On December 31, 1999, it headed from Nepal to the Chinese border

Today is the last day of the twentieth century and our last day abroad.

The convoy headed from Kathmandu towards the border town of Zhangmu.

In the car, I thought that Nepal, as the end of our foreign trip, left me with an important topic, and I must talk about it before the end. That is: Nepal, which does not have much cultural accumulation, does not have its own independent civilization, why can Nepal bring us so much pleasure? Aren't we doing a cultural expedition? Why do you love this place with low cultural concentration? Imagine how frustrating it would be if our trip abroad ended in Mohenjudaro in Pakistan or on the banks of the Ganges River in India!

This question is actually an overall question of human civilization. Moreover, it can also be said to be the question of the century.

Civilized people from all over the world like to come to Nepal, not to visit the monuments, but to immerse themselves in nature. The nature here, whether it is the Himalayas or the primeval forests, is much earlier than any human civilization, and it is not expected that human beings have been tossing and turning for thousands of years, and their favorite is not their own creation.

Travelers also like the atmosphere of life here, which is pure, loyal, and slow-paced, with sparse villages, rustic houses, and clean environment, not to mention fresh air and clear drinking water. In fact, all of this is closer to nature, a nature that is not too polluted.

In contrast, people are reluctant to go to all the important towns of ancient or modern civilizations, and most of them stay there because of the needs of work. It's crowded, culturally dense and easy to live in, but if you can, you can flee and flee to Nepal or something like that.

Here comes a profound paradox. Originally, human beings went to civilization in order to get rid of rough nature, and the opposite of civilization was absurdity and barbarism, and nature at that time seemed to be closely connected with absurdity and barbarism. But gradually it became clear that things were reversed, and the crowded downtown may be more deserted, and the dense crowds may be more savage. Modernist art has written about this reversal, and people have finally admitted that they would rather accept the absurdity and barbarism of nature than escape the so-called civilized world that is absurd and barbaric. If it is willing to give civilization a new position, then it has leaned on the side of nature.

Now it is impossible to erase or rewrite the history of human civilization, but we have the right to draw lessons. The important lesson is that human beings should not be too arrogant with their own kind, let alone too arrogant with nature. This arrogance also includes the creation of civilization, if this creation is not in harmony with nature. If you look at all the places in the world where there is a high concentration of civilization, they are no longer inhabitable, which shows how serious the problem has become. Civilization, there is already a danger of dehumanization.

The dehumanization of civilization manifests itself in many ways. Excessive reproduction, excessive consumption, excessive emissions, excessive competition, excessive space occupation, excessive red tape, excessive knowledge display, excessive insect carving skills, excessive psychological twists and turns, excessive right and wrong, excessive text garbage, excessive ineffective construction...... An explosive revolt against all these disasters is a return to nature.

We are glad that the Chinese civilization has lasted for thousands of years without being broken, but we should also realize that it is this advantage that has brought about a heavier excessive accumulation. Good things become bad here, and glory goes to the negative here. Therefore, the most urgent task of Chinese civilization in the new century is to unload its heavy burdens and face nature with ease, even if these heavy burdens have the honor of history and the luster of civilization. Even if the pearl baby is overwhelming, it should be willing to unload, so when it is difficult for manpower to bear, it is already an inhuman existence.

China will inevitably achieve greater development in the new century, and few people doubt this prospect now. It is time for civilization, then, to look for a new function. Promoting development when it is not developing, and controlling and reminding all the evil consequences of anti-nature and anti-humanity when it is developing rapidly, is where the post of the new civilization lies.

Compared with poverty and chaos, we will certainly have wealth and order, but more importantly, we will have beautiful comfort, that is, the "poetic dwelling" that philosophers yearn for. I expect that the new charm of Chinese civilization will be displayed at this point, and its competition with other civilizations will also be launched at this point.

I suddenly imagined that if we had paused a little before the threshold of the century and asked aloud the opinions of the Chinese philosophers of more than 2,000 years ago on this issue, I believe that the vast majority of them (only Yang Zhu could not be sure) would not be much divided. We will oppose the phenomenon of excessive accumulation of civilization that harms the natural ecology.

Confucius would say, "I have always advocated temperate pleasure and harmony with heaven; Mozi will say, my proposition is simpler than yours, and I oppose any useless waste and useless accumulation; Xunzi said that human selfishness will destroy the simplicity of the world, so it must be reversed with severe punishment......

Smiling and silent were Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi, who seemed to have foreseen everything for a long time, and finally spoke: put civilization and nature together in front of us, and we only choose nature. What is the world bustling about? The only way to speak of civilization is nature.

That is to say, Chinese culture is a culture of subtraction at the highest level, a culture that yearns for simplicity and nature. It is this essence that saves it a lot of money and preserves life.

So, what should we do in this age that is already overcrowded and cluttered, is even more self-explanatory.