Text: Cai Leilei
It is said that Chinese filial piety has been passed down for thousands of years and is a traditional virtue, but who stipulates "virtue" and who defines "virtue"? Since Confucianism began to talk about filial piety, it has always been a matter of catering to the rulers, and it is a matter of mutual assistance among ordinary people to reduce the economic and administrative burden of the rulers.
Why do we often say that "home is not a place of reason"? Why is "domestic violence" always mediated and reconciled first, rather than being directly defined as "violence"? There is a filial son under the stick, and he will not hit the house for three days. Why do we always praise a structure based on the "family"? Whether in propaganda or literature, we seem to take it for granted, and we have never doubted this structure - in fact, until a few years ago, most people got married as "the way to complete the scriptures", "sooner or later", "everyone around them got married", and few people asked themselves why they had to enter this structure, and whether they could not enter this structure.
A man and a woman and a child are artificially defined as "home", and many "warm scenes" are artificially depicted to attract people into this structure, because with a man and a woman as the smallest unit, offspring can be produced, and the offspring can share the income of their labor and prolong their life after the man and woman are no longer productive - this can be proved by the rules of human history, such as homosexuality has always been regarded as freaks before entering modern civilized society, and has reached the point of death in almost any country, The reason is that this kind of structure cannot produce offspring, and cannot form a closed loop - any regime hopes that the closed-loop structure of one man and one woman can be stably continued, and then if there are any contradictions, any existential problems, they will solve them internally, and do the internal circulation, so that they can manage less, but collect taxes. Then someone asked, what if the woman can't give birth? Then stipulate that this man can remarry - isn't this a proof that the stupid law at that time maintained the internal circulation? Because it won't give birth to it, it won't close the loop. The reason why there was no regulation on men's fertility was that it was a turbulent era of low productivity, and men had to work and fight wars.
Therefore, many so-called "traditional virtues" are actually people who first define "beauty" based on their own interests and use their high position, and then influence your "beauty" from childhood to adulthood, and then you naturally think that this is beauty, and otherwise it is ugly.
If you really learn more about ancient culture, you will find a lot of contradictions, such as saying that you must be filial, and saying that if parents treat children badly, children can be unfilial - these are some very crude "brick" style remarks, so that you can find the basis for the correctness of your behavior in any situation, so that its ideas are invincible, but there is no practical guiding significance. Because what is filial piety, what is the standard, and how can it be called bad for children? These are all vague, and the final evaluation criteria are not counted by yourself, and the people around you say that you are what you are. So there are a lot of "customs" here, one standard for one place, and then a large number of performative personalities have also been derived, it doesn't matter how the facts are, it's important to play the image to others, so there are so many filial sons in the circle of friends, and a large number of fools who were not good to their parents before their death, and did a lot of things after death, crying a lot.
Why is the word filial piety not in the English context? It's not that they're cold-blooded, it's that they're productive enough and have abundant material security, so that center takes on social obligations, and doesn't need to brainwash the so-called family structure to the meaning of the word internal circulation. In Western developed countries, of course, there are also respect for parents, or thanks to parents, but basically everyone is based on their own subjective feelings after self-expression, thanks to parents and gratitude to strangers who have helped them are the same, there is never any moral feedback requirements, let alone "I can't argue with you", "I can't talk to you loudly", "I can't go against your will", "I have to come to see you how often" and the like - the reason why there is no such thing as I said, This responsibility is borne by the management center, rather than unloading the responsibility, delegating to each small structure to complete itself, and then mediating if it is not completed, and in the end it is usually dozens of boards each, compromising to ease the temporary contradictions, so that everyone can live temporarily and no longer take care of things.
For example, Germany's high subsidies for childbirth are actually more about increasing the population - they want to increase the population too simply, as long as the immigration conditions are slightly relaxed, the population can immediately burst Germany Believe it or not? Their subsidy is only the second purpose of increasing the population, and the normal fulfillment of the government's social support obligations is the first purpose. Assuming that raising a child costs a total of about 1 million yuan at the end of the obligation, then the government will subsidize 60~700,000 yuan, despite this, most people are still unwilling to bear the remaining 400,000 yuan, because there are countless energy costs in the middle - it is based on this that the government subsidy will be higher and higher, because they think that being able to have children and pay energy to raise them is already an additional contribution to society, and the natural society should pay more for this cost.
What if society doesn't pay for it? Then no one wants to have children, so they have to brainwash the greatness of everyone's affairs, and use social consensus to kidnap children. In this way, you can save two expenses, one is the cost of raising children, and the other is the cost of supporting the elderly - behind this internal cycle of brainwashing, the essence is to add two more taxes, because the labor wealth created is transferred and paid internally.
The so-called patriarchy, inheritance and other dross are all derivatives of this essential purpose.
For the wealthy, in fact, the parent-child relationship is very simple, because no matter how much you raise your children, it will not cost a few dollars, so you will be given the highest level of education and resources - these do not require parents to "work hard", and there is no need to emphasize the so-called "pay" at all. When they get old, they are also the most senior nurses and nannies and many high-level pension methods, such as Cai Lan, who everyone knows, some people say that he has no children and no daughters, and his old age is miserable, but in fact, there are seven or eight cooks and nannies serving on the side, and they want a dozen young models to beat their legs next to them every day, what kind of children do you want? What about you basking in the sun in the old shabby alley?
Therefore, whether it is material or spiritual, the rich will not only not bring the pressure of "return" to their children, but will also leave them rich property after death, and they do not need such a thing as "filial piety" to maintain each other. Filial piety, just under the premise of the disability of the social management center, the bottom people in their later life on a social consensus insurance, is a last resort expedient - because they can not force the social management center to travel duties, so they retreat, feel that following this concept, at least a little bit of protection, although the risk of not being rewarded is not small.
In this consensus that there is no unified standard, in fact, everyone is very tired, take middle-aged people as an example, your parents are waiting for you to return, but you have to make money to support your family, you are already very tired, it is good not to be unemployed, how to complete the world's requirements for filial piety? Do you want to go out to work? Or drop the young children? You may not even be able to do the same thing as "not letting your child become a left-behind child". But what if you don't have children and honor your parents? Then it doesn't make sense, because if that's the case, then your parents should have been desperately honoring their parents at that time and shouldn't have given birth to you. And if you agree with this concept, you must take care of the old and the young, after all, you have to let your children follow this concept when you are old, and you have to put him in it from an early age, forming a mutual harm at the bottom, and passing on three generations.
Some concepts can not be closed-loop, and the reason why it cannot be closed-loop is because there is a problem in the middle of the link - just four people playing cards, if the owner of the chess and card room is too hard, these four people must not have a winner for a long time, at this time do not jump out of this framework, find the essential factors of the chess and card room, but focus on improving their card skills, usually just a drop in the bucket. Do the Chinese know? In fact, I know, otherwise how did the idea of the official standard spread for thousands of years? Everyone wants to be the boss of the chess and card room, even if it is the boss's little brother, the little brother, to watch a field, it is also called "glorious ancestors", Shinong industry and commerce, who will not carry it? But is it really sustainable? If it is really sustainable, why does it last less as the more modern it is? In the Xia Shang Zhou period, when the people were still very ignorant, it could still be maintained for more than 400 years, and the further it went, the more it could be regarded as hard to maintain for two hundred years?
Fortunately, in recent years, more and more people have begun to jump out of this framework, whether it is filial piety, or marriage, or having a baby, everyone is more and more aware of the problems of this system, so they are reluctant to enter this framework, and they are not willing to let their descendants also enter this framework - the data proves everything, and the impact on the business of the chess and card room is the biggest punishment. And then the society will find out, oh, it turns out that we have a choice.
(ENDS)
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I'm Cai Leilei, thank you for reading.