What exactly is nationalism? If you flip through the textbook, you can find large sections of obscure text, as well as various terms related to clouds and mountains.
But Xiao Letian’s understanding of nationalism is very simple and goes straight to the core of the problem. The so-called rise of nationalism is actually just a tool used by countries to concentrate manpower and material resources to unify people's hearts in their struggle for hegemony.
Human beings themselves are very contradictory. On the one hand, human beings need to integrate into society and get what they need and stay together as a group. On the other hand, human beings are self-interested and fear that the collective will harm their own property interests.
To give a more vivid example, humans are actually a group of hedgehogs in the cold winter. They need to hug each other for warmth but are afraid of hurting each other.
But with the continuous evolution of human history and the gradual development of society, whether you like the existence of large groups or not, you cannot deny the reality that there is strength in numbers, and unity is strength.
With a huge land and a large population, working together will create a powerful collective, and this collective can not only provide protection and external expansion to all people, but it will also forcibly deprive everyone in the group of some of their private interests.
This is a contradiction, an irreconcilable contradiction. People need the security of the collective and the right to expand externally, but they also want to protect their own private interests from losses. It is this kind of conflict that has caused a lot of chaos in society.
Analyzing it from the perspective of human nature, when will human beings willingly dedicate themselves to their own selfish interests? In fact, it is nothing more than the following situations.
Of course, the first owner of self-interest is oneself. This is the animal instinct of human beings. Needless to say, the second owner is of course the family. People such as parents, wives and children share their own interests, and most people are very happy to give.
The third level belongs to the clan. They have the same blood and the same surname. It is acceptable to suffer disadvantages to the clan.
The fourth level is the township party. They have the same accent and the same living habits. They help each other and are not considered outsiders. The so-called township party is actually a national concept.
Further up is the nation and country. People have common beliefs, a common language, and common values. Because they have many commonalities, they can barely suppress the grievances of damaged self-interest, so that this large collective will not collapse.
The above is just a very narrow view of the nation, and nationalism is a sublimation of this concept. Some thinkers began to consciously sort out, dig deep, organize and form a set of theories on the view of the nation, and then within the same nation Promote it to get more people to accept it.
Why do we need nationalism? It is because we need a more advanced means of uniting mankind. How many people can there be if we use family and clan unity? The smaller clan has only one or two hundred people, and the larger clan has only one or two thousand. It may be possible to dominate a county, but can it still be controlled in any larger area?
Use the township party to unite people? You can only unite hundreds of thousands and millions of people, but that’s it. The tribal groups formed based on regions in ancient times are actually a manifestation of this model.
What is higher than clan and township party? Of course, it is the nation. The rise of Western nationalism is because many smart people have figured out the rules and dug deep into the commonality of the nation. They started from many aspects such as religion, language, life customs, historical origins, etc., and finally can unite the base. It can reach tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
The fighting power unleashed by such a human collective is quite terrifying. Internally, it can suppress all internal strife, and externally, it can strive for more benefits to feed back the nation.
This is the fundamental reason for the rise of nationalism in the 19th century. Whoever shapes the national character in advance and popularizes nationalist ideas will gain the right to speak in the game of world hegemony.
The deep-seated reason why Japan was able to defeat the Qing Dynasty in the Sino-Japanese War of 1888-1894 was the confrontation between nationalism and the backward clan-township party alliance.
One is a crowd of people clenching into a fist to hit someone, and the other is a pile of scattered sand that shouts loudly but scatters as soon as they make a move. The outcome is self-evident.
For example, during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, including the later Eight-Power Allied Forces invasion of Beijing, although some people actively resisted, more people still watched numbly.
Even during the war, countless Qing people provided logistical supplies to the invading army. Let alone a guiding party, as long as there was money to be made, it was not a problem to collect grain and grass, transport materials, or even directly participate in the war as mercenaries.
Don't think that those people were forced to do nothing under the enemy's butcher's knife. In fact, most of the real history says that the Chinese who cooperated with the invaders only wanted profits. They made a lot of money by helping the invaders. In the Qing Dynasty, workers not only had no money, but also suffered beatings and scoldings. Even fools knew what to choose.
Later generations have no right to blame them, because those people have never received nationalist education, and they do not understand those principles. Their spiritual world can only understand the clan, township and party, and then go on to deeper issues. They didn't think about it at all.
They have no national concept, let alone national concept. They simply accept the control of habits. Their inner subtext is only "I, my family, my clan, and even my older fellow villagers should not be wronged." As for other people having nothing to do with me.”
This was the thinking mode of people in that era. How did they fight after the advanced ones were defeated? What exactly does the so-called enlightenment of people’s wisdom mean? Is it really just about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and knowing one or two thousand men?
Look at the Japanese ronin and wild samurai vying for boat tickets in front of Xiao Letian. Two-thirds of them are literate and know how to write, and some of them have even learned arithmetic.
These people are not illiterate, but they still fight for a Ryukyu ticket. As long as Xiao Letian gives them the opportunity to make meritorious deeds and a path for promotion, they can wield the sword against their compatriots.
The Japanese ninja who poisoned Katsura Kogoro on the rafter, do you think he feels guilty? Would he feel guilty for massacring his own nation's elite intellectuals?
No, not at all. At this time, Japan was as ignorant as the Qing Dynasty in the previous life. Nationalism and national concepts were not promoted. People only saw the lord and their own selfish interests. How could they feel guilty about killing for the lord in exchange for military exploits? ?
Xiao Letian's feet suddenly trembled, pulling his consciousness back from his deep thoughts. It turned out that the merchant ship he was on had slowly left the bridge and headed south.
"The order is passed, the implementation of the Z-word plan will be accelerated, and no one on the list will be allowed to stay before the New Year! If this crime requires someone to go to hell... then let me, Xiao Letian, do it! But before I go to hell, I We must first build a paradise on earth..."
"Send a message to Ryukyu. The Ryukyu Prime Minister's Mansion will hold the grandest banquet in the New Year this year. I will announce important things to them!"
