Diary of Douban: How does Gong Yu move mountains?

In China, there is probably no one who doesn't know the story of "Gong Yu moved mountains": a 90-year-old Gong Yu, suffering from the fact that his residence was blocked by mountains, decided to lead his children and grandchildren to move mountains. This seemingly impossible task was finally completed. In later generations, this was regarded as a fearless spirit of the working people. As the saying goes, "Nothing is difficult in the world, if you put your mind to it", even if it is an arduous task, you can always do it.

It was not until I reread the story the other day that I realized that the problem was not that simple. An obvious doubt is: If Gong Yu's motive for moving the mountain is to consider "the northern part of the mountain is blocked and life in the mountain area is inconvenient", then why did he choose to move the mountain instead of clearing the way, or even simply move his family to the plain? In any case, this is easier and more feasible than "moving mountains", just as modern people are not determined to fill in the distance barrier caused by the Pacific Ocean between China and the United States.

Besides, how did he move mountains? Let's calculate the huge workload he faces. According to Liezi Tang Wen's original records, the Taihang Mountain and Wuwangshan Mountain he wants to move are "seven hundred miles square, and Wan Ren is high", which obviously has the exaggerated and inaccurate tone used by the ancients (especially Taoist philosophical works) (Zhou Dynasty 1 =7~8 feet = 162 ~ 65438+). According to the conservative assumption, the total volume of these two mountains is 100 km, and 100 m above the ground, which means that the total earthwork volume of the mountains is 1 trillion cubic meters. The density of rocks is different. For example, marble generally weighs 2.52-2.85 tons per cubic meter, and dense diabase weighs 2.9-3.0 tons. Now it is 2.6 tons per cubic meter, which means that 26 trillion tons of stones will be removed. According to this story, Gong Yu "led his children and grandchildren to bear the burden of three men, dig dirt and transport dustpans to the end of the Bohai Sea ... It was a contradiction at first to save money in cold and hot weather", that is to say, with three children and grandchildren who can afford the burden, earthwork can only be transported to the Bohai Sea once a year. At present, according to the calculation of per person 100 Jin, the average number of descendants in each generation is 104, which means that only 2 cubic meters of mountains can be cut every year, which means it will take 500 billion years to complete the mountain cutting! You know, the earth is only 500 million years away from the Cambrian explosion of life.

Of course, as he himself said, "A son gives birth to a grandson, and a grandson gives birth to a son; A son has a son and a son has a grandson; Children and grandchildren are infinite, and the progress can be accelerated through the continuous reproduction and proliferation of the population. However, this still seems extremely slim. Because under the condition that the mountain remains unchanged, he has only three ways to move the mountain as soon as possible: increasing manpower, increasing daily investment and improving efficiency (including adopting new technologies to transport mountains). It is impossible for human resources to proliferate indefinitely. Suppose Gong Yu was from the early Western Zhou Dynasty. At that time, China had a population of about 5 million, but now it has only increased by less than 280 times. The increase of time investment is more limited; New technology to improve efficiency is the most desirable, but he doesn't see any interest in it at all in the original text. The hardest thing is, even assuming that his family can survive the famines and wars of past dynasties and has been thriving, how can he keep future generations busy for this project?

By comparison, we can see that the largest pyramid of khufu in ancient Egypt was built around 2690 BC (assuming the technical conditions are similar to those in Gong Yu), with an original height of 146.5 meters and a base length of more than 230 meters on each side, which is much smaller than Taihang Mountain and Wuwangshan Mountain, of course, but the tower body is also made of more than 2.3 million stones (and the pyramid is hollow, unlike mountains). Judging from the population of Gong Yu's family, even such a much smaller project may take tens of thousands of years?

So, in the story, Yugong's wife questioned ("With your strength, you can't destroy the hills where the Taihang and the Prince of Wu are guarding their elders, can you?" ), the neighbor's ridicule ("With the strength of age, even a hair on the mountain can't be extinguished. What is it like a stone?" ), from a technical and rational point of view, at least understandable. Gong Yu didn't want to move mountains for most of his life, but at the age of 90, he had a whim. However, it seems that he did not consider the feasibility from the perspective of engineering technology, nor did he think that besides moving mountains, there are plans such as immigration that are easier to achieve his goals, not to mention the unnecessary damage to the ecological environment. In fact, his ultimate success was not because of the feasibility of his plan, but because this spirit shocked the gods. "The emperor felt sincere," so he moved mountains with his divine power. However, if you think about it carefully, this means that people in a plain area suddenly found two more mountains at their doorstep. This is the suffering of Yugong.

Reading this story in this way may make people feel that the predecessors' times are out of place with modern thinking, but if so, isn't it wrong to regard Gong Yu's moving mountains as "carrying forward the fearless spirit to change the poverty and backwardness of his hometown"? Judging from the original story, this is of course an impossible myth in reality, and its original intention is probably not to promote the spirit that man can conquer nature. The evidence is that this story comes from Liezi Tang Wen, which was originally a Taoist work praising "your vanity" and "inaction", and Tang Wen is Wang Yang's wanton and endless time and space, so the story of a fool moving mountains was inherited. I'm afraid this arrangement is not accidental, that is to say, under the background of the original work, it is more likely to be a fantasy story that explains Taoist philosophy of life.

In this regard, accusing Gong Yu of rushing into the horse without calculating the earthwork will probably make the ancients ignorant of the so-called; However, this is worth taking seriously, because after Mao's Lao San Pian, "moving mountains" has already become a spirit, a symbol or symbol, but people often accept it without thinking. The characteristics of this thinking tendency are: voluntarism that blindly emphasizes "spirit" (no matter what difficulties you encounter, you only focus on the results. As for how to achieve it, it seems that "spirit" is enough); Emphasize the intensive human input driven by spirit, but relatively ignore the new technology that can improve efficiency; Lack of patience in judging technical details and rational logic, ignoring data, rarely basing their opinions on logical statistical analysis, preferring to judge problems from a moral point of view; The solution is narrow-minded and not open-minded, and it rarely considers whether there are other options and possibilities.

Of course, this tendency did not appear until modern China. More than one historian (such as Huang Renyu and Wei Genshen) noticed that among the officials in China, few people knew how to use statistical data and technical analysis as management tools, or based their views on public affairs on detailed figures. Ada in Tang Dynasty and Qiu Zhuo in Ming Dynasty are very few exceptions. On the contrary, China people have always advocated the power of morality, spirit and will. In addition to "Yu Gong Yi Shan", another story "As long as the kung fu is deep, the iron pestle is ground into a needle" is also a household name. Of course, it's a legend that doesn't need to be rigidly adhered to, but even so, a modern person may wonder: after putting so much manpower into it, the final output is just a needle. From the input-output ratio, is it worth it? At this time, perhaps the only thing that can comfort you is that you have gained some spirit and skills beyond the needle.

In a sense, it can be said that the lack of numerical management and technical support, talking about the "spiritual" organizational management model, is a social orientation that has not yet been modernized. In a more modern society, people pay attention to the perfection of the organization at the system and institutional level, and let everyone concentrate on solving local technical problems through the optimization of data and technology, instead of simply emphasizing some kind of "spirit" to overcome difficulties and obstacles-that is actually incompatible with the instrumental rationality of "doing good for the sake of doing good". This is why many people feel that in a modern organization that overemphasizes efficiency and instrumental rationality, it is difficult to have any passion for work, and it is not very enlightening, because people are only familiar with the technical details of their work, and sometimes they don't even know what the overall mission is.

Of course, "spirit" can't be lost, but modern society is becoming more and more complicated, and relying on "spirit" alone is no longer enough to meet many challenges. In an organization, if team leaders only talk about the spirit of overcoming all difficulties when drawing blueprints, but don't guide and teach people the corresponding technical details, it will inevitably make people feel that they are just singing high-profile, and they have learned nothing except being encouraged occasionally. In the end, they have to grope for themselves in the chaos, which in itself will greatly reduce the efficiency of the organization.

After the China women's volleyball team won the championship in Rio Olympic Games this year, many people talked about the "women's volleyball spirit" almost reflexively in their excitement, but Lang Ping, head coach of China women's volleyball team, hit the nail on the head: "Don't talk about the women's volleyball spirit just because we won a game. The spirit of women's volleyball has always been there. You can't win by spirit alone, you need technology. " Of course, what she said is right. Perhaps only amateurs can see the spirit, and experts can see the technology. It is not that we don't need to talk about "spirit" in this era, but we should talk more about technology. What's more, isn't the persistence of technology and rationality not qualified to be a kind of "spirit"?