You can kill but don't turn him into a traitor

You can be noble or humble, you can be rich or poor, you can kill but don't turn him into a traitor. ("Zhong Ni")

Appreciation Monarchy is really an embarrassment that the development of human society has to face. People always have to live in a certain social group. Social groups must have structural order. The further back the era goes, the more urgent society’s need for this kind of structural order becomes. In this way, the emergence of an authoritative monarch who takes charge of everything becomes inevitable. Specific to China, the fragility of the small-scale peasant economy naturally requires that this kind of authoritative monarch exist in the form of a hereditary system for a long time. Therefore, "serving the emperor" as an obligation has been fixed within the community for a long time.

Unlike European knights who served their lords and Japanese samurai who were loyal to their generals, Chinese scholar-bureaucrats had another kind of "thing" besides "serving the king", which was "serving heaven."

China has always lacked established religion, but the absence of religion does not mean the absence of faith. Since ancient times, there has always been a consciousness of "heaven" in the hearts of Chinese scholar-officials. "Heaven" is higher than the "Emperor", which should be the common belief of Chinese scholar-officials. The so-called "serving the king" actually means to use the external form of "serving the king" to exercise the substantive content of "serving heaven".

But like anything, form and content often conflict. If every "Emperor" can be "cautious and serve God" ("The Book of Songs, Daya, Ming Dynasty"), then everyone can naturally "favor the Emperor" willingly ("The Book of Songs, Daya, Volume A"). But what if the "Emperor" goes against "Heaven"? Should I obey the "Emperor", or should I go beyond the "Emperor" and go directly to "act for Heaven"? Faced with such a choice, people often suffer from schizophrenia.

Later, with the gradual establishment of the centralized monarchy, the religious sense in the spiritual world of the Chinese people became weaker and weaker, and the so-called "serving the king" and "serving heaven" gradually ceased to exist. What difference does it make? "To serve the king is to serve heaven" has become "to serve the king is to serve heaven". The ancient "doing things" no longer has a sense of metaphysics, but has become a subtle and intentional art. For such an art, Xunzi described it in more detail. He said:

If the master honors it, then he will be respectful and respectful; if the master trusts and loves it, he will be cautious and shy; if the master is dedicated to it, then he will be restrained. And be detailed; if you care about those who are close, you will be cautious but not evil; if you are distant, you will be unified but not twice; if you want to harm others, you will be fearful but not resentful. To be noble but not to be boasted, to be trustworthy but not to be humble, to be responsible but not to be dedicated, to be good but not to be inferior when the financial benefits are great, you will have to give up and then accept. When good things come, there will be harmony and order; when misfortune comes, there will be tranquility and order. If you are rich, you will be generous; if you are poor, you will use moderation. You can be noble or humble, you can be rich or poor, you can kill but not make someone treacherous. This is the art of maintaining a favored position for a lifetime and never getting tired of it. ("Zhongni")

This seems to be teaching people the "Guidelines for Becoming a King". Not really. This is talking about "serving the king", but it is also talking about "serving heaven". It's just that this kind of "serving heaven" and "serving the king" are highly overlapped, and only in the moral bottom line of "it can be killed but not turned into traitors", the true nature of the ancient "serving heaven" is vaguely revealed.

The Confucian concept of "unity of nature and man" can be said to have come to an end.

To truly "serve the heaven", one must get rid of the shackles of "serving the king", just like Zhuangzi, who denounces the eight extremes and communicates with the spirit of heaven and earth alone. In the past, only practitioners who "jumped out of the Three Realms and were not in the Five Elements" could do this. But today, when the feudal monarchy has been abolished, it should be universally possible.