During the Warring States period, Zhao Kuo of the State of Zhao was familiar with military books, eloquent in the world, and often made the famous general Zhao Hao dumbfounded, but the old father did not think much of the son of Xueba, and before dying, he instructed Zhao Kuo's mother not to let Zhao Kuo lead the army, which coincided with the Qin people. However, the State of Qin was deceitful and spread rumors that the State of Qin was not afraid of honesty, it was afraid of Zhao Kuo leading the troops, and the King of the State of Zhao fainted, and actually disregarded zhao Kuo's old mother's death to dissuade him, and really used Zhao Kuo as the commander-in-chief, and the outcome was known to everyone, and the battle of Changping was killed alive by the Qin army, resulting in a major historical tragedy, and Zhao Kuo himself naturally died on the battlefield, and thus gave birth to a well-known idiom: talking about soldiers on paper.
We can't just think that the scholar will only learn and will not be able to do it, this historical allusion is probably to warn the world that theory and practice are not the same thing, military theorists may not be able to become good commanders, interlaced like mountains, looks very close to the industry, in fact, is completely two different things.
If Zhao Kuo is just a nerd pseudo-scholar, then Wang Mang of the Western Han Dynasty is a rather creative scholar, and some people say that Wang Mang is a modern person who has traveled to ancient times, which is indeed very reasonable. As a foreign relative of the Western Han Dynasty, in order to realize his political ideals, he let the young emperor Zen give himself the throne and realize a bloodless change of dynasty, which was a remarkable innovation, and his reform measures were even more shocking, abolishing the slave trade, redistributing land and state-owned, salt affairs and other public utilities were all nationalized, industry and commerce levied 10% income tax, the proceeds were used for public undertakings, loans to the poor, and so on. This is the first century AD! These earth-shattering reforms should have come nearly two thousand years later, but Wang Mang was so ahead of the curve.
We have to admit that in that extremely backward era, Wang Mang was a scholar and economist of real money and silver, but unfortunately, as Mr. Bai Yang lamented, he was not a politician, and politicians did not think that they were smarter than others, and the scholar Wang Mang thought that he was the smartest, so he adopted the method of policy pushing, the consequences can be imagined, the reform completely failed, the new dynasty he created also quickly collapsed, and his only merit was not to be maintained without bloodshed, and the country was soon again warlords and the people were not happy.
Sorry for Wang Mang! As a remarkable scholar, he saw the root causes of the people's suffering and social ills, and also designed a set of very advanced reform measures, not for the sake of prosperity and wealth, but only for the ideal of social reform and entered the political arena, which is almost unique in ancient Chinese history, but his end can only be a fiasco. Through the tragedy of Wang Mang, the complexity and danger of the political arena have once again been confirmed.
It is better not to be an official easily, and the qingming officialdom can still be saved, but it is inevitable that they will be blamed and overturned, and the corrupt officialdom is more likely to be the paradise of the scum and hooligans, because they are often able to bend and stretch, are better at observing the color of speech, and tend to be inflamed. Thousands of years of history, the prosperity is too few, and often in vain, so I admire the crown in the "History of Ru Lin", many times evaded being an official, and the last time simply hid in the mountains, this is a long time to see through the officialdom is not the stage of scholars, the two evils are the lesser, which is too advanced in the era of learning and excellence, and how wise!