Chapter 13 Chapter Fourteen There is a savage force in life

Wang Shuo: This is not the case in foreign countries.I originally thought that the United States is like this, with shameless and casual sexual relations. According to the information I received before, the United States must be the best in the world.But as soon as I arrived in the United States, after staying for a while, I realized that the United States is not like this. People put a lot of emphasis on affection and family.Prostitution is also regulated.It seems that we are the only ones like this here. This is our specialty and patent, which is our collective shamelessness.Why can we collectively be immoral now? Because in the past, for the sake of political progress, we have put down the burden of morality, conscience and honesty, not just now.

Old Xia: Life seems to have pulled out human nature from the root.So in life, no matter how shameless things you do, before your human nature is restored, and when new systems and rules are not gradually established, you can only go this way, becoming shameless, and living in shamelessness is free.We have experienced too much suffering, but we have no awareness of suffering; we have done too much shamelessness and suffered too much humiliation, but we have no sense of shame.The numbness of human nature, the numbness of the soul, and finally even the fucking body is numb, and I can't find the feeling after sleeping with a prostitute.

Wang Shuo: I found that this kind of thing also shows signs of weakening, at least as far as I have come into contact with, I dare say that this kind of thing is weakening.The entertainment of escort girls is no longer as fun and exciting as it was in previous years, and no one takes it as a big deal anymore. Old Xia: Where can economic prosperity push the system and morality?The ancient Chinese said that they knew etiquette when they had enough food and clothing, and they could be persistent only if they had constant production. But I can’t find many people who really know etiquette and perseverance in Chinese history books, especially those who are rich.Those in power and knowledgeable.For example, Bai Juyi, a great poet in the Tang Dynasty, I was taught since I was a child that Bai Juyi was a realist poet who sympathized with the suffering of the lower class and exposed the darkness of the ruler, as evidenced by his "The Charcoal Seller" and "Shangyang White-haired Man" .But his private life was extremely lewd and cruel.It's not about three wives and four concubines, but he raised young prostitutes, bought them at the age of fourteen or fifteen, and they were all virgins. He played with them until he was eighteen or nineteen, and when he was twenty, he felt that these women were old, and he was tired of playing with them. Just drag these old women to the market together with the horses and livestock that his family wants to sell. His life is so rich, but he is so cruel to women, and he doesn't treat people as human beings at all.Not only Bai Juyi, but it was also a fashion among rich people at that time.Sex with young virgins is said to be good for longevity.I don't believe you say that he cares about the suffering of the lower classes.He treats young girls and young women like this, and when they are about 20 years old, they will be sold together with old horses. Is this called caring for people?What is the concept of people in their eyes?I think that what this nation lacks most is not wealth or a set of etiquette that regulates people, but how to treat people, how to treat people as human beings, and how to respect people.know the national interest.National interests or even global interests are not important to the Chinese people. What is important is that everyone knows that they are human beings, treat themselves as human beings, and treat others as human beings at the same time.A Western proverb says: When you stand up to defend the illegally deprived rights of others, you are defending your own rights.For example, in the United States, tolerating the police or the government's violation of a person's legal rights is tantamount to encouraging the violation of power against all Americans.

Many economists now also emphasize that if people get rich first, other reforms will follow naturally. Get rich first, and then people will know what to do and what to do.In the past I had some faith in this statement.That is to say, a former unscrupulous hooligan has become a wealthy self-employed man. He wears designer suits and Italian leather shoes, and his small head is smoothed so that he will no longer be able to curse and spit everywhere.Now I'm getting more and more skeptical that that's not the case at all.Once he gets rich, he can pay attention to some external manners, such as not spitting everywhere. He feels that doing so is not in line with his status and does not deserve his famous brand outfit, but he can use the money in his hands to do more. Shameless.

Wang Shuo: What do you mean by more shameless? Old Xia: For example, to bribe officials, and the kind of things I just mentioned. As for cheating in transactions, it is shameless. Wang Shuo: I don't think anyone is more shameless.Our biggest shamelessness has been done long ago. Before that, it was just restrained to varying degrees. It cannot be said that it is more shameless now than in the past.After the failure of the Cultural Revolution, we have done the most shameless thing.Now, just being rich can bring some kind of restraint, maybe his heart will not become moral because of having money, but he may become more immoral in his heart, such as the things you mentioned.But he still restrains himself in public, he is afraid of being caught whoring prostitutes and being exposed, and if he is caught, he will either lose his money or be locked up for half a year.So he had to put on the appearance of a rich man on the surface, with five people and six people.I think it is very difficult to expect morality to restrain people's behavior. Only a few outstanding people can have moral self-discipline, and morality cannot be institutionalized.An excellent head of a state-owned enterprise may be honest and self-disciplined, but most of them cannot, so institutionalized coercion is needed to restrain them.I think institutionalized coercive constraints cannot bring in private morality, but can only establish a minimum public morality in the minimum consensus of public opinion in society.What is the minimum?For example, this kind of morality cannot require everyone to sacrifice themselves to save others or help the poor, but this kind of moral knowledge requires everyone not to punish others, harm others, and not to hurt others.You don't have to donate money to the poor, but you can't get money from the poor.But public morality is quite dangerous. A little bit of public morality can easily infringe on personal interests. We also have a tradition of disrespecting personal interests. Once we call for the establishment of public morality, the negative effects may outweigh the positive effects.

I don't know if there is a better way.But to say that today is more shameless than in the past, I have already said that I don't see it that way. Compared with the most shameless coercive politics, these little shameless ones corrupt others, but they do not directly force others, especially in terms of sex. The coercive tradition in Chinese culture is especially suitable for those defenders. Old Xia: Once addicted to drugs, it is lifelong. Once addicted to shamelessness, it is also lifelong.To build another thing, there must be a minimum foundation of humanity, and now that the foundation is gone, how to build it?

Wang Shuo: I have no conflict with you on this point.I also think it is impossible, it is impossible to establish a moral awareness of collective victory, and it is even difficult to establish the minimum public morality I just talked about.I'm afraid it has to be institutional morality, turning restraint into a mechanism to expose these shameless people to the public, so that they can be completely exposed and shameless.The method of fines is relatively common now, but fines are shameless versus shameless, so it is not an effective method.In my opinion, a fine is shameless power to sanction moral shamelessness. The former is more shameless than the latter, because it is an act of coercive power, a barbaric act similar to plunder.In my opinion, punishing a person who does not abide by the moral order of adultery is essentially the same as punishment or exile in ancient China for writing a certain character that violated the emperor's taboo.

Old Xia: I think Singapore’s cleanliness and morality are regarded as a model by some people in China. A young man in the United States was whipped for making a small mistake. This kind of moral order is based on coercion. Shamelessly established, there are only two words "money and violence". Wang Shuo: I think Singapore is close to the moral supremacy of Islamic countries. It regionalizes this thing, and it is okay to limit this thing to a certain range.Pan-morality is as scary as pan-politics.If it's a part of human weakness that you can't fix, I don't think morality alone can do it.Because morality also has moral difficulties. It involves the fundamental weakness of human beings. I think it can only be reduced or narrowed to the smallest possible range. I want to solve the problem fundamentally. The so-called recreating new people all end in failure.

Old Xia: The social experiment that wants to recreate new people, the result is that instead of creating new people, it degenerates people. Wang Shuo: From this point of view, there is also this problem in terms of sex.No country has succeeded in eradicating immorality in sexual relations at all.The current successful example is to limit it to a certain range and manage it with standardized laws. I am afraid this is also a helpless choice for human beings, and it can only do this in the end.In terms of morality, we must at least achieve "it's okay not to be ashamed, but it's a bit too much to be proud." It's enough to be able to not be proud.

Old Xia: People who went to China in Melbourne also set up a lot of brothels, and took away a lot of prostitution business from local Australians, because the Chinese charged lower prices.A friend once took me to a brothel owned by a Shanghainese, and I wanted to see what was going on.What surprised me was that the brothel owner's children were playing in it. I asked him why he didn't find a nanny for the children?He said that babysitting here is too expensive, and I said, isn't your job very profitable?Why put children in this environment after school? At this moment his wife came out, having just served a guest.All three of them work in the brothel, and when there are not enough people, the wife also picks up customers.Fucking crazy about money.

Wang Shuo: I think people should have some money.But some people can’t stop the car when they earn money, and the more they earn, the more they want to earn. If they earn so much this month, they can double it in another month. But after having money, I don't believe that his moral standard has improved, but that he has more worries, he feels that he has a little dignity (whether this dignity is a real face or a fake face), and his behavior is somewhat restrained. Don't talk about how a person's heart is, it's enough for him to have superficial restraint.If there is no such restraint, I think it will be even more terrifying.how to say?I think my moral requirements are quite low-key. Old Xia: The most shameless cruelty in the world is caused by intelligence, and people can use wisdom to be shameless.Especially when it comes to dealing with the same kind.How could the mutual killing of animals be more cruel and shameless than the mutual killing of human beings?When two cats fight, if one of them thinks the other is shameless and cruel, he will definitely say, "You are not as good as a human being".This kind of shamelessness and cruelty reached the extreme during the "Cultural Revolution".The cruelty of the Soviet Union is much simpler than the cruelty of the Chinese style. The great purge, the physical elimination is over.The Chinese style first insults and defeats you in terms of personality and dignity, parades in the streets, wears high hats, and hangs up broken shoes.Thousands of people criticize and criticize you in public, let yourself scold and slap yourself in public, bow your head and confess your guilt in public, this is more cruel than being physically eliminated. Wang Shuo: I think our current moral shamelessness must have been common in old China.A lot of people don't like this thing and want to change it.So China imitated the Soviet-style revolution. At that time, the Soviet put forward the slogan of "reconstructing new Soviet men", and believed that only socialist Soviets could shape new men.He wants to fundamentally transform human nature, and the starting point of this transformation may be based on ideal justice.But they proceeded from a noble purpose and resorted to unscrupulous means, but in the end they created a hell on earth and the loss of humanity.Today, no one believes in that set anymore, so keep a low profile.Going back to a basic moral standard: as long as one is a person, one only needs to obey the law, and other private life is completely a personal matter. Old Xia: The traditional Chinese way of administrative intervention in personal private life is not dead, and it cannot be revived. There are still a lot of such interventions in today's life.When you want to treat people.When governing people, restraining people, and depriving people, there must be many people who see this and their eyes light up, excitedly gearing up. Wang Shuo: It will quickly transform moral appeals into an effective administrative supervision and punishment, and finally it will be the rapid restoration of certain things during the Cultural Revolution.For example, the "Adultery Law" must confirm the occurrence of adultery, so it will slip through the wall.Eavesdropping, stalking, and small reports have all come out, and the idle little foot detective team of the neighborhood committee has something to do, or enters your home without your permission, conducts a sudden search, and the relationship between men and women will return to nothingness. In this era, in the end, all personal privacy is gone.But now, there is a little private space at the beginning, everyone can talk about personal things together, and individuals can keep the privacy that they don’t want others to know. Suddenly the police came in.If you use sexual confusion as an excuse, and restore the old routine under the pretext of maintaining moral order, the police will suddenly break in and search, and you have no way to refuse or protect yourself. Old Xia: Now it can do what it wants to do.Once he wants to do it, it doesn't matter if you're a hotel or a street or a private house. Wang Shuo: So there is still a kind of barbaric force in our life, which is not very rational or irrational at all. Where there is reason, as in the United States, no amount of moral appeal will do much.There are a large number of people in the United States who are calling for morality, but where is it not scary?The reason is that it is restricted by a rational and institutionalized rationality. The establishment of any new law, such as restricting guns, has to be discussed many times, and it is based on facts, limited to a specific range, and will not affect other rights. threat and abuse.But the barbaric power in our place does still exist, if you give it an excuse, it will make a comeback.I really thought it was safer, but some recent things... make you feel like you will come again at any time, you have to give it an excuse if you are not careful, or it will make an excuse for itself, "dang", this kind of barbaric The power will mobilize, and by then, all will be blind.There are still many people who are willing to listen to it, and most people cannot resist it.For it, it is not carried out under a limited scope or rational control. When it comes, it will sweep away many others while sweeping this thing. Most people can only obey... Old Man: It is indeed so.The feeling you mentioned just now no matter what stance you take, whether it’s a ruffian stance, a “wrist” of popular culture, or a stance of waging war on popular culture like the one you’re doing now, it’s all inseparable from such a big background. No sense of security is universal, everyone does not have it, like during the "Cultural Revolution", what about Liu Shaoqi, the president of the country?It’s not about being ashamed and regretful, about being resigned, about being resigned, about being killed, about being killed, his fate is no better than that of an ordinary commoner, and sometimes even worse than that of a commoner, such as criticism or something... Wang Shuo: I don't think Liu Shaoqi is that miserable, and the worst is the civilians.Liu Shaoqi died unjustly, and there will always be a day of redress, and there will be commemorative activities on any day now, and civilians are as unknown as trampling an ant to death.When I was in the army, I was just eighteen years old, and I was in the military medical school for a while.There are three large pools filled with corpses, which have been dissected.We stood on the side and saw other people hooking up one after another with a hook, and another after a while.Hook one, saying that this is a Kuomintang spy; hook another, this is a historical counter-revolutionary.When they hooked one, we put it aside for help, and introduced it while hooking, who it was, who it was, and so-and-so, all shot together.There are just three big pools for soaking. After every operation, everyone will fish up the corpse, put on gloves, and practice on him.Those corpses were all stitched with needle holes and had been soaked for several years.I was eighteen at the time and didn't feel much of it, but ten fucking years later... just thinking about it gives me chills in the back of my head.Once that kind of thing comes, I can't stand it, I really can't stand it.How heavy that big butt is, it's scary sitting on your head or next to you.So I can only try to stay as far away as possible, so that our views and positions stay here, and over time, I feel that it becomes very numb.