Chapter 2 Humanities and Nature

The vastness of the universe is not difficult to imagine by simply reading a few books on modern astronomy.When you look up at the sky at night, although you can see thousands of constellations, densely covered all around.But the vastness of the distance between those stars is astonishing enough.The stars in space are just like a few sailboats or a few gulls on the sea.We can say that the universe is more empty than real.Although those constellations are radiant and brilliant, we can also say that the universe is darker than light. In the universe there is the sun, in the solar system there is the earth, in all things on the earth there is life, and in life there are human beings. The status of human beings in the entire universe is really too small.For example, in the dark night, there is a little light in the boundless wilderness, at most it only illuminates the area around the size of him, and it is completely dark and unknowable if it is a little farther away.The glimmer of light emitted in the course of human life is more aptly described as being like a firefly. Although the firefly flies forward, its light shines on the tail.Human knowledge can only know what has already been done, and with this knowledge and memory of what has already happened, we can go forward to the infinite and unknowable future.

If you pay too much attention to the natural world, just like a pedestrian in the wilderness at night, keeping his eyes on the boundless darkness, it will frighten you and confuse you.But some people value their personal life too much. You should know that personal life is still a nature, the same emptiness is better than reality, darkness is better than light, and it is also in the boundless darkness.The human mind, on the other hand, seeks the truth in the void and the light in the darkness, and that can only be found in the accumulation of human history and culture.These cultural heritages accumulated through the past history of human beings are called humanities, which are used to oppose nature.It's real, it's bright, but it's just a glimmer of light at the tip of Firefly's Tail.

How can some of the historical and cultural heritage accumulated by human beings compete with and stand side by side with the vast universe of the entire natural world.But as far as people are concerned, there is only this way. This is the so-called human-centered opinion.In the traditional Chinese view, the natural world is called heaven, and the humanistic world is called human beings. On the one hand, the Chinese use humanities to fight against nature, and to exalt humanities to stand side by side with nature. Nature devours humanity, and we don't want to use humanity to defeat nature.

Taoism also has the theory that heaven and man are invincible, (see) but Taoism underestimates the historical and cultural group karma too much. Individuals can only say that other heavens have more points and humans have less points. It is insignificant again, how can heaven and man be invincible.So Xunzi wants to say that Zhuangzi knows about heaven but not about people, but Xunzi advocates that human nature is evil, which does not really understand the truth of human history and culture.If you analyze it one by one, human beings do have all kinds of shortcomings and all kinds of sins.For each individual is but a part of nature.But if you can look at the history and culture of the large group of human beings as a whole, then all the goodness in the world is not created by the karma of the human group, and how can it be said that human nature is evil?Western Christian thought, because it only focuses on individual individuals and does not pay attention to the accumulated karma of a large group of historical cultures, therefore also advocates that human nature is evil, saying that life is inherently sinful, so it will inevitably lead to death. Erase life and return to nature.Buddhism also has the same tendency. If they don’t pay attention to the large group of historical and cultural karma, they will inevitably become pessimistic about life. They only point to individual lives to make arguments, but they refuse to divert their attention. For the sake of business.Modern Western thought, liberated from their medieval Christian teachings, has returned to ancient Greek concepts. On the one hand, it positively affirms life, but on the other hand, it still pays too much attention to the individual. Turn back to medieval religion to remedy your present ailments.As far as personnel and human affairs are concerned, the future way out may be to dilute individualism and turn to the common cause of history and culture in a blink of an eye to revive the old Chinese traditional concept of the unity of man and nature.