When Jiang Min went out, Wang Xiaolie stood up and went to the window, looking at the summer scenery in the yard. On the big poplar tree, there were two singing cicadas lying on their backs. They were chirping happily. Wang Xiaolie reached the window, suddenly shut up, and kept sticking his butt out.
Suddenly, Wang Xiaolie felt that the world was funny and couldn't help but laugh.
When he first arrived in Xiangyang, Wang Xiaolie was confused about what kind of army he wanted to build and what kind of government he wanted to build. The army itself knows nothing and can only learn to build according to the memory of its previous life. The government is better, it knows to put the people first, and try to do it bit by bit.
Thinking about it now, the confusion at that time was not only correct, but also necessary. If you feel that you understand everything from the beginning, you will not be cautious, but you must be broad-minded. Then what? Maybe there will be no more.
When the strong ships and cannons of the West opened the door to the East, it took a hundred or two hundred years for the East to break free from the control of the great powers and try to go its own way. There are various opinions on how to take your own path. There is China's "Chinese learning as the body and Western learning as the application", Japan's departure from Asia and joining Europe, and India's non-violent non-cooperation. Of course, in various countries, there are those who completely give up their own culture and copy the culture of Western countries.
Over two hundred years, it has been proven that in various countries, it is not feasible to completely abandon one's own culture and copy the culture of others. Whether in Japan, China, or India, what develops over time is a culture that is different from the West and incorporates its own culture.
Those who advocate giving up their own culture and completely copying Western culture could have said that their country was too backward in the past and could only take it step by step and gradually become the same as the West. When Eastern countries catch up with Western countries and fall behind in many aspects, this statement becomes more and more like a dream.
It's like a test, students who only copy the answers will never be good students. Only when you fully understand the problem and come up with the answer can you be a good student.
I recall that when I was young in my previous life, a few students got together and talked about historical issues. Some people always said that if China was like a country in a certain era and implemented certain policies, it would inevitably develop. You say you want to learn from Britain, others say you want to learn from France, and some people say you want to learn from the United States, or even Russia or Japan. The answers are varied. So students are just students after all, and they have this idea just because they haven't graduated yet.
People often ask, why didn’t the Industrial Revolution happen in China first? This question even has a special name, called the Needham Question. In fact, there is no answer to this question. In other words, there are too many answers to list clearly. Once the force is listed, the various causes will still fight with each other and cannot form an answer. Anyone who says they can answer this question is, without exception, lying.
The science that studies people, whether it’s politics, economics, society, ethics, etc., a lot of the content is nonsense. why is it like this? Because Wang Xiaolie used methods commonly used by Westerners in his previous life. First define a few concepts, then list a bunch of rules, and deduce the results from them.
Is the world like this? no. The world has no concepts and rules. Concepts and rules are just ways for humans to understand the world. So are there any rules in the world? Yes, but it is not a commonly understood rule.
The laws of the world discovered by human beings, whether it is physics or chemistry, information science or life science, are a summary of the knowledge formed by human understanding of the world. These laws are never the truth, and they are never universally applicable, but are conditional.
This is not only true for the humanities, but also for the natural sciences. What makes natural science more scientific than human science is that the boundaries of the objects of natural scientific research are relatively clear. In other words, in the natural science world, after a definition is made, it is not easy to touch the boundary of the definition.
After years of practice and the results of his own thinking, Wang Xiaolie believes that the fundamental rule in the world is that there are degrees but no boundaries. The reason why there are degrees but no boundaries is because degrees exist naturally, while boundaries are added by human beings’ understanding of the world. Man cannot be omniscient and omnipotent, so this realm must be vague. One more thing is the existence of Tao. What is not known or cannot be explained clearly, but is clearly known to exist in the world, is called Tao. Tao is not a thing or a law, but something that is still unknown and unclear due to the limitations of human understanding.
What is the way of heaven? The way of heaven is by no means an existence where doing this is right and doing that is wrong. The same approach is sometimes right and sometimes wrong. Some people do it right and some people do it wrong. It sounds illusory, but it is real.
To understand the world, you must always know that what you know is only the temporary appearance of the world, a part of the knowledge. The rules and knowledge summarized from this are not eternal. Just like when you first learn physics, you will feel that mass is real and energy is ethereal. But when we really cut the object open, we find that energy is everywhere, but mass cannot be found no matter how hard we look for it.
This is true for the natural sciences, let alone the humanities? Where is the answer to what standards are prescribed! Chinese culture has a long history and has many sects. From a true analysis, it is nothing more than conforming to the will of God or the will of the people. Of course, there are also weird things like Legalism among them, and everything belongs to the emperor alone.
When Germany rose, some philosophers emerged. Hegel, one of the most influential figures, said after reading the Analects that Confucius only talked about some common sense morality, which we can also find in other nations. It is said that Confucius is just a practical wise man in the world, and there are only some kind, sophisticated, and moral admonitions from him. Apart from this, we cannot get anything in a special sense. Speaking Chinese is a low-level language because it is not precise enough.
When the West was at its peak, the Chinese people couldn't help but sigh with emotion when they saw this kind of evaluation. Foreigners still dare to say it, and get to the essence of it with just one word. So I also studied Hegel and various Western philosophers. After learning a little bit, I can come back and criticize my own culture.
In the final analysis, those who do this have neither understood Hegel nor Confucius. The worship of Hegel is not because of how great Hegel is, but because Germany is more developed, more advanced, and richer.
When China developed and did not learn from any other Western countries, I don’t know what these former thinkers would think.
A big reason for the criticism of Chinese culture and the admiration of Western culture is that China was poor and backward, while the West was rich and developed. Why is this happening? Most people are not capable of analyzing the causes or even coming up with solutions. After thinking about it for a while, I couldn't figure it out, so I just slapped my head because the culture is different. There is such a difference, of course, because Western culture is better. He even invented a theory, stacking beds and building houses, which became a prominent science. For example, it is said that the industrialization of the West was due to the light of Greek civilization, or to which philosopher or group of philosophers. Strange, does Greece have science or industry? It is said that it is Greece only because it was a group of barbarians who first entered industrialization and they chose Greece.
Following the Song Dynasty, the Central Plains dynasty could not defeat the northern peoples most of the time. Many times, there is even a huge difference in combat effectiveness. Many historians are not able to analyze why this happened. They slap their heads and think that this is because the Central Plains dynasty valued culture and suppressed military force.
I believe you!
Because of the complexity of history, you can almost always find a large amount of evidence for your opinion on an issue, no matter how outrageous. If you write a book and list out countless examples of literati suppressing military generals when the Central Plains dynasty was weak in military force, you cannot say that this is right. Because there are many examples at home and abroad that are inconsistent with this conclusion. War has its own laws, and this law is by no means summed up in this way.
After defeating Zhao Bin and occupying Tongzhou in the First World War, Wang Xiaolie witnessed the war in person and truly built up his confidence. Regardless of past life or this life, to hell with those incomprehensible sermons. Practice may not necessarily test the truth, or in other words, if you don’t believe in God, there is no truth in the first place. But practice can truly bring about the needed knowledge. This knowledge is the cornerstone for moving to the next step.
The Northern Expedition to Luoyang and subsequent wars finally allowed Wang Xiaolie to overcome his previous ignorance, gain confidence in the future, and make his own plans. Wang Xiaolie already had a good idea of what to do in the future and where to start.
(End of chapter)
