Chapter 23 5. Let the voice of reason prevail

In June 1986, I accompanied a deputy prime minister to visit Ghana and met with the then head of state of Ghana, Mr. Rollins.His presidential palace is located in the stone fort where Europeans transported slaves, next to the Atlantic Ocean. In his words, "I work here to never forget this humiliating history."In a very simply furnished reception room, this African leader who likes to talk about philosophy talked about African issues. He said: "Our people lack a rational spirit, as if this spirit has been castrated by colonialism, so Many things are difficult to do.” I often feel this way when I visit Africa myself.In Africa's political and intellectual circles, two viewpoints predominate. One is radical African nationalism, which blames colonialism and globalization for all problems in Africa.Not long ago, I visited Ghana again and specifically visited the memorial hall of Nkrumah, the founding father of Ghana.The most expensive book in the canteen of the memorial hall is a monograph by a Ghanaian scholar. It talks about combining Ghanaian reality, learning North Korea's "juche" thought, and completely decoupling from globalization.There is also a view of radical westernization, advocating following the "Washington Consensus" and adopting a policy of cutting government spending first, and then democratizing one person, one vote. As a result, AIDS is seriously out of control, the economy is depressed, and recently there is a food crisis.With world food prices skyrocketing, these leaders suddenly found themselves neglecting agriculture completely, and ordinary people were starved for food, and revolutions were about to start again.Why neglect agriculture?In the words of UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, one of the reasons for the current food crisis is that “billions of dollars are spent on political in agriculture".The situation in Africa, in Chinese terms, is either the extreme left or the extreme right, and it is difficult for a truly independent, rational, and fact-based voice to become the mainstream.

Looking back, during the entire "Cultural Revolution" period in China, irrational ultra-left trends of thought dominated the mainstream. After the Cultural Revolution in 1976 and until 1989, the irrational right-leaning trend of thought seemed to be very influential again in the Chinese intellectual circles.With the success of China's reform and opening up and the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, China insisted on reform and opening up, followed its own path, and the rational voice of steady reform gradually became the mainstream.The West has painstakingly encouraged the independence of Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan, and has convinced more Chinese people that only by following their own path can China have hope.This is really a bad thing turned into a good thing.But we still hear a lot of irrational voices today. Some people want to use the ultra-left methods of the past to solve today's problems, and some people think that only the Western political system can solve China's problems.

Western countries have entered the post-modern era, and the mainstream discourse of intellectuals is to "deconstruct" everything. Some of our intellectuals like to follow in the footsteps of the West and learn to "deconstruct" everything in China.But they just forget that after hundreds of years of development, the economic foundation, legal and political systems of Western societies have been very mature (to be precise, over-mature), their per capita income is dozens of times higher than that of developing countries, and their per capita occupancy The resources in China are also dozens of times higher than those in developing countries, so even if there is a lot of dissatisfaction in Western society, the ability of its system to self-regulate is obviously greater than that in developing countries, and no matter how chaotic it is, it will rarely cause major chaos.According to a poll in early 2008, Italians are the most depressed among Europeans. Only 4% of them are satisfied with the status quo. The whole society is shrouded in a pessimistic atmosphere. There was no violent turmoil.

Western intellectuals often say that my task is to criticize and "deconstruct".For the situation where the political system is very mature, the instrumental rationality is too much, and the cumbersome laws and regulations have bound the further development of people and society, it is indeed necessary to loosen the constraints, to criticize, to "deconstruct", and to need Foucault.In contrast, I think it is not enough for Chinese intellectuals to criticize. What China needs is not only criticism and "deconstruction", but also affirmation and construction, including the construction of laws and systems. We should study China's problems down-to-earth, Think constructively while criticizing ugly phenomena.For China, construction is at least as important as deconstruction, if not more important.

There is also a certain pan-moralization and extreme tendency in our culture.This is not the mainstream of our culture, but the negative impact that this tributary may have on our business cannot be ignored.In fact, there are many antithetical sentence patterns in our charming Chinese, which are catchy and musical, but they all make a moral comparison of two diametrically opposed things, such as: "A gentleman is magnanimous, a little People often mourn", "Only state officials are allowed to set fires, and the common people are not allowed to light lamps", "The wine and meat of Zhumen stink, and there are frozen bones on the road".If you think about it, in our real life, extreme situations are rare after all, and most of them are intermediate states.There are bad in the good, good in the bad, worry in the joy, and joy in the sorrow. Of course, there is a question of whether there is more joy or more worry.This method of expression in our language is related to the Confucian moral tradition, "Scholars can't be brave", but the Confucian tradition also pays attention to the doctrine of the mean, requiring "pursuing knowledge through poor reason" and "careful thinking and discernment".In short, when inheriting our cultural traditions and using our beautiful characters, we should also pay attention to certain thinking patterns that may be caused by certain language habits and affect our accurate judgment on things.

There is a characteristic of the English nation that is worth learning: the British like sophisticated people, and the word sophisticated is not easy to translate. The "English-Chinese Dictionary" translates it into "mature and experienced", which can be said to be quite close, but this word also contains some related meanings, such as seeing the world, thinking carefully, judging decently, and doing things with a degree , not emotional, not extreme, insightful and comprehensive.I personally think that this word may be translated as "mature mind".Saying a person is sophisticated is a high compliment in the UK.The fact that the parliamentary system works relatively well in the UK has something to do with the fact that the British admire this characteristic.

In contrast, there are not enough of them in our culture.It can be seen from the discussion on the Internet and Weibo that every time it is abuse, it is moral reprimand, it is black and white, it is either one or the other, it means that the country is on the verge of disaster, it means that China is about to be expelled from the ball, and there will be another round. It's a revolution.I have no objection that when certain problems in China are relatively serious, some people come out and call out to attract everyone's attention. This is very worth advocating.I am not opposed to severely condemning all kinds of immoral behaviors from a moral standpoint.But we must prevent radical thoughts and moral impulses from becoming the mainstream thoughts of our society again, because moral judgments are the easiest to simply classify the complex world into two poles of good and bad, and most things in the world are mixed with good and bad, and progress often There are also problems that come with it, and the key is to make sure that progress can dominate.

Throughout the history of human progress, there has never been a pure and pure change without cost.I can even say this: If a nation is always dominated by radical thoughts and moral impulses, it can only show that this nation lacks the ability to think rationally. In the end, this may be a disaster for this nation. It is one endless turmoil after another.We need to learn a little bit of British empiricism and "mature mind". This is similar to what we call "harmonious middle way".In short, we must let the voice of reason prevail in China. Only in this way can the rise of our Chinese nation be smoother and more reliable, because this is a sign of a truly mature nation.