How can we make the people willingly ruled by themselves? This was the primary consideration of the ancient monarchs, and on this issue, experts from the East and the West can be said to have seen the same thing, and they all thought of the foolish people.
They all think that as long as the IQ of the people is lower than that of the monarch, then the monarch's country will be golden and eternal, however, can the long-term peace and stability of the ruler really be guaranteed through the foolish people?
The theoretical basis of the policy is that the people should be ignorant, ignorant, and unteachable, and can only be restrained and controlled by the rulers with laws and morals, otherwise it will cause social turmoil and chaos.
Therefore, the ruler should deprive the people of freedom of thought and speech as much as possible, prohibit the people from contacting and disseminating any information and opinions that do not conform to the ruler, and make the people become loyal and obedient slaves of the ruler.
**The practical means of policy are varied, for example, the Legalists believe that the people are just consumables, so they put forward the idea of "squeezing their bodies safely and using their lives in wartime".
That is, when there is peace, they work hard to provide dishes for the gluttonous feasts of the magnates, and when the world is in turmoil, the horsemen have to take responsibility and charge for the monarch's country.
Plato's contemporary, who also believed that the ideal city-state should consist of rulers, soldiers, and craftsmen, also had some similarities with the Legalist philosophy.
In order to allow the people to settle down, the ancient rulers tailored a social ladder for the people, which is the Shinong industry and commerce, from the pre-Qin period to the end of the Qing Dynasty, throughout more than 2,000 years.
The limit of this ladder is the prime minister below one person and above 10,000 people, and anyone who wants to step out of this ladder will be regarded as a rebel and thief.
These methods seem to be effective, but in fact they are self-deception, because they cannot change the nature of the people, but can only temporarily suppress the desires and thoughts of the people.
As soon as the opportunity arises, the populace will erupt into a strong revolt and rebellion, which will bring endless troubles and crises to the rulers.
In the pre-Qin period, hundreds of schools of thought contended, and various ideas exchanged and collided, and they quarreled, but it was a rare unanimity in terms of understanding the foolish people.
Lao Tzu, who advocates the rule of inaction, said earnestly, "Those who are good in ancient times are not enlightened by the people, but will be foolish, and the people are difficult to govern, and they will have more wisdom."
This means that the more ignorant the people, the more peaceful the country will be, the more wise and rational the people will be, and the country will fall into turmoil.
Contrary to Lao Tzu's philosophy, Confucius also believed that "the people can make it happen, but they can't know it", which shows that in Confucius's view, the people are just fuel like cattle and horses, and there is no need to ask why, as long as they work hard according to the monarch's orders.
Shang Ying, who has made the foolish people to the extreme, pointed out sharply: the foolish people are easy to cure.
Why do rulers try their best to fool the people? Orwell, in his masterpiece "Nineteen Eighty-Four", said that it was essentially because the ruler had no legitimacy and could not stand up to questioning.
Therefore, it is necessary to calm the population with false spaces, to shield dissenting opinions, to shield real information, to cover up the truth, to falsify history, to create an ignorant majority, and thus to eliminate the destabilizing factors that may erupt.
Just imagine, if everyone has their own ideas and independent personalities, or like Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, who casually question the genes of princes and generals, then the position of the ruler is in jeopardy.
Therefore, for the monarch, it is best to rule by keeping the people in a state of ignorance, so that everyone agrees that it is natural to be ruled, and only to work hard without dissent.
And the highest state is the self-ignorance of the people, that is, being called by the slave owner as a cow and horse, but being able to feel proud in the slavery, and trying to protect the interests and dignity of the slave owner.
The so-called ignorance is power, Orwell said it thoroughly in 1984, the public has no specific concept of the world outside the Oceanic countries, only the ** image repeatedly reported on the electronic screen.
Oceania doesn't want the people to understand the outside world, and when the people become ignorant, Big Brother can manipulate it at will, this is the power of Big Brother.
The policy of fooling the people has profoundly influenced the course of Chinese history, and the rulers of successive dynasties, from the pre-Qin to the Qing dynasty, have done so.
From the Han dynasty onwards, the rulers' foolish tactics became more subtle and deceptive, and they were no longer as simple and crude as the Shang Dynasty.
Instead, he used Confucian benevolence and morality to decorate the façade, but in fact, he still has the same set of Legalism in his bones, and this subconscious that cannot make the people rich and thoughtful has endured.
Ying Zheng said that the emperor burned books and pit Confucianism as a teacher, ** directly assumed the responsibility of education, and accelerated to the dethronement of Confucianism in the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and the only purpose of reading was to read the scriptures thoroughly, so as to deeply understand the spirit of the imperial court.
In the Song Dynasty, the emergence of science further imprisoned people's thoughts, and Zhu Xi put forward the concept of preserving heavenly principles and destroying people's desires, asking everyone to be a pure person and a person without selfish distractions.
That is, to be willing to be a submissive citizen and to be a slave with peace of mind, Zhu Xi's concept has also become the ultimate ideal pursued by scholars.
After the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the methods of foolish people were even more extreme, shaving their hair was easy to obey, **banning*** various means emerged in endlessly, history was tampered with beyond recognition, and the people were transformed into insensitive.
So much so that at the end of the Qing Dynasty, everyone thought that the braids on the head were originally there, and as for the three massacres of Jiading in Yangzhou on the 10th day, they were forgotten in the dust of history, which shows the power of the foolish people.
For the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, governing the people was as simple as a shepherd's shepherding sheep, as long as there was a whip, a few bones were thrown and some sheepdogs were raised to act as lackeys, and the people had to obediently kneel down and be obedient to the people.
Aixin Jueluo thought that this could be passed on to the eternal world, objectively speaking, in an agricultural society, this has a great reality, but the rulers of the Qing Dynasty did not expect that they encountered a great change unseen in a thousand years and collided with the industrial revolution.
The British scholar Joseph Needham once asked a question, when he studied the history of Chinese science and technology, he found that ancient China had many important contributions to science and technology, but why did the modern scientific and industrial revolution not occur in China but in the West?
This question is controversial, and the answer is not uniform, and one of the answers to Joseph Needham's problem is to assume that the foolish methods of the rulers of the past are difficult to invent and innovate in a group that is insensitive, insensitive and rigid.
Therefore, when the cannon of the foreigners sounded, the seemingly huge empire was powerless, and many people with lofty ideals also woke up like an empowerment, and the spring and autumn dream of Aixin Jueluo for thousands of years was completely shattered.
It can be seen that the consequences of fooling the people are tragic, because it not only damages the interests and dignity of the people, but also weakens the strength and authority of the rulers.
As a result, the ruler fell into the quagmire of self-isolation and self-corruption, and lost the ability to keep pace with the times and interact with the people, which eventually led to the demise of the ruler and the decay of society.
The enlightenment of the policy is also profound, because it tells us that the people are the foundation and driving force of society, and only by respecting the wisdom and creativity of the people can we promote the harmony and prosperity of the society.
Therefore, we should be vigilant and oppose any form of policy at all times, whether in the name of law or morality, under the pretext of protection or education, whether in the interests of the state or the nation.
Neither can suppress the wisdom and creativity of the people, can not let the people become the tools and vassals of the rulers, and can not let the people lose their own thoughts and personalities.
Only in this way can we truly realize the ideal society of putting the people first, the people have something to do, the people have income, the people have creation, and the people have happiness.
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