Zhu Guangqian: A serious remark - to modern Chinese youth

I've been teaching at the university for exactly 10 years, and every year I've seen a lot of students coming in and a lot of students going out. Among this large number of students, the mediocre majority are fixed, and there are many handsome and promising. We have worked hard to train batch after batch, and after graduation, what kind of people have they become and what kind of things have they done? Most of them are destined by a common fate. There are officials to be officials, but there are no officials to teach. If you are in your career, you will be trapped in your career, and your proper work will kill you for two or three minutes, and you will be able to deal with personnel for seven or eight minutes. What they have learned is not very solid, and their ability is not enough, so they naturally cannot do any real business. Time and environment did not allow them to continue their research, and soon their original shallow knowledge gradually became deserted, and they were only busy "making a living" all their lives. In this way, their personal lives will slip away in the ordinary, and the country's culture, scholarship, and all undertakings will not be able to develop. There are also some people who, because of the oppression of life and the temptation of evil forces, have been corrupted from promising young people into local tyrants and shoddy gentry or corrupt officials, completely changing the face of the original scholars, doing evil, and being shameless, so that the decadent habits in society are as deep as a day.

When I think about it, I feel bored. Personally, a teacher like me wastes his life in chalk scraps, hoping to bring a few talents out and get a little spiritual comfort, while year after year I see that the students who leave the school are going down an ordinary and bleak path, which does nothing to contribute to the progress of culture and the improvement of society. What is the meaning of this life? Isn't it self-error and misappropriation? Secondly, as far as the assumption of the country and the nation is concerned, at this critical juncture, there seems to be no great hope for a lifetime of people whose personalities have been fixed, and only the hope is that the young man is handsome, and the country has spent a lot of manpower and financial resources to train thousands of young people, and it is precisely in the hope that they will be able to shoulder the heavy responsibility of the country and the nation in the future, and as a result, they are still following the mistakes of the previous life, and the future is not very bleak.

Young people often like to blame all the ills of society on the people standing on the stage, but in fact, the people on the stage still have the same education, and after the same youth stage, they have also complained about the people of the previous life. By analogy, when the young people of our lifetime come to power, it is likely that they will still be dissatisfied with the young people of the next generation. Today's idealistic youth will often become degenerates who succumb to facts and abandon their ideals tomorrow. Zhang Zongxiang led the young people who stayed in Japan and beat Cai Jun, who flattered the enemy and humiliated the country, and this Zhang Zongxiang later became the foreign minister and signed 21 traitorous treaties. Wang Jingwei has dropped bombs, been imprisoned, and has done revolutionary work for decades, but this Wang Jingwei is now the puppet of the enemy and the leader of traitors. Although many young people have not gone to this extreme, after joining society, it is not uncommon for them to surrender to the evil forces. This is a very sad phenomenon. Society comes and goes, and the people who make up it do not change in disguise, and society will not change for the better. In the past 50 or 60 years, we have been talking about education every day, and education does not seem to have a good impact on people's materials. People in this life will follow the mistakes of the previous life with their eyes open, and people in the next life will still follow the mistakes of this life with their eyes open.

Young people who belong to the most prosperous people in society, this fact and problem deserve serious consideration! Time flies forward, waiting for people mercilessly, and in a blink of an eye, young people become middle-aged and old-aged, and if you don't pay attention, you will fall into the doom of many middle-aged and old people. This Doom is a tragic trilogy. The first part is to hang a high ideal, to transform society; The second part is to discover the conflict between ideals and facts, and the will is at odds with the evil forces of society; The third part is the elimination of ideals, the surrender of the will to the facts, and the failure to reform the society, but the corruption of the society. To give them a brief title, this is "pursuit", "hesitation" and "depravity".

This is a dead end, young people. In your naïve minds, its danger may not be well understood, and you may think that you will never go down this path. But I believe that if you don't have a thorough awareness, if you don't show strong willpower, if you don't put in the hard work, if you don't make down-to-earth preparations, you will still be on this path without any problems. Decades later, your lives and ideals have been destroyed, the corruption in society is still the same, and there is still no way to reform society if you are replaced by a group of young people like you. Friends, I am from the past, I am not exaggerating the horror of this road, it must not be walked again!

Jesus preached his gospel, saying that if all beings in the world turn their minds and wash their hearts and cherish charity, the world will become the kingdom of heaven. This ideal could not be simpler, but it could not be more profound. The simplest is often the right way, because it is easy to be overlooked, and it is often the least easy to achieve. What was easy has become the most difficult to achieve, all because of human stupidity, cowardice and laziness. The difficulty in the world is that people don't know or can't change their minds, or they change their minds and don't have the strength to persevere. There is no place for fools, cowards and laziness in a happy world. If you want to survive reasonably, you must have the spirit and ability to be conscious, determined, and struggle.

"Knowing the difficult is easy to do", this consciousness is a starting point that our youth lack the most. Everyone seems to live in the drum, drunk and dreaming of death with their eyes closed, giving up the most precious lucid rationality of human beings, and descending to pigs and dolphins to be raised and slaughtered by people. There is such a sad thing in the world! Young people, there is only one major event at the moment - enlightenment - complete enlightenment! You are dreaming, and you need a thunderbolt to wake you up, to shake the word "enlightenment" into your ears.

"All roads lead to Rome". There is no need for a single path to life and a better society. The path that each person takes should be judged by himself and the needs of the environment, and gradually find out, as long as he is willing to go, sooner or later he can always reach the destination. No matter which path you take, you must be determined to be a human being; To be a modern Chinese, you must have several basic understandings.

1. The understanding of the times - the evolution of human society cannot escape the laws of nature. Scientists have different opinions about the natural laws of evolution. According to Darwinian scholars, living things are often in a competition for survival, with the fittest surviving and the unfit being eliminated. The maintenance and development of society depends on the division of labor and mutual assistance among all elements, and mutual assistance is also based on nature. These two opposing propositions give rise to two different ideals of international politics. One ideal is to embrace war, survival is a kind of competition, and in competition only the fittest can survive, then war must be used to create the fittest and maintain the fittest, and war is the strongest stimulant of cultural progress. The other ideal is to support peace, war is only destruction, in war human beings try to play the cruel beast nature, the more cruel the more greedy to destroy, the more difficult it is to unite, the more difficult it is to coexist and prosper; To develop culture, we need to build, and construction requires mutual assistance, benevolence, and peace. These two ideals have their own one-sided truths, and on the contrary, they complement each other and cannot be discarded. Ours is the era of the most competitive and the most needy for mutual assistance. Competition is a fact, and mutual aid is the ideal. Whether you're competing or helping each other, you're going to get a quest. In competition, only the fittest can survive, and the most uncomfortable in mutual aid may not be able to sit back and enjoy the benefits of others. The so-called "most suitable" is the most capable, and the modern ability is academic thought, technology, and organizational power. Whether it is an individual in the national society or the nation in the international community, with these skills, can you compete with others, and can also help others, otherwise you will eventually be eliminated even if you want to make a living, and the iron law of nature is merciless.

2. Understanding the current status of the country and the nation -- The mainland has been closed off from itself for thousands of years. The inherent culture is self-sufficient, and the cultural and academic standards of the surrounding countries and nationalities are lower than ours, and they have never felt a serious external threat. Since the 19th century, when the sea ban was opened and China became a member of the international bloc, the situation changed dramatically. We are now facing two very serious difficulties. First, our inherent culture and scholarship are not adequate to meet the current environment. At first, we were intimidated by the power of Western science and material civilization, regarded the inherent culture as worthless, and advocated the complete acceptance of Europeanization. So far, what has been received is only the skin, and it is useless, the transplanted tree often does not bear fruit, and from the situation of the two wars and social unrest, the misuse of material civilization is also dangerous, so some people advocate the inherent culture, thinking that what we have inherent is all right. It is probably more reasonable to be eclectic, to make up for the weaknesses of the achievements of both China and the West, and to build a new kind of culture and scholarship. However, cultural scholarship must be cultivated over a long period of time, not like yeast that can be produced overnight. The ability of those of us who are engaged in culture and academia is still too naïve and weak, and we are not worthy of construction. In short, our old is gone, and the new future is in this time when we compete with other peoples or help each other, and we hardly have a set of weapons or tools in our hands. This is a very serious situation. Second, we are now fighting the war with all our energy. In these two tasks, the war of resistance is urgently needed and temporary; Nation-building is fundamental and long-lasting. Thanks to the guidance of wise leaders and the efforts of heroic soldiers, and thanks to the changes in the international situation, our War of Resistance is close to the final victory. This is an unprecedented opportunity for us to be an honorable member of the international community and to open up a new chapter in history. However, this "may" is only a "possibility" rather than an "inevitability", and from "maybe" to "inevitable", it still requires more arduous efforts than the War of Resistance Against Japan. After the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, there are still thousands of problems to be solved urgently, there are many bad habits that need to be cleared up, and there are many cultural and production undertakings that need to be built. We ask, can our talent be prepared to take on these important tasks very efficiently? Otherwise, our good opportunities will be fleeting, and many of our bright hopes will be lost. Our young people must have a clear understanding of this, and they must catch up with each other and seize the good opportunity so that they will not let it go.

3. Personal understanding of the relationship between the state and the nation -- The world is in this era of fierce competition, and the country and the nation are at this critical juncture, what is the position of our young people? There are two important prerequisites that we must recognize:

First, if there is no way out for the country and the nation, there will never be a way out for the individual. If we want to find a way out for the individual, we must first find a way out for the country and the nation.

Second, if the individual cannot become a powerful element in society, there is no way out for the individual, and there is no way out for the state and the nation. In order for an individual to become a powerful member in society, he must be virtuous, learned, and talented, and virtue, learning, and talent can only be obtained through hard work.

In the past, the mistake of our youth was that we did not understand these two premises. Everyone only calculates for the sake of the individual, and does not think about the country and the nation at all. We are busy coveting the stability and comfort of our personal lives, and we do not spare any effort to cultivate the ability to benefit society, and we cannot do what we should do well, and we blindly do everything we need to do. This is a dead end that cannot be taken again, and I have warned again and again. We must put a painful change from the past, get rid of all selfish motives, and work the premise of the country and the nation. We need to know that we are inferior in everything, and in the final analysis, we are still inferior to others. Now, in order to elevate the status of the nation and the nation, each of us must cultivate a sound body, a fine character, a high level of scholarship, and a skillful skill to make ourselves a powerful member of society.

These are the three most basic realizations. We must have these understandings, and then put them into practice in an orderly manner with the spirit of perseverance and perseverance, so that we can only embark on a bright road as individuals, our country, and our nation. Finally, I would like to emphasize that we need to be fully enlightened.