For a nation, a long history and cultural maturity are valuable assets and heavy burdens. Every time I find problems in real life, it is "ancient". The accumulated evils in history will return to the light in reality, and the corpse will be revived.
Examining the inheritance and development of 5,000 years of history and culture, and examining its advantages and disadvantages, is not only a matter for historians, but also for people who are concerned about reality.
Mr. Wu Si's "Unspoken Rules: A Real Game in Chinese History" is a masterpiece of historical interpretation. With elegant and vulgar and eclectic brushstrokes, he vividly depicts those thought-provoking cases in history.
His writing is so straightforward that it makes people feel cold, like a scalpel, coldly piercing into the hearts of every one of our readers. His analysis is incisive, allowing us to learn to look at the environment around us rationally, so that we can truly see through history and understand everything.
While telling the story of officialdom, he dissects the unspoken rules hidden under the formal rules that actually govern the functioning of society.
Mr. Wu Si, who served as the editor-in-chief of Yanhuang Chunqiu and the reporter of Peasants, excavated new perspectives from history when researching contemporary peasant issues.
Around 2000, he proposed the concept of "unspoken rules" to explain the "bad rules" of the Ming and Qing dynasties and various phenomena in modern society. Today, "unspoken rules" have become an indispensable part of contemporary discourse, and we can understand their meaning without explanation.
The charm of this book lies in the fact that the author has carefully selected some lesser-known historical materials and ancient books to present them to the reader from a unique perspective. He skillfully combines these precious materials with compelling stories to bring an otherwise obscure historical record to life in a vivid narrative.
The author is not only good at telling tragic stories, but also able to integrate these stories with profound theories, so that readers can appreciate the weight and wisdom of history while enjoying the pleasure of reading. The specific chapters are briefly presented as follows:
1.Armed with sharp weapons: The government can legally injure people, such as the extortion of prisoners by officials in Ming Dynasty prisons.
2.The common people are a big wrongdoer: the ordinary people have no resistance to indiscriminate charges, and the cost of protecting the rights of a single individual is too high, taking Meishan in the Qing Dynasty as an example of charging 50 yuan to protect rights.
3.The second level of fairness: the cost of crime by officials is very low, and the punishment is almost non-existent, such as the repeated forage fee collected by the Qing Dynasty post station.
4.The reason for the **: low salary, more entertainment, not greedy, not greedy, not going on, taking the Ming Dynasty's ** income and dots as an example, everyone should be familiar with the historical stories of the Ming Dynasty.
5.Bad government is a sieve: the policy of doing evil can only screen out bad officials, and bad money drives out good money, taking Wanli in the Ming Dynasty as an example of collecting mining taxes and sending eunuchs as mine supervisors.
6.The emperor is also the most wronged: there is still a huge bureaucracy between the people and the emperor, and it is too easy for the emperor to be deceived and deceived by taking advantage of the information advantage, just as we are now facing a sea of network information. Having said that, how many good ones do most emperors have?
7.Settle the violators: There can be no one in the officialdom who does not act according to the unspoken rules, or others will attack you in groups, and you can't eat and walk around, taking the Qing Dynasty Shaanxi grain road entertainment and disaster relief anti-** people were killed as an example.
8.On seniority is also a good thing: according to seniority and years as the promotion standard is a product that has been forced out of the way, because there are many people in the officialdom who are related to human feelings, taking the invention of this system by Sun Piyang in the Ming Dynasty as an example.
9.The law of the fall of new officials: the new ** will quickly become bad after entering the officialdom, because of the trade-off of interests and the coercion and temptation of other **, taking the Qing officials in the Ming Dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang period as an example.
10.The boundary of justice must always be old: as time goes by, the punishment for breaking the law becomes lighter and lighter, in the past, if you were greedy for 10,000, you would be shot, and now you are greedy for 10,000 just to enter the game, take Hai Rui Hai Qingtian's proposal in the Ming Dynasty as an example.
11.The traditional heart of officialdom: various routines of sending red envelopes and bribes in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
12.Yan's transformation: The story of Yanzi in the Spring and Autumn Period, Yan Zi** was praised by officialdom colleagues, but Yan Zi was honest but was said badly by colleagues, all of which were issues of interest, and the people had no right to speak.
13.Chongzhen's Death Bend - A summary of the unspoken rules of the empire: At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the more frantically taxes were levied on the people to suppress the rebellion, the faster the Ming Dynasty died, and the matter passed the critical point, and the suppression of the rebellion through taxation and conscription could only cultivate more rebel armies of displaced people.
14.Definition of Unspoken Rule: None.
15.Joke Tiandao: Tiandao is nothing but a beautiful excuse, taking Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty hated Mencius's statement that "the people are noble and the king is light" as an example.
16.Fakes in Ancient and Modern China and Abroad: The History of Counterfeit Manufacturing as Reads from the Notes on Reading Wei Caotang.
17.Our personality ideals: The false filial piety performance of the Wei and Jin dynasties no longer exists, the previous idealism is also gone, and being a good citizen who is diligent and does not harm others is the goal now.
18.Understanding superstition: This article is particularly touching, we criticize superstitious thoughts, but after the criticism, there is no new convincing thought to replace, this world is often not good with good retribution, evil with evil retribution, so everyone will make up so many *** stories out, this is a kind of spiritual compensation.
19.Postscript: The Peasant and the Empire|The author uses his own set of theories about the ruling and ruled classes to go through the entire history of China, which is quite convincing.
The concept created by Mr. Wu Si is like a bright star of historical stories, flowing out between the lines. However, more important than historical stories are the hidden mental models and mental models, which act as a compass to guide us through the fog of reality and insight into the world. It is this perspective of thinking about history that allows us to accurately grasp the core of the problem in the midst of complex social phenomena and hit the nail on the head.
Life is often not pink, black and gray are the main colors of fate, but as Romain Rolland said, there is only one kind of heroism in the world, that is, to love life after recognizing the truth of life.
Finally, I conclude with a text from the miscellaneous chapter "Understanding Superstition" in the book:
We have not yet established a human system that guarantees good retribution and evil retribution. We are accustomed to seeing good people unlucky and wicked people gaining power. This is the fertile soil for 'superstition' to take root, blossom and bear fruit. ”
Now, we are faced with one unfinished effort after another of our ancestors, the interruption of many efforts. The Guandi Temple collapsed, and the quotation card was removed. The problems of the past are still there. The efforts of the past are gone. In the end, what determines the outcome is probably what happens in the real world offstage and behind the stage. ”
Three minutes to talk about culture