"Heavenly Way" is a very deep literary and artistic work, adapted from the literary work "Distant Savior", which perfectly reveals human nature, and the questions that we usually find difficult to understand can sometimes find answers here. One of the main points in the book is that it is cultural attributes that determine a person's personal destiny and level of life. The word "cultural attribute" runs through almost the whole play. All the ideas tried to express throughout the play, the plot depicted, and even the respective development of the fates of the characters in it, were ultimately attributed to this word with a little "mysterious" color.
Saying that he is mysterious is because this is a core word that supports the logic of the whole play, at the important juncture of the changes in the fate of the various characters in the play, the voiceover repeatedly mentions this word, so that when we experience the impermanence of fate, we can't help but have a little sense of "fate".
So, what are "cultural attributes"? Or more precisely, what is the "cultural attribute" in the TV series trying to express, and what is the real "cultural attribute"?
If you want to talk about "cultural attributes", of course, you have to say "culture" first, what is culture? The word culture, first from the I Ching, "looks at the humanities and transforms into the world". What does it mean, that is, in its own population, within the scope of society, through various forms, the formation of rules, decrees, etiquette procedures, etc., and then in the "world" promotion.
All decrees, ceremonies, including writing, language, music, and so on, are rules, unlike the rules of other groups, societies. You can accept foreign music, crops and other secondary things as a supplement to your own society, but if the core rules are shaken, your people, the uniqueness of society, your culture, will not exist.
As above, culture, first of all, rules, this is his connotation, and secondly, he is all our production and way of life, the sum of all human activities and creations, which is his extension. To put it more bluntly, everyone who is related to people, with people, with society, is culture. A single person independent of society has no value for discussion, and no culture or rules. The society in which we live is supported and constructed by countless tangible and intangible rules, that is, culture, and at the same time shapes us who make up society.
For example, is the Yangtze River and the Yellow River culture? Of course, we have lived in this land for thousands of years, and the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and even the grass and trees of this land have long formed a relationship with us to change and shape each other. We change the natural environment around us all the time, and they are not changing us all the time. Culture, with us, with this society, is a two-way interactive relationship. Culture shapes us, and we change the rules, culture.
It's very interesting, that is to say, there is no such thing as "cultured" or "uncultured", but only in a certain society, within the scope of the population, how much the rules are mastered.
Furthermore, with the state as the individual and the world as the society, there are also its rules and cultures. If there is no universally accepted and recognized rule and culture that exists globally, then in the state of the weak and the strong, whose strength is great, whose culture becomes a strong culture, imitating and learning from them, it is called "culture", and vice versa is weak, "no culture". This logic is placed within the state, within society, and the same holds.
Within the country, there needs to be a culture that is widely recognized and accepted by all the people in the country, such as for today's China, which is the "Chinese nation".
The formation of this culture is not natural, and requires all kinds of harsh conditions, especially a long time cost. For example, in the Spring and Autumn Warring States were unified by Great Qin, even with the blessing of strong force, even if there were hundreds of thousands of years after the "Great Yu ZhiShui", the demarcation of "Kyushu", and the establishment of the concept of "Tianxia", in the efforts of cultural convergence, when Great Qin tried to forcibly add its own culture to the "Six Kingdoms", it still encountered widespread resistance, and even died in the second. In the end, the solution to this problem lies in the fact that the Western Han Empire found new ideas, integrated various cultures, jumped out of its own limitations, formed a breakthrough at the level of world view, and treated various branches of culture equally, laying the foundation for the future.
Another example is the identity of the "Chinese nation", of course, it is not empty, in fact, the geographical environment is similar, the people in our land have always influenced each other, and in their own differences, there is a cognitive basis for mutual recognition.
Take the "Han-Hungarian Hundred Years' War", although the rise of the Western Han Empire is directly related to the Spring and Autumn Warring States, in fact, why not the Xiongnu? If it were not for the Spring and Autumn Warring States to the Chu and Han dynasties, in the past few hundred years, one group after another in the Central Plains battlefield was frustrated and forced to leave, go south to the north, east to the west, and bring a large number of more advanced productive forces, production methods, and more importantly, the ability of the crowd to organize social organizations to the four directions, how could there be the rise of the Xiongnu Empire?
Furthermore, although the Western Han Dynasty laughed to the end in this Hundred Years' War, the process of this hundred years, including the understanding of geographical regions such as the Western Regions, from music, poetry, crops, food, clothing, to the understanding of the form and method of war, how far-reaching, and how profoundly changed ourselves.
Under the unified cultural cognition of the country, it can be divided into various "subcultural" systems according to region, language, ethnicity, etc., and then divided into smaller "cultural" groups due to region, language subdivision, work, interest, education level, blood, surname, and food taste, habits, etc.
Cultural attributes are things that are constantly subdivided according to this series of "cultures" from large to small, until we are individually positioned in the large group of national society. He is something we naturally possess since we were born, which is equivalent to our "identity card" and "house number" in this society.
Then, what is the "cultural attribute" mentioned in the "Heavenly Dao", as if it is not the same thing as what we said above. Indeed, in the TV series, the "social attribute", this specific "cultural attribute", is actually confused with the cultural attribute in the general sense, so that it causes some difficulties in our understanding in the viewing process.
Of course, perhaps this is precisely the effect of the TV series deliberately because of its public nature, because of its epochality more than a decade ago. Because this so-called "social" attribute is actually talking about "class". In fact, the so-called "strong" and "weak" culture originally carried this meaning.
What I want to complain about is that in the TV series, this "cultural attribute" is not only said to be divine, but also carries a "sense of fatalism". It is believed that "a strong culture creates the strong, and a weak culture creates the weak" is the way of heaven and cannot be changed. However, in fact, whether it is strong or weak, regardless of class, and even "cultural attributes", it can be changed. It is certainly possible to use this as a criterion for judging things, but it is undoubtedly wrong to use him as the only criterion.
As a TV series, it has its own limitations, which is not a big problem, but if we really think that things are what the show says, it is a big mistake. Things always have to develop, right.