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Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" was written in April 1918 and first published in the monthly magazine "New Youth" in Volume 4, No. 5 on May 15, 1918, and later included in the anthology "The Scream". Lu Xun's article sounded the clarion call for the "May Fourth" new article, which represents the awakening of the people's consciousness and the counterattack against various unreasonable systems, shackles and decadent cultures that suppress human nature in society.
In "Diary of a Madman", Lu Xun made a deafening first sound through the mouth of a madman:
"Everything has to be studied to understand. In ancient times, people used to eat people, and I still remember it, but I don't know very well. I opened the history and found that there is no age, and the words 'benevolence, righteousness and morality' are written on each crooked page. I couldn't fall asleep, and I read it carefully for half the night, and only then did I see the words in the cracks, and there were two words written all over the book: 'cannibalism'. ”
In our opinion, the ancient feudal ** society was a cannibalistic society, which was easy for everyone to understand. In the May Fourth era, in Lu Xun's era, it was indeed an astonishing discovery to summarize the evils of feudal society as the word "cannibalism", and to expose the history of the old society, the old system, and the old civilization as the history of cannibalism. And there is indeed no second person who knows so deeply like Lu Xun.
Lu Xun exposed that the feudal ** society was a "cannibalistic society", and the working people were not treated as **, but as slaves, cattle and horsesIt is consistent with Marx's view that "the only principle of the system is to despise human beings and make them not become human beings".
Since the rulers do not treat people as people, they are destined to also become inhuman things, becoming man-eating beasts, and the old society has become a barbarian society, a "cannibalistic" society. So, how exactly does society "eat people" or "people eat people"?
The first is the change of dynasty and violent war, "it is better to be a peaceful dog than to leave people in chaos". In Lu Xun's words, once the war starts, society immediately becomes a chaotic era. And the people in the troubled times, as Cao Cao said: "The white bones are exposed in the wild, and there is no rooster crowing for thousands of miles." The people are left behind, and the thought breaks people's intestines. ”
From this description, we can imagine how bleak and dark the society was at that time. In the end, there were a large number of deaths in the war, and the living often grieved more when they thought of the dead, and both the living and the dead broke Cao Cao's intestines.
Secondly, the violent nature of society itself. Societies often gain power through violent revolutions, peasant uprisings, and then enforce the will of the rulers through coercion in order to maintain their rule.
The rulers of ** use state tools, violent machines, and rely on the "cannibalistic" law to maintain ** rule, rule the people from the top down, and carry out bloody ruling oppression, economic exploitation and slavery on the people. rampant in the township, fish and flesh the people, and destroy innocent people.
However, the ruler "they are a group of people, they want to eat people, and they are sneaky, and they don't dare to start directly", "they don't want to kill directly, and they don't dare, for fear of disaster", so they won a whole set of fallacies about benevolence, righteousness, morality, three outlines and five constants, etc., which are reasonable, and are full of nets, forcing you to find a way to die, so that "they are not charged with murder, and they have fulfilled their wishes." ”
What does that mean?That is, the ruler needs a fig leaf in addition to direct violent ruleRelying on ideological control, ideological and cultural influences, and ethical and moral forces to restrain the spirit of the ruled, and strictly regulate people in various shackles of morality and thought. In this way, the goal of direct violent domination is accomplished to ideological, cultural, and spiritual domination, and finally a long-term collective unconscious is formed.
Once the collective unconscious of the people is formed, it can remain unchanged for a long time, even if there is a change of dynasty, but the rule has not changed, and the successful person of the revolution still wants to be the emperor and maintain his family's worldThe foundation of "the whole world is not the king's land" and "the shore of the land is not the king's minister" remains unchanged. This is why the ancient times fell into the cycle of dynastic chaos, because the rule of the ** system did not change at all, and it was constantly strengthened, reaching its peak in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Under this kind of cultural, ideological and spiritual enslavement for a long time, the people have long become numb and ignorant, and they have no thoughts at all, and they cannot think, and they have developed a kind of servility, which naturally obeys everything and obeys everything. In Lu Xun's words, this kind of ** ethics and morality is like a poisonous needle of a thin-waisted bee, paralyzing the other party, losing consciousness, and then slowly being eaten.
In addition, the ruler also wants to use the people's "other slaves" to become "self-slaves", use the people to restrain the people, and complete the "self-slavery" between the people themselves. This is done through the establishment of a strict hierarchy, a whistle-blowing system, and popular autonomy.
"There are high and low, big and small, up and down. You are abused by others, but you can also abuse others;Eat yourself by others, but you can also eat others. Level by level, I can't move, and I don't want to move. ”In the chain of cannibalism, not only those who eat people eat people, but also those who are eaten by are also cannibals, and no one can escape the fate of "eating" or "being eaten". "You eat me, I eat you, everyone eats each other", there is no so-called "unfairness", everyone is fair. At the same time, "I want to eat people, but I am afraid of being eaten by others, so I look at each other with very suspicious eyes." That is to say, everyone will live in fear, people generally have a sense of precariousness, almost everyone feels that a terrible disaster may befall them at any time, a little careless, a word is not careful, a word is not careful, a single action is not careful, he will fall into the bottomless abyss, never to return, to be eaten.
* The shackles of ignorance and ignorance constitute the collective unconscious to lead to mass violence, which eats away at the awakened "aliens". After being poisoned, the "eaten" unconsciously collaborated with the ruler to "eat people".
In short, successive rulers have used these methods to eventually turn the entire society into a tyrannical, greedy, selfish Daze who deceives and coaxes, "sucks blood and eats flesh", and the "eaten" obediently settle in this unjust and endless exploitation, oppression and slavery.
References for this article:
Lu Xun. "Diary of a Madman".
Cheng Yu. Completely remove this "feast of human flesh", and look at the thoroughness of Lu Xun's anti-feudal thinking from "The Scream" and "Wandering" one by one.
Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" is included in the "Scream" anthology, and you can buy the anthology directly!
Both versions, both are available.