Chapter 19 Bottom Line Ideals and Chicken Stealing Fables

No word can give people a more awe-inspiring justice than "bottom line".When the country is invaded by foreign enemies, the citizens who grew up in Si will rise up and resist, because the aggressor has touched the bottom line of the country's sovereignty; "Women", because they believe that "the south bank of the river is green in the spring breeze, and the top of a man's head cannot be green."Similarly, the farmer whose ancestral grave was dug by the village cadres did not hesitate to fight to the death, because not only his father's generation was buried in the ancestral grave, but also the landmine of his bottom line dignity was buried.Even though he usually bears the humiliation and resigns himself to it, if he is "bullied to this point", the anger he has buried for many years may be completely detonated.

Regardless of whether you agree with the above ideas or behaviors, you have to admit that the bottom line is everywhere.Moreover, the bottom line has the magic power to balance society. In the summer of 2008, when I went back to my hometown in Jiangxi, I found that all the old trees around the village had been stolen and sold by the village cadres, except for the old trees next to the ancestral graves.The reason why these trees were not forcibly sold was because some strong men fought desperately in the name of their ancestors, so that the tree dealers and village cadres who cooperated with each other had no choice but to stop.The reality is almost absurd, where laws and political morality are not enough to stop the collusion of power and capital, but those few lonely ancestral graves - the "old culture" and "old forces" criticized by the new government, seem to be defending dignity one after another. The fortress held a little bottom line for the village.

When it comes to the bottom line, I can't help but think of two European movies: One is French director Alain Chabat's RRRrr! ! ! ", which tells a romantic story that happened more than 30,000 years ago.A detail that I will never forget is: One day, the "hairdresser" found a female corpse, and everyone talked about it. Some said it was killed by plants, some said it was killed by animals, and some said it was old age.What's interesting is that when someone speculated that it was "death by human hands", there was a burst of laughter immediately, it is simply a fantasy!In the eyes of these lovely primitives, it was unthinkable for man to kill his own kind.In those wild years when wild beasts appeared and people were simple, human beings had to rely on each other to demand the most basic right of survival from nature.Human beings cannot eliminate their own kind, which may be the common bottom line of these ancient humans.Compared with that distant era, the bottom line of civilized people is getting lower and lower, so that in the twentieth century, the bottom line was completely lost.

Another film about this is Austrian director Michael Haneke's Wolf Time, which is about the future of humanity: After a catastrophe hits Europe, a young couple takes their two The child fled the city and planned to live in the country for a while.However, when they rushed to the countryside, they found that their house had been occupied by a strange family.What is even more unfortunate is that the male owner of the strange family decided to protect "his" shelter at any cost, and shot and killed the real male owner of the house without hesitation...Michael Haneke's works analyze human nature Knowing that, in his eyes, civilization is so fragile-"In the face of disaster, all moral systems can easily collapse." At such a time of chaos, you go to recite "The wind can enter, the rain can enter, and the king's guards cannot enter." "The "Property Rights Declaration" seems out of date.

Obviously, "The Time of the Wolf" is not just a negative prophecy about human nature. Haneke mercilessly shows the audience the darkness in human nature and the disaster that a society will face when the bottom line collapses.Disasters will lead to the collapse of the bottom line, and the collapse of the bottom line will inevitably lead to greater disasters until the civilization accumulated by human beings is self-destructed. In this regard, the short history of thousands of years has given enough answers . Everyone has their own bottom line.The so-called "sheep will bite people when they are anxious", even a lonely sheep has its own bottom line, let alone people?However, although everyone seems to be "fighting for (one's) bottom line", you have to admit that in human history and social life, various bottom lines are not unbreakable.The so-called "common bottom line" is sometimes just a cable that facilitates our search for painful memories of shipwrecks in the sea.

When it comes to the French Revolution, the first thing many people think of is the brutality of Robespierre and the ensuing head roll.As everyone knows, this young French man who appeared on the stage of history as a "revolutionary executioner" was once a humanitarian with warm eyes and a staunch advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.However, when the monster of revolution was awakened and rampaged, it was the same Robespierre who uttered the astonishing slogan "Louis must die, because the fatherland must live" among the crowd, and erected a massacre on the Revolution Square. The guillotine for opponents.Violence that breaks through the bottom line always follows the same logic. Soon after, when Robespierre was guillotined by the Thermidors, he just changed the slogan "Robespierre must die because the Republic must live." ".It is not difficult to find that when "people cannot destroy people" cannot become the common bottom line of a society, anyone may become the next target of "running guillotine".

"The twentieth century bleeds, and the twenty-first century sweats." I used to be full of joy that mankind has finally entered a century of improvement in the 21st century.However, the bloody memory of the twentieth century makes me have to constantly think about whether the bottom line for human beings to "change the world with sweat" really exists.Not to mention the not-too-distant Gulag Archipelago described by Solzhenitsyn as a symbol of suffering. Didn’t genocide still occur in Rwanda in 1994 decades after the Nazi atrocities were exposed?In the face of tens of thousands of victims, what is the bottom line for human beings?Looking at the history of the world, all kinds of religions have always earnestly taught people not to kill, steal, and commit adultery. However, when did these rules and regulations prevent careerists from killing, stealing, and committing adultery in the name of religion?Even today, the death penalty still exists in many countries, and the state, as a legal "public murderer", continues to provide some kind of legitimacy for "people can destroy people".What is even more astonishing is that those horrific lynchings, like the murder of a teacher at the China University of Political Science and Law in October 2008, received deafening applause from the Chinese.I really complied with that sentence: the inverted knife on the guillotine is the heaviest on your own neck, and the lightest on other people's necks.

Is there a bottom line?Is it too romantic to talk about the bottom line in the face of extremely complicated human nature?At least, we should believe that human beings will never return to the movie "RRRrr! ! ! "The beautiful era of "people cannot destroy people" is over. However, although setting, identifying and defending the bottom line means a kind of romanticism to some extent, we also have to admit that life without a bottom line will become extremely dark, and a society without a bottom line is bound to be full of absurdity.Where would we drift if the earth and everything lost gravity first?I believe that many people have seen a post similar to the following version: "Wake up in the morning, lift the quilt made of black heart cotton, brush your teeth with carcinogenic toothpaste, drink a glass of milk mixed with melamine, and eat a deep-fried dish of laundry detergent. , plus a Sudanese red salted duck egg, bought a ticket from the ticket dealer, and rushed to the underground tobacco factory to work on time. At 9:30, I secretly used a counterfeit mobile phone to watch the stock drop from 6124.04 to 1240.46, and ordered a plate at a restaurant at noon. Rice field eels fed with contraceptives fried in gutter oil, a plate of cabbage sprayed with dichlorvos, two bowls of poisonous rice cooked with old grains, and a plate of dead pork bacon raised in lean meat at night—this is a A happy day for the Chinese people."

Although this kind of bad, exaggerated and playful life will not focus on a single person, the public's anxiety about the bottom line of Chinese social life in recent years is palpable.And, it's a real anxiety.All kinds of facts and rumors about the decline of the bottom line have already plunged Chinese society into the abyss of dishonesty step by step. The "Top Ten Famous Absurd Bans in China" circulated on the Internet reveals another kind of absurdity.In this series of famous "prohibitions", there is actually one that "primary and middle school teachers are strictly prohibited from raping and molesting girls".The clause is said to appear in the “Teacher Guidelines” issued by the education bureaus of Heshan District and Ziyang District, Yiyang City, Hunan Province.It is hard to imagine that this kind of behavior clause that completely violates the criminal law will appear in the moral "prohibition" of the education system.Could it be that this ban is to draw a bottom line for China's criminal law?Or is it that the local education authorities believe that China has returned to the old scene when the rule of law collapsed decades ago and "one marriage ruled the world"?

Some people say that the real difference between humans and animals is that humans have "imagination".Perhaps, the difference between a society with a bottom line and a society without a bottom line is also that the latter has an unparalleled "imagination".In a society without a bottom line, J.K. Rowling is doomed to be poor all his life.When people can do whatever they want without being constrained by the outside world and their hearts, the stories created by reality will be far more dramatic, colorful, exciting and magical than Harry Potter written by Rowling. When the police can push away citizens’ homes and arrest couples watching pornography into the police station, when township cadres can lead teachers and bulldozers to flatten villagers’ crops, when young judges are mysteriously “suicided” in the detention center, when the groom-to-be is When "peek-a-boo" crashes into a wall and dies, when a resident's property-rights home can be destroyed in broad daylight by demolition crews, when the mother of a child under interrogation turns up unannounced in a psychiatric hospital after months of disappearance, we have to Not to mention, in a bottomless society where power is incontinent and citizens are silent, "Nothing is impossible"-everything is possible.

It's a pity that in this age of admiration rather than thinking, people seem to pay more attention to whether low-waisted pants have hit the "social bottom line", but they don't care about the "collapse of the bottom line" that may actually lead to social crisis. Don't ask. During the Spring and Autumn Period, Dai Yingzhi, a doctor of the State of Song, once talked with Mencius about governance.Yuzi talked about the hardships of people's livelihood and hoped that the government would reduce exorbitant and miscellaneous taxes.Dai Yingzhi also admitted this fact, but he said that the real abolition of taxes will not be realized this year, it will take until next year, and only part of the taxes can be reduced this year.After hearing this, Yuzi told Mr. Dai a story: There is such a person who steals chickens from neighbors every day.Someone went to advise the chicken thief: "Stealing is shameful. From now on, don't steal chickens again." After hearing this, the chicken thief said, "Well, I know it's not good. How about it, please Allow me to steal less. I used to steal every day, but now I will steal once a month, and I will only steal one chicken. Next year, I will stop stealing." This is a very memorable fable.If you are careful enough, it is not difficult to find that the story of this chicken thief is more like a story about a transition period. In a functioning society, "don't steal chickens" is undoubtedly the bottom line.However, in a country that is undergoing a period of transition, people's attitudes towards this bottom line are divided: "radicals" often demand that "the bottom line is in place at once", that is, all chicken-stealing behaviors are prohibited, and everyone must abide by civic ethics Norms and laws (this is not "radical", in fact, it is just a normal requirement), while those who focus on "improvement effects" accept that "the bottom line is in place N times"-"After all, chicken thieves steal less than before Already!" Between the words, he even felt moved.From the latter's point of view, the most important thing is to consolidate the existing "stealing reduction results", the so-called "one day's contribution, unexpected crash".Of course, for many people, the real pain is that "N" is an unknown.No one knows when the theft will actually end. Usually, people regard the bottom line as a spiritual or moral minimum agreement, and it is on this basis that a moral or spiritual community is formed.What's interesting is that whether it is "falling the bottom line", "holding the bottom line" or "falling the bottom line", all of these seem to have acknowledged that the bottom line is an established fact.Just like people lament that "people's hearts are not ancient", the regret is only that what is gained is lost again.However, through the above parable of stealing chickens, it is not difficult to find that some bottom lines (such as "no stealing chickens") are just an attempted ideal.Some people are anxious, some people are careless. The so-called transformation period is just a state of "dreams exist" but "dreams are not fulfilled". Standing on the ladder of civilization, you have to lament how ambiguous the word "bottom line" is.In one place or at one time, it may be the ideal, but in another place or at another time, it becomes the bottom line.Just like constitutionalism is still an ideal in China today, but it is already the bottom line in some other countries.Looking back at history, whether it is far or near, isn't all the commendable efforts of the Chinese people over the past hundred years aimed at turning the "bottom-line ideal" of constitutionalism into a "bottom-line reality"?And the progress of human beings is not just making the ideals that have been pursued so hard become the bottom line of reality again and again, and thus step by step, approaching broader and more real freedom and happiness?