Is human nature good or evil?
For this eternal debate, I prefer the latter.
Human nature is always "evil", which is a kind of egoistic instinct of animals before human beings entered civilized society. Civilization distinguishes human beings from animals, can restrain themselves from harming others, and exhibit human behavior at critical times, but once this behavior is seriously violated, civilization will be left behind.
In other words, civilization's constraint on human beings is more like a contract, which will lead human beings to "good", but in essence human nature is more inclined to "evil".
If you don't believe me, you can learn about the tragedy of the Mininet: in order to survive, three seafarers who were originally of high moral character had to feed on the corpses and blood of male servants.
This is the evil of human nature!
In desperate circumstances, the restraining power of civilization is bound to be weakened, and the hungry cannot talk about civilization. With this kind of cognition, we can understand the maggot-like small characters in the film "The Examination of the Mountain Festival", and we can also understand the superiority of Imamura Changping more deeply.
The story of "The Examination of the Mountain Festival" seems absurd but true, compared to the son's "abandonment" crime against the elderly, what is more tragic is that human beings can take a lot of distorted facts for granted in order to survive, and "rationalize" all inhumane things, which is the darkest and most terrible place of human nature.
Ah Lingbo, 69, lives in a small, remote village in Shinshu. Her body is still very tough, her teeth are also very good, and she can cope with the daily life of the family.
But even if she is physically strong, she will inevitably be sent to the fate of "Mt. Nichi" at the age of 70.
The so-called going to "Lingshan" is "sending death", and Ah Ling po knows it. But she did not feel sorry that her life was coming to an end, and she still took care of the family.
Ah Lingbo's eldest son, Tatsuhei, is a widower, so giving Tatsuhei a string is her first wish before entering the mountain.
The second son, Li, is lazy and has body odor, has always been unpopular, and is still a "virgin boy". Ah Ling Po knew that it was impossible for him to marry and have children, but it was not in vain for him to taste the joy of men and women. Therefore, giving Lisuke a happy time was her second wish before entering the mountain.
As the day of going to "Mt. Nichi" slowly approached, Ah Lingbo found a widow from a neighboring village as a daughter-in-law for Tatsuhei, and found a golden woman of the same age for Lisuke to join.
After both wishes were fulfilled, there was still one thing that made Ah Ling Po feel bad: her teeth.
The eldest grandson, Yuanfuji, often teased her, with good teeth and a good mouth, and could eat anything. In other words, when you are old, you can eat anything.
The speaker has no intention, the listener has a heart. These words of her grandson made her feel very ashamed, and she was worried that her daughter-in-law would dislike her own body and be tough, and in desperation, Ah Lingbo only knocked out her front teeth. Blood was pouring out of her mouth, and it hurt, but she grinned.
Winter is always coming, and Ah Ling Po always has to go to "Lingshan Mountain".
On the night of parting, Ah Lingbo prepared the snowflake rice that the family wanted to eat the next day in advance, took off her only cotton kimono in winter and gave it to her daughter-in-law Ayu, taking advantage of the fact that the family was asleep, and gently opened the door.
"There was no wind that night, but it was particularly cold, the sky was overcast, there was no moonlight at all, and Tatsuhira walked like a blind man toward a dark road."
According to the rules of the village, those who send their mothers to "Mt. Nichi" are the eldest sons.
It was a dead road, her mother was on Tatsuhira's back, she was very thin and light, but it made Tatsuhira's heart extra heavy. Desolate mountains, full of crows that feed on carrion, and the ground is full of the white bones of those who entered the mountains before.
It turned out that in this place of Shinshu, there was an unwritten moral custom: all old people over seventy years old, whether they were healthy or not, were to be sent to the back of the village to worship the mountain god. The so-called worship of mountain gods is essentially to let the old man starve to death in the deep mountains.
This is a moral rule internalized by the local villagers, and anyone who tries to violate this rule will have only one way to die. Just like In the film, Li Ping, who could not bear to carry his mother on the mountain, was looked down upon by the villagers and relatives, and was eventually executed by his son Tatsuhira.
What is the intrinsic goodness of human nature?
In the extremely low productivity, relying on the sky to eat in the mountains, people's lives are extremely poor, eating and surviving has become the biggest problem, in order to save food, the old man who has lived to the age of 70 has to be abandoned. Here, there is no kindness, there is only obedience to the rules.
Poverty is the root cause of all evil, and in the face of poverty and hunger, man can only tear off the label of civilization and become a lowly animal.
This custom of "abandoning the old" in the "Examination of the Mountain Festival", whether it is Chenping or Ah Lingbo, is powerless, and ethical kinship is destroyed in the instinct of survival, what is the difference between people and cold-blooded and ruthless animals at this time?
When you say that human nature is inherently good, it is because you have not yet understood the meaning of existence.
Some people, just being alive is already the greatest luck!
"Kaeyama Seiko" is an adaptation of a short film by Japanese post-war writer Shichiro Fukasawa. In this film, Masahira Imamura looks directly at the most real ugliness and barbarism of human nature, exposing the evils of human nature to the audience through a group of people. He made people soberly aware that without the fig leaf of civilization, human beings are just animals.
Even more ironically, this conscious animal does not exist independently, but lives in groups. For the sake of profit, they are good at rationalizing their actions, in other words, rationalizing "evil." When "evil" is rationalized, the individual is freed from the condemnation of conscience and is able to enforce that terrible rule with integrity.
A few days ago, looking at Weibo, all the marketing numbers were one-sidedly attacking the evil deeds of a certain celebrity with a surname. It is undeniable that the star surnamed Zhang is wrong, but what is the explanation for the behavior of the marketing number to attack it. For their own benefit, they have promoted the development of the situation, and the more serious the situation, the more benefits they can get. They call their actions "justice" and then continue to manipulate the keyboard warriors who have no thoughts of their own, the group of blinded gangsters, which is the most terrible reality.
They stood together, just like the villagers in the mountains.