Chapter 25 "Vulgar Revolutionaries" and "Incremental History"

I once read a French novel called "La revolution des Fourmis" (The Revolution of the Ants).I was very impressed by the concept of "vulgar revolutionaries" mentioned in the book.The so-called "vulgar revolutionaries" are people who, no matter what price they pay and what means they use, will see all the fruits of the revolution within their lifetime.It is undeniable that many social movements in human history, from the initial revolution to the final extreme, were driven by this kind of psychology.On this point, the French Revolution is undoubtedly the best anatomical specimen.

The French Revolution that broke out in 1789 is undoubtedly an epoch-making event in world history.The following year, Burke published "The French Revolution," a violent attack on the principles of the French Revolution.You might say that Burke carried a long-standing English prejudice against the French.But it is undeniable that some of Burke's viewpoints mentioned in the book have extremely important connotations of the times.An important reason why Burke opposed the French Revolution was that this revolution did not come from life experience or real life, but was based on abstract rational concepts.In Burke's view, the "freedom" flaunted by the French Revolution was a metaphysical abstraction that could only cause disaster.The real freedom is the concrete freedom in real life, the freedom conforming to the natural order. "What is the use of talking about one's abstract rights to food and medicine? The question is how to acquire and command them."

Different from the "natural human rights" advocated by Rousseau, Burke pays more attention to "human rights endowed with human rights".Burke does not deny the value of human rights in "natural human rights", but thinks that it is more axiological than methodological.Talent is innate and established, while human endowment is acquired and needs to be grown and cultivated.In this sense, Burke's so-called "human rights" includes both value theory and methodology.As Hu Shi advocated, considering the limitations of human beings and the complexity of society, it can only be built bit by bit.

As for the utopianisms that were popular in the revolutionary years, he believed that they were also unreliable. "Human nature is complex; the aims of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and therefore there is no single purpose or orientation of power which can be adapted to human nature or to the nature of human affairs. When I hear of any new When political institutions seek and flaunt the simplicity of their designs, I have no doubt that their architects were ignorant of their trade, or ignorant of their responsibilities." "They have no respect for the wisdom of others; They replace this respect with an overconfidence in themselves. To them, an old specification of a thing is reason enough to be destroyed. As for the hastily established new specification, they don't care in the least. continued..." According to Burke, when the professed rights of the theorists were carried to extremes, "the grand purpose of these politics was to transform France from a great kingdom into a great casino; A nation of gamblers..."

Also in "On the French Revolution", Burke wrote: "You (referring to the French of the Revolution) started badly, because you started with contempt for everything that belongs to you. You are in the Do business without capital... Respect your predecessors, and you will learn to respect yourselves. You will not think that the French are a people of yesterday, a people of born low, servile wretches, until 1789 until the liberation." 4 equals 3, do you believe it?If you don't believe me, I can prove it to you mathematically. The specific answer steps are as follows: Step 1: Assume A+B=C;

The second step: launch (4A-3A) + (4B-3B) = 4C-3C; The third step: organize the equation 4A+4B-4C=3A+3B-3C; Step 4: Extract the common factor 4 (A+BC) = 3 (A+BC); Step 5: Remove similar items (A+BC). Seeing this, some readers will definitely get excited.Of course he knows that 4 is not equal to 3, this is common sense.Otherwise, this world would be too ridiculous.But why this ridiculous equation?Astute readers probably noticed that the problem lies in the assumption in the first step: Since A+B=C, then the fourth step "A+BC" will be equal to 0.In other words, 4(A+BC)=3(A+BC) is actually 0×4=0×3, and the reason why this equation is true is that this 0 has "destroyed" any value of the number.

Here, I am not studying mathematics, but want to take this opportunity to express my attitude towards history.Looking back at the attitudes and behaviors of people in the world who deny all history and overthrow all old civilizations, why not add this "zero that denies everything" to this multiplication operation, thereby subverting the order of the world and making the world lose its true meaning?This "0" is like an absurd revolution that negates everything, extinguishing the creation of history, and the rest is "poor and blank". And what I call "addition of history" and "increment of history" is to pursue the positive accumulation of civilization, and "multiplication of history" with "zero that negates everything" is actually to make history return to zero and return to nothingness.In my opinion, no matter what country or era you are in, it is unrealistic to think that you can start all over again and create a "brave new world" just by denying everything in the past.Ignoring that 0 has the power to negate everything in the multiplication operation, the "civilized equation" that can be harvested in the end can only be the destruction of "0×4=0×3" and the absurdity of "4=3".

Here, we don't need to repeat the twists and turns of the Chinese revolution in the twentieth century.Just through a few fragments of life, talk about how the past "revolutionary thinking" still has an impact on China today. In 2006, the Henan Xiangcheng government planned to invest a huge sum of 65 million yuan to repair Yuan Shikai's former residence on a large scale, and mobilized citizens to donate for this purpose.As soon as the initiative came out, it immediately attracted criticism from some members of the public.In addition to protesting against the government’s mobilization of taxpayer donations, many people pointed their finger at Yuan Shikai’s historical status—because Yuan “stealed the fruits of the revolution” and was a historical sinner and a restorationist in the history of China’s constitutional government movement, so, It was a mistake to rebuild the former residence for it.What's more, they think that this move is to summon the souls of those dead ghosts who have worn the crown.

The Chinese often say "love the house and the black bird", which means "the one who loves others is also the black bird on the house."Calling for donations is indeed debatable. As for the latter, since people are used to treating Yuan as an "unlucky crow" in Chinese history, everyone undoubtedly "hates the crow and the house" when it comes to his former residence. Not long ago, when Zhejiang Hengdian Group announced that it would raise 20 billion yuan to rebuild the Old Summer Palace in Hengdian in five years, the author proposed the concept of "incremental history" in the face of turbulent opposition.It means that in the face of history and the future, we should do as much "addition of history" as possible, not only to restore history, but also to revitalize the stock of history and seek historical increment.

First, as far as history itself is concerned, in order to better understand everything in the past, society should excavate as many historical materials as possible in order to get close to the historical truth.It is undeniable that today's historical research tends to be "heroic", just like setting up a model, doing "historical subtraction", cutting off branches and leaves, and only leaving "useful deeds" into history.So that our history is so rough that there are only polarized "good words" and "bad words", only famous "good guys" and "bad guys".

Second, focusing on the future, human history is a process of continuous creation and continuous pursuit of historical increment, a process of gradual and gradual accumulation.For this reason, it is necessary to encourage creation and protect existing creations as much as possible, because all incremental history of human beings comes from the accumulation of creation.The historical stock plus increment will be transformed into a larger stock, witnessing the accumulation and growth of human civilization. Regarding the former, Yuan Shikai’s life was not only 83 days. Today’s denial of Yuan Shikai is only against Yuan’s rule of the country, and the revolution died prematurely. Obviously, this has nothing to do with his former residence.In fact, Yuan Shikai's former residence was also left over from his father's generation. As a historical relic, it has reason to be repaired and protected.This is also an important reason why Henan Province listed Yuan's House as a provincial cultural relic twenty years ago. No one would insist that Yuan Shi became the emperor because the former residence opened the door of magic for him.If this is the case, I am afraid that it is not only this ghostly former residence that needs to be demolished, but also the Forbidden City where more than 20 emperors lived. As for the latter, if the repair of old houses can better preserve the style and appearance of the old buildings, it will undoubtedly be beneficial to the maintenance and increase of historical stock.On the one hand, the old house has witnessed a piece of history in old China; on the other hand, we cannot at least deny the sweat and wisdom of the people who built the house to make a living.If the house was abandoned because of Yuan, does it mean that we have somehow been implicated in the lives of those unknown people and their ordinary creations?Obviously, those people are doing "addition to history". On the contrary, those who advocate the demolition of old houses are doing "subtraction from history". History will not benefit from their vigorous "demolition of houses".The overlord of Chu did not burn down the monarchy when he set fire to it. What he burned was only a building bought by countless laborers with their blood and sweat. The same thing happened in Germany, a small town was about to cut down a tree that Hitler had planted that year.In fact, what are the trees? Chinese characters allow Chinese people to live poetically.Today's Chinese are all thankful that Chinese characters have escaped the catastrophe of the last century.It caused China's declining national fortune, and it also originated from the fragile hearts of the people in the city.Fortunately, this is a great nation after all, through the endless dangers of history, opening roads across the mountains, building bridges when encountering waters, and finally with the heart of bearing humiliation, the Chinese civilization has been passed on from generation to generation without the humiliation of being wiped out. In 1918, Qian Xuantong first launched an attack on "New Youth". In this article "China's Future Writing Problems", Qian Xuantong said, "To abolish Confucianism, we must first abolish Chinese; if we want to get rid of the naive and barbaric In order to keep China from perishing, and to make the Chinese nation a civilized nation in the twentieth century, we must (take) the abolition of Confucianism and Taoism as the fundamental solution, and the abolition of records of Confucianism. Theories and the Chinese characters of Taoism's demonic words, especially the fundamental solution of the fundamental solution."Qian Xuantong hoped that Chinese characters could be abolished in China, because "everywhere is enough to prove (Chinese characters) that this old birthday man is not suitable for living a new life in the era of scientific prosperity in the 20th century."Most respectable literati in that era almost hated the Chinese characters used to express their thoughts.Lu Xun is known as the "backbone of the nation", but he almost went to the house to expose the "Han tiles" and tied the Chinese characters to "decapitate".Lu Xun said that Chinese characters are "a sharp weapon for the policy of ignoring the people" and "the tuberculosis of the working people". "If you don't get rid of it first, you will only die yourself."At the same time, Qu Qiubai, a literati politician, was not to be outdone, and his abuse of Chinese characters almost reached the point of "crazy": "Chinese characters are really the most dirty, worst and most bastard medieval latrines in the world." In Qu Qiubai's eyes, The Latin text is a flush toilet with an ISO9001 label, representing advanced civilization. Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, since the state affairs had declined, Western learning was the top priority, as evidenced by the dispute between "Western style and Chinese application" and "Chinese style and Western application".What's worse, most of the radical intellectuals in China, in order to make the "Eastern Invincible", have regarded the Western language as a sunflower book, "If you want to practice magic skills, you must first go to the palace", and simply castrated this "remnant of hieroglyphics".Looking back on these voices in history through the smoke and clouds of a century, the author is often amazed at how crazy Chinese intellectuals are when they join hands and join hands to follow the fashion.Whether it was the romanization of the national language in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, or the "anti-rightist struggle" that "Chinese characters must be Latinized", I broke out in a cold sweat when I thought about them afterwards.Language is the blood of a nation and the river that carries civilization. If we lose it, we will lose our roots.This is the same as what the ancients said, "To destroy the country, the history must be destroyed first".The country is broken by mountains and rivers, and the city is full of spring vegetation.If Chinese characters are eliminated, for the entire Chinese nation, "mountains and rivers" will no longer exist. Chen Duxiu and Hu Shi also advocated the abolition of Chinese characters.It’s just that Hu Shi’s attitude was a little milder, and he believed that everything must be done slowly, first turn Chinese characters into vernacular, and then talk about eliminating Chinese characters, because there are too many monosyllabic words in classical Chinese, “it must not be turned into pinyin.”Hu Shi held this position, although it was an expedient measure, but his vernacular movement allowed Chinese characters, the "remnants of hieroglyphics", to climb out of the "medieval latrine", which was more or less saved Chinese characters.That's why today's Chinese characters and pinyin have the opportunity to live together. This is probably the most classic "combination of Chinese and Western" so far. In fact, it is the Chinese people who do not want to be "progressed" who are really "helping Maokeng" and holding the Chinese character Maokeng down.Because when the elites are working hard to promote Roman Chinese and Latin Chinese, most of the grassroots are "willing to be ignorant" and have no spirit of "advancing with the times".The so-called "dragon seed" of thought reaps the "bait pit" of reality. Alphabetization in China has only stayed in the study of intellectuals who boasted of revolution, so Chinese characters have survived.This may be the only example in Chinese history where "ignorance survives".It convinces me that there is a valuable side to what Burke called conservatism. The above is the main content of my article "Chinese Characters and the Fortune of China" written in 2003.There have been many discussions on the Internet about this article.In my opinion, many Chinese advocated the abolition of Chinese characters at the beginning of the last century, which is actually a logical problem.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, there was a serious crisis in China, including national psychology.Abolition of Chinese characters is the out-of-control and flooding of this psychological crisis.This scene is like a farmer planting a farm, suffering from insect damage, and no harvest.The next year, instead of trying to kill the pests, kill the seeds.No matter how illiterate the peasants are, they would not do such a thing.In fact, these beautiful Chinese characters are not the perpetrators of Chinese civilization, but the victims of literary inquisition. As for how we should reform Chinese characters, I think the most important thing is to restore Chinese characters to freedom.Hu Shi and others made some efforts in the New Culture Movement, such as the transformation of classical Chinese into vernacular, Chinese characters have made great progress, and the form has been liberated to a certain extent, but the spirit of Chinese characters is still not free.A few years ago, I translated the book "The Awakening of China" by Mr. Chen Yan, which was like holding the "Third Plenary Session" in French.why?Because he is originally from China, and I am from China, and the book is also a study of China, but it is in French.At first, I didn't understand that overseas Chinese were busy writing books in foreign languages.Later, I did a few papers at the University of Paris, and gradually gained resonance. Once I wrote them for more than ten days at a stretch, and suddenly felt happy for life.Why?It's not that I'm good at writing French, but because I don't have any freedom, and I can write freely without restraint.I looked up and down, nothing more than looking up a dictionary and checking grammar.A few years later, when I read the article "Exiled to English" (Exiled to English) written by Chinese-American writer Ha Jin in the "New York Times", I felt the same way. Western characters are not superior to Chinese characters but have advantages, which has nothing to do with the characters themselves.I have never doubted the expressive ability of Chinese characters, besides, the expressions can be changed in many ways, such as from poems to words, from operas to novels, from classical Chinese to vernacular.I grew up in the south of the Yangtze River, wandering in a foreign land. Whenever I think about my youth, I often recall Qiu Chi's "March in late spring, the grass grows in the south of the Yangtze River, the peanut trees are mixed, and the orioles are flying around." It can be described as a dream.No matter how good the vernacular is today, it cannot reach the artistic conception of these parallel prose.It should be said that each style of writing has its own strengths, each has its own prosperity, and each has its own limitations. If it is limited to one of them, Chinese characters are still not free.The prosperity of poetry in the Tang and Song dynasties is a treasure of Chinese civilization, but this kind of metrical lyric has allowed literati to write emotions for hundreds of years, and playing crossword puzzles is also a limitation, because Chinese characters are not free. It is a gratifying thing that Chinese characters escaped the catastrophe of the last century.If we lose our mother tongue, what kind of wandering will our hearts face, and what kind of melancholy will our children be when they can't understand our childhood?Writing the article "Chinese Characters and the Fate of the Nation" is not because the author is conservative, but because he wants to be more truly free.A message to China, whether it is radical or conservative, whether it is leftist or rightist, be more rational and tolerant of everything in the past and everything in the present, let alone regard your own civilization as nothing.The so-called "Socrates has a temple of Socrates, and Confucius has a temple of Confucius", it is irrational to uproot one's own civilization after all.The best transformation of Chinese characters today is not to seek outsiders, but to give Chinese characters more freedom, and to treat Chinese characters and people who use Chinese characters more rationally and tolerantly. The government and the people are both responsible for this.Those who use Chinese characters cherish the freedom they have gained, and tolerate the freedom of others to use Chinese characters, striving for complete freedom.If Chinese characters are related to the fate of the country, it still depends on whether Chinese characters are free. Mr. Tang Degang, a historian living in the United States, mentioned the phenomenon that "the Republic of China is not as good as the Qing Dynasty" in his book "Yuan's Reign". "A political and social system that has been reformed and revised for thousands of years cannot be useless. When it cannot withstand the challenge of Western civilization and gradually collapses, there are often gold and celebrity calligraphy and paintings under the ruins. It cannot be burned. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, most of our older generation of explorers are revolutionists, thinking that a western-style skyscraper that meets their ideals can immediately tower into the sky. The result is often the opposite. The new residence has not been built, while the old residence has been demolished, and the masses sleep on the streets and starve to death. Said that the plague is rampant, so the victims will complain that the present is not as good as the past, and the Republic of China is not as good as the Qing Dynasty." Here, we might as well understand "building a new residence" as "addition to history", and demolishing old residences as "subtraction from history".It is undeniable that human beings are progressing through innovation, and sometimes it is inevitable to use "historical subtraction".However, in order to do a good job of "subtraction of history", we must first do a good job of "addition of history".Otherwise, it is inevitable that there will be a situation like Tang Degang said, "the masses sleep on the streets, starve to death, and plagues are rampant."Although we agree that the Republic of China is an improvement over the Qing Dynasty and that democratic Iraq is better than autocratic Iraq in terms of value, how to add first and then subtract during the transformation process is undoubtedly a question worth exploring. The author once summed up the Chinese tradition as "demolition and relocation".In China's transitional period, "China" is often pronounced as "demolition where", to make fun of the Chinese-style "demolition civilization".Although China has thousands of years of civilization, the so-called grand peasant uprisings are nothing more than one dynasty's demolition campaign against another dynasty, and they all demolish first and then move.On the contrary, Paris, whose civilization is later than many cities in China, has become the most poetic, romantic and civilized city in the world because of what I call the "incremental view of history" at all times.I believe that everyone who has been to Paris will feel the shock of "incremental history". In fact, the reason why I advocate the abolition of the death penalty is also out of the consideration of incremental history.The fact that the state, in the name of the majority, binds and decapitates those who have been captured will not add to history.In my opinion, "killing for life" is also doing a "historical subtraction".As Beccaria said two hundred years ago, when the state retaliates against murderers, it is actually arranging for public murderers to kill.When the guillotine is erected, it means that after the murderer subtracted human beings once, the state will subtract them again. An old system can be eliminated and replaced by a new system, thereby achieving the completion of historical increment.Killing a human being, however, does not add to human history.The death sentence will only bring long-term losses to human beings, and a person will not become a new person just because he is eliminated, so this "subtraction of history" will be permanent. In 2006, Saddam Hussein was finally hanged, this has become absolutely certain.The question is, was the hanged man a dictator or an old man? Knock off the crown, cut off the head.Some cheered that the dictator got "what he deserved".However, in my opinion, the "desired end" of a dictator is to disappear from the power system, not physically.In fact, when Saddam Hussein was deprived of all his powers and all his fangs and claws were removed, the "dictator Saddam" was already dead. Peace did not return to Iraq because the dictator was hanged.After Saddam was executed, several violent incidents broke out in Iraq.A statistic published by the Associated Press in April 2009 showed that the Iraq War caused at least 110,000 Iraqi civilian deaths.As of November 9, 2009, the death toll of US soldiers in Iraq has reached 4,362.All kinds of conflicts give people a kind of chaos of "the gods are thirsty".No one doubts that the US government is deeply involved in the quagmire of the Iraq war, and Iraq has also fallen into the abyss of civil war. On December 24, the US "Time" magazine selected the Iraqi as the important figure of the year.The reason for being selected is "struggling on the verge of death."Since the "liberation", the people of Iraq have been subjected to endless mental and physical torture every day.Even when Saddam Hussein was in power, the country experienced more than 12 years of economic sanctions, and the Iraqi people had never encountered such a hellish life. The author does not doubt the value of democracy in Iraq, but the current chaos in Iraq inevitably gives people the wrong impression that "democratic Iraq" is inferior to "authoritarian Iraq".It's not that "democratic Iraq" is bad, but that the building of "democratic Iraq" has not been built at all, while the abuses of "authoritarian Iraq" are brazenly fighting and showing off their power on the street. Over the past few years, with the fall of Saddam's big tree, the original hozen has long been scattered.However, for these hozens, if they have had a "good life" in the tree, or feel that the life after getting off the tree is not as good as they were in the tree or imagined, most of them will look for opportunities to go back to the tree. As mentioned above, American soldiers sawed down the big trees in Iraq and drove the hozens away.However, the old trees have gone, and the new building has not been built. Today, Iraq is still like a mountain of flowers and fruits.If the hozen of the subject era could not live directly in the houses of the democratic era, and in troubled times, they would inevitably have to endure the cold weather during this transitional period. From subject society to civil society, from hozen to citizen, this transformation is determined by the growth of various social forces, and the key to social growth lies in the rise of individual rights and consciousness.In this transformation process, the combined effect of external force and internal force is undoubtedly important.However, the harm of war is that it breaks or interrupts the original historical accumulation and adds many uncertain factors. Summarizing the massacres between the United States and Iraq and different sects within Iraq, it is not difficult to find that these two countries seem to be cursed by revenge.As Gandhi said: "An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind." Obviously, what Iraq needs most today is reconciliation, forgiveness, and salvation, rather than pushing those "evil ones" to the gallows and continuing to fight. Do human subtraction.From this perspective, the U.S. and Iraqi governments' insistence on executing Saddam Hussein not only gave up Saddam's resources to promote Iraqi reconciliation, but also may make the current "revenge situation" worse.