Chapter 23 one's tradition

People are born modern, but they are everywhere in tradition. In the opening scene of the movie "Dead Poets Society," the principal asks the students what are the four pillars of Wilton Missionary School.Under the crowd, the students answered with one voice, "tradition, honor, discipline, excellence".In private, however, students regard this prestigious, step-by-step, honor-laden school as "hell." Every sentence that the new Mr. Keating said is so meaningful, "Most people live in quiet despair".In order not to waste their "eternal" youth, young people should face up to difficulties and dare to challenge tradition and authority.Of course, if we broaden our horizons, it is not difficult to find that daring to innovate and challenging authority is also a kind of tradition.The so-called "challenging tradition" may mean that a new tradition challenges another tradition.

What is "traditional"? The classic explanation of tradition in "Modern Chinese Dictionary" is "passed down from generation to generation, with characteristic social factors, such as culture, morality, ideology and system." If we regard culture, morality, ideology and system as a kind of information Variables, it is not difficult to find that the so-called tradition is also variable.Even today, when communication is so developed, no one can give us a precise indicator of Chinese tradition.From the perspective of communication, because time goes by without a break, while traditions are spreading, new elements are constantly being added.For example, new traditions (noise) are constantly being invented, while old traditions (information) are gradually disappearing.The alternation of old and new, or mutual dislike, is the tradition we have today.

Tradition is information.In other words, tradition exists as a whole of information, continuously encoded and streamed in time and space.However, any information has openness, and the so-called "walls have ears" and "there is no impenetrable wall" are just like this.When tradition becomes signaling, all kinds of noise (positive or negative) are added.From this, we can draw at least two conclusions: ① It is impossible for the old tradition to be completely conveyed to the next era; ②Old traditions may provide materials for inventions of local or other new traditions. When tradition is regarded as information, it is not difficult for us to understand why Chinese tradition is full of paradoxes.After all, information may be true or false, it only pursues dissemination, and is not responsible for absolute correctness.

As Ming Enpu pointed out in "The Quality of Chinese People", "The life and state affairs documents of Chinese politicians, like Rousseau's confession, are full of the most noble emotions and the most despicable actions. He killed ten thousand people, and then Quoting a passage from Yuzi, saying that human life is sacred. He pocketed the money for repairing river embankments, and as a result caused the whole province to suffer from floods, and then he lamented that the plowmen lost their fields.” As one of the most profound analysis of Chinese human nature since the Opium War, Ming Enpu's criticism can also be used as a kind of foreign information to add to the transformation of Chinese tradition.

When it comes to the transformation of tradition, it is necessary for us to recall a classic "fable". Experimenters put five monkeys into a cage.A bunch of bananas and an automatic water spray device are hung on the cage. As long as a monkey takes a banana, water will be sprayed on the cage immediately, and the five monkeys will be wet.After each failed attempt, finally the monkeys reached a consensus: don't touch the banana, otherwise the water will spray out. Later, the experimenter replaced one of the monkeys and replaced it with a new monkey (monkey A). "Monkey A" saw the banana and immediately went to take it, but was beaten up by the other four monkeys.Because the four monkeys thought that the behavior of "Monkey A" would make them drench, they worked together to prevent "Monkey A" from touching the banana.When "Monkey A" drew a violent beating every time he tried, he quickly accepted the so-called "monkey consensus" that the banana butt cannot be touched.

Using the same procedure, the experimenters replaced all the old monkeys one after another.When the new "Monkey B" wanted to take incense, he was beaten by other monkeys.Interestingly, the maintainers of order also include "Monkey A".When the taboo became a tradition, "Monkey A" became a loyal defender of the tradition.In this way, when all the monkeys in the cage were replaced with new monkeys, no monkey dared to touch the banana on the top of the cage.They don't even know when and why bananas became taboo.Even if the experimenters had already removed the sprinkler, the monkeys would still maintain their "monkey consensus" through heteronomy and self-discipline.This is where "tradition" comes from.

Of course, the tradition here is a negative one.Just like Fang Loon wrote in the novel, the first person to walk out of the valley is doomed to be beaten to death after returning.Applying Havel's narrative about human rights and sovereignty, this story also tells us, "Man is God's creation, and tradition is man's creation."Tradition will be valuable only if it is constantly invented and transformed, and it is truly people-oriented. Regarding how tradition was invented, there is a detailed description in the book "The Invention of Tradition" edited by Hobsbawm: "Those 'traditions' that seem to be or claim to be ancient, their origins are often quite recent. And sometimes it's invented."Through the national costumes of Wales, the reconstruction of Scottish classics, the changes of British royal ceremonies, the changes of Indian celebration etiquette under British rule, the imitation of African nationalities to the British middle-class lifestyle, and the national festivals of Britain, France and Germany from 1870 to 1914 The seemingly counterintuitive notion that "tradition is invented" has been exhaustively demonstrated in a variety of cases, such as changes in popular and popular culture.Here, tradition is no longer an unchanging and constant narrative myth of historical continuity, but an "invention" and "production" derived from recent history.

In China, the best example is the hair of the Han people.During the military pass of the Qing Dynasty, in order to keep the so-called tradition of "the head can be cut off, the hair must not be shaved", there was "Jiangyin Ten Days", the Qing army massacred the city, and 170,000 people died; In the past, the shaving order of "keep the hair but not the hair, keep the hair but not the head" has become "leave the braids but not the hair, keep the hair but not the braids".Today, the tradition of long hair and braids of Chinese men have both disappeared. Just as Chinese was invented and became the mother tongue of Chinese people, all cultures, systems and ideas are also created by man and invented by man.The masterpieces of human civilization are created intentionally or unintentionally through human efforts bit by bit, finally gathering sand into a tower, dripping water through a rock.

When German Foreign Minister Fischer talked about the relationship between Germany and the European Union, he said meaningfully: "Germany is our hometown, and Europe is our future." Of course, we can relax the vision of the past and the future and apply this cultural concept to the entire history of mankind. It must be admitted that the vagueness of "traditional" semantics contributes to some degree of prejudice.Some people rigidly think that "tradition" means "tradition and tradition", that is, sticking to the local culture, so they tend to regard their own culture going overseas as the promotion of tradition, and the introduction of foreign traditions as cultural colonization or invasion.

As mentioned earlier, "tradition is information". Once a tradition is invented, it cannot be guarded like a state secret or passed on from generation to generation like a secret recipe passed down from generation to generation.Openness and dissemination are the attributes of information. Once tradition is invented, it is destined to face the whole world.A true civilization will connect human beings, and no pioneer will enjoy his own civilization to himself.Although the development of traditions has a strong and weak sequence, it is undeniable that the traditions of any country or nation are subordinate to the great tradition of mankind and have their own strengths. form.Human beings are just a pendulum hovering between reason and emotion, which determines that different traditions also have a certain identity.

Someone once came to the conclusion that intuition is the tradition of the East and rationality is the tradition of the West.For example, throughout the ages, Chinese theories, including politics, society, and life, have mostly been conclusions in the form of quotations, without a process of reasoning.However, we cannot conclude that China does not have a tradition of rational thinking. Those traditions of rational thinking are just covered up by the smoke and dust of history and have lost their former glory. A French old man once asked me a simple question. When I relayed it to Chinese students, I never got it wrong.However, one of my French alumni was stumped. "Benjamin has three older sisters, and each older sister has a younger brother. How many brothers and sisters are there in Benjamin's family?" I believe readers will get the answer right away.After about two or three minutes, the French student figured it out, and the answer was seven.Benjamin, plus a sister, a brother, plus a sister, a brother, plus a sister, a brother.I said, the answer is wrong.He still didn't believe it, and continued to draw three lines on the paper to prove it.It wasn't until I told him that every younger brother was Benjamin himself that he suddenly realized that he was stupid. Telling this story is not to prove that the French are stupid.France is one of the few creative nations in the world. It not only contributed to the progress of the world, including Descartes, Pascal, Marie Curie, Hugo, and Tocqueville, but also contributed to the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and even the European Union.However, human thinking is so peculiar, and "rationality" sometimes makes us detours.If we are not aware of the limitations of our rationality, it is inevitable that we will be obsessed with half-reason as truth.It is undeniable that a series of utopian tragedies that have appeared since the Enlightenment are related to this. Of course, the intuition advocated by the Orientals also faces problems.Huang Renyu once criticized China's "ruling the country by virtue" and the lack of digital management in the "China Social Security Administration".In my opinion, the study of Confucius and Mencius is a kind of knowledge derived from intuition, and the rule established by autocratic China is also a kind of suspicious and intuitive rule.Those who win the world are suspicious of other people's rebellion all day long, so they "come from intuition and go to hallucinations", turning the whole country into a prison from which the emperor and the common people cannot escape.And the occurrence of the "Qingfeng is illiterate, why bother flipping through books" type of literary prison case has witnessed the extreme of this paranoid rule of intuition. Today, we can criticize that ancient Chinese exegesis has not developed into hermeneutics, and criticize Ba Jin for not reaching the height of Solzhenitsyn.However, China is not without a tradition of abstract thinking. For example, Zhuangzi is a very good master of logic.In fact, the popularity of Zhuangzi in Europe is not inferior to that of Confucius.Zhuangzi even surpassed Confucius because of his reputation for "turning butterflies" and "zifeiyu" and other famous speculative harvests.Similarly, the thoughts in "Mozi" are also very speculative. The Jinwen Confucianism and Ancient Confucianism in the Han Dynasty cannot be said to be devoid of speculative features, and the metaphysics of the Wei and Jin Dynasties is an "unprecedented development of the abstract thinking of the Chinese nation" (Feng Youlan's words). No era in history can indulge in abstract thinking like the Wei and Jin Dynasties .There is such a story in the book: A certain family arranged a debate after the wedding banquet.At that time, people talked about the relationship between existence and non-existence, universal and particular, general and particular, so it was called "metaphysics".The grand occasion at that time can not help but remind people of the popular British cafes and French salons in the 18th and 19th centuries. In "Book of Jin", there is an allusion of "Kan Killing Wei Jie".According to the "Biography of Wei Jie": "The people in the capital heard his appearance, and the viewers were blocked. He was overworked and sick, and died in the sixth year of Yongjia, at the age of twenty-seven. At that time, people said that he was killed." Yushu is facing the wind, and was watched to death by the sexy and charming fan group in the capital. However, it is believed that there was another reason for Wei Jie's death: after Wei Jie crossed the river, he went to see General Wang (Wang Dun), sat and chatted at night, and the general summoned Xie Youyu (Xie Kun).Wei Jie was very happy to see Xie Kun, so he didn't care about talking to Wang Dun, and they talked about metaphysics together until dawn, and Wang Dun didn't interrupt.Wei Jie has always been in poor health, and his mother does not allow him to socialize too much.Due to exhaustion that night, Wei Jie couldn't get up from bed and died. In other words, Wei Jie was exhausted from being fanatical in debate. Chinese tradition is full of paradoxes.On the one hand, it is necessary to study things to gain knowledge; on the other hand, it is necessary to practice the world.Obviously, if too much emphasis is placed on the application of the world, the study of things and knowledge will be affected.For Wei Jie, empty talk just misleads his body.However, for most Chinese, empty talk is understood as "misleading the country". Mr. Qian Mu made such an analysis when reflecting on why China does not have a political theory of Western social systems in a book: "The military system of the Han Dynasty was military throughout the country. In the West, it was not until the modern Prussian Kingdom experienced oppression when Bismarck was prime minister that such a system was invented, and we have already practiced it in the Han Dynasty...Modern Chinese often He despises his own political traditions in the past, and says that China has no complete set of political theories and no great political thinkers. Of course, in the past Chinese works, there are very few books that focus on political theory, and few books that are famous for their political thoughts People. It’s not that the Chinese have no theories and thoughts about politics, but because most Chinese scholars are officials, and their political theories and thoughts have long been expressed in actual politics. There is no need to write books out of thin air. Break away from reality to complete a set of empty theories in his books." Mr. Qian Mu's remarks may not be completely correct, but it has opened up a way of thinking for us, that is, the reason why China has not produced a complete set of political theories is because there are too few people who talk empty words in Chinese history, and most intellectuals are "manipulating the world". The five buckets of rice bent down and went.Therefore, China's political theories are basically the doctor's theory of "treating the head when the head hurts, and treating the foot when the foot hurts."Therefore, China did not invent "separation of powers", but invented "three obediences and four virtues". There is reason to believe that, from the perspective of knowledge cultivation, "empty talk" not only does not "harm the country", but may become the key to the collective rational growth of a nation.In fact, many theories in Western philosophy and political science start from geometric empty talk, and accumulate little by little into practical science. In 2005, the author once met a staff member in the Education Office of the Chinese Embassy in France. This gentleman told me that the reason why Chinese symphony did not develop was because the son of King Xuan of Qi suppressed "indiscriminate use of Yu Yu".This statement seems a bit absurd.However, we can also get some useful enlightenment from it: Arty and posturing are not necessarily all bad things.In the Age of Enlightenment, the French salon culture became popular precisely because many arty ladies participated in it, unintentionally playing an important role in promoting social progress.Like Nan Guo, they play the role of "maintaining form".There is form, and then there is content. In this sense, we can better understand that it is the turmoil of history that creates tradition. Since the 1990s, with the rise of nationalism, China's "Confucianism Movement" has been very lively.In recent years, it has been in full swing, with the emergence of the "Book Reading Movement", "Hanfu Show", and "Cultural Conservatism". From the perspective of cultural ecology, all of these are understandable.What makes me worry is that those talented scholars and beauties who are well-clothed and well-fed, why bother to choose a "cultural emperor" in China to be the only one. "The world has suffered from the Qin Dynasty for a long time", this suffering comes from despotism.As we all know, since the first emperor, the idea of ​​great unification in China has prevailed.In this context, the so-called traditions in Chinese history have, to varying degrees, practiced the fate of "winner and loser".Qin Shihuang, like Hitler who was active in Berlin a few years later, threw books and held "bonfire parties" or planted people in crop fields, all in the hope of forming a new and unique tradition. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu engaged in "removing a hundred schools of thought and respecting cowardice alone". Although Confucian culture has since been respected, it may not usher in a good time.From being regarded as a devil by the first emperor before, to being regarded as a god by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in the final analysis, what Qiaojia culture received was "inhuman treatment".The Confucian culture in the Central Plains was very popular, and the Wu Chu culture, which was alive and well in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, began to die.During the May 4th Movement, Confucius thought he could be reborn in a mortal body, but he would be pushed into the ditch by radical intellectuals as a ghost under the black clouds and electric fire. The right and wrong about Confucius and his theories, until today, seem to have not escaped the ideological shackles of the great unity.Even a few "cultural conservatives" who once debated with me, "brought Confucius to lead the princes", so it is not that they want to dominate the world academically one day. What the author really cares about is the next question: Can China today establish a "human tradition" that is not about gods and ghosts, but about all living beings?China has thousands of years of eloquent history. Is it only the tradition of Confucius that is riddled with holes?Could it be that the Chinese people before and after Confucius have spent their lives in vain, so that the Chinese tradition is "the vast expanse of whiteness is really clean"? When postmodernists advocate that all grand narratives are dead, I firmly believe that there is one thing that is with human beings, and this is the greatest tradition of human pursuit of happiness and freedom.If today's Chinese people can think high and learn to open their horizons, it will not be difficult to find that Chinese tradition is just a small tradition in the great tradition of mankind.Moreover, in a sense, a person fighting for his own tradition is fighting for the tradition of the country and the freedom of the country. Tradition, like culture, has no boundaries.Today, Chinese people often go to Europe to seek help from Mr. Havel when they talk about constitutionalism and human rights.However, as early as more than a thousand years ago, Mencius of China said that "the people are the most important, society is second, and the king is the least".In just ten words, the true meaning of "human rights are higher than sovereignty, and sovereignty is higher than political power (monarchy)" is expressed, and the value orientation of a constitutional country is clearly stated. What are the traditions of a country?In my opinion, everyone has their own traditions, and the traditions of a country should be specific to everyone.The Chinese say that they are "descendants of Yan and Huang". In fact, the Yan and Huang mentioned here are not Yandi and Huangdi themselves, but a symbol, and the descendants of Yanhuang are not the descendants of Yandi and Huangdi, but the descendants of the generation of Yanhuang (of course It also includes bloodlines that have been integrated into many other foreign domains), that is to say, the so-called "Yanhuang" refers to the life of an era, not the bloodline of a family. In terms of blood relationship, everyone has their own ancestors; in terms of traditional inheritance, everyone has their own cultural blood relationship (or traditional blood relationship). For example, when I read Hu Shi, Hu Shi’s thought is a tradition of Chinese culture. Enter my thinking; I read Dong Shijin, and Dong Shijin added a sense of history to my research on peasant issues; I read the Englishman Karl Popper, and Popper will also become a source of my cultural thoughts.These thoughts reflect each other, together with my own experience and daily thinking, over time, I will form a tradition that belongs to me and may affect others at the same time.In other words, tradition is inseparable from specific people and varies from person to person. Therefore, tradition has its own personality and is subject to change, rather than being unified and everyone can follow suit. Every moment is becoming history and new traditions are being formed.No era belongs to one person.History is not written for one person, or one thought.So I said that human beings have a big tradition, China has a relatively big tradition, and everyone has their own small tradition.Due to the different environments in which everyone grew up, the sophistication they experienced, and the education they received, this small tradition is naturally different.It is these traditions, which may even be quite different, that constitute the great tradition of China.Some of them are submerged in history, some exist in our lives, and even become popular. In view of the fact that there are many traditions that are more precious than gold that have been submerged or forgotten by history, I insist that the best way to promote tradition is not to welcome a certain tradition or theory that once reigned as king again, but It is to gradually restore the memory of history, so that all traditions and wisdom can be revived under the picture of knowledge.I believe that all these efforts will eventually pay off, just like when we play Go, a seemingly dead piece will come back to life under the new situation, and even come back silently, just like the Navajo language.During World War II, it was the dead-like language used by the Navajo people, which made the Japanese lose the Pacific War quickly after it was encoded into a coded language. In the article "Fighting for one's own tradition is fighting for the freedom of the country" I mentioned: Although I have been away from the countryside for many years, I vaguely remember the scene of people crying on the wrong graveyard in my hometown.Thinking about the traditions of a country is like a large cemetery. In theory, everyone can find their ancestors and belong to their own traditions.However, due to the long history, or encountering storms and thunderstorms, or someone moved the tombstones and used them to pound clothes or make pig farms, the ancestral graves are not very clear.So some thoughtful intellectuals came. They stood on the high ground and pointed out that a certain majestic mound is the grave of all your ancestors, as if the other surrounding graves were dug out by rabbits when they escaped. of.However, in this increasingly open era, where knowledge is preferred over truth, who would believe those nonsense? !Who would want to make a fool of crying over the wrong grave? When it comes to "Chinese civilization", people often say "there is a long history".It can be seen from this that civilization is always "on the riverbed" and "on the road", in the process of continuous convergence and formation.There is no stereotype of civilization, only transformation. As mentioned above, the really great traditions are the traditions of people, traditions with an open spirit.The efforts of human beings for thousands of years are nothing but the establishment of a human tradition concerning human happiness and freedom.Therefore, we must not only dare to face the past and spare no effort to salvage historical memory, but also dare to face the future and devote ourselves to building a lively society.Instead of using the vulgarity and short-sightedness of "successful kings and defeated bandits" to determine the tradition of "great unification" in the country, or exhaust the youthful years in the historical view of "the son hides the father". Every nation has great traditions and despicable traditions. The civilization that is ahead of the world today is just that the great traditions overwhelm the despicable traditions.Western countries have not respected human rights since ancient times. The United States in the last century was still struggling in the vortex of the abolitionist movement; it was also in the 1940s that French women gained the right to vote. In Paris, I once met a Chinese official who was traveling in Europe.His mentality is as full of paradoxes as China, a country full of vitality.On the one hand, he doesn't know why "declining Europe" is not as modern as Beijing and Shanghai decorated with high-rise buildings; on the other hand, he will inadvertently reveal his inferiority complex towards Chinese culture.Once, he even asked a German directly: "Do you discriminate against us Chinese?" Obviously, compared with Europe, China is still a developing country, especially in terms of how to safeguard human rights.However, anyone who actively promotes the transformation of Chinese culture and society has no reason to feel inferior.As latecomers to history, contemporary Chinese shoulder the fate of the times more like their European ancestors.Today's French intellectuals cannot laugh at those foreigners who are committed to national transformation, just as they cannot laugh at Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Jean Valjean and the Count of Monte Cristo who moved towards forgiveness through the ages. This is a great era.As China's economy grows, Chinese people gradually regain confidence in their own traditions.The author believes that the best way to carry forward the Chinese tradition is to restore people's memory of past knowledge and history.Only by sincerely looking for lost memories can we recreate great traditions and civilizations based on the past.When the memory remains, the great tradition will not die, even if it falls asleep, it will wake up in the middle of the night; and the despicable tradition, no matter how it changes its face and makes a splash, will eventually be seen through and discarded by people. Tocqueville said: "When the past no longer illuminates the future, people's hearts will wander in the dark." The film "The Manchurian Candidate" also witnesses that the existence of witnesses depends on their true memories and independent choices.When memories are emptied and replaced, when thoughts are controlled and manipulated, we are no longer ourselves.Because of this, I think the hope of this era lies in the tireless search for those strong or weak voices scattered in the wilderness of history, for those beliefs and values ​​that we cherish a hundred times, and jointly build a world that belongs to China and even more to the world. great tradition.