Since the Industrial Revolution, human society has undergone earth-shaking changes, since then, human beings began to abandon the arrogance, self-centered inferiority, really feel in the face of nature, human smallness, but also gradually realized that human activities should be subject to the objective laws of nature, everything should be done according to the rules, clear, rather than bold, do what you want.
In fact, when it comes to human cognition of their own smallness, Chinese understand it more thoroughly.
China from ancient times to the present, has always been in awe of nature, in addition to the indispensable Qin Shi Huang, most of the emperors in front of the "Heavenly Emperor", or retain the fear of the gods, therefore, in the past, the emperor ascended the throne, there will often be a process of sacrifice to the heavens, if disasters occur frequently, the people are not happy, the emperor will generally apologize to the heavens, sin himself, pray for forgiveness from heaven.
But even so, we should also soberly understand that the ancient Chinese cognition of the natural world and the human cognition of the natural world after the Industrial Revolution are completely different things. Why?
Ancient China's "reverence" and "fear" of the natural world are a little stronger, always feel that there is a huge energy between heaven and earth, a huge body of the master, if human beings act recklessly, let this god greatly unhappy, will be the natural disaster in the human world, not to mention the peace and prosperity, survival will become a problem.
It is precisely because of such a mentality of stealing life from ants that most of the people in ancient China lived very poorly, walking on their backs for decades all their lives, and also giving birth to children and suffering together.
It is also precisely because the "fear" component is a little more, resulting in the ancient Chinese working people did not dare to contact nature, understand nature, and naturally will not follow the principle of "following the objective law to do things", and build their country better and better.
The Industrial Revolution in the West, on the other hand, is very different. Before the Industrial Revolution, the Western world can be said to be a mess, neither China's so many ethical guidelines, the compulsory constraints of family rules and state laws, nor the lighting and guidance of spiritual beacons such as moral etiquette, so the social life of the entire Western world can be described as chaotic.
However, after the Industrial Revolution, human beings began to recognize the laws of nature, and also enjoyed many benefits of doing things according to the laws, and also found a way to develop. Obviously, this path is extremely correct, helping the Western world, which was once 1,800 years behind China, to rise rapidly, easily defeating manchu Qing China, which was once proud of the world, and turning against customers, becoming the object of learning that China is still trying to follow.
So what is China learning? In addition to advanced science and technology, a key learning content: follow the objective laws of nature and follow the rules.
It can be seen that after the Industrial Revolution, human beings have realized the smallness of the natural world, and more or less "respect" this level, and even can be said to be "respect without fear". By finding the normative way to do things, it is used by human beings.
It is precisely because after the Industrial Revolution, human cognition of the natural world has risen to a new level, so there will be a social division of labor, and with the intensification of the demand for efficiency improvement, the social division of labor is becoming more and more detailed.
If we talk about the social division of labor, we in ancient China did not lose to the Westerners. This is the wisdom that Chinese has since ancient times, but unfortunately, the social division of labor in ancient China not only did not improve social production efficiency, but hindered social progress, because its division of labor is more to facilitate the decay of the privileged class, resulting in leading cadres unable to take care of their own lives, and ordinary people cannot decide whether to live or die.
Needless to say, in the past, the families of the rich and the officials not only set up official homes and hired long-term workers, but also hired a large number of servants to arrange the master's food and living. People who have watched "Prime Minister Liu Luoguo" are deeply impressed by this scene: the big corrupt official and Yan eat a meal, they are too lazy to move, only open their mouths, let the four squirrels take turns to feed into the mouth, pull a shit is also "not idle", let the six squirrels around the side, only move their butts without moving, and wipe the shit.
Officials and rich merchants are still like this, not to mention the emperor as the supreme ruler. Every word and deed is equipped with corresponding systems, such as speech officials, collecting relics, three provinces and six ministries, etc., which are all institutions set up to facilitate the work of the emperor.
After all, the emperor's work is also for the sake of the country's strength and the people's prosperity, but it is not easy to say that he also needs "special supplies" in life. Not only did the emperor's life have to be taken care of by the eunuchs and eunuchs, but even the sex life had to be carefully arranged, and there was a "respect room" system, equipped with a number of eunuchs to serve, which was too much.
Daily life is arranged so meticulously, how can the emperor and ministers live and take care of themselves? The ancients had clouds: if a house is not swept, why sweep the world; I think: A person cannot take care of his own life, how can he take care of the lives of the people in the world?
Looking at the ordinary people, they not only have to take care of themselves, but also have to do a lot of work beyond the scope of their abilities for how to "take care of themselves", such as the farmers in "Journey to the West" who farm, there are no cattle, and they can only be cattle carrying plows and plowing the land.
If that were all there was to it, there would still be a small number of poor people's children who would be apportioned to the official family and the rich peasants, be dispatched by the rulers, serve in forced labor, and be forcibly conscripted into the army, and die on construction sites, battlefields, and deep palace compounds.
Such a hierarchical social division of labor, which means very serious, is doomed to have no positive effect, so it is not surprising that ancient China has always hovered in the 300-year cycle of rise and fall, and can never enter the wave of the industrial revolution.
Therefore, I laugh at the ancient social division of labor: leading cadres cannot take care of themselves in their lives, and ordinary people cannot decide whether they live or die.