Chapter 4 difficult situation

There is an old man named Socrates, you probably don't know him. He is seventy years old!Deep sunken eyes and a white beard.I have been locked in prison for several days; the day after tomorrow, when the ship returns, the execution will be carried out.This morning.He had just woken up, and there was a little light in one of the small panes, a very Greek sky. Cretu is a rich old friend who has exhausted his eloquence, begging old man Su to escape from prison. "Money, keep it on me," he said, "besides, when you die, who will take care of your children?" But old man Su was very stubborn, he said solemnly:

"It's certainly unreasonable for the Athens government to sentence me to death with false words. But if I break the legal system of Athens by escaping from prison, it is tantamount to repaying others for their evil, and making me wrong. You must know , Two evils cannot make one good. When I am dissatisfied with a system, I have two options: either leave the country; or change the system through legal means.But I have no right to destroy it by rebellion.Let the Athenians kill me!I would rather die a sufferer than live a rebel. " Old man Su swallowed the poison with his head up and died. The yellow liquid flowed down and stained his beard.

※ ※ ※ There is another man named Thoreau who likes to be alone.At the age of 30, I built a wooden house by a forest lake by myself, and worked by myself.Once a barbecue was built in the woods and nearly burned half of Concord's woods. That evening, while taking a walk, Thoreau was taken to jail for refusing to pay taxes.He believed that the government used the money he paid to support wars (Americans bullying Mexicans) and black slavery, which violated his personal conscience, and he took immediate and rebellious actions to resist what he thought was a wrong legal system. "When faced with an unreasonable legal system, should we blindly obey it? Or should we obey it temporarily, and at the same time slowly follow the legal path to reform? Or resist immediately to resist and destroy this legal system?"

Thoreau asked, and his answer was justifiable: "Blind obedience is the lowest level of stupidity. Don't think about it. The time to seek reform is too long. How many days do you have in life? It's not that you have enough to eat and have nothing to do. You don't have to change society all day long like blowflies. Life is alive For life, not for reform. So the best way to deal with an unreasonable system is to resist it immediately." Thoreau didn't enjoy himself; he slept excitedly in the prison overnight, and was redeemed the next day by the kind-hearted old aunt who paid the taxes on his behalf.But a hundred years later, in the ancient and poor East, a man named Gandhi had his fill of fun and brought thousands of people to "immediately resist" an unreasonable system.

※ ※ ※ New York, which has a clear love and hate, has also recently produced a character.Wearing gold-rimmed glasses, the very quiet and delicate Gez was sitting in the night train, eager to go home and take a hot bath.Four young black boys surrounded him and asked him for five yuan.Everyone in New York knows that the next step for five dollars is probably five holes in the head.The guy with the scar on his face put a gun to an old woman's neck just last month and snatched a gold chain. But what about the quiet Goetz?There is no police to protect, and no passengers dare to help—should he, as old man Su said, be a law-abiding victim; or, as Thoreau said, be a law-breaking rebel?To put it another way, should he let these four people beat him up, stab him twice, and then report to the police; or should he take out all the weapons in his hand to attack the enemy and make himself a law-abiding criminal?

Gotz, wearing glasses, stood up in the rickety car and said: "I'll give you five yuan each!" He fired five shots in a row.The one with the scar was hit in the spine and half paralyzed. He is only nineteen years old this year.Goetz, on the other hand, waited at home for the court to pronounce his fate. ※ ※ ※ There is also a Chinese, you may not have heard of it, Zhang Xiguo.When he got into a taxi, the evil driver not only took a detour, but even got out of the taxi to fight.Dr. Zhang, a senior intellectual, rolled up his sleeves and confronted the driver in the street. Mr. Police, representing the legal system, came, but he thought that fighting should not be done. If it was his turn, the driver should be injured, and then he should be charged with injury.

That is to say, if he is stabbed to death by a flat drill, then the last deceased person will go to court to sue him for murder, and everyone will be happy. When a system is unable to protect individuals, do individuals have the right to protect themselves? As far as the basic principles of the rule of law are concerned, we cannot tolerate individual "enforcement".If everyone refuses to pay taxes, if everyone takes up guns and kills the "bad guys" like John Wayne, if everyone rolls up their sleeves and fights; we might be back to primitive times, Everyone relies on their own sharp teeth, and the fittest survive.The reason why the rule of law is important, we say, is that it secures even small individuals with weak teeth.

However, if the existence of "law" is for "individuals", why do "individuals" often sacrifice for "laws"?For Thoreau, the existence of the government is to protect the rights and interests of individuals, but when he is fighting for the rights and interests of individuals.Instead, the government wanted to punish him.For Goetz, he protected himself—achieved the purpose of the "law", but at the same time violated the law.Only that old man, Socrates, simply gave up on himself and sacrificed himself, so he lived in peace with the law. When the so-called "rule of law" has become a huge, rigid grid, locking every "person" made of flesh and blood into a small grid, does this law violate the original intention of its original purpose?When a policeman asks ordinary people to report the crime after being injured by the villain, have people become so "civilized" that they have forgotten what "civilization" is for?

※ ※ ※ So I am very afraid of hearing people say "school honor", because I know how many "disobedient" and "unteachable" students will be brutally suppressed for such an abstract frame, and how many maverick individuals will have to Stuffed into a frame, unable to breathe or move. I can't bear to listen to people preaching the virtue of five generations living under one roof.Beneath that harmonious surface, how many midnight sighs, shattered dreams, and disintegrated individual wills, all for an abstract ideal, a system that originally benefits individuals and often sacrifices individuals.

Legal system, country, society, school, family, honor, tradition—behind each majestic term is an extremely large and authoritative norm and system, which seriously requires individuals to accept and follow. However, the rule of law, society, honor, tradition—the reason why they exist is not for that insignificant "person" who can bleed, cry, and fall?tell me.