How do we observe the world?

Those who are familiar with painting should know that when a good painter observes objects, he uses perception rather than vision. The human eye is the most precise short-focus lens in the world. When it focuses, the content outside the focus will be blurred. Therefore, the painter wants to draw a complete image with the effect, and the eyes are out of focus. Because the focus can only be generated locally, the closest to the real appearance of the object can be obtained by perceiving the blurred shape of the painting object in the state of defocused eyes. But what the painter thinks is true is actually distorted in the eyes of the viewer. So who was wrong? In fact, no one is right, but the focal length of the two eyes is different. There are eight billion people in the world, and when facing the same object, there will be eight billion kinds of focus, and it is possible to get eight billion kinds of truth. This kind of statement is too strict. I use this example to illustrate the complexity of this world. The simplest thing will have different forms in the eyes of different people.

There is no truth in this world, because the world in everyone's eyes is different, and the world in the brain is even more different.

I am always helpless in the face of Chinese-style thinking, because it is too difficult to explain the multi-dimensionality of this world to them. Our overall consciousness is under the veil of an authority that has remained unchanged for thousands of years. We have no opportunity, time, or license to think outside of authority. But there are always some people who will doubt authority, but only doubt. Even if it is transformed into a goal, it is very simple, that is, to overthrow authority, and it is far from extending to content beyond authority. The function of literary inquisition is to eliminate those who want to question and overthrow authority. Therefore, for thousands of years, the focus of Chinese-style thinking is actually very simple, which is to maintain authority and break authority. For thousands of years, no one has paid attention to the complexity of nature, the complexity of human beings, and has never even produced the concept of spirit. The reason why materialism can prevail is that spirit is still far away and unknown to us now. thing. People are accustomed to using the simplest sentences to summarize everything and regard it as the truth. As a result, countless contradictory truths have emerged, and miraculously coexist in the minds and cultures of the Chinese people. The reason why they can coexist is because there is no reasonable mode of thinking to identify them. So, just like a see-saw, conflicting consciousness is at both ends, whichever is needed. Moreover, it has never stopped inventing truth, and the object of truth generalization is always people.

The human unit is always the group. Our observation always ignores individuality and divides people into groups. Some people saw Le Pen's "The Crowd" and were stunned and regarded it as a divine book. Because every sentence in the book expresses us. It's not that books are too good, but when we observe human beings in groups, we can only get similar conclusions. But such a simple observation and conclusion has never been done by us for thousands of years. It also proves how shallow our observations of man are when we completely ignore nature.

The same is true when we observe countries. We can hardly draw different conclusions for each country. Most of the time we get information from the surface, and the summary result is always one sentence, all countries are the same. This modular observation is just a cultural hangover.

This problem is as complicated as observing people, so I will use an inappropriate example to describe it. When comparing the performance of CPUs or other chips, it is now customary to use ladder diagrams to represent them, which are intuitive and contrasting. When we observe a country, we can also build such a map.

The first echelon with the best performance is, of course, countries that have eliminated royal power and political authority, and have a highly developed civilization and economy. The second echelon follows the first echelon, and has established a system to eliminate authority. countries that lag behind but are already on the path to stability. The third echelon is those countries that carry the burden of history, are still poor and backward, have not eliminated royal power or authoritarian religion, and are likely to experience group persecution of human disasters at any time. The first two echelons have eliminated the hidden dangers of war, while the third echelon is still the existing unstable factors on the earth.

This is just the simplest division. If you classify carefully, each country is an echelon. It is its own culture that determines the position of each country, and the system is only the fruit of the soil of culture.

This problem was discovered and raised by the masters a hundred years ago, but due to the needs of the regime, these masters’ questions and opinions have been put on hold, and cultural thinking has stopped. Therefore, the consciousness of the Chinese people has stayed at a hundred years ago. And the consciousness of Chinese people a hundred years ago is not much different from that of five hundred years ago. . .

I don't know which lazy person invented a word called national character. I have no idea what the word is trying to mean from start to finish. Group characteristics by country? Or something else. But this term is a politically condensed version of Chinese thinking.

What is the national character of the United States? American culture was born out of European culture. It is the product of five hundred years of restrictions on royal power in Europe, and there is no restriction of the royal power system, so it has become the freest political system in the world. But the United States is an immigrant country. It does not exclude all cultures and nations in the world, whether it is from African aborigines, East Asian dynasties, or various sects. We are often proud of China as a country with 56 ethnic groups. How many ethnic groups does the United States have? It is in units of one hundred thousand million, because any kind of culture can be found there and survive. It is a remarkable achievement that all cultures are concentrated in one place and have coexisted peacefully for so many years, and it also verifies the rationality of the American political system. Its inhabitants come from all over the world. You cannot expect the natives from Africa to automatically become European gentlemen as soon as they set foot in the United States, nor can you expect the Islamic clerics to forget their Allah in an instant, and the courtiers from the East to forget their kings. All kinds of chaos are inevitable. But the framework of American civilization determines that any kind of culture must be free under certain common premise. The most insidious politicians only dare to cause trouble in the name of human rights and the law. Human disasters and group persecution in the style of third world countries are impossible. Then the national character of the United States is all the world cultures under the premise of this modern civilization, which is almost equivalent to the cosmopolitan character.

Europe, the birthplace of modern civilization, is not as complicated as the United States. Many countries in Europe are regarded as the closest to heaven on earth. In such a place, even if the culture goes back five hundred years, it is almost impossible for the emperor to reappear and the dynasty will be restored. This is why many people say that China is five hundred years behind the world.

India, a very representative country, is most comparable to China. The population exceeds that of China, and the same has a long history. But India is the largest democratic country in the world, and its implementation is a European-style system. Over the decades, what have we seen? Institutions are urging cultural change, but the results are slow. The concept of hierarchy is far from eliminated, and women have not yet evolved into humans. I don't know how long it will take for the influence of Brahmanism to be degraded, but it is also true that India's education and culture are advancing by leaps and bounds. It also confirms how difficult it is to change the culture. From India, what we see is our own future, but unfortunately, India has been on the road for decades, and we have not yet taken the first step.

Russia, decades after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, ushered in its own great emperor, or after decades of Europeanization. The reason why people like Putin can appear is that the influence of Soviet culture is far from being eliminated, and it is the result of natural growth. What kind of concept there is, what kind of leader will be produced. No matter how chaotic or degraded the society is in major European countries, it is impossible for this to happen. This is the greatest achievement of Europe's hundreds of years of development.

South Africa is in chaos now, so the Chinese scolded Mandela. This once again made me laugh at China's political IQ. After the political reform in South Africa, it was the French who assisted in governing. In just two decades, it became the pearl of Africa and the most developed and dynamic country in Africa. So the South Africans became proud and felt that they should be in power. The French were very generous and handed over power to the South Africans. The results are obvious to all. The South Africans have returned to the barbaric era. They killed all the white farmers, and the roads are filled with tombstones. The Pearl of Africa fell at a speed that shocked the world.

In Southeast Asia, in Latin America, in South America, each country is slowly evolving according to its own culture. We all know that modern civilization is the direction, but the resistance is different. This resistance is precisely their respective cultures. The forces of progress and hindrance lead to different results in different countries.

So, which echelon is China's cultural power in? It lags behind Southeast Asia. The huge population and geography create a powerful illusion and give the ruling class more room to operate, but in terms of civilization, it is really inferior to Southeast Asia. Vietnam is on the road to innovation, Burmese people are in anarchy due to disobedience to military control, and Cambodia is still establishing a royal state after one-third of its population has died, but it already has a sense of right and wrong. The rulers of Thailand and Singapore dared not defy the evolutionary direction of civilization, though they were unwilling. China, however, still prevents and distorts modern civilization based on its strong historical inertia.

I dare not be too obsessed with judging right from wrong. The world is too complicated and too multi-dimensional. Maybe China can walk out of its own unique path of civilization, but at least for now, we can only see an endless sea of blood.

It is too naive to attribute China's current backward thinking to the temporary cultural embargo. Cultural embargo has been a common method for thousands of years. People are often proud of the permanence of Chinese culture. The most powerful means is embargo And violent maintenance, it makes the culture unable to change for thousands of years. This kind of embargo has made Chinese people accustomed to comparing themselves with themselves. This is a ridiculous behavior, which is often criticized. To see progress, we are much better than before. The ridiculous thing is that the comparison must be multi-dimensional. My child has grown to 1.2 meters at the age of eighteen. I will not think that he is growing and improving over the years. I will only realize that he is abnormal. If I spread this matter everywhere, Well, I'm not normal either. And the ban prevents me from making comparisons with the outside world, so I can't know whether my own is normal or not.

The change of culture requires not only the superficial political system, but also the deepest beliefs, concepts of human nature, attitudes towards nature, traditional cognitive habits, and so on. But the mountain of Chinese culture requires the efforts of all people beyond imagination. Because all the worlds we have now are just this big mountain in front of us, we haven’t even had the opportunity to look out, and our awareness of the complexity of the world is almost at zero.

There are only three or two countries in the world with Internet firewalls. In the Internet age, most countries are open to information, but this does not prevent countries from crawling out of their respective pits.

A simple question, the Communist Party will fall tomorrow, so what kind of thing can the Chinese build? What echelon will it be in the world? If you stay where you are, is there any value in today's sacrifice?

This goes back to the problem a hundred years ago. What we need to change is the soil, not a poisonous weed growing on it.