Zuo Lian martyr Hu Yepin's novel "On the Pasture" tells a thought-provoking story that happened on the pasture.
During the Xinhai years, the bourgeois revolutionary forces were in full swing, approaching all the way from Hunan and Wuhan and about to spread to Guangzhou and Fujian, and our story began in Pucun, near the capital of Fujian Province.
Pu Village, a peaceful and peaceful village, but the villagers of 2,000 people live a life of sunrise and sunset according to the rules, maintaining tradition, but at the same time ignorant and conservative, hearing that the revolution is in full swing, the people are panicked and armed.
One night, the appearance of a "thief" broke the tranquility of the village and stimulated the nerves of the bored masses, and Cousin Chen held a torch and led everyone to capture the "thief".
However, after catching the "thief", the direction of the story gradually changed from heroic villagers uniting to defend their homeland, gradually becoming a villager who ignored the truth, knowing that it was a poor fugitive who was caught, not a thief, but carried out group violence with collective will.
Gustav said in The Rabble: "An individual with a strong enough personality to resist hints is extremely rare, and appears outnumbered in the face of countercurrents." We see the demise of the conscious individual, the gain of the unconscious personality. ”
The villagers of Pu Village can be brave and willing to sacrifice themselves in the group, or they can blindly follow the crowd and lose their humanity in the group, and the individual reason is insignificant in the collective suggestion, like a ship going against the current, which is washed in one direction in an instant.
From the perspective of "I", the eyes of a seven-year-old child, the novel observes this change, like a pure blade without impurities, immature but sharp, coldly piercing the facts, exposing the cruelty of reality, and unreservedly dissecting the ignorant and malicious side of human nature for readers to see.
The weak have nowhere to speak, the strong turn a blind eye to the defense of the weak, the group may rebel against the weak and deceived at any time, and may be inferior to the strong at any time.
Or there is no winner, the will of the group is the final winner, individual morality is assimilated by the group and dies, malice grows instead, it may be you, it's me, every individual with personality, all are losers.
Groups can induce unconscious fanaticism.
When a suspicious person broke into Pu Village in the dark, the villagers, led by Uncle Chen, began a fanatical chase of the "thief".
Cousin Chen played the role of group leader here, and he kept shouting: "Good fellow! Run into the tiger's den! Thief...... Boy! ”
The flames of the revolution burned near the village, and when the people were panicking, "I" shivered in my mother's arms, while the crowd, infected by Cousin Chen's emotions, was not afraid at all, all like warriors charging heroically, eloquent and elated.
"The various murder weapons made the sound of demonstrations, the footsteps were particularly hard, and they ran wildly, and everyone raised their throats to shout, as if a pack of wolves were chasing ordinary beasts... They turned a corner near the Daoren Pond, as if they were walking towards the tomb of the champion to the west: they were still shouting, striking straw with bamboo-pointed knives, and making unpredictable noises. ”
This description vividly shows the feverish scene of villagers chasing "thieves" under the infection of the group, and individuals think they are invincible under the agitation of the collective atmosphere.
The collective unconscious emerged, just like the sinking of the Sewol in South Korea in 2014, the giant ship carrying 476 people, tilted in the undercurrent "Meng Bone Waterway", as the sea gradually poured into the cabin, the situation became more and more precarious, but most of the students on board did not want to survive on their own, but obeyed the collective arrangement and stayed in the cabin without moving.
Is it that the students on board trust the leader of the collective too much, or are the students assimilated in an atmosphere where the collective does not run away?
People who choose to jump into the sea in life jackets to escape are regarded as outliers, and most of the children are waiting for rescue on the boat, and they are about to drown in the capsule if they do not save themselves, but they still briefly lose the ability to analyze the situation, which eventually leads to tragedy.
The collective prompts unconscious fanaticism, and the individual may become a fearless hero in the collective, or it may become a fish on a knife.
Behind the mass violence, everyone is a murderer.
Voltaire once said, "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
When there is an avalanche, there is not a single snowflake innocent, what crushes the camel, not the last straw, but all straws.
Early in the morning of the day after the "thief" was caught, people gathered in the ancestral hall to try this man, and from his confession and appearance, it was clear that he was not a thief, but indeed a fleeing bannerman, a poor man with thin yellow muscles and ragged clothes, and a weak man who was miserable in despair.
In their solemn consultation and consideration, the Third Father, the Sixth Gonggong, and Cousin Chen all showed their belief and wanted to pardon this poor man, but at this time, a change broke out in the crowd: "Banner man, it is our enemy!" ”
One stone stirred up a thousand waves, and the villagers began to tell one after another about the sins committed by the banner man and the disagreement that had happened with the banner man.
In the increasingly fierce hatred, beheading, gouging eyes, hanging for half a day ... All kinds of cruel criminal laws must be discussed and used on the head of this banner man, as if all the sins of the banner man must be vented on this person.
Although the banner man has a bad reputation, the banner man who was caught is a pitiful person, has no gap with the villagers, and is harmless to the village. The group was agitated by resentment, mixed up the seemingly similar banner people, and immediately generalized the specific banner people in front of them, and came to the conclusion that "this person cannot be released, and must take revenge".
Thus, a brutal mass violence began.
They hung him from an old willow tree, head to the ground, his body in circles, laughed at his toad-like shape, threw him with stones, pumped him with branches, and even dung him when he struggled to the point of paralysis, until he was tortured half to death, and then they left satisfied.
Numb the villagers, mistakenly regard the group for justice and quantity for truth.
The so-called revenge is just a game of play, everyone enjoys the secret pleasure of violence in the collective, but everyone does not feel that they are committing violence.
The group is the best protective color and the best fig leaf, but acquiescing to group violence, watching violence coldly, and even enjoying excitement and fun in watching makes oneself a member of the violence.
In the past, in the rural society, the trial method in which everyone gathered in the ancestral hall relied on village rules and people's agreements and emotional impulses, which easily led to irrational group violence.
Today's society under the rule of law, relying on the law to maintain fairness and justice, greatly reduces the occurrence of such vicious incidents, but group violence still exists.
In the mall, the frustrated person hesitated and wandered on the roof, and the passerby abuser loudly encouraged him to jump downstairs, shouting "not jumping is not a person" to stimulate the other party.
On the Internet, victims speak out on the Internet, Internet abusers rise up and attack, high above and do not care about themselves, you say a word, drowning the victim in layers of spitting snowflakes...
A mediocre individual, the cover of the group, may instead make his inferiority fully revealed.
The inducements and hints of a sane individual, group may make him a blind radical.
A critique of the cruelty and numbness of human nature.
In "Medicine", Lu Xun denounced the phenomenon of eating human blood steamed buns, denounced the people for being insensitive, absorbing the pain and misfortune of others, taking it as nourishment for his own life, and blooming bloody flowers in the decomposing corpses.
When the villagers of Pu Village abused this innocent banner man, the ranch was filled with laughter, as if watching a good show, and the more painful the banner man was tortured, the happier the people became.
Xunzi believes: "In the beginning of man, nature is inherently evil."
Human nature is originally bloodthirsty and aggressive like a beast and survival of the fittest, but through acquired education and the nourishment of goodness, it can exude the brilliance of human nature different from animals, that is, "morality".
Morality is the law of the heart, the self-discipline of prudence, and the sign of what makes a person human.
The villagers of Pu Village regard the wounds of others as capital for play, and take pleasure in torturing the weak, and this happiness based on the pain of others is deformed and cruel.
Like lice that dwell on the hair, it lives by sucking the blood of blood vessels, dirty and shameless, vile and indecent.
"When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes at you."
There is hatred hidden in the heart, malice is bottomless, and the abyss is bottomed, and human nature is immeasurable.
What the author Hu Ye frequently criticizes is the evil of human nature, this bloodthirsty numbness, stupid malice, and bone-chilling coldness.
At the end of the novel, it is getting dark, and the men and women on the ranch go home satisfied.
Later, it was rumored that the ghost of the banner man appeared on this pasture, and people no longer dared to put their sheep there.
"Now, it's time for the grass on this pasture to be shouldered again."
At the end, the word "again" is intriguing and gives people infinite imagination.
Year after year, the grass blows again and again, the unjust souls of the banner people wander alone, and the tragic events that occur on this pasture are overwhelmed by time and buried by the grass on the shoulders of people, and their lives are desolate.
And the same events on other ranches, maybe ... It's still going on.
Write at the end
The persecution of innocent banner people to death is the result of group violence and the evil of human nature.
The worst human nature, under the cover of the group, grows arrogantly.
Keigo Higashino wrote in "Malice": "Hatred does not know what to do, and it goes deep into the bone marrow, which is the coldest human nature. ”
The villagers' hatred for this poor banner man came from collective agitation, from stupid associative imagination, from the numb mentality of watching the play, and finally to dominate the evil in the depths of human nature.
Liu Xiangzengyun of the Han Dynasty: "Virtue is fine, grievances are small".
Sima Qian's "History" Zeng Yun: "The virtuous one prosperous".
Born as human beings, we may not be perfect, but we can persuade ourselves to be good with morality, and in the crowd, we can use reason to keep ourselves calm and suppress the evil in our hearts.
The so-called, the gentleman is cautious, the wise are cautious, and the prudence is as good as the beginning, then there is no failure.
Encourage all kings.