Chen Fan—that is, the Chen Zhongju who "speaks to be a gentleman, behaves in the world, boards the car and holds the bridle, and has the ambition to clarify the world" mentioned in the opening article—after hearing the recommendations of everyone, he met with this "country number of states and counties." The filial son who pleases him with courtesy.Talking about family life, Chen Fan discovered that Zhao Xuan had five children under the age of twenty.Chen Fan was furious.What was this guy doing sleeping in the tomb?Isn't this "filthy ghosts and gods"? "The sage makes rituals, the sage bows down, and the unworthy can reach" (from "Book of Rites"), it doesn't matter if you follow your toes and can't reach it, what kind of sage are you pretending to be?Isn't this "to deceive the public"?So Chen Fan punished Zhao Xuan.

The Eastern Han Dynasty during the Emperor Heng's period was not a good world.Harvests have failed year after year, thieves are everywhere, eunuchs intervene in politics, and party disasters continue. The Eastern Han Dynasty, which has been established for more than 120 years, has been declining and showing signs of decline.But through this story, we can still imagine the moral fashion at that time. We can see how people at that time deceived the public, and what kind of performance they could use to deceive the public. Times are really different.Just imagine, will anyone in China today do what Zhao Xuan did?Even if he wants to confuse people?Zhao Xuan's behavior is probably beyond the imagination of today's lunatics.Taking a step back, if someone re-advocates mourning for three years, will we feel that this is normal and natural, so we wholeheartedly support it?Today, the funeral leave stipulated by the state is 3 days, and no one seems to suggest extending it ten times or eight times to gain political capital, moral capital or other capital. The norm that stood firm in 2000 is not normal today.

I am not speaking here of some trivial courtesy. "Filial piety is the foundation of benevolence." Confucius told people in the world to "cultivate one's body with the Tao, and cultivate the Tao with benevolence." It is in line with the principles of nature, and it is based on human nature, and it is propriety and righteousness.For 2,000 years, it has provided hundreds of millions of people with the authoritative answers to why and how they live, and it has acquired the status of being attractive to counterfeit. Confucius is really dead? It seems that Lei Feng is also dead.More than ten years ago, an unknown father took his child in the car and no one gave up his seat. The father said to the child: "Uncle Lei Feng is gone."There are so many versions of this sentence, and its popularity is far greater than that of Nietzsche's "God is dead."It can be seen that the current situation not only creates heroes, but also philosophers, at least famous sayings.

In fact, some people still give up their seats to the elderly and children, and it is not uncommon for children to respect their parents.But there is probably no one who does not admit that the moral climate has indeed changed.The basic basis for making this assertion is that few people pretend to be Lei Feng like Zhao Xuan pretended to be a student in order to deceive the public.The phenomenon of pretending to be Lei Feng was quite common, and the term "false positive" was also quite popular.Times have changed, who still calls others "fake positivity"?Now it is the fake foreign devils and the real and fake bigwigs who are deceiving the public, not the fake filial sons, fake morals, fake benevolence, righteousness and fake positive.

"Uncle Lei Feng is gone", this sentence is no small matter.What Lei Feng represents is an ideal personality with the core of "serving the people" (the people do not include the enemy). It is said that it conforms to the laws of science, conforms to the trend of history, and represents the future of mankind.A person with this personality can be a successor, born great and dead immortal.This kind of personality ideal has dominated the history of the Republic for twenty or thirty years, providing hundreds of millions of people with the standard answer of why and how to live.

Personality ideals are not like fashion hairstyles, and the basis for their changes is much deeper. The ideals of personality advocated by Confucius and Mao Zedong are very timely and tell people how to deal with the most basic interpersonal relationships at that time, and they strongly prove that this way of handling is in line with the laws of heaven and people or the laws of history, and has ultimate value.Now, we are far away from the era when clansmen live next to each other and family friends are everywhere, and we are not close to the era when revolutionary comrades unite to overthrow the three mountains.Going out to work, there are small businesses and hawkers, employers and employees, and on the way after get off work, there are passers-by and bargaining customers everywhere.I want to call comrades or brothers, but I really don't know who to speak to.

Confucius and Chairman Mao did not teach us how to behave in such a society, and they did not have time to establish for us an ideal of personality that suits the current situation, and connect it with the ultimate value that does not know where to hide. Whoops, we've lost our mental support. Do Westerners have any good ideas?It is said that when Westerners face a spiritual crisis, they often turn their eyes to the East, so we might as well look to the West.When God is dead or dying, Westerners always have to find a way to deal with their human relationships. What is the basic human relationship in the West?Marx's analysis of capitalist society begins with commodities, and he believes that the exchange of commodities is the basic relationship of that society.He introduced labor as a commodity, and under the condition of complying with the rules of equivalent exchange, deduced and established a theoretical building with rigorous logic and eye-popping.

All the theories of Western economics, which are now popular, are based on two basic assumptions: 1. Everyone strives for their own best interests under given constraints, that is to say, people are rationally self-interested. of.2. Everyone has complete freedom of choice in the market, that is to say, no one can force anyone else, and they can only exchange their own products and services equally.So we see the wave of exchange that does not benefit each other gushes out again. It seems unnecessary to say how the principle of equivalent exchange has permeated Western society, so that the exchange theory in sociology has become the mainstream.Nor do we need to mention how often efforts to analyze the behavior of households and governments using economic methods have won Nobel Prizes.In short, the routine for Westerners to deal with basic interpersonal relationships is equivalent exchange.

Equivalent exchange—what kind of personality ideal is this?To put it more nicely: is it an ideal to be a good citizen who is good at protecting one's own rights while also respecting the rights of others, a good citizen who is self-interested but also obeys social obligations?What about serving the people?what about love?What about heaven?Tao?What about the laws of history?What is the meaning of life?What about ultimate value?No wonder Westerners say they have a mental crisis! But I don't think Westerners have such a bad idea.Citizenship is well qualified to be the ideal personality for us today and for generations to come.Assuming that this ideal can really become a reality, although the phenomenon of obtaining surplus value by capital as described by Marx will not come to an end, there will never be any naked fraud.In addition, chronic diseases such as "talking about benevolence and morality, full of male robbers and female prostitutes", full of serving the people, full of chronic diseases such as selfishness and fraud, have unexpectedly lost the appropriate temperature of popularity.To be left with a society where people work honestly, earn money cleanly, and respect themselves as well as others - is this a bad, vulgar outcome?

"Saints never die, thieves never stop", this statement is really very reasonable. By the way, I think the word "Mr." in English and American is wonderful. As a weakened form of Master, Mister still basically means "master" etymologically.You are also the master, and I am also the master. Everyone is their own master, taking care of themselves and taking responsibility for themselves.No one has the right to bully anyone, at least not to force anyone.This is the premise of equivalent exchange and the essence of citizenship. We cannot worship foreigners.They are masters, and we are masters too.Their tradition gave birth to civic personality, and we also have a tradition that can give birth to civic personality. "Sex is similar, habits are far away", the hearts of the world are connected.

In the Confucian ideal personality with benevolence as the core, it clearly contains the growth point of citizen personality. Zigong once asked Confucius: "Is there anyone who has a word that can be practiced all his life?" Confucius replied: "I'm sorry! Do not do to others what you don't want yourself to do to yourself." Confucius not only respected others, but also affirmed himself .This is not an insignificant sentence. What Confucius told Zigong was a big principle that can be followed for life, and similar principles have also appeared in the core category of "benevolence".Confucius said: "A benevolent man establishes others if he wants to be established, and achieves others if he wants to be achieved." Here, he affirms the self who "desires to be established" and "desires to be achieved" more directly, and respects others who have the same desire.Acting in such a balanced way is the core of civic personality. I don't intend to confuse the ideal personality advocated by Confucianism more than 2,000 years ago with the civic personality of today's West. Naturally, doing so cannot stand the scrutiny of knowing people and discussing the world.I also have no intention of being a Confucian revisionist.Every era has its own problems and solutions.No need to cling to a proverb—citizens in the West don't seem to cling to Jesus' admonition to "love your neighbor as yourself." What I want to say is: don't worry about losing our tradition.People in ancient and modern China and abroad have something in common. In the era when labor was still the means of earning a living, before labor became the first need or greatest pleasure in life, and after the era of paying tribute and corvee to build mausoleums, people have a kind of compulsion to behave The Way, whatever you call it, whatever your tradition. A citizen's personality that is self-interested but not harmful to others may not be inseparable from the ethereal ultimate value.I'll hang it up here first--I can't hang it well, but it doesn't mean that others can't hang it too. The simplest way to put it is to describe the citizen personality as the ultimate state of its own roots.What is a person? "Food and sex are also sexual", in the words of Chinese peasants: "A person has two brains, one for eating and one for giving birth".This is the "self".Coupled with the constraints of the "superego", the sense of responsibility, or the sense of etiquette, righteousness and shame, this is a human being.No one will question the ultimate value of ants or monkeys beyond their own survival and reproduction, so there is no need to ask human beings. This hanging method is a bit of a shame, but it cannot be said that it is unreasonable.In fact, Freud's id and Sartre's freedom of choice are indeed regarded by many people as the ultimate value.You can have another opinion, but you can't call others stupid. If we refuse to accept this ultimate value and only recognize the ultimate value of tradition, we can hang on to tradition.In his book "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism", Max Weber used the concept of "vocation" as a hook to link the earning work of citizens with the ultimate value of God, heaven, and the immortality of the soul.It goes without saying that self-interested behaviors can be linked to behaviors of respecting others.It seems that we Chinese don't have to work too hard if we want to hang up.Our ancestors regarded the Tao, the way of heaven, and the principles of heaven as the ultimate existence of their own roots, and used the concept of the unity of man and nature to link the way of heaven and human nature firmly. There is a saying in "The Doctrine of the Mean": "Heaven's destiny is called nature, and straightforwardness is called Tao." Then we only need to "establish others if we want to be established, and achieve others if we want to achieve ourselves", and the ultimate value is already in it.We must refuse to accept this kind of natural tolerance, unless there is a hard connection with the external nature, we can also say: "Heaven moves vigorously, and a gentleman strives for self-improvement."What is self-improvement?Does working hard count as self-improvement?Just hang it up.This is to take the sky as the rule, follow the will of the heavens, and follow the destiny of the heavens, which is just like obeying God.Coupled with a "geo-kun, a gentleman carries things with virtue", treat others tolerantly and help others, that is even more harmony of yin and yang.One yin and one yang are called the Tao, and this is the end. If the ultimate value in the Eastern and Western traditions is too old and inapplicable, we can also replace it with a less old one, which was popular more than ten years ago.There is a concept of "incentive compatibility" in Western economics, which means that every individual's rational and self-interested behavior will bear the good results of social progress and everyone's benefit after being guided by the invisible hand.Then, just earn your money well, as long as you don’t break the law, the result will be social progress and people’s happiness.In this way, those who care about the national economy and people's livelihood can rest assured that history is advancing in your business.If you are really uneasy, you might as well do more charitable work in the future and directly harvest the good fruits. The current work can be regarded as laying the foundation.Those who are more impatient don't even have to wait for the future. Before the new regulations are established, it is the time for heroes to use their weapons, and they can do some great things to bring peace to the world. If this ultimate value is not satisfactory, I am afraid that I have to ask what kind of heart my heart is.Seeing one's nature clearly and recognizing one's true self-nature is a skill that Buddhism is particularly good at, and it is also the ultimate value recognized by Buddhism-seeing one's nature and becoming a Buddha.People who have reached this level don't need to care about any ideal personality.Since you have ideals, you are always dissatisfied with your real self, and this is exactly the kind of delusion that a fully enlightened person will not have.Perhaps, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism can provide the answer to how to become a real person, and help us become the kind of person we could be, should be, and should be.But even if there is an easy-to-understand answer, I am afraid that it will not be easy to be popular in the world when some people are starving and freezing, and some people are killing each other. That's a long way off.One last sentence: A good citizen will not interfere with other people's conscience, and he may do the same thing himself.When everyone has the right conditions and great interest to do such a thing, the civic personality will give way, and what replaces it may be very fairy-tale.