Chapter 8 Why reformers are nerds

Why Wang Mang failed has aroused controversy among Chinese and foreign scholars. Fifty years ago, some people called him an "early socialist".In fact, this comparison is unrealistic, and Wang Mang's demise can be explained by his personal experience of history, so we don't need to provide hypotheses about events that didn't happen. Although Wang Mang's New Deal involves a lot, its main points are not difficult to list.One is to call the land of the world Wang Tian, ​​which means that the land is state-owned. The area occupied by each family and the number of slaves used are limited, and they are not allowed to buy and sell on their own.The second is to make "five balances" and "six managements", that is, the government conducts business, and also uses gold, silver, cloth, and five baht coins to go down to turtle shells to form a currency system that can be replaced by each other.One is agricultural policy, and the other is commercial policy, which also fit the traditional so-called "food and goods" category.Its ideal is that all farmers have fields, goods can be circulated, prices are fair, and usury is extinct.

This kind of ideal involves the foundation of the country and society, and has lofty goals.However, according to the edict issued by the reformer himself, since the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the tax system assumed to be equal to all people, because "the powerful people invaded, divided the fields and robbed the fakes" has not lived up to the name.Due to financial difficulties in Xinmang, the ministers only get a piece of silk in the next month. "The lessons are unreasonable, and the officials will not be paid." optimistic. At the turn of the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty, two things are worth noting: first, the power of government control has decreased, and the civil gentry has risen.The second is the expansion of the bureaucracy. It is estimated that there are more than 130,000 local officials in the central government.Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu rose from the people, he used the power of the former instead of being fettered by the latter; Wang Mang did the opposite.He couldn't compete with the great family and surnames, so he wanted to issue an imperial edict against them.Although he changed Chang'an to Xin'an, he still had an inseparable relationship with the old-fashioned bureaucracy.Juntian should start in rural areas, and the government should also organize ordinary businessmen to provide second-line and third-line support.He paid no attention to these things.

Today, when we read the biography of Wang Mang in "Han Shu", we cannot ignore the bookish "style" of this man.For example, he used "five mighty generals" to patrol around, rode in "ganwen chariots", drove "kun six horses", and each of them "carried the feathers of warblers and birds on their backs".He also divided the big counties into five, and the counties and counties were three hundred and sixty in the name of pavilions, in response to fate.The Xiongnu Shanyu was changed to "subduing Shanyu" by him, and the people in the territory under his jurisdiction were also divided into fifteen divisions.Gaoguli was reduced to "Xiaguli".

Wang Mang may be mentally disturbed. When he was emperor, he was always under the greatest pressure from the outside world, and he often worked all night long.However, he also has many methods that we regard as bizarre today, such as creating ideal mathematical formulas in advance and applying them to real people, using a symbolic instruction as a practical method, and paying attention to the symmetrical balance of vision and hearing. , do not pay attention to the specific connection of the organization, which are all related to the history of traditional Chinese thought.This is also the product of early political maturity and untimely technology supply.Because ruling this huge empire is all-encompassing, even doctoral consultants must ensure that they have an intellectual grasp of a myriad of things, in order to commend the omnipotence of imperial power.Therefore, the original one-sided views can only be involved and shrouded to derive a universe in which everything can be interconnected and regular.

In the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu was the most famous person who advocated the "unity of man and nature".When he questioned Emperor Wu's policy, he had already put forward the explanation that "those who are in charge of government and are suitable for the people should be rewarded by heaven".His "Spring and Autumn Fanlu" is the abyss of yin and yang and five elements.All spring, summer, autumn and winter, east, west, north, south, and middle are also related to wood, fire, earth, gold, and water, and are also related to the five senses, five flavors, heaven, earth, father and son, "each in its own order".Dong Zhongshu himself said that the disaster was extraordinary, and he almost caused a catastrophe, but fortunately he was pardoned by Emperor Wu.However, the false science of yin-yang and five elements has become a well-known truth after being advocated by this generation of great Confucians.Because "the fire resides in the south and dominates the summer qi" and is compatible with the military, the "Hanshu" Wuxingzhi pointed out that Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty's several expeditions against the Huns were carried out in the years of severe drought between spring and summer, but the book did not explain it clearly. It is due to the drought, or the drought caused by the army, or both because of the strong "summer qi".The same book Tianwenzhi also pointed out that "often stars" (common stars and groups of stars) "all have the image of state, state, official and palace things".From the Western Han Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty, this belief only intensified. The Book of Rituals in the Book of the Later Han records that on the night before the winter solstice, all officials in the capital wore black clothes at five quarters before the end of the night (approximately six o'clock in the morning today), greeted the Qi in the "black suburbs", and saluted. Change to a red robe.It is because the days are the shortest and the nights are the longest on the day of the winter solstice. After that, the days will get longer and the nights will be shorter.It is also necessary to measure the weight of the water on that day, determine the length of the sundial shadow, and adjust the musical instrument.This is to take advantage of the "solar terms" to give some precautions to all things related to numbers.

Any action has a relationship between yin and yang, and any number of things has a certain sequence endowed by nature, so it can be explained by numbers, which does not conflict with modern science.Liu Xin, who supported Wang Mang, explained that raining means that Yin Qi cannot flow upwards, and Yang Qi cannot penetrate downwards. It can also be said to explain a physical phenomenon in an aesthetic way.That's why Needham said that Chinese philosophers guessed the mysteries of nature on par with Greek thinkers.We feel that the Greek thinkers only believed that the laws of nature must be discovered continuously before they can be continuously unfolded.Thinkers such as Dong Zhongshu in the Han Dynasty believed that all the knowledge that human beings should have is already under control, and that natural phenomena, normal and abnormal, are all related to human affairs, and ordinary people can see through them at a glance.There has been a big difference in this.The greatest burden of Chinese thinkers is that the knowledge they uncover is difficult to separate from the government.

Emperor Guangwu Liu Xiu also focused on prophecy.He and Zheng Xing discussed suburban sacrificial offerings, and there is the following record: This also proves that an autocratic monarch needs an ideology as his basis, and it is difficult for his subjects to resist, because if they do not support it, they are against him.Zheng Xing had no choice but to admit defeat, admitting that his academics were shallow, and he was not as good as a saint, so he had to get away. Under the same circumstances, we can also guess that it was difficult to communicate in the written language of the day (paper only appeared around 105 AD), and the government recruited so many scholars that it was difficult to popularize knowledge that was incompatible with the ideology of the government.Zhang Heng of the Eastern Han Dynasty made an armillary sphere and a seismograph in 132 A.D., which could predict where earthquakes occurred without waiting for reports from various places.He said that the sky is like a chicken egg, and the earth is like an egg yolk. It travels once a day, a total of 365 and a quarter of a degree. He also calculated that the pi is 3.1622.However, he was slandered by the eunuchs, and he was not satisfied with himself, so he dared not tell the emperor directly, "Many of the later works are not detailed, and people of the time hate them." , there is a world of difference.Wang Chong, who was about 50 years earlier than Zhang Heng, made systematic criticisms of the superstitions of the day, and wrote "Lunheng" with more than 200,000 words, but others were "different people" and the book was "different books". His biography is written in "Book of the Later Han Dynasty", only a few dozen lines are discussed, and there is no transcription of a single word except that his book "begins as strange, but eventually has truth".It can be seen that knowledge that takes knowledge itself as its purpose always has a tendency to go out of fashion.

From these points of view, we look back at Wang Mang: "Sui Shu" scriptures said: "Wang Mang is good at amuleting fate, and Guangwu prospered with pictures, so he prevailed in the world." With a mystical color, there is no fundamental difference in supporting their imperial career.But other than that, Liu Xiu paid attention to actual organization and achieved his goal step by step.Wang Mang's vision is high but his power is low. He can only preach that the overall situation of the world should be like this. He often does things inappropriately, and may be deceived by his own propaganda.As long as his biographer extracts the front and back of his imperial edict, it can also be seen that this reform expert is actually still a big bookworm.