The mental state of these literati has always been strange.

They want to take refuge in the elders, but they also hope that a certain elder will come to the door twice in three days, and if they don't come out to take refuge, the world will never have peace.

Don't say much, how many of the thousands of officials of the Ming Dynasty in the imperial capital died with Chongzhen in the end? Is there a hundred.

Of course, with the ability of the elders, it is not difficult to digest these Confucian students, but there is basically no hope of changing their thinking.

In fact, if there is no embarrassment from arrogance to inferiority, it is already good.

This kind of total negation of the self is much more terrifying than Voltaire's use of China to suppress the aristocracy and culture of European streets, a sense of inferiority from the depths of his heart, and a sense of despair to accept his inferiority.

As a result, these intellectual elites began to think that the reason why China was backward and corrupt was because of the old traditional culture. And the reason why the old traditional culture is so stubborn is because of Chinese characters. Therefore, if we want to save China, we must sweep away the old culture; And in order to sweep away the old culture, it is necessary to abolish Chinese characters first.

At this time, the intellectual elite was no longer obsessed with the superficial issue of whether to wear Hanfu and whether to keep Hanfu, but began to struggle with the more advanced stage of whether to abolish Chinese characters. Even characters like Lu Xun call on everyone not to read Chinese books.

As a result of everyone reading Western books, the worldview, values, and outlook on life have been fully assimilated by Westerners, and they have begun to think about problems and understand the world in the way Chinese of Westerners. It was not until a long time later, when China's hard power grew rapidly, that a group of local scholars finally began to challenge these notions and propose to use traditional Chinese knowledge to solve China's problems, rather than blindly relying on Western experience.

But that was a long time later.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, a large number of intellectual elites completely denied China's situation, although the most important reason was the lack of hard power, which humiliated the country again and again.

However, I have to say that Confucianism has reached this time, it is really laughable and helpless, anyway, it is a sentence, the credit is his, even if it has nothing to do with Confucianism, it can be far-fetched, the mistakes are other people's, even if the implementation of the idea is wrong, it is not difficult to find a dick as a scapegoat at the bottom?

If we grow up in an era when China's national strength is booming, we can objectively evaluate traditional culture and accept that China's backwardness in the past has cultural factors, because of the pride and complacency that has lasted for thousands of years, and the good and bad in traditional culture are regarded as excellent ingredients and passed down from generation to generation, there will naturally be many drawbacks.

Staying at the superficial level of binding feet and taking concubines, these are of course the most conspicuous decadent cultures, which must be cracked down on. But it is also the most superficial appearance, and Li Xiangqian pays more attention to those deep-seated reasons, such as the loss of vitality of culture.

What does it mean to lose vitality?

This Li Jiantai is almost a living dead, his only mind is to snatch his family property back from those mud legs, since it can't work, then retreat to the next best thing and concentrate on making a fortune in Baoding.

But the situation in Baoding is very bad, farming here is not a good errand, mainly because there are not many people, and there is a lot of land.

But these elites of the Ming Dynasty may not be as good as those who are born in peasants, and people who are illiterate have the courage to do so, so far, unless it is a hard assignment, the Ming scholars are willing to leave their homeland to go overseas to see, no.

The only person who went overseas in this era in history was Zhu Shunshui, who went to Japan to ask for help.

It's ridiculous, Japan was just beaten by the Ming Dynasty just a few decades ago.

Therefore, even if the elders gave some material treatment on the surface, the contempt for these Confucian students in their hearts has long been indissolvable.

For hundreds of years, they have become accustomed to such a pattern: studying, enlightening, imperial examinations, being officials, embezzlement, enjoyment, having sons, studying......

Behaviors that deviate a little bit are regarded as evil and wrong, whether it is gambling money or reading non-imperial examination books, of course, pulling the little maid into the room is still worth encouraging, and there are many children and grandchildren.

If culture loses its vitality, it will not move forward, but stick to the old tradition, not looking forward, but looking backward, and the trend of Chinese culture beginning to lose its vitality is generally from the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty all the way down.

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty supported Dong Zhongshu's exclusive Confucianism, which was an important factor, because Confucianism began to dominate the political field, which also ruled the most important power of resource allocation.

The stronger Confucianism became, the less vibrant the culture became, and this general trend has not changed.

What is Vitality? It is a curiosity about the outside world and the world.

However, the ignorant literati of later generations blamed the decline of Chinese culture on Confucianism, which is biased, at least Li Xiangqian understands that Confucian culture is only a part of traditional culture.

The main body of Chinese civilization is the Central Plains civilization, and the process of Chinese history is not only a historical process in which Confucian civilization gradually crowds out and integrates other civilizations, but also a historical process in which the Central Plains civilization crowds out and integrates other civilizations.

The origin of the Central Plains civilization was in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when a hundred schools of thought contended, Confucianism was only one of them, of course, it was the most important one, and Mohistism and Taoism were the three most powerful schools of thought.

In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Chinese culture was generally at the same level as Western culture. It is in no way inferior to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

By the time Qin Shi Huang ruled the world, Chinese civilization had clearly surpassed Western civilization. When Qin Shi Huang swept Liuhe, the Romans were still in the era of slavery, no matter how Westerners whitewashed, it cannot be said that the West at that time was advanced, and the huge civilization generation gap was manifested in specific aspects, that is, China during the Qin and Han dynasties, both in population and army, far surpassed the West.

Don't say anything about how the Roman legions were, a bunch of guys who couldn't run and didn't attack enough, that is, it was okay to bully the northern Gaul barbarians who were not very civilized, and it was inevitable to meet the Germanic barbarians who hit the streets.

For the population of a country and a nation to grow, to a roughly equal extent in terms of technical capabilities, it must be the growth of countries and nations that are better managed and have a stronger ability to compete for resources, while countries and nations that are chaotic in management and have a weak ability to compete for resources will only disappear.

Therefore, in ancient times, the Chinese population maintained a leading position for a long time, which was the reason why China's management ability was stronger and its ability to develop resources was stronger.

Some people say that the large population is because the Chinese can give birth, and it is the old idea that the Chinese have more children and more blessings. This is another joke, casually understand a little biology, the two basic characteristics of biology are metabolism and reproduction, reproductive ability is one of the most important abilities of biology, if Westerners are not as good as the Chinese in fertility, it can only be said that they are inferior to the Chinese at the biological level.

But in fact, Westerners are also very productive, and early immigrants from Australia, Canada, and the United States had an average of seven or eight people in a family because of their abundant resources. Therefore, the reason why the population of the West is inferior to the Chinese population for a long time lies in their backward management level and inefficient development and utilization of resources, and the poor management level causes the division of the heroes, because they do not have the ability to manage tens of millions of people, they can only manage hundreds of thousands of millions of people without division, so wars are frequent, there is no stable environment for population growth, the development and utilization of resources is inefficient, the same land can not feed as many people as China, historical data also proves that before the Industrial Revolution, China's land yields are among the highest in the world.

After the Industrial Revolution, the population of the West began to grow rapidly, and the Chinese population fell sharply from accounting for one-third of the earth's population to finally being surpassed by India, which is actually a manifestation of backwardness, because your ability to draw resources from the world and raise future generations has declined.

With the help of the Industrial Revolution, the white race became the most resource-rich of the three major races, indicating that their ability to absorb resources has increased.

The superficial phenomenon that caused China's backwardness is that the West gave birth to the industrial revolution and advanced human civilization to the industrial age, while China stayed in the era of agricultural civilization, and the generation gap of this civilization was greater than that of the county system in the Qin and Han dynasties than the slavery system in Europe.

The actual reason lies in the output.

When a female college student only needs to hold her mobile phone to make an appointment with some uncles and snap a meal, she can get a lot of money that she can't earn even a year after graduation.

When a boy works hard to write code overnight, he finds that he can't get as much as some people get from playing blockchain fraud.

When a child discovers that the school is no longer more than academic performance, but more than who has hundreds of houses to collect rent.

In the same way, studying and taking the imperial examination are behaviors with an extremely high input-output ratio in this era, which is higher than engaging in scientific research.

The gentry in this era are accustomed to seeing someone's business with money, or what is a good remedies, they will directly take advantage of it, a bit of humanity, and will give a few children money to buy, most of the domineering ones are just killing people and seizing property.

An enduring topic in the field of science and technology is, why the industrial revolution was not born in China, on the surface, China in the Tang and Song dynasties, or even earlier, has the foundation of the British Industrial Revolution, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the British population has not exceeded 10 million people, and this population size, after the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang, from a technical point of view, the early industrial revolution Jenny spinning machine, hydraulic spinning machine and other machines, the Tang and Song dynasties in China have also appeared, the two Song Dynasty period is quite popular.

As for the iron ore mines and coal mines, which were the most important of the Industrial Revolution, there is no shortage of skilled workers.

Therefore, whether it is from the aspect of human resources, market size, or technological level, it is impossible to explain the reason why there was no industrial revolution in China, and even later some people blamed it on the two subversions of the Central Plains civilization by the Mongols and the Manchurians, but this is by no means the truth, before the Mongols went south, the two Song Dynasty ruled China for four hundred years, whether it was the Northern Song Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty, they reached the peak of the economic field in the first hundred years of their rule, and they could not break through the barriers of the industrial revolution in a hundred years.

The real reason is that treated.

In later generations, as long as they were bosses, they complained that their employees were unreliable and unwilling to endure hardships, and when they asked about wages, they had a lot of experience on how to pay less wages.

That's the problem, although the gap between the rich and the poor shouldn't be too big, but the people who contribute a lot should always get some.

What China lacks is an organization that relies on technological progress and production efficiency to make profits.

Even for businessmen, the source of their profits is often monopoly rather than competition.

When the British used Jenny spinning machines for production, China did not lag behind, and when they produced with water-powered looms, China did not lag behind, but when Watt improved the steam engine after repeated mathematical calculations and physical reasoning, China completely fell behind.

The reason is that in the field of natural sciences in China, it has always stayed at the level of summarizing the practical experience of craftsmen, and everything is a handicraft exploration, rather than a large-scale industrial research and development.

Because if Newton had been born in China and had been engaged in technological innovation, he would have either been killed and taken the treasure, or he would have been attacked for destroying Feng Shui and dismantling the steam engine because he had cut the profits of some old man.

Therefore, the elders have not restricted their contacts and communication with the West, and even took the initiative to send envoys there.

After making up for the shortcomings, Zhou Lang believes that with the enhancement of hard power, there will definitely be no phenomenon of the intellectual elite completely denying their own culture.

From the deepest level of civilization, we will continue to inherit and promote the development of Chinese civilization.

Europe has already given birth to people like Newton who seek the power of science from the origin of the world, and thinking about those who point to you and say that you are not worthy of being a Chinese if you do not read the disciple rules, and you must pay him to buy the book of the disciple rules to be considered Chinese, you can only sigh and sigh.

Therefore, the question is not in the natural sciences, but in how to deal with the so-called traditional forces.

The elders broke the superstition and cracked down on all kinds of charlatans, fortune tellers, big and small liars, and it was already a posture of war with those knights in martial arts.

Sadly, their enemy is the whole world.

People are brothers in the four seas, and the elders are enemies in the four seas, whether they are in business, officials, or the big lords lying there, they are essentially the enemies and mortal enemies of the elders.

Of course, there is no one who dares to go against the elders, especially in a place like Baoding, which has already been killed by the Shun army.

The Shun army may not be good or advanced, but the people on their opposite side are not advanced representatives either.

Li Jiantai found that he had become a dispensable person.

(End of chapter)