Re read Lu Xun s Coming : The high pressure in the authoritarian society and the fear and servility

Mondo Social Updated on 2024-02-23

Like "Shengwu", "Coming" is also a random thought of Lu Xun, published in May 1919 in New Youth, Vol. 6, No. 5, and later included in Lu Xun's "Hot Wind" anthology.

The content of the two works is closely related, ""Coming" is the beginning, and "Shengwu" is almost inherited, which is the extension and play of the content of "Coming". So, what kind of story does "Here Come" tell?

"When it was founded, I lived in a small county town and had already hung a white flag. And it came to pass, one day, that many men and women fled in spite of each other: those from the city fled to the country, and those from the country fled into the city. When I asked them what was the matter, they replied, 'They said they were coming.'" ”

That's the point of this article, people don't know who is coming, they don't know what is going to happen, everyone is just fleeing, they are afraid of the "coming" thing itself. So, what exactly is "coming"?

It is nothing more than the arrival of officers and soldiers, bandits, and robbers, and their "coming" means killing, and "coming" is a frightening death. The fear of "coming" vividly shows the embarrassing and pathetic state of existence of the people.

In Lu Xun's view, most of the Chinese people go with the flow, they have no ideas of their own, they don't have their own opinions, they all follow the crowd, from the perspective of their own interests, follow the public. Others run, I run, anyway, everyone is running, that's definitely right. All people are slaves, so there's nothing wrong with being slaves.

Chinese people have never won the qualification to "be a man".

"In fact, the Chinese people have never fought for the ** of 'people', at most they are slaves. ”

We are in the cycle of "the era when you want to be a slave but can't" and "the era when you temporarily become a slave".

Whenever there is great chaos in the world, social turmoil, and difficult days, the people are eager for a strong figure to appear, and to end this turbulent day, whoever can calm down all forces and complete unification, they will support whom. Then determine a master, determine the ** system, and promulgate the rules for being a slave: "How to serve, how to pay food, how to kowtow, how to praise the saints." ”

Then the society ushered in stability, which is the so-called peaceful and prosperous era, and everyone was safe and well. You are your slave master, and I am my slave, both to live a stable life. In fact, the demands of the rulers and the common people are the same, the rulers hope that the world is stable and the rule is stable, which can continue for thousands of years, while the common people hope that life is stable and life is stable.

As long as you can create a stable life, you can be a slave and be a slave, so what difference does it make if you are a slave or not? Anyway, everyone is a slave, who is not a slave? That is to say, the enslavement and national nature are so deep-rooted that we will never be able to get out of the fate of ** and slavery.

And the fundamental reason why the people are full of servility lies in Lu Xun's view.

* In society, power is highly monopolized, monopolized by the monarch, or the warlords of the Lu Xun era. The ruler is above all laws and institutions, and his power is not subject to any restrictions, restrictions, restraints, and supervision.

Social governance is full of capriciousness, arbitrariness, barbarism, brutality and violence, the oppression, exploitation, enslavement, and "squeezing" of the people by the rulers. They used all kinds of methods to try to "paralyze the common people into an immortal state", "willing to be a machine of service and war forever", and turn according to the "slave rule".

The first is repressive rule, the establishment of a network of power from the top down, rooted in society, from which no one can escape this woven web. Any disturbance will be contained in the cradle, and any sprouts will be brutally suppressed. Extreme cruelty to torture, absurd justice, utterly degraded social morality, and inhumane mass exile, mass exile, super-intense death**, and so on.

Establish absolute authority and domination through the tools of high-pressure rule and violence, so that people will always live in fear, create an atmosphere of terror, make people dare not make mistakes, and make people remember that if they are not cautious in their words or actions, they will fall into the bottomless abyss and never return.

Every citizen can smell the whistleblowing channel, and every group of people, every office, every house has a famous eyeliner or makes everyone worry about eyeliner around them.

Therefore, the common people in the ** society live in this kind of fear, and as soon as they hear "coming", they run from south to north, and from north to south.

At the same time, they also carry out thought control and mental slavery, creating a deep servility in the minds of the people, so that they have no independent thoughts and wills of their own, and everything is transferred by the will of the monarch. All the will of this monarch and every word of his word must be regarded as very sacred and infallible, without the slightest doubt, and must be absolutely obeyed and resolutely followed.

Even if the monarch was a doll a few years old, all the ministers, including the gray-haired old men, trembled at the sight of him, and hurriedly lay down on the ground, buried their heads deeply, and kept shouting "Hurray, hooray, hooray!" ”

For them, it is not a human being at all, but the Son of Heaven who sits on it.

* The ruling system has created a deep servility in the minds of the masses of the people, and on the other hand, this servility in turn supports the maintenance of the ** system and has become a powerful spiritual pillar of this system. So that we are always going back and forth in the fate of **, over and over again, and we can never get out, jump out, and change the fate of being slaves!

References for this article:

Lu Xun. "Hot Wind" Here it is".

Luo Liangping. Lu Xun's Thoughts on the Slave Question: Reading Lu Za's Notes

is here" is included in Lu Xun's anthology, just buy the anthology directly!

Both versions, both are available.

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