What makes coriander a paradise on earth?

Stranger culture-what is the "paradise" on earth built on?

On the occasion of the publication of the Eighth Anatomy Series, it is necessary to add that the series aims to deeply analyze the root causes of many differences between Chinese and Western civilizations, and try to uncover various misunderstandings of observation and understanding, so as to break the mindset that China people have been accustomed to for more than a hundred years, especially the "half-way thinking" (intercepted by words, especially pre-designed words). Although we try to be objective and comprehensive, this is just a family statement. The meaning of a text is not a universal truth, and it is impossible to cover everything. Readers can hold their own opinions and speak freely.

One day, while waiting for the green light, I looked across the street aimlessly. When the green light was on, a group of people came across. When they came to the middle of the road, a young man spit in the street. Because it was in the middle of a fairly clean environment and the road in the city center, the move was harsh, but he was unconscious. Judging from his clothes and manners, he should be a well-off young man with a certain education. If he hadn't stood in front of me first, I would have thought he was a polite young gentleman. But this action exposed his upbringing and his possible living environment, especially the failure of public education for a century.

Why is a behavior that has been trying to correct for a hundred years never changed, and it is also fierce because of the influx of new people into the city (the key cleaning areas in the city center can be free of dust and garbage, but there can be no sputum)? Why can't a child's education from primary school to middle school for more than ten years prevent him from inheriting bad habits? This shows that the public education in China, which has a history of one hundred years, is wrong, because people under the age of 30, whether from urban or rural areas, generally receive primary and secondary education. In my previous article, I pointed out that the first major deficiency of modern public education in China is that there is no ideological system of its own civilization. It is not a long-term solution to force students to recite Marxism-Leninism, socialist theory or leaders' speeches by means of test scores. The lack of self-civilization ideology in public education directly leads to the loss of aesthetic rights of external behavior, and then leads to the withdrawal of aesthetic education of external behavior (which is very different from moral behavior education) from the historical stage generation to generation.

Modern public education in China was introduced from the west in modern times. The process of introduction is not a slow and complementary experience, but a traumatic operation, just like a woman forced her pregnant baby to induce labor and stop her life in order to spoil her adopted baby, because people repeatedly told her that pregnant baby is hopeless anyway, and it is better to adopt a healthy baby than to give birth to a dead and decadent baby. Self-castration, which is rare in the history of human civilization, has completely lost the traditional education system of Chinese civilization that lasted for thousands of years. When the old water is poured, the first baby is the ideological system of its own civilization, and the second baby is the external behavioral aesthetics accompanying the ideological system. And this second-born baby is closely related to the sputum at the beginning of our article. What's more, this unprecedented move of "changing babies" has not absorbed the true meaning of modern western public education: first of all, it is the domestication of people rather than the storage of knowledge. Any civilization is accompanied by its ideological system and its external behavioral aesthetics. In the ranking of education, this should be the first, because it directly affects the foundation of civilization and society, and knowledge and skills rank third. China's modern education system is a freak from beginning to end, which makes knowledge and skills education full and raises a headless and brainless baby. The result of not having one's own civilized ideology is to cultivate talents with first-class knowledge and skills, but lack self-awareness! This makes the whole superstructure soulless due to the lack of self-awareness, and the outstanding performance of soulless is the aesthetics of not knowing what external behavior is.

The education of external behavior norms is not the moral behavior education that we generally understand and barely maintain, such as doing good deeds, being honest, loving labor, not changing money and so on. It is an aesthetic norm of daily behavior-how to stand, how to sit, how to walk, how to eat, how to wear, how to have neat hair, and how to be polite besides treating people. In short, it is the aesthetics of external behavior. We talked about the distance between "internal personality and external behavior" in the previous article, pointing out that the characteristic of western civilization is to widen the distance between them as much as possible, and all efforts are made to clearly separate the internal and external in the aesthetic of external behavior in two isolated worlds: private and public. There are two aspects to this. On the positive side, westerners walk out of their homes, and they are uncomfortable from head to toe. Everyone realizes when to end their personal life and start a business. The greater the distance between these two "I", the more gentlemanly they are. Although this tradition has been relaxed since the 1960s, it is not as harsh as before. However, since tradition is natural, it pays attention to the aesthetics of external behavior, and strictly divides public and private for this purpose, and regards this as an important goal of public education, which has not changed.

Public education in the west, especially private schools, can basically make a person erase or at least hide the imprint of his birth or living environment on his external performance through several years of education. This is also a necessary way for an ordinary person in western society to gain social recognition, because it is the most basic goal of public education. In the first hundred years of entering the industrialized society, they used to deal with this kind of thing very severely, from corporal punishment to mental depression. What's more, they have long been at the bottom of religious traditions. Before the emergence of modern education, the church had a long history of "formatting" people's spirit and behavior. After 1949, many people accused "nurseries" (run by western churches) of being cruel. In fact, China people can't stand western-style "formatting" and naturalization. However, China's public education learning from the West just ignores this goal, so that if children in compulsory education stage do not cross the threshold of higher education, it will be difficult to reshape a "public self" different from their parents and birth environment in subsequent social life. What's more, even after receiving higher education, China's higher education has no other goals except imparting knowledge and skills. If the individual is unconscious, it is also out of reach to reshape a "public self" through external behavioral aesthetic norms.

The so-called "public self" is not a "selfless self", but an attempt to correct or cover up its innate instincts and habits through external behavioral aesthetic norms. If public education can transform "private self" and cultivate a noble person, of course, everyone is happy, but the proportion of such lofty goals will not be great. Compared with the transformation of "private self", it is relatively easy and realistic to modify "private self" with external behavioral aesthetic norms.

To test whether there is a real superstructure in a civilization depends on whether there is an aesthetic norm of external behavior in this society. This aesthetic right is still not in one's own hands, which not only reveals the beauty and ugliness of a social landscape, but also reflects whether this civilization has its own head on its shoulders or is empty. Losing this aesthetic right and losing one's own civilized ideological system is just a front foot and a back foot. In East Asian countries (more than East Asian countries), only we have completely lost our ancestors' external behavioral aesthetic norms (from words and deeds to clothing), so that the whole society has lost the aesthetic feeling under external behavioral norms and norms. As a result, the aesthetics of the external behavior of this society is not going up, but falling down day by day. On the one hand, it is the westernization of the urban white-collar petty bourgeoisie and its departure from this civilization, on the other hand, it is the rural development of the general public (including the remaining civil society). Some people may be puzzled when I say this. They will say, now that the pace of urbanization has been greatly accelerated, how can there be overall rural development? Urbanization is not only about building tall buildings and leaving the land, but also an important manifestation of it is the improvement of external behavior aesthetics. We are now experiencing a large influx of people into cities. It is not the city that has transformed them, but they have turned the city into a big countryside with their external behavior.

When I was a child, although there were no luxuries among the people in China, people generally paid attention to dressing neatly when they went out. Although the hair and face are not special, they are at least clean and tidy. Look at the old photos. City residents, whether employees or workers, avoid messy clothes and hairstyles when they go out. It will be even more shocking to compare the people in the 1950s movies with those in today's real movies, as if all races have changed. My childhood and adolescence left a general impression on me. People around me were not rich but never poor. Now that I have so much money, I can't guarantee to leave such a general impression. I wandered around Wangfujing Street that day, and all the way was a modern metropolis with only a few loopholes. First of all, people peddle in the street, use loudspeakers, and even hire people to stand in front of shops or even outside them, which makes people feel like walking in the market. Wangfujing when I was young didn't have this posture. At that time, the waiter may not be enthusiastic enough, but there is no such shy entanglement; Secondly, the streets are increasingly colorful and bright. It is said that China people like red, but I don't think the costumes of Han and Tang dynasties like bright, and I have never seen such a gaudy appearance in the city when I was a child. Restoring tradition is to regain cultural tradition, but it is not that the city retreats to the countryside; Then there is the rusticization of the surrounding alleys, which is in sharp contrast with the fashion and brightness of the main street. For example, as soon as I left Wangfujing Street, I turned into Duofu Lane, and I didn't walk a few steps, just like entering a scrap collection station. A group of people turned a section of hutong into a waste collection place, with stains everywhere. Waste recycling is a sign of environmental protection, but it can't turn streets into buying stations. Hutongs in Beijing were not glamorous in the past, but they were not as messy as they are now. The concentrated expression of the mess is that public space has also become a place for private life. Dirty things can be thrown at will, and dirty water can be splashed at will. As various food stalls and shops come one after another, a lot of cooking and washing are done outdoors, which makes the road surface covered with oil stains, water stains and sputum stains. Oil stains are masterpieces of using streets as kitchens or mobile dining tables. Water stains are the result of directly treating the road as a sewer, and phlegm stains go further. Simply treating public space as your own spittoon is undoubtedly unique among countries in the world that can send people into space. Some patriots may long for love, but they don't agree with these weaknesses. Their thinking is very straight. They think there are weaknesses. How can they build an atomic bomb and send the jade rabbit to heaven? In fact, there are two incomparable things. There is no causal relationship between behavioral shortcomings and intelligence, but the former will hinder the latter's maximization of interests.

Another manifestation of rural cities is kinship terms between strangers. I notice that there are many shops now. As soon as I stepped forward, I was inexplicably called brothers and sisters, and I was particularly close, which was not available in previous city shops. It is extremely uncomfortable to use kinship terms to bring a strange relationship that should be kept at a proper distance closer. These young shop assistants are either used to this name, or think that direct close relationship will be beneficial to sales and themselves, so they show excessive intimacy to strangers. I don't know that this will not bring the relationship closer, and it may also make some customers feel uncomfortable. Most people are not used to being greeted by relatives anytime and anywhere. You've already bought things into the store like this, but you haven't looked at them carefully. The effect may be counterproductive, making him feel that you are eager for quick success and instant benefit, not a sincere salesman, so your subsequent sales promotion will also make him feel unreal. Human civilization has designed honorifics to avoid nicknames other than blood, just to keep people in society at a distance and safeguard their dignity from this distance. The society in which people call each other brother and sister is not a harmonious world, but a hypocritical society. You don't have to put your dignity on selling things. Giving your dignity at any time is also an affront to the dignity of others.

Another outstanding manifestation of urbanization is the increase of disheveled people, which is in sharp contrast with the accelerating modernization process. When I entered Beihai Park after a long absence, I left such an impression. Today's parks are quite deserted before the tourist season or the time for foreign tourists to visit. Maybe the tickets are too expensive, or maybe even if you have a park annual card, you can only enjoy a little green environment when you go in. Generally, places of interest have to pay extra. It is more likely that young people in the city think it is not fashionable to date and play in old parks, so young and middle-aged citizens don't go in very much, at least in proportion. This has caused that if you enter the park at four or five o'clock, there are mainly two kinds of people who attract your attention: the security guards hired by the park; Older people who come to exercise or attend other parties. If the latter is still casually dressed and untidy, then it is not an exaggeration to describe the former with disheveled clothes and untidy appearance. Where did these people come from (it can be seen that there are only backward and poor areas in China, and there are still surplus young people)? They didn't see the minimum education of being a human being, and their employers didn't give them the most basic training outside their jobs, such as washing their faces and combing their hair neatly. For example, their uniforms should be clean and not idle and dirty. As a security guard, they must stand and sit. However, even these basic norms are completely invisible to them. It can be seen that they have not received this basic minimum education at home, school or employer. What's the use of hanging beautiful moral slogans all over the street when the minimum standard education of a society has not been completed?

Old people, the main users of parks, often have different words and deeds about themselves. They regard the park as their backyard, not only wearing the clothes they wear in the kitchen, but also doing everything in it (playing tape recorders, listening to the radio, using microphones, and directly treating the garden as their living room). There is no concept that public behavior and private behavior should have boundaries. Even if everyone can afford microphones, radios and tape recorders now, it doesn't mean that they can be used anytime and anywhere. A spitting army composed of hired security guards (who manage the garden themselves but don't know how to care for the working environment), urban retirees (who use the garden most often and don't know how to care for their entertainment space) and foreign tourists left a stain on the spotless royal garden.

The most outstanding performance of urban and rural life is the mixture of public life and private life. Compared with western society, China society is inherently ambiguous, and street life has always blurred the boundaries between public and private behavior in China society. In the process of industrialization, one of the great undertakings of western society is to domesticate individuals, so street life is forcibly expelled from the stage of public life. Although China society did not regard it as a big undertaking, the city also standardized street life to a certain extent, and gradually established some public and private concepts in citizens' lives. However, this civil society, which is slightly separated from public and private, has been washed apart by the influx of new people in the past 30 years. The reason why cities do not urbanize new people according to the code of conduct, but make cities rural is because the society itself has long lost the aesthetics of external behavior.

The root cause of spitting is also the performance of public behavior and private behavior, and other moral accusations have not been dug up. In a society where public behavior and private behavior are completely separated, spitting and spitting human filth should never appear in public places. The biggest difference between urban life and rural life is the separation of public life and private life. In western society, there is a clear distinction between what can be done and what can't be done. Its high degree of spiritual collectivism is manifested in the clear distinction between public and private, and clean and orderly urban isolation is indispensable. In France, for example, "eating" is generally not carried out on the main road. When the weather is fine, restaurants and cafes can set up open-air seats for customers to bathe in the sun, but mobile food vendors are strictly prohibited in cities (except for holiday beaches or special parties). Sandwiches and pancakes can only be bought in designated stores, not sold in the open air. Employees of companies or institutions are not allowed to eat and drink tea in the office. Generally, there is a special space for drinking coffee or tea, but not at their desks. If there is no lunch in the office, if there is no canteen, they will all go to the restaurant. People with financial difficulties will take the lunch prepared at home and hide in a corner of the park to eat, whether it is cold or hot. Such a meticulous separation is to cut off the mix of public and private from the root. I know a white shopkeeper who runs a small shop by himself and nobody cares about him. What can't he do in his own shop? However, he insists that a mineral water bottle will not be exposed where customers can see it, and there will be no objects in the store that expose themselves, such as cups and kettles. Thirsty, he would rather close the shop and go to a nearby cafe to drink. Later, when his business was depressed, I thought he would break away from the routine and have lunch in his own shop (restaurants cost a lot of money). Who would have thought that people would rather go out and buy a sandwich and eat it cold than let the store smell a little food? I was deeply impressed by the clear distinction between internal and external, public and private, and the strict aesthetic norms of external behavior. If China people open their own shops, who cares about eating and drinking Lazar? Hot water bottles, teacups and even pots and pans can be avoided. I've seen those shops with millions of dollars in goods, and they can eat and drink in front of customers without any privacy.

I recently went to the Beijing Art Museum in Manzhouli. The function of century-old monuments and art exhibition is really elegant. However, such a place has been humiliated by a group of managers who have no public-private boundaries. As soon as I entered the temple, I was stirred into the market by the loud chat of two women (the price of green onions and what to eat at night). They are really capable. One stood at the entrance of the East Exhibition Hall (they were hired to guard the indoor exhibits, and they stood outside chatting), and the other stood at the entrance of the West Exhibition Hall, across a courtyard more than ten meters long, chatting loudly like no one's watching. When entering an exhibition hall, the woman guarding the room listened to the radio and chatted with another staff member. Tourists pass by. If there is nothing, it doesn't affect them to regard the workplace as their living room and chat with the stereo on. Not long ago, I went to the eunuch museum in Beijing and encountered a similar situation. There are four exhibition halls, one of which is locked. I asked why I couldn't go to see them and replied that there was something in it. It seems that ancient temples and public places are not guarded by them, but for their private use.

China people, who lack self-awareness, have almost no concepts of public and private, internal and external. People can do the later things, or they can do the former things. They can wear clothes in their own kitchens in the street without shame, and even walk into solemn and formal occasions. The biggest drawback of not distinguishing between public and private is that the workplace is used for private purposes. Don't say that an administrator guarding a thousand-year-old temple can regard the historic site as his private house, even a cleaner cleaning toilets in a shopping center can cool his clothes and shoes and put personal things in. I suspect that China people have been like this since ancient times. But with the collapse of its own civilization ideology, the code of conduct closely related to it also collapsed, and the aesthetic of external behavior disappeared from generation to generation.

I don't know how the United States, a new immigrant country, does it. In old Europe, the separation of public behavior and private behavior is an important part of family and public education, and it is the starting point for a child to learn to be a man. I wrote in my previous article that educating children to separate public behavior from private behavior is a shortcut to cultivate self-awareness, because educating them to open the distance between public and private is actually to make them realize their distance from others and their connection with others. Therefore, it is probably more effective to separate public behavior from private behavior and domesticate it from childhood than the moral behavior education we are used to doing (which can be parallel). The root of many uncivilized behaviors in China society is that there is no distinction between public behavior and private behavior, and people have almost no consciousness of hiding private behavior in front of others, especially around the private behavior of "eating". In the article Anatomy Series 4: The Threshold of the Upper World Society, I talked about the scale by which westerners divide the upper world society and the lower world society, and there is also a scale on whether public behavior and private behavior are separated. Observing whether a society pays attention to etiquette and how to regulate "eating" (occasions, ways and contents), we can get a general concept.

People don't need to eat anytime and anywhere, as long as they satisfy their appetite, they don't need to eat anything. People are different from animals, which is a big dividing line. Civilized society needs to standardize the aesthetics of external behavior. In western society, the external self and the internal self are clearly divided, and the private self that cannot be exposed should not be exposed in public, because the external self is restrained and decorative, while the internal self is naked. It is understandable to eat anything on any occasion in order to survive when you are down and out, but now China is full of fried, fried, smoked and baked food because of its diet. Walking on the streets of China, I often feel that the city has become a private kitchen. People eat everything, regardless of occasion, time and manners, especially young people, because the streets are full of temptations. Watching some TV programs is no exception. They are keen to introduce all kinds of strange ways to eat, and no one, whether the interviewer or the interviewee, considers eating in front of the camera. I remember when I was a child and a teenager, there were no duck necks and chicken feet mala Tang everywhere in big cities in China, and melon seeds would not bite streets and shops. The most amazing thing is that luxury stores sell tens of millions of precious stones and mahogany while eating melon seeds and snacks! One day, I passed a luxuriously decorated furniture store, which was an authentic luxury store in terms of price. I saw two salesgirls (maybe private bosses) sitting on tables and chairs with a price tag of more than 100 thousand, eating melon seeds and throwing them all over the floor. These two men who have no concept of public or private simply don't know that luxury goods are not only sky-high prices, but also need elegance and dignity to justify themselves, otherwise people are cheap and things are cheap.

We have always emphasized western learning, but China's western learning has a natural defect, that is, idealizing and moralizing each other's advantages, which makes us unable to see the true story under the skin. The modification of external behavior is one of their true stories, so there is hypocrisy in such behavior characteristics, but the complete separation of public behavior and private behavior is also one of the sources of many enviable advantages of western society. Instead of moralizing what they present in the outside world and destroying themselves with a "inferior quality", it is better to subdivide the source and learn from it.

It is not that China has not paid attention to the aesthetics of external behavior since ancient times, and there is no civilization that does not set aesthetic standards for its external performance. Eating is the basis of this kind of beauty, and it is also the first step to distinguish between people and animals. Otherwise, why did our ancestors create such exquisite bronzes and porcelain before all civilizations? Eating like a beast can be done at home (in the west, the upper-middle class can't do it at the dinner table), and it is not much different from being convenient in a toilet without a door. Western-style knives and forks appeared much later than China people used chopsticks. That is to say, when we have had a gentle meal, they are still eating birds' hair and blood, but they just came from behind. After using a knife and fork, people are strictly different from animals in eating. For example, eating with a fork is for people's body not to bend down to eat directly (when eating, the body must sit up straight, which is a sign of bad manners), and cutting with a knife is for people's teeth not to be direct. I remember when I was a child, my mother taught me table manners. Don't put your elbows on the table. Food should be sent to your mouth with chopsticks, not directly into the bowl, and your mouth can't make a sound when eating. These regulations have only one purpose, that is, people eat differently from animals, because people feel humiliated. There is a word in French called pudeur, which can be translated into Chinese as shame or shyness, meaning that a person has a private and indecent side, and he will be ashamed to show it in front of others. A civilization has lost its sense of shame and has no self-awareness and public self at all. This is not free and easy, but a retrogression from exquisite civilization to primitive civilization.

This retrogression is a step-by-step decline. The starting gun has been fired since the demise of the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty. /kloc-After the 0/9th century, the world situation and civil strife became more precipitous, and this "crazy horse" who only wanted to escape ran wildly on the falling runway. In particular, the superstructure of this civilization has been destroyed several times, and each time it is reborn. As a stepfather, it is somewhat unable to take full responsibility. Every generation has given up and lost the sense of ownership, so that nowadays, if we look at China society from the aesthetic perspective of external behavior, it is difficult for the superstructure to assume the responsibility of the stepfather, because it has lost the aesthetic framework of external behavior. For the rejuvenation of China, it is not enough to have high technology and wealth, but also to rebuild the aesthetics of external behavior. If the superstructure itself loses this aesthetic right, even without realizing the fact of "losing", it is not a revival, but a final problem. Those countries whose superstructures are attacked by butchers, or whose superstructures are usurped and destroyed, are faced with the lack of external aesthetic behavior or crisis, just as clothes and ornaments are torn off by violence before people die, and only the instinct of life is left in the dark crowd. My understanding of the "Chinese dream" is not only rich and powerful, but also shameful for everyone. The first step of shame is to hide the inner self and the private self.