Freedom covers a wide range. What we are going to discuss today is people's physical and mental freedom. Thinkers of past dynasties have defined freedom in more than 200 ways.

Among them, the so-called "carefree travel" in China Taoism is also a kind of freedom beyond things, but not for doing whatever you want, but for self-liberation.

From this point of view, Taoism should be closer to freedom in a broad sense. If freedom in a broad sense is free and unconstrained, then freedom in a narrow sense should be like "dancing in chains" described by Goethe.

Judging from the development of human history, most of human freedom should belong to freedom in a narrow sense.

1, there are many shackles that imprison freedom, and totalitarianism is one of them.

Confucianism has occupied the commanding heights of China people's moral psychology since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty exclusively respected Confucianism. This high degree of moral consistency has played an inestimable role in the integration and unity of all ethnic groups.

But at the same time, most of the ideas that let a hundred schools of thought contend during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period have become the legacy of the sea. This is why China people must sacrifice their freedom of thought in the pursuit of reunification.

For thousands of years, although free thought has been imprisoned, it has not really disappeared for a day. It is as ubiquitous as air, as can be seen from the slogans of peasant uprisings in past dynasties.

As a result, Confucianism, which has been popular for hundreds of generations, immediately became a "scapegoat" for feudal rulers to imprison freedom after the complete collapse of the feudal dynasty, and was put on the stage of historical trial and accepted the criticism of free literati. However, all this has nothing to do with the original intention of Confucius and his disciples.

Therefore, in a fundamental sense, true freedom is not bound by power, and it is impossible to be bound by power.

Statue of Liberty (located in new york, USA)

2. Although freedom is not bound by power in essence, it is not that freedom is given a pass to do whatever you want.

Judging from the development of human society, human beings are just following such a road, namely:

Freedom-imprison freedom-release freedom.

Freedom after release is not freedom before. It rises from an unconscious freedom to a conscious freedom, and it is an excellent new variety that gradually breaks the disadvantages of unconscious freedom and the side effects of conscious imprisonment. Its DNA should eliminate most of the bad heredity, be extremely stable and have little variation.

No matter from society or family, stupid people often hate the practice of imprisoning freedom. According to this person's idea, if the intermediate link of freedom-imprisoning freedom-releasing freedom is removed, then there is no need to release freedom.

In this case, the former freedom cannot be the latter freedom, that is, conscious freedom. Moreover, if the former freedom is allowed to develop without restraint, either the power of this freedom will disappear quickly, or there is a much greater power to restrain it than the former freedom.

Personally, criminals who have no good education or self-discipline often need laws to imprison this vicious fermentation of bad freedom.

From a social point of view, even primitive tribes have a set of procedures to imprison freedom. Just like the morality and law of civilized society, the quality of this procedure directly affects the survival or destruction of the tribe.

The Yellow Emperor fought against Chiyou.

If you imprison freedom for a long time, freedom will be like a spring, and it will be deformed if it is pressed tightly. Even if the pressure is removed, it will be difficult to recover for a while.

In the feudal society of more than 2,000 years, it is difficult to recover the suppression of China people's freedom of thought in a short time. It's like a child who has been taught very strictly since childhood. As an adult, he often walks on thin ice with trepidation.

Considering this situation, Lu Xun's cry is not the so-called radical overcorrection.

The stability of culture is often beyond the imagination of ordinary people. Those who grew up abroad or studied abroad as teenagers often seem out of place after returning home.

Although sometimes, such people will become the envy and pursuit of mediocre people, but more often, it is their "condescension" to the traditional culture of China. If you don't choose to escape, then this "resignation" will become adaptation with the increase of time, and finally become as indispensable as habit.

Freedom that has been imprisoned for a long time, once adapted to this heavy pressure and released, will often become a burden. Just like Lao Bu, the prison librarian in The Shawshank Redemption, regaining his freedom means burden and despair to him. He can only release this powerful burden by ending his own life.

People call this prison pressure a symbol of institutionalization. Andy, the hero of the film, has never been assimilated by this system, so there will be no disobedient ending.

In addition to morality, this is actually a procedural habit, just like the sudden death of a relative who has lived with him for most of his life, and he suddenly feels that there is no point in living.

Prison life, even prison discipline, has become an indispensable part of Lao Bu's life. His freedom-adaptability to another way of life-was suppressed and deformed.

Therefore, the more stylized a person's life is, the worse his adaptability to the outside world is. Such examples can be seen everywhere in life. At first, those senior otaku and otaku refused to communicate with the outside world, and finally they even became panic. A considerable number of people take the postgraduate entrance examination only because of their attachment to college life and their resistance to society.

These symptoms are no different from crying after weaning.

Stills from the movie The Shawshank Redemption.

4. The meaning of freedom to life

Freedom is as indispensable to us as air. To put it mildly, as long as we pay a little attention to China's famous paintings of past dynasties, we can understand the significance of freedom to China literati.

From the simple floating clouds on painted pottery, to the flying sky on the stone wall in Dunhuang, to Gu Kaizhi's "Painting Luoshen" like "silkworm spinning silk", and then to the five generations of landscape paintings after Wang Wei ... China people materialized their imagination of freedom into concrete works of art, infiltrated into the blood of the nation, and illuminated the darkness when the country changed from generation to generation.

The same is true of calligraphy. We describe good calligraphy works as flowing water, that is, there are countless changes under the established rules. Therefore, judging calligraphy, we can't give a very specific standard, just look at the extent of free play under the statutes.

See Lanting Preface, Mid-Autumn Festival Sticker, Abdominal Pain Sticker, Cold Food Sticker ... Ancient calligraphers in China brought freedom to a high level.

To put it mildly, we often say slogans such as "private space" and "poetry and distance" are also expressions of longing for more free space. In today's highly developed human society, individual free space is extremely compressed.

The electronic map of satellite remote sensing has made the world have no privacy corner, and the ancient seclusion has actually disappeared. The penetration of the internet into life has made such a star deviant; The corruption of officials and the information of various natural and man-made disasters spread all over the world at an extraordinary speed.

Freedom is becoming more and more urgent and rare in our life!