Chapter 4 Historiography --- the opening of the desert rose

I put historiography last.The influence of history on value judgments seems to be very clear.Learn from the past to know the future, and only by knowing the past can we predict the future. This has already been said badly.I don't use idioms very much, so try another way of saying it. A friend came from Israel and brought me a desert rose.There is no glass rose in the desert, but the name of this plant is desert rose.In the hand, it is a pile of hay, real withered, dry, dead grass, such a handful, it is ugly.But he asked me to read the manual; the manual told me that this desert rose is actually a kind of lichen, with needles shaped like pine branches.If you soak it whole in water, it will be fully revived on the eighth day; if you remove the water, it will gradually dry up again, dry like sand.Keep it hidden for another year or two, and one day it will be soaked in water again, and it will come back to life again.This is Desert Rose.

Well, I'll put this bunch of dry grass in a big glass bowl, fill it with water, and put it there.From that day on, my two precious sons and I went to see how Desert Rose was doing every day?On the first day I went to see it, there was no movement, a bunch of dry grass was soaked in the water. When I went to see it the next day, I found that it had a center, which had been stretched from the inside to the outside, and it was a little green. The feeling, not the color.I went back to see it on the third day, and the green blurred feeling was really a green color, the green of the pine branches, giving off the smell of damp moss, although the edges were still dry.It spread itself out, already showing us that it really had a rosette.Every day, the greenery at its core expands an inch.We add water to it every day, and one day, the green has gradually extended to all its fingers, stretched out layer by layer.

On the eighth day, when we went to see the desert rose, our neighbor happened to be there along the way, so he followed us to the kitchen to see.On this day, what unfolded in front of our eyes was a complete, plump and revived desert rose!The three of us yelled wildly, because we were so happy, we saw a dark green desert rose fully blooming. The neighbor said strangely, what are you doing with this handful of weeds?I was stunned. Yes, in his eyes, it is not a rose, it is a lichen!You said, no matter how beautiful the lichen is, where is the beauty?What he saw was a handful of unsightly, damp-smelling lower plants in a large bowl; What I get is the phenomenon and the clues behind the phenomenon bit by bit, the twists and turns, and the inexhaustible origin.

Therefore, in our value judgment, the beauty of this thing is earth-shattering, and its resurrection process is the shocking performance of the primordial universe.We can appreciate it for only one reason; we know where it started.Whether we know this starting point or not will cause a divergence in value judgments between us and our neighbors. Needless to say, learning from the past and knowing the future, I just want to tell you the story of the desert rose.For any thing, phenomenon, topic, person, event, if you don’t know its past, how do you understand what its present meaning means?If you don't understand its present, how can you judge its future?If you don't know the past, don't understand the present, and can't judge the future, what qualifications do you have to be our "national leader"?

I was a very stupid, very late student of history.After the age of forty, I realized my shortcomings.When I wrote "Wildfire", I only looked at isolated phenomena, that is to say, the desert rose is ugly here, and I want to change you, because I want a really fragrant rose.After I turned 40, I discovered history and how the desert rose came all the way. My interest is no longer direct criticism, but: you give me a thing, an event, a phenomenon, and I hope to know the history of this event. In the larger coordinates, horizontal and vertical, where exactly is it located?Before I don't know the horizontal and vertical coordinates, sorry, I dare not criticize this matter.

After understanding this point, you may find that 60% of the so-called knowledge given to you by the education system and media in this society are half-truths and half-false.For example, we grew up thinking that the so-called Western culture is an open, democratic culture that emphasizes personal values ​​and resists authority. We all say that the West is a liberal culture.After using your own mind to study European history, you will be surprised: How can this happen?It was one thing before the Western Renaissance, and another thing after it; it was one thing before Enlightenment, and another thing after Enlightenment.Then you have also believed that what is China and what is China's national conditions is autocracy, autocracy for two thousand years.If you use your own brain to study Chinese history, you will find that, hey, this is also a half-truth and half-false statement.Is China authoritarian?The China before Zhu Yuanzhang is not the same as the China after Zhu Yuanzhang; the China before Yongzheng and Qianlong is not the same as the China after Yongzheng and Qianlong, so what do you mean by "two thousand years of autocracy in China"?What is the point of such a definitive statement?After entering history yourself, you wonder: Why does this society give you so many half-truths of "truth" and not tell you what they are half-truths?

The exploration of history will inevitably force you to go back and reread the original texts, using your now more mature and broader reference frame of vision.Rereading the originals made me hard on myself.There was a mainland writer who ate at a restaurant in a European country. A group of friends ate happily, drank, patted their buttocks and left.After leaving the restaurant far away, the waiter came out and said, "I'm sorry, you forgot to pay the bill." The writer wrote an article praising the honesty of the Europeans, and no one suspected that they ate for free on purpose.If we are in China, if you forget to pay for your meal, people may come out with a kitchen knife to chase you. (laugh)

I wrote an article with the intention of refuting, that is, sorry, this is not a question of ethnicity, moral level or cultural differences.This is probably an economic issue at all.For example, if the writer went to Europe that happened to be Germany, where there was a serious shortage of food after World War II, the German hostesses would have to chase him out with kitchen knives.This is not a moral issue, but a development stage issue, or in other words, an institutional structure issue. After writing that article, I smugly felt that I had great insights.Well, one day when I was rereading the original classics, I turned to an article written by a best-selling author more than 2,000 years ago, which almost made me fall off my chair.I found that my "great" insights were written by others two thousand years ago, and they were written better than me.Who is this person? (Projection shows "Five Worms")

What Han Feizi wants to explain is: We Chinese always praise how noble Yao and Shun’s abdication is. Poor, that is to say, their enjoyment is about the same as that of the lowest class.Then when Yu was king, his toil was similar to that of "subjects and captives".Therefore, when Yao, Shun and Yu were political leaders, their treatment and enjoyment were not much different from that of ordinary people at the bottom. There's nothing wrong with giving up. (Laughter) But "the current county magistrate" is just a county magistrate in today's system. Compared with ordinary people, he enjoys a lot of power.In the language of the twentieth century, he has all kinds of privileges conferred by the "official position", he has a lifetime salary, housing discounts, study abroad fees, medical insurance... because the benefits brought by power are too great, and the whole The whole family should enjoy this benefit, who would let it go? "It is difficult to leave the magistrate of today's county magistrate, but it is difficult to leave the emperor of the past lightly." The reason is not morality, culture, or nationality. What is it? "Thickness and thickness are different in reality", actual interests, economic problems, and institutional structures have resulted in completely different behaviors today.

After reading Han Feizi's "Five Worms", I thought, forget it, you are still writing the same thing two thousand years later, and you think you have unique insights.You are too ridiculous, too ignorant of your position. This kind of "harshness" in measuring oneself should actually be a basic condition, I think.It is impossible for us to know all the paths traveled by our predecessors, but it is at least a pursuit to have some knowledge of the past paths.Speaking of this, I think of Eliot's famous literary criticism, talking about personal talent and tradition, and also emphasizing that every individual creative achievement must be judged in the literary pedigree to be meaningful.Pedigree is history.However, this standard is rather difficult for Chinese people in the twentieth century, because long-term political turmoil and divisions have caused serious cultural faults, and we are very, very far away from our original scriptures, our genealogy, and our history.

Literature, philosophy and history.Literature allows you to see the reflection of poplar trees in the water, and philosophy enables you to know the stars in the maze of thought, so that you have the possibility to get out of the maze; then history is to let you know that the desert rose has its specific starting point, and no phenomenon is exist in isolation.