-on the struggle for rights in rural China.

There is a buzz in the south of the village and the new seedlings are long and flat. Travel thousands of miles around the world, but learn from your neighbor's father.

-Lu you

There are thousands of forms of struggle in ancient rural areas, among which the most important ones are the contradiction between leaving and returning, the contradiction between getting rid of bondage, the contradiction between emotion and order, the contradiction between time and space and social contact, and so on. Fei Xiaotong connected the analysis of rural society in China into a close structure with the booklet Native China, in which "native color" started from economic factors and went deep into cultural factors, showing the core social characteristics of agricultural society, and then sorted out the close key contents such as "private morality", "family", "differential order pattern", "courtesy order" and "educational power".

Of course, if you want to restate the whole book in more concise words, it is unnecessary and impossible. For example, Xiang's book "Dialogue with Homeland" is far from the possibility of reaching a dialogue in essence, just imagining that with the progress of society, we can evaluate our predecessors from the commanding heights. I closed the book and pondered Fei Xiaotong's analysis of "feelings of home and country" under the rural nature. What impressed me most was that "rural China" was a contradictory body of "upholding private morality" but "dispelling the spirit of individual independence". On the one hand, China people with rural backgrounds always take personal relations as the principle and private interests as the purpose; On the other hand, it failed to develop the pursuit of individual personality spirit.

The nature of farming society determines the ecological stability of aborigines. In the case of stable and backward productive forces and poor production resources, only by focusing on a certain power and taking the gap pattern as a fixed sequence can we not only meet the cause unity under power, but also realize the "happy know life" of each member in the power network. Therefore, in rural society, writing to the countryside is out of date from the perspective of time and space, and locals don't know that writing knowledge can change their cognition and become a source of strength to break the original pattern. Under the background that the rulers firmly grasp the right to speak, "clothes are simple." Under the "educational power", people can't be independent, but their ultimate goal is private possession. Even if they have the opportunity to get ahead occasionally, they just want to "return home with their clothes on" and hope to re-establish their position in the original local structure. Fei Xiaotong interprets "self-cultivation, governing the country and leveling the world" as a social structure of "individual-family-society-country", which blocks the social connection of "individual-society" and is most unfavorable to the cultivation of "civic consciousness" and "patriotic consciousness". Therefore, as long as there is a slightly stronger military force, it can traverse the north and south, causing serious damage and fatal blow to the local society.

On this basis, traditional culture has painstakingly maintained this stable structure. In order to maintain the survival and production of the family, love between men and women is forbidden. The definition of affection is filial piety of offspring to elders and obedience of daughter-in-law to mother-in-law. Therefore, the mother-in-law can't get her husband's reasonable love, so she devotes her love to her son indefinitely. The son must be filial to his parents, and the daughter-in-law can only express this filial piety and kindness to the next one in the family. The love between husband and wife hurt her feelings for her son, so the contradiction between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law is inevitable. Therefore, in order to maintain this stability, husband and wife should "take the customer as the respect" and "follow Qi Mei's example", and women should be patient first. After years of "daughter-in-law makes a wife", they become violent and cruel. So how do you build a relationship between men? They must never get along and cooperate on an equal footing, but must be integrated into the higher and lower levels and obey the order of "ruling the country by courtesy". Therefore, most men in China are "submissive to the outside and bully the inside", so as to balance their sense of identity from the power ecology at the order level, which obviously does not conform to the business relationship of equal cooperation between people in modern society, nor does it conform to the reality that women have surpassed men in obtaining production resources and mastering production technology.

Confucius' thoughts of "the difference between men and women" and "the order of aging" can be described as the most important experience of rural society. However, this seemingly reasonable and stable structural thinking ignores the individual's "desire" and "rationality" characteristics. In rural society, resources are limited and the population is soaring, so different surnames conflict with each other, and conflicts often occur between different villages. In case of famine or war, mass slaughter has become an important means to restore the original stability of society. The tens of thousands of people who died in the pit and the tens of thousands of people who were slaughtered in the city can be seen on every page of the history books, which is what Lu Xun called the "cannibalism tradition". Individuals have the desire to dominate resources and subordinates, only the desire to dominate children. It is an absurd tragedy that the family ethics lacks the love of nature. Fei Xiaotong generously pointed out: "A child who is interfered in an hour will definitely exceed the number of times that adults are criticized by society in a year. Being an ordinary person under the most autocratic king will not be more sad than a child living under his parents who love him the most. "

Li Shimin said: "The use of force to quell chaos, the defense of the text, and the use of military and civilian, each at the right time." Later generations often comment that emperors "rule the world at once, but can't rule the world at once", because what rules the world is a kind of political ethics that needs stability and order, and "Confucianism is very interested in becoming a king based on educational power, and they are never enthusiastic about the order maintained by violent power", which is called "Wen". The so-called "ruling the country by virtue" and "serving the people's parents" is to use the family unit as a metaphor for the social hierarchy in an attempt to establish such a relationship, so as to facilitate the implementation of the concept of "filial piety" in governing the country and educate the public. Of course, this ignores everyone's pursuit of dominance, so the violent power of "tyranny is fiercer than tigers" will inevitably be expelled at the local grassroots level.

The statement of "parents and officials" has established the educational nature and dominant power of "patriarchy", but the relationship between people is not single-level, so the concept of Confucius' teacher of saints has been further improved. "One day as a teacher, one life as a father" establishes the educational rights of rural social teachers; After the ancient science examination, officials took the examiner as the teacher and established a superior-subordinate dominance relationship; The relationship between superiors and subordinates in the unit and the relationship between seniors and sisters is also dominated by the educational nature of "cultivating objects". Therefore, a doctoral student who pursues independent academic spirit will be sent to hell by his tutor on the charge of "bullying his teacher and destroying his ancestors" and will never turn over. If he doesn't "learn" from his big family to adapt to this power relationship, he will become a reckless person and be rejected by the whole power system. No matter how powerful the individual is, he can't find a position in the established power groups and circles. If you make a careful statistical analysis, you will find that the "Jianghu forces" in major disciplines now-big coffee people form a circle of friends to dominate a certain field, and their disciples and grandchildren take over. If it is created, it is "betraying the teacher", and there is no place to stand, so you can only flee hastily. People with independent spirit are destined to become heterogeneous and will be rejected and strangled by group forces. The Jianghu of elders can't tolerate challenges, so they will use calmness and firmness.

There is no Don Quixote in China, because this kind of personal heroism is not allowed in the local elder politics. Individual spirit is always out of place in a small group with interests as the link, and people can only pretend to have the obedience of "repaying kindness with kindness" to satisfy selfish ideas. Therefore, individual spirit is always the root of tragedy. The most direct example is Li Guang written by Sima Qian, who can't humiliate the pen. Now, if you influence the authority of some "mentors", you will die.

Fei Xiaotong put forward the concept of "power of the times" for these tragic heroes. At the turn of the century, "the times make heroes" and individuals hold high the banner and occupy the top of the mountain in order to seize the right to speak. No wonder "a hundred schools of thought contend" in the Spring and Autumn Period and Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism developed together in the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Because of the turmoil, people are forced to break the inertia of habits and find new sequences to adapt and stabilize. Because of the turmoil, heroes can make full use of others' nervousness, hesitation and anxiety. Therefore, heroes must embrace the arrival of the storm and advocate the emergence of change. When he is old, he will become an elder who is afraid of change.

Social change and development is an inevitable trend. Only by bravely standing at the forefront can we continue to implement the "power of education", so we should know that there is no end to learning, and we should guard the "knowledge" to educate the "ignorance", instead of using our own "ignorance" to dominate the "knowledge" and be alert to the "duplicity" obedience.

Jing Xiang is in Ding Youdong.