Why did ancient China kill many children, but the Greeks mostly killed their fathers?

Patricide spirit? With what? Killing children culture?

There are great differences between China culture and western culture.

What are the common themes in Greek mythology? Patricide? One of the most famous is the story of Oedipus.

There was a king who got an Oracle saying that he. Will be killed by his own son? . The king was so scared that he didn't even dare to sleep with the queen. One day, he couldn't help having sex after drinking and gave birth to a son named Oedipus. The king was afraid and threw the baby into the mountains. As a result, the child was found and raised by a shepherd. When he grew up, he met the king on a narrow path in the city. These two people don't know each other. The king ordered Oedipus to make way, and Oedipus was also very violent. In a rage, he killed the king, his own father. Then he was elected king by the people because of his outstanding ability, and married his former queen, that is, his mother, according to the custom, thus realizing his promise. Kill father and marry mother? Prophet.

Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, which is the root of western family tragedy.

This story was later quoted by Freud and formed a famous term in psychology:? Oedipus complex? .

Besides this story, in Greek mythology, patricide? In fact, there are many examples There are frequent conflicts between father and son among Greek gods, and fathers usually take precautions against their sons. Uranus, the god of the sky, imprisoned his children underground. As a result, his son Cronus castrated his father with a scythe, replacing his father's dominant position.

Cronus was not at ease when he became the master of heaven, because his father said to him before he died. You will be overthrown by your own son like me. ? So Cronus made a cruel decision: eat all the born children. So he swallowed all his first five children as soon as they were born. The sixth child is Zeus, the greatest god in Greek mythology. After he was born, his mother exchanged his bag with a stone and survived. When he grew up, Zeus drove his father out of the palace and became the king of the gods himself.

In Greek mythology? Patricide? There are so many stories that are not accidental coincidences, but reflect some realities of Greek society at that time.

Look at the ancient myths of China, and you will never see this? Great rebellion? On the contrary, what do we see? Kill a child? That legend.

For example, Shun is very talented, but his father doesn't like him and often beats him for no reason. Where's Shun? He never resists. If he strikes lightly, he obediently endures; When he was hit hard, he fled to the wilderness and cried alone. When Yao heard about this, he thought Shun was very virtuous, so he was ready to reuse him. As a result, Gu Sou was even more unhappy. He murdered Shun with Xiang, the son of his concubine. Once, Gu Sou wanted to repair the roof. As soon as Shun climbed up, Hexiang immediately took the ladder away and set fire to the house. Fortunately, Shun used the hat on his head as a parachute, then jumped down and escaped. As a result, after two days, Shun was asked to dig a well, and Shun went honestly again. When Shun went down to the bottom of the well, his father and brother hurriedly dug and filled the well, trying to bury him alive. Fortunately, Shun was very alert and knew that they were not kind. As soon as he got off the well, he dug a dark tunnel on the side wall of the well early and saved his life again.

Because of this? How to build a harmonious family at all costs? This spirit made Shun the greatest saint of that era, praised by thousands of people and later became a leader. This legend, which is a bit strange to read today, was regarded as one of the most classic stories to educate China people before 19 1 year ago. It's listed as? Twenty-four filial piety comes first.

There is also a famous story in "Twenty-four Filial Pieties": In a year of great disaster, a dutiful son named Guo Ju planned to bury his son alive in order to save a mouthful of food and ensure that his mother would not starve to death. His theory is that when a son dies, he can have another one, but when his mother dies, he can't be resurrected. This is the famous twenty-four filial piety? Guo Ju buried the child? .

These two stories didn't happen by accident. In the traditional culture of China, there are many stories that emphasize filial piety in this way. So in this sense, maybe we can interpret China culture as? Killing children culture? .

02

Myth is a metaphor of real society.

Then, why is the theme of western mythology patricide and us killing children?

This reason is complicated, which can be traced back to the geographical differences between China and Greece.

As mentioned earlier, the geographical environment of China has two characteristics. First, it is semi-enclosed, surrounded by the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, grasslands, deserts and the Great Wall. Second, the closed hinterland is fertile, which is very suitable for the development of agriculture and settlement.

The geographical environment of Greece is almost completely opposite to that of China. The first characteristic of Greece's geographical environment is openness. Greece is a peninsula. Looking at the map of Greece, the first thing that impresses people is the length of its coastline. Except the north, anywhere else on this peninsula is only 50 kilometers away from the sea. There are many natural harbors along the coast and the navigation conditions are unique. In the words of Gu Zhun? This condition is not available almost anywhere else in the world? .

The second characteristic is that the land is very barren. Greece is mountainous, and there are many stones and gravels in the soil, which is not conducive to agricultural cultivation. So Herodotus, the ancient Greek writer and historian, said Greece? Born in poverty? .

This difference in geographical environment determines the difference between China civilization and Greek civilization.

Our ancestors settled on both sides of the Yellow River for generations long ago, and soon formed a large-scale and simple settlement agricultural model. Chinese civilization is fundamentally an agricultural civilization and a settlement civilization. In the settled civilization, people's way of life is just a repetition of the previous generation. The experience and wisdom of the elderly are crucial, because they know when to flood and when to sow. So we said:? If an old dog barks, he gives advice. ?

In agricultural society, the elderly are the eternal authority, all social resources are in their hands, and the elderly dominate the family for life. The older you are, the higher your qualifications and the greater your right to speak. So China is a society? Old society? , what else? Old? The related words are all good: Honest, sophisticated, young, old, boss, boss? It means mature, stable and respected.

Life in Greece is not like this.

The barren land in Greece is not suitable for planting rice and wheat, but those rocky hillsides can be used for planting vines and olive trees, and also for raising sheep. Therefore, Greece cannot be self-sufficient in food, but can produce olive oil, wine and wool.

What if you can't eat olive oil, wine or wool? You can sell it for food. So the Greeks went to sea to do business, sold their olive oil, wine and wool to other countries and brought back food from other countries.

Maritime trade and settled agriculture are completely different lifestyles. The sea is obviously the world of young people. Because the sea is full of dangers, a long voyage will take months to struggle with the wind and waves, which the elderly can't do. So in early Greek society, the richest people were often young people. In Greek legends, we read more praise for youth and vitality. Most Greek sculptures praise the youthful and healthy human body, because the Greeks advocate sports that show youth and strength.

The more important function of this maritime commercial activity is to break the blood relationship. In large-scale sailing activities, it is impossible for men, women and children in a family to get on the same boat, only young people in all families. On this ship, people are equal, not seniority. So generally speaking, in ancient Greece, when his son came of age, his father would recognize his equal status. This tradition later evolved into law: As adults (17 years old and 18 years old), the men in Athens were completely out of my father's control. After passing the citizenship examination conducted by my father or guardian and the Legislative Assembly, I can obtain the independent right to register. ?

Speaking of which, let's review Greek mythology again. Myth is a metaphor of real society. In his book Civilization and its Dissatisfaction, Freud attributed the emergence of western democracy directly to his son's resistance to his father. He thinks that the development process of civilization comes from? Original father? The direction of despotism? Brotherhood? The process of democratic change. In the development of Greek society, blood relationship has been relaxed and patriarchy has been weakened. Adults form a society in an equal way, thus creating a democratic city-state in Greece.

Patricide spirit? It is a basic spiritual motive force to promote the continuous development of Greek and western society. Man's attitude towards family authority determines his attitude towards social authority when he grows up. A prominent feature of western culture is to dare to resist authority and complete metabolism and self-renewal in intergenerational conflicts.

In the spiritual world of China people, ghosts often interfere with human life and need human sacrifice. This is not the case in Greece after the blood ties are broken. ? In the concept of ancient Greece and Rome, the soul is like a wandering image, without substance, even without the function of thinking and speaking, and cannot interfere with the world of the living. Moreover, once the deceased is buried or cremated, his soul can cross the Milky Way and enter a land that will never return, thus breaking the road to light. Therefore, the ancient Greeks had no fear of the souls of the dead who had been buried, especially cremated, and there were few stories of ghosts visiting their homes. ?

03

The blood relationship has never been broken, and the immortals have collapsed.

In other major civilizations in the world, consanguinity has long been cut off in other different ways. For example, the Sumerian civilization in the two river basins also entered a stratified society from the period of the blood clan emirate, and one of the main factors driving this change is commerce. The business of the two river basins is important because the geographical environment of the two river basins is very different from that of China.

In ancient Sumer, every city and its satellite towns were separated from other cities by deserts. There are almost no stones and metals in Sumer, and there is almost no wood except palm, tamarisk, willow and poplar, which are not very good building materials. If necessary, copper, stone and construction wood can only be obtained through trade with the upper reaches of the north. ?

Therefore, Sumerian civilization did not have such a self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy as China, and products from different regions had to be exchanged in large quantities. Big business, especially long-distance trafficking, occupies an important position in Sumerian society and has a decisive influence on the formation of social organizations. ? In Sumerians, the existence of big business is indispensable in production or social division of labor, and it is the adhesive to integrate the whole social life. ?

Therefore, the Sumerian blood relationship has long been broken, and the rise of temples is one of the manifestations of the broken blood relationship. Because there is no longer blood relationship between people, it is natural that the same ancestor cannot be used to maintain unity. They are looking for a new belief, which makes a huge temple appear in the Middle East. Every city-state in Sumer tried its best to build exquisite temples to worship the main gods worshipped by the whole city, which had nothing to do with their ancestors. * * * The same god? It is a powerful social adhesive, uniting residents, uniting the king and obeying him as part of the cosmic order. ? People's social status is determined by property rather than blood, and the poor become slaves of the rich in large numbers, thus entering the slave society.

In China, commerce is underdeveloped from beginning to end, and the self-sufficient natural economy has always been the main body. ? David N. Keightley pointed out that the characteristics of ancient geographical environment in China are helpful to explain the forms of its cultural development. China's early culture was based on agriculture, so the role of the market seemed very unimportant. In addition, the main rivers in China flow from west to east, which makes it difficult to stimulate the development of regional trade, because the latitudes flowing through them are the same, so the natural resources are basically similar. The lack of a large-scale trade network can also be explained by the wide distribution of natural resources. Every place can be self-sufficient in daily life without trading. The natural environment of ancient Mesopotamia was completely different from this. Metal ore, hard rock and high-quality wood needed for social development are very scarce, and they all rely on long-distance trade networks. ?

Therefore, the historical development of China is different from other major civilizations. While other civilizations broke the blood relationship, China witnessed the continuous expansion of blood groups, from families, clans to tribes, and finally formed a country.

China in Shang Dynasty seems to have some similarities with Sumerian city-states as early as 1000 years ago, such as cities, palaces, writing and bronzes. However, this is only a superficial similarity. Essentially, China's early civilization is very different from Sumerian civilization and later Mesopotamian civilization. The emergence and development of bronzes in the two river basins are mainly due to practical factors such as farming and fighting. In the early days of China, bronzes were mainly made into ritual vessels for political purposes. Although the bronze culture in China is so developed, farmers have been using rough stone tools. Sumerians created words to keep accounts or to serve the economy. China's Oracle Bone Inscriptions recorded almost all divination, which is the operation mode of business politics. In Sumer, cities developed from economic centers or commodity trading centers, while in China, the earliest cities were political centers, not economic centers. Therefore, archaeologist Zhang Guangzhi emphasized that politics, rather than technology and trade, is the main driving force for the formation of China's civilized society. In many other parts of the world, such as Greece and Sumer, the situation is just the opposite.

Zhang Guangzhi also believes that there is a * * * similarity between early China culture and Mayan culture, that is? The important feature is continuity, that is, many cultural and social elements continue from barbaric society to civilized society? . What about Sumerian culture? Is it a breakthrough, that is, in the relationship between man and the natural environment, through the emergence of new factors such as technology and trade, it has caused a breakthrough in the bondage of natural ecosystems? . ? The kinship system was destroyed and kinship was replaced by geographical relationship. ?

However, although it belongs to the developing culture like China, Mayan culture has no ancestor worship, only deity worship. So we can see that Maya culture, like Sumerian civilization, Egyptian civilization and Greek civilization, has huge temple buildings. There is no such temple building in China, and the ancestral temple building in China is no different from the palace building used by the living.

Therefore, from the Neolithic Age to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the blood relationship has been firmly binding China people. The principle of Confucian political theory is actually to enlarge the principle of consanguinity to the state. Some people say that the religion of China people is Confucianism, and the core of Confucianism is filial piety, right? It is good to be cautious and pursue the future. . According to the research statistics of linguists, there are about 25 words about relatives in the languages of major nationalities in the world, but how many are there in Chinese? 350. For men of the same generation as their parents, only one uncle was sent away in English, while there are five titles in Chinese: uncle, uncle, uncle. Cousin in English can only be expressed by the words Cousin, Cousin, Cousin, Cousin, Cousin, Cousin and Cousin in Chinese. This shows the importance of consanguinity in the life of China people.

Until the Ming and Qing dynasties, the ancestral temple was built in the nearest position to the palace. In the south of China, the most exquisite buildings in the center of a village are basically ancestral halls. And if you travel around the world, you will find that the churches and temples in their city centers are gods, no matter in India, the Middle East or Europe, and none of them are dedicated to their ancestors.

The temples of China people are dedicated to ancestors, while those of other civilizations are dedicated to gods. This is the fundamental difference between Chinese civilization and other civilizations.