Follow Fei Xiaotong to see rural society

Looking at rural society with Fei Xiaotong

——Reading "Country China"

2017/7/31

Yu Shengyu Having grown up in rural life, my feelings are complicated. In more than thirty years of life, I have witnessed the changes in rural life. When I was a child, my life was slow, peaceful and leisurely. However, as I grew up, many people left the countryside to work. There were only left-behind elderly people and left-behind children in the village. During the Chinese New Year, the village was particularly lively, but soon fell silent. The houses are getting taller and taller, but there are fewer and fewer people. The small alleys in the village gradually became barren and overgrown with grass. The grass grew taller than people, and the path was only about a foot wide. I think I still don’t know much about rural society, so I bought this book "Country China" and look forward to following Fei Xiaotong to learn about the local culture around me.

Fei Xiaotong said that from the grassroots level, Chinese society is rural. Because there is no flow or not much flow, people and things around me are "learned and adapted from time to time", and there is no need for contracts or abstract principles. However, in the process of moving from rural society to modern society, the lifestyle we developed in rural society has its drawbacks, and social development has forced changes in our way of thinking and interpersonal interactions. Take the spirit of contract as an example. The West has had a spirit of contract since ancient times, but our rural society does not need a contract. What we focus on is integrity, but integrity works in a society of acquaintances, but what about strangers? With the development of the times, the sense of contract has slowly penetrated into our lives. Even between acquaintances and relatives, the existence of a contract is required.

Mr. Fei Xiaotong explained in Chapters 2 and 3 that “writing to the countryside” is not entirely necessary because in rural society, people do not need to communicate through written language. Just judge country people as stupid. They just haven't developed an understanding of those unfamiliar things in big cities in their lives. They have a lot of knowledge in life, but they just can't be used in city life. It makes sense, but what I find strange is: Don’t rural people need the enjoyment of spiritual life, such as reading books and newspapers? Reading requires you to acquire certain words, right? Whether it is a rural society or a modern society, people will have spiritual pursuits and spiritual enjoyment, right? I still remember when I was a child, I lay on my father’s shoulder and read the story book “Capturing the Swallow Li San” together. I also remember the scene of the three brothers and sisters fighting for a book, hiding it here and there and looking for it.

I very much agree with one of Mr. Fei’s main points in the book: Western social structure is mainly a group structure, and group structure emphasizes equality and fair contracts. The pattern of Chinese rural society is a differential pattern, just like the ripples that occur when a stone is thrown on the water. Everyone is the center of the circle pushed out by his social influence, and those pushed by the ripples of the circle are connected. The most important thing in Confucianism is human ethics. What is ethics? Mr. Fei's explanation is the sequence of ripples that occur in the group of human beings that he pushes out and has social relations with himself. In the differential order pattern, social relations are gradually extended from one person to another, which is an increase in personal connections. The social scope is a network composed of private connections. Therefore, all social ethics in our traditional society are only limited to Meaning occurs in personal connections. Seeing this, we understand why in feudal society "one person can achieve enlightenment, a chicken or a dog ascends to heaven", why you need to find an acquaintance before entering the hospital, and why you need to find someone to do things. Confucius's moral system never leaves the center of the differential sequence pattern, so it is "filial piety first to brotherhood", "son is the father's shelter", "repaying grievances with straightness", "a gentleman seeks for himself, and a villain seeks for others". Mohism's "love without distinction" is exactly the opposite of Confucianism's order of human ethics, so Mencius called him fatherless and kingless, which doomed the Mohist school to its downfall.

In the chapter "The Politics of Inaction", the author proposes two forms of power: the power of violence and the power of consent. Tyrannical power is oppressive in nature, and the basis of consent power is the social contract, which is the power given by different divisions of labor. The main reason why power is attractive is economic interests. Under the consent of power, those who hold power do not want to protect their own special interests, so society must use honor and high salary to recruit them.

Without economic benefits, tyrannical power has little meaning and is therefore less likely to occur. From ancient times to the present, aren’t wars between countries also for economic gain? In the United States, the emphasis is on consenting power, but in the attack on Iraq, isn't it also the case of brutal power at work? What’s interesting is that the rulers of China’s traditional feudal society exercised tyrannical power. However, because China was a large agricultural country with insufficient foundation, the result of exercising tyrannical power was widespread complaints. Qin II only wanted to build a major project to build the Great Wall to consolidate national defense, but the people really Unable to bear it, Chen Sheng and Wu Guang rose up. Therefore, China has established the ideal of inaction politics in the cycle of chaos and chaos. In fact, in rural societies where the mountains are high and the emperors are far away, consent power is basically active. However, unlike the consent power in the West, the power of consent in rural society Agreeing that power is the power of education, the author named it the rule of elders. Thinking about Chao Gai, the "Li Zheng" respected by the locals, you can understand and agree with this name.

The author said that China's rural society is a blood society. Blood relationship means that everyone's rights and obligations are determined by kinship, while geography is a social relationship developed from business. College is the basis of status society, but geography is the basis of contract society. Business cannot exist in a close kinship society, and transactions are maintained based on favors. In rural society, trading markets are usually not in the village but in an empty field, because doing business in person is a behavior between strangers and cannot involve other social relationships. The city is a geo-society, so it pays attention to contracts and laws. Therefore, interpersonal relationships in cities are simpler and more pure, while in rural society, people are "reduced to chaos", which is an incalculable debt of gratitude. When comparing the West and the East, the West, especially immigrant areas, such as the United States, why was it so quickly established that a constitution that has been in effect for hundreds of years was enacted? It is because it is a geographical society; and China has paid attention to filial piety and brotherhood for thousands of years and the population has not moved much, so it is a blood-related society. Is this the reason why China's business has been sluggish for thousands of years? In the past, I always saw it said that the autocratic monarchy emphasized agriculture and suppressed business. In fact, the agricultural society paid too much attention to human relationships and had little population mobility, so business could not thrive.

Looking up from the book and looking at the social development around me, I feel that modern economic development will force China’s traditional differential order pattern to change, and the footsteps of moving from a human society to a contract society are already ringing around me; Global economic and social development will also force China's education to undergo major changes, especially basic education. If it is still our duty to train high-scoring students through examination-based education, then we, like children, will become frogs in the well. Have you not seen the well? The water is getting less and less and the wellhead is getting smaller and smaller?

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