Chen Yuyi sat on the carriage and looked out the window. The weather in March in the Central Plains is already pink and willows are green, and spring has come to an end. There are busy farmers in the fields sowing seeds, sowing their hopes for the year.
In the past two years, due to the promotion of tofu and soybean oil, soybean prices have risen rapidly. Many farmers have reduced their wheat cultivation and switched to soybeans. Especially in the Central Plains, due to the rapid spread of technology, more crops have been replanted.
As the carriage passed through Dengfeng, there were fewer and fewer farmlands on both sides, and they were all mountains. Chen Yuyi stopped looking out the window and leaned back in his chair to think about something.
Although it has been mentioned many times before, this time Wang Xiaolie made it clear that the political power must govern society according to the statistical laws of society. The perspective of observing society is different, and the governance methods are of course very different. How to govern requires officials at all levels to slowly explore.
Wang Xiaolie has always been worried that by observing and governing society in this way, it is easy for officials to forget that they are all living people and lose their humanity. This is inevitable when all the information in front of you is social statistics rather than individual stories. Officials cannot do this. They must first understand the significance of statistics and govern people as if they are human beings.
It’s easy to say, but how many people can do it?
Chen Yuyi shook his head. Now even I often can’t figure out this issue, so how can I ask officials to do this?
When we go to Xinzheng, Wang Xiaolie made it very clear that the chief secretary must stay there and give appropriate rewards. Officials who disagree with him will be punished and all transferred away to tell people the will of the Xuanfu Division. State officials at the next higher level and those involved in the matter will also be punished.
If all Xinzheng officials are transferred, who will take over? Do the officials who take over do better than the original officials? Chen Yuyi only felt a headache.
Some people often think that if you go back to ancient times and you have modern memory, what's so difficult about doing things? According to modern standards, it is much better than ancient times. Is society progressive? Some people even think that the textbooks tell you that capitalism is more advanced than feudal society, so there is nothing difficult to do.
Everything must be combined with practice and cannot be divorced from reality. The ancient ones are not good, and the modern ones may not be good either. Most of them will cause confusion. Capitalism and feudalism are European stories that are not suitable for other regions and certainly cannot be copied.
According to the European story, some people believe that feudalism must be abolished first and a capitalist country established. It is even believed that the initial stage of capitalism involves bloody exploitation, and the state must support this kind of exploitation.
It is wrong to think this way. Human society cannot be made by such a simple analogy.
The evolution of human beings from primitive society to slave society, to feudal society, and finally to capitalist society is a European story, not a story of other regions. There is no other region in the world that has reached this stage. All countries are learning from capitalist society. Rather than saying that this is a necessary stage for human development, it is better to say that Europe and the United States are too strong and are learning from strong countries.
What stages does human beings go through? Primitive society most likely existed, but the subsequent slave society was questionable. Feudal society existed, but the subsequent capitalist society was questionable. If we put it another way, human beings have evolved from feudalism and nation-building to great unification. Isn’t that wrong?
Much of our knowledge was taught to us by others. Many people cannot learn the knowledge taught. Some people can learn a small part, some people can learn most of it, some people can learn it all, and some people can break through on the basis of this knowledge. It is a curve. . Everyone's position on this curve may change through personal efforts and struggle. The shape of this curve may also change due to social governance reasons. But this curve will definitely exist. It is impossible to think that everyone is the same.
In physics, people often praise the contributions of Newton and Einstein. If you look at the development of physics as a curve, you will find that most people are in the middle of the curve, and the only ones at the top are these two people.
If it were not physics but social thought, it would probably conform to this distribution. The vast majority of people will be distributed at a relatively low level. The closer to the correct thoughts in the middle, the fewer people there are. But those who can truly search for correct ideas are very rare.
Wang Xiaolie used to be afraid that he was at a lower level without realizing it, so he acted cautiously and was cautious about testing. When I finally thought about things clearly and looked at other people's opinions, I felt like a primary school student, and I realized that I had really made a breakthrough.
If you traveled back in time, what would you do? When it comes to this issue, many problems can be seen.
I think that since we have returned to feudal society, we must first develop capitalism. You think so, and so do many people. This kind of thinking is not popular because it is correct, but because it conforms to the ideas of most people. And the thoughts are very strange. Most people feel itchy when they see something that conforms to their own thoughts. When they see something that does not conform to their thoughts, they call them stupid and do not pursue what is correct.
Going back to ancient China does not mean going back to feudal society, nor does it have the social soil of the European Middle Ages. There were no feudal aristocrats, no almost autonomous urban industrial and commercial merchants, and of course there were no fierce conflicts between industrial and commercial merchants and the feudal aristocrats.
It is wrong to draw a forced analogy between noble landowners and feudal lords, and it is also wrong to forcefully compare Chinese industrialists and merchants with those in European towns. The development of productive forces will certainly promote changes in social relations, but this change will never be similar to that in Europe.
The reason for forcing analogies is that the author's position is not high in the curve of thought. I cannot recognize the differences between the East and the West, and I cannot imagine the changes this difference will bring. If you are in this state and still think you are right, your position on the ideological curve will be even lower.
The reason for this idea is of course that it is relatively easy to copy the answers, but it may not be so easy to pursue the correct answer. More importantly, the pursuit of being right is not that attractive. Because few people recognize you and even fewer agree with you.
It is still much simpler to copy the West. More specific methods, such as copying muskets and artillery, copying the chief of staff, copying Western tactics, will make you invincible in one fell swoop, and the same is true. There is no problem in copying, but you have to copy it correctly.
What's even worse is that some technologies are not understood yet, so they think they can kill everyone.
For example, European heavy cavalry believed that with heavy cavalry, they could kill all directions. Due to different social relations and a different combination of technological levels, China will not have the battles of the European Middle Ages. For example, during the Song Dynasty, the most commonly used weapons against cavalry were axes and mazha knives, which mainly attacked horse legs. The so-called heavy cavalry charging into battle will not actually happen, and the discussion does not make much sense.
For example, a four-wheeled carriage is considered to be able to carry a larger load. In fact, due to the differences between Eastern and Western harnesses, the opposite is true. The four-wheeled carriage only does not bump when carrying people, and the load is less than that of the two-wheeled carriage.
For example, horse-drawn trains are considered advanced means of transportation. In fact, it is only useful on flat terrain. Once it goes uphill or downhill, the effect is greatly reduced. The friction of the train is small, which will greatly increase the difficulty of going uphill. We have studied Zhan Tianyou’s herringbone railway and should understand this truth.
There are many examples like this. Basically, they are obsessed with the West and believe that everything is advanced. If you can copy it, you can surprise everyone.
In ancient China, China was leading in culture for most of its time, and those intellectuals were the world's top academics at that time. Modern China believes that its culture lags behind the West, and the intellectuals of this era are the scumbags of the world. When academic scumbags criticize top academics, they often miss the point, but they are extremely confident.
Only by correctly understanding your position on the ideological curve and which interval you are in can you correctly understand the world. If you cannot correctly understand your position on the ideological curve, you will be blindly arrogant and feel that you are the best in the world. If you don't know someone the same as you, just call them stupid when you go up to them.
(End of chapter)
