Why do the British keep the royal family and use Chinese characters to teach us how to do things?

I followed the official account of the British Embassy the day before yesterday because they posted an article reflecting on the tragedy that happened in my country in the 24th year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty. The most striking sentence of the full text is the large subtitle: "Any society that wants to progress should face its own history honestly."

I forwarded it to my friends and said: The British have learned the "Spring and Autumn Brushwork" of our ancestors, and I admire it! To paraphrase the popular Hong Kong film lines on the Internet: "You are teaching me to do things??"

I know that there are gangsters who will jump up and say: These pirates are from pirates, and now they are pretending to be nobles. Are there still few people who colonize and kill in the world? The Opium War and the Eight-Power Allied Forces have not yet been settled with him.

I haven't argued with people for many years. For those who hold such views, I just want to say, can't the descendants of people from pirates be good people? Aren't so many princes and generals in Chinese history born in murderous Ruma? They killed many more of their countrymen than the British killed the colonies. His subjects also wished him a long life without boundaries. Just to take one example, from AD 157 to 280, after more than 130 years of war, the population of the country dropped sharply from more than 56 million to more than 16 million. (War, famine and plague plus population escaping from official registration and other factors)

There is also a logical error in Gang Jing. You can't say that what people say now is unreasonable because your ancestors were robbers and bandits in the past, and then say that it is reasonable and legal for you to be a bandit and bandit now, right?

On Sunday, the British embassy posted an article with pictures showing the lively scenes of the UK's celebration of the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession to the throne.

When I was in history class as a child, I always hated the emperor, thinking that the so-called "feudal autocratic rule" was a "shackle" (a term used in textbooks) that hindered China's progress.

After going to university, the teacher led us to reflect on the consequences of the French Revolution in the "Mao Dengsan" class. The radical revolution brought the royal family to the guillotine. The whole society was filled with blood and terror, and the political situation was turbulent for many years. On the contrary, the conservative Britain retained the royal family, implemented a constitutional monarchy, and eventually grew into an "empire on which the sun never sets".

Equally conservative is Japan, which has successfully transitioned to a capitalist society while retaining royalty. To this day, there are still 10 countries in Europe where there are royal families, namely the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Monaco, Luxembourg, Denmark, and Liechtenstein. China and Russia, which eliminated the royal family, also fell into a vicious circle of constant revolution.

As long as the common people can eat (not enough to eat), it doesn't matter who is the emperor at all. The so-called "people's aspirations" are deceiving people, and "people's aspirations" have never been the fundamental factor determining the direction of history. Qin Shihuang destroyed six kingdoms and implemented brutal rule. Is this "what the people want"? The Mongolian Iron Cavalry stepped on the level of the Southern Song Dynasty and divided the whole country into four levels: Mongolians, Semu, Han, and Southerners. Is this also "what the people want"? When the Manchu Qing came to power in the Central Plains, the brutal policy of "leaving hair but not head" was also "what the people want"?

Yuan Shikai failed to proclaim himself emperor, not because public opinion scolded him to death, but because there were large and small armed political groups in the country against Yuan! General Cai E fired the first shot against Yuan Huguo in Yunnan, and divided his troops into three groups to fight against Yuan, repeatedly defeated Yuan Shikai's army, and was supported by the anti-Yuan armed forces in various provinces.

Now that I think about it, Yuan Shikai's proclamation as emperor is not terrible. Haven't all the countries with royal families in the world become developed countries? What is terrifying is that Yuan Shikai's mind is full of imperial tyranny. Of course, if there were not so many armed forces at that time to fight Yuan Shikai with real swords and guns, then no one could stop him from becoming emperor.

It is not the hearts of the people, but the strength of the social elite that determines the direction of history. Yuan Shikai was proclaimed emperor, and there was no army against him in the whole country, so he could sit down firmly. The common people didn't care, and the common people joined the army just to beg for food. In that era of turmoil, they joined the army to avoid starvation.

The common people don't want to care about politics or how much they are greedy. They also feel that they are sitting in that position based on their ability and greed for so much money based on their ability.

This great social experiment in Shanghai is the beginning. You don't care about politics. People's politics are all about your dinner table. You yearn for a planned economy, right? They stop the market economy immediately and give you a "rationing economy"! Immediately all levels of "official collapse" (the so-called guarantee unit), road signs, approval slips, tickets, and entry and exit cards all came, and the black market also appeared immediately. What you thought of as "distribution on demand" has become distribution by power level.

Sociology has an important judgment, that "society is an organism." It means that society is like an organism, it grows from small to large, and is not designed or planned by any genius. It is like an embryo, developing slowly, growing a nervous system, growing a digestive system, a circulatory system, etc.

British philosopher and sociologist Spencer proposed that the survival of the human body must have three major systems of nutrient intake and absorption, blood circulation and neuromodulation, and the survival of society also depends on the corresponding three major organizational systems: social, agricultural Production and industrial production organizations provide society with necessary products; social business, logistics, and financial organizations, like the blood circulation of the human body, deliver nutrients to all parts of the body; social and political organizations headed by the national government The system adjusts the parts to be subordinate to the survival of the whole.

According to this, Spencer divides the people in society into three categories, namely workers engaged in production, peasants, businessmen, entrepreneurs and bankers engaged in circulation, and government managers. These three types of people cooperate with each other, perform their duties, and maintain a balance. To disrupt this dynamic balance is to disrupt the social organism.

Of course, actual biological and social systems are far more complex than simple analogies, but this way of looking at society is a genius insight. The revolution of physics and biology since the 20th century has revealed to us that the world is a very delicate and complex system, which is unpredictable, chaotic and random. Rather than being rational, unique, and deterministic like the world constructed by Newton's classical mechanics, as if everything were predictable, as if human rational intervention could create and design a perfect new world.

Consider how much of our internal activities need to wait for the approval of consciousness? When your fingers touch the hot pot lid, they will shrink back very quickly, the pupils will shrink rapidly when stimulated by light, and the food will immediately cause saliva secretion, etc. Which one needs you to be aware of it and then issue a command to respond accordingly?

The same is true of society and the country. When dealing with emergencies, the response of the centralized system is always half a beat, because layers of approval and reporting are waiting for the greatest brain. In Western society and Japanese society, a large number of social organizations and civil organizations began to carry out rescue spontaneously.

Why does a society need news? Like a small wound on a person's skin, should the body convey this information in time? After the blood vessel wall is injured, there is a gap, and it will immediately send a signal to wait for "rescue". Vasoconstriction slows blood flow and reduces bleeding, and platelets flow rapidly through the bloodstream to the injury site. Platelets adhere to the blood vessel wall and coagulate into a clot to achieve initial hemostasis. The blood then undergoes complex coagulation, producing cellulose to surround the blood cells to achieve the purpose of coagulation.

There is no news on the body, not amputation, but the wound infected and festered and died.

Back to why the British use Chinese characters to remind us to be honest with our own history? To keep us from repeating the same mistakes! How can you avoid repeating mistakes when you don't even know what happened in the past? So are we repeating the same mistakes? We keep repeating the same mistakes.

Queen Elizabeth is lucky. I wonder if she knows about the absurd and bumpy life of our last emperor, Pu Yi? He went from being a war criminal in the Fushun War Criminals Management Office to becoming a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and then being attacked by the Red Guards and forced to participate in reform through labor. More than a year later, he "died" because of uremia.

Last year, a memorial tree planted by Queen Elizabeth for her coronation in 1953 was toppled by high winds. Netizens said with a smile that Elizabeth is now the tree's memorial queen. Some netizens maliciously predicted that the queen would die. But the queen can still have a long battery life and a full battery.

Now, Queen Elizabeth celebrates the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne. It sounds like Emperor Kangxi celebrates his 60th anniversary of his accession to the throne, and has traveled through time.

However, in 2022, we are still entangled with the issue of Yuan Shikai's proclamation as emperor. Isn't this another kind of crossing?