Chinese culture is a big river that flows endlessly, not dead vines, old trees, and crows along the river! Sit in the lecture hall of Yu Qiuyu's Chinese culture compulsory course, and taste the silent and majestic vitality of Chinese culture.
"Replace the relationship of reality with the ideal, the imaginary connection, the conjecture to supplement the missing facts, and the pure imagination to fill the gaps in the facts" - Marx
I have two trees in my yard, one is a date tree and the other is also a date tree. --Lu Xun
Last time I talked about the sixth reason for the longevity of Chinese culture, called diluting competition. We think about it, and I think many friends may notice that there is still a lot of competition around us. So I want to tell you that strengthening wins and losses and strengthening successes and failures is something that some people in China have done, or that they have to do in some historical stages. This mainly appears in scenes such as imperial examinations, officialdoms, shopping malls, etc., and it is undeniable that the competition is quite fierce.
The so-called "success"
But in most cases, most Chinese really don't care much about competition, so no matter what, they will eventually return to the majority. Here I have to tell you about a very troublesome concept, which is called success. I often meet young people on various occasions, or young parents ask me to write them a few words, they like me the most is to write about the concept of success, heavenly reward, and I often write to them kind, happy, healthy, this is my own motto.
Why don't you write success? I personally feel that the biggest trouble or the biggest sadness in Chinese society now is that so many people are seeking success and so many people are afraid of losing, which makes us unable to sleep day and night, and we must pay attention to our surroundings all the time. The main reason we are often upset is that we are looking forward to success and don't know when we will succeed. Here there are two concepts of success, I am not opposed to the word "success" in the general sense, success has two concepts, I hope you will separate.
The first concept is to make things successful, which is the first concept. The second concept is to compare others. The success I stand for, or the success that I recognize, is the first success, which is to make things successful. We can congratulate that on that. If the meaning of success is to compare others, this success has a negative meaning, and a poison is quietly buried in it.
There are various kinds of psychology in comparing others, comparing others in positions of power, comparing others in wealth, and comparing others in reputation. On this issue, Chinese sometimes calm down and think about it, and it is a little clearer than many people in Europe and the United States.
Tedious official positions
For a certain kind of worship psychology of being an official, but they really seek an official position, step by step, this kind of figure is not too many. We often pay attention to the frustration that many officials feel after they lose power overnight. In fact, I see this kind of psychology very, very much, so I hope that everyone will not try to pursue official positions, and strive to compare the people around them, compare their friends, and compare their opponents, which is unnecessary.
I have seen how many retired officials, every day in distress is the subordinates to change their faces to themselves. In fact, I know better, not to change my face. Subordinates want to work, the new leader comes, the work is arranged, I can not seriously follow up, do not let the new leader think that I am the old leader's person, and if I always surround the old leader who has retired, let people feel that there are many small circles in this unit, which is very bad, so they deliberately avoided, not disloyal to you. But after the loss of power, he was tormented by the infidelity of his subordinates every day, which was indeed very distressing.
Position of power is not a very good thing, and I must advise you on this. It has a lot of commitments, a lot of sacrifices, and that touched us. But overall, it's not very important. I met a high-ranking leader who retired and thankfully he liked my book, so we had a conversation.
He told me that he had been writing his memoirs since he retired and had been writing them for three years. His wife told me he was flipping through my book while writing a memoir. I earnestly advised him, and I said that since you are my reader, I cannot but tell you a little, can you please not write, do not write such a memoir. You go to exercise, you go to art, you go to write calligraphy, not memoirs like this.
Why? I said the app itself was boring. What can you write about in your memoirs? You haven't fought, you haven't participated in thrilling things, you've been ushered in. This project went up, the joint venture over there could be negotiated, these things were written out, I said a sentence that he did not accept very well, and then quickly accepted, I said such a memoir, to be fair, your son and your grandson will not read. So I make it clear from this that the official position as a whole is relatively boring, not worth exaggerating, and not worth remembering.
Wealth and fame
As for wealth, the same is true, Chinese understand very well that it has not only become the object of robbery and coveting. And it will also bury an unparalleled hatred between flesh and blood. This is especially true of fame. I wrote an article about fame, how many people under the heavens later got the fame they had hoped for, but when his life was over, the fame soon disappeared. You see that some people are very fond of writing on their tombstones such as so-and-so, a cadre at the deputy department level, and then writing "This unit does not have the level of the main department" in parentheses, which is very ridiculous. It is completely unnecessary that the reputation end up on the tombstone or on the eulogy. The various reputations of the political and cultural circles were quickly forgotten by everyone due to the ups and downs.
You see, these characteristics show that the success of comparing others is very worthless. I'm not here to give you psychological relief, I'm just talking about a nature of Chinese culture. What I mean by seeing through it has been seen through in the history of Chinese culture. Here I would like to talk about a few ancient Chinese classics, this famous saying Chinese almost all know, so it has slowly become a very thick precipitation in our hearts.
For example, Lao Tzu said that "misfortune and happiness depend on, and blessings and misfortunes lie down", that is, our misfortune and happiness are closely dependent on each other; Lao Tzu also said that "misfortune is greater than dissatisfaction", as long as you compete, the greatest disaster awaits you. What I mean by competition is the kind of competition that compares others to others, not the kind of competition that makes things successful; Zhuangzi said that "safety and danger depend on each other, and misfortunes and blessings live together"; Han Feizi said that "misfortune and happiness are the same door, and benefits and harms are neighbors"; the great poet Bai Juyi said that "misfortunes and blessings are vast and unpredictable, and most of them retreat like prophets early."
A gentleman has nothing to argue with, and his contention is also a gentleman
There can be many, many such examples, which prove that China's first-rate philosophers, thinkers, literati, and poets have agreed on this issue. I have hardly seen an example in our ancient Chinese philosophical and aesthetic treatises that encourage people to compete by comparing others to success, and all the highest discourse systems are tightly implemented in the basic concept of "diluting competition". So I can say with some confidence that this is the main focus of Thinking in Chinese culture.