Lecture 7: Cultural dualism and cultural triadism

So why do some people cling to cultural dualism, while others believe that cultural triadism is correct?

In this regard, we must first look at the chronology and geographical context in which these cultures arose. Confucius was born in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period at the end of the Zhou Dynasty, which coincided with the period of war, when the seven kingdoms competed for power, the world was strife, the wealth was exhausted, and the people were struggling to make a living. Therefore, under the premise that culture is the forerunner of civilization, people must find a social system that can promote the progress, harmony, coexistence and co-prosperity of human society, and stability and unity, so cultural dualism is the necessary tool for Confucius to propagate his thoughts; and because ancient China was an agrarian society, the people attached great importance to self-cultivation and rest, and did not like it and were suitable for migratory life, so the philosophy of closed-mindedness must be put on the field of superstructure and gradually become the ideology of superstructure. Even the era of Zhu Xi, who became a sub-saint in the later period, was also a period of war, before the establishment of the Song Dynasty, there were five dynasties and ten countries, the northern nomads invaded the south, the country experienced more than 200 wars, the people were not happy, and the society regressed, even if the Song Dynasty was established, China at that time was not a unified world, there was Liao in the north, Xia in the west, and the world was divided into three parts. Strictly speaking, the Song Dynasty could not represent China, because most of the area north of the Yellow River was in the hands of the Liao, the west was in the hands of the Xia, and the Song Dynasty was only in the southeastern provinces, and even more so in the Southern Song Dynasty. This period was a period of multi-ethnic harmony, and there was a social phenomenon of harmony and peace.

China from the Tang Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty through the division period of nearly 500 years, during this period of the country's wars and disputes, the society has been in turmoil for a long time, the country is scarce, there must be a need to promote social harmony, the idea of national stability and unification, so in the early Northern Song Dynasty, the emergence of Shao Yong, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi laid the foundation for the later Zhu Xi thought.

First of all, Shao Yong excavated and sorted out the principle of "Hetu", perfected the principle of innate gossip in Confucius's "Zhou Yi", theoretically consolidated the principle of "Hetu" innate gossip, and proposed to take the number of heaven and earth and the number of circles as the calculation principle of the origin of heaven and earth, and thus consolidated the principle of multiplication of binary numbers without investigation.

Based on this, Zhu Xi put forward the idea of "learning from things", advocating the idea that the world is fixed, the poor should be poor, the rich should be rich, and the heavens are determined, and advocated centralization, national unity, and social harmony.

Confucius and Zhu Xi both stood on the basis of the innate gossip principle of "Hetu" in their theories, advocated cultural dualism, promoted social closure, advocated the centralization of state power, opposed the existence of the people's own spirit, adhered to the mechanical idea of "living a tree and a skin", and sought a theoretical justification for the development of a harmonious and unified country. Now it seems that these ideas were progressive and necessary in society at that time, and their ideas were also applied later, and they were applied very well.

Confucius's ideas were applied in the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, initiated by Dong Zhongshu, and promoted and implemented by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Zhu Xi's theory was collated and implemented by Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming Dynasty, and then comprehensively promoted by Zhu Di, until the Qing Dynasty, Zhu Xi's thought has always been a national ideology, which lasted for about 600 years.

From the perspective of the whole process of the formation of cultural dualism, there is nothing wrong with the dualist culture of ancient China, and Westerners and contemporary Chinese accuse Chinese Confucian culture, which is what Hegel said: "Confucius is just an actual worldly wise man, and there is no speculative philosophy in him." "The philosophy of Confucius is the philosophy of the state", these two sentences can summarize the contemporary understanding of Westerners and contemporary Chinese.

An important reason for this is that the dualistic culture of ancient China was bombarded to death by Western swords and cannons on the beach of the Qing Dynasty.

After Westerners burned the Old Summer Palace and trampled on it, since then the Chinese have also stepped on hundreds of millions of feet, trampling forward to welcome the arrival of Western culture.

So what's wrong with Confucian culture?

The mistake is that Confucian culture is a dualistic culture, and dualistic culture is a culture of intuitive thinking and sensory thinking, Confucian culture does not recognize the existence of "spirit" in living things, and does not agree that people can exist in "spirit", let alone self-awareness, people only need "one skin" to live, as for whether there is gas or not, it doesn't matter, you just need to be obedient and obedient.

At this point, you should understand why Hegel said: "Confucius was only an actual sage of the world, and there was no speculative philosophy in him." "The philosophy of Confucius is the philosophy of the state."

The dualistic culture is to ask every subordinate to only retain intuitive thinking, sensory thinking, and only biological thinking, as for the objective idealistic thinking that exists in human beings, it is restricted, and even the thinking method of existence must be shaved away. What kind of spiritual existence do you want as an ordinary person, what kind of objective and idealistic thinking do you want, you can think about it in private. Hong Xiuquan thinks a lot, he wants to exist spiritually and cause trouble to the country.

Therefore, Confucian culture is resolutely opposed to objective idealistic thinking, and resolutely does not allow ordinary people to exist only gods. The Tang Dynasty once had a theocratic ascendancy, but was kicked out of the superstructure by the Confucian scholars led by Han Yu and retained the secularization of imperial power.

Why was the Tang Dynasty able to ascend the throne of theocracy? Because in the era of the emergence of theocracy, there will inevitably be the phenomenon of the dispersion of imperial power and the differentiation of centralized power, so it is said that nothing in the world is a perfect product, and there are defects.

The core of the cultural triad is openness, division, rules, order, democracy, struggle, and sharing, and it pays attention to populist culture, believes in wolf civilization, and admires the individual heroic spirit of lone wolf character. So you see that the cultural triadism is very developed, Britain was rampant in the nineteenth century, dominating the world, occupying so many regions, but it did not establish a centralized power. Why? It is because the core of the cultural triad is openness and division. Even it is a small island country, which is a little bigger, and it is divided into two parts: England and Scotland.

You can also experience this from life. For example, Chinese eat with chopsticks, and Westerners eat with knives and forks. You make a pot of rice and put it in front of the Chinese, and the Chinese will take chopsticks and eat around the basin. But Westerners have to bring plates and divide the meal. Chinese talk about sharing, while Westerners talk about sharing; this is the embodiment of culturally dominant behavior.

European integration has been going on for more than 1,000 years, and the Europeans intended to merge in the 10th century, and the reason why they have not been able to unify into one country like China is because the core of the cultural triadism is openness, division, rules, order, democracy, struggle, plunder, sharing, and so on. Westerners mostly believe in Christianity, and the core of Christian culture is the three-element culture, because the ideological principle of the three saints comes from the Pythagorean theorem.

The reason why ancient Western civilization surpassed and left China at the forefront of world civilization around the tenth century is that the ancient Greeks were better and much better at mathematics than us, like Pythagoras, Archimedes, and Heraclitus were all geometricians.

It can be seen that the reason why ancient China stagnated dualism and did not advance culturally was more due to political reasons. For example, the Zhou Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty both appeared in the three-element culture, and both entered the upper ideology, and led the regime to implement the three-element cultural thought, the Zhou Dynasty King Wen divided the princes is the three-element cultural theory and practice, and the Tang Dynasty's temperance system is also the three-element cultural theory and practice. However, the practice of the two-way culture theory was not well implemented in China, and both implementations led to hundreds of years of division and war, causing heavy disasters for the people, the country was ruined, the people were separated, and the society regressed.

In the later period of the Zhou Dynasty, hundreds of princes quarreled and wars continued. After the Tang Dynasty was destroyed, a unified Ming Dynasty appeared more than 470 years later. Both of these divisions have brought heavy disasters to Chinese society.

Therefore, should Chinese have objective idealistic thinking?

Objective idealism itself is possessed only by higher animals, and the only creatures known in the world today to have this method of thinking are humans, apes, and dolphins. Human beings are the most outstanding creatures who use this method of thinking, because human beings have advanced language communication functions, and can best apply concepts, judgments, reasoning and other objective logical thinking methods to understand and transform nature.

In the scientific method of understanding nature and transforming nature in the long-term cycle of all these high-level thinking methods, the Chinese would have had it thousands of years ago, but only because of the bitterness of war, the Chinese chose dualistic thinking after repeated concepts, judgments, and reasoning, abandoned theistic religion, and politically chose the political system of dualistic structure, secular state, in order to unify the country, equality of the people, social harmony, and concentration of power.

And the theory of yin and yang and the five elements that have influenced the Chinese for thousands of years, and the thinking method of long-term recycling in the Chinese with clear ideas, regular sequences, clear rules, skillful skills and standardized patterns, how is it pseudoscience?

How can the theory of the five elements of yin and yang, which has been continuously recycled, inherited and developed by the Chinese for thousands of years, become pseudoscience? If it is pseudoscience, how can it be circulated for thousands of years, and how can it enter the superstructure?

The theory of yin and yang and the five elements is a decisive and objective cultural concept that the Chinese nation has studied through practice in understanding and transforming nature, and it is a highly scientific and conceptual method of human objective and logical thinking, which is beyond doubt.

The Chinese nation is the first human nation to understand that the world is divided into north, south, east and west, the sky contains wind, thunder, rain and electricity, and the earth contains gold, wood, water, fire and earth.

The Chinese people believe that there is a relationship between gold, wood, water, fire and earth, in which gold gives birth to water, water gives birth to wood, wood gives birth to fire, fire gives birth to earth, and earth gives birth to gold. Jin overcomes wood, wood overcomes earth, soil overcomes water, water overcomes fire, fire overcomes gold and circulates with each other. It was also found that the basic attributes of the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire, and earth correspond to the existence of five directions in heaven and earth, the east belongs to wood, the south belongs to fire, the west belongs to gold, the north belongs to water, and the center belongs to earth. The following natural phenomena and basic principles exist in the mutual growth and restraint of gold, wood, water, fire and earth.

"Wood: Mu Wang gets gold, and Fang becomes a pillar. Wood can make fire, fire burns wood, strong wood gets fire, and it turns into stubbornness. Wood can overcome the soil, and the soil is rich in wood, and when the soil is weak and the wood is broken, it will fall. Wood is born in water, and the water is more woody, and the water can grow wood, and the wood is more and shrinking.

Fire: Fire is prosperous and water, and the party becomes a mutual benefit. Fire can give birth to the earth, and the earth is full of fire, and the strong fire can stop its flames. Fire can overcome gold, gold is more fire extinguished, and gold is weak when it encounters fire, it will be melted. Fire depends on wood, wood is more fiery, wood can make fire, fire is more wood

Soil: The soil is strong and the wood can be dredged. The soil can produce gold, and the gold is more than the soil changes; the strong soil can obtain gold, and the party can control it. The soil can overcome the water, and the water will flow more than the earth, and when the water is weak, the soil will be silted. The earth is born by fire, and the fire is scorched, and the fire can produce the earth, and the earth is obscure.

Jin: Jin Wang gets fire, and Fang becomes a vessel. Gold can produce water, water is more gold and sinks; strong gold gets water, and only then can it frustrate its edge. Gold can overcome wood, wood is more gold, and wood is weak and gold, and it will be cut and broken. The soil can produce gold, and the gold changes in the soil

Water: Water is rich in soil, and it becomes a pond and marsh. Water can grow wood, and wood shrinks more than water; Water can overcome fire, fire is dry with water, and fire is weak when it encounters water, and it will be extinguished. Water depends on gold, gold is turbid, gold can produce water, water is gold, gold sinks. ”

The above cultural cognition is completely a decisive and objective scientific method obtained by the Chinese nation through the observation and understanding of nature, and through concepts, judgments, reasoning and other thinking methods.

Therefore, whether you are an Oriental or a Westerner, if you question the scientific nature of the "Yin and Yang Five Elements Theory", unless you are not a human being, you are an outsider.