However, the historical mission and realistic choice of saving the country and strengthening the country cannot replace the historical thinking on the trend of civilization and cultural construction; The question of being alive cannot replace the question of how to be alive; Survival cannot replace the pursuit of meaningful survival. How to inherit and carry forward traditional culture in modernization and how to ensure the sustainability of economic growth are not the urgent tasks we are facing.
Based on this consideration, this paper tries to analyze the logic of the sentence "being behind will be beaten", which has not been thoroughly analyzed in the often urgent modernization affairs and has been forgotten. However, perhaps it is it that often leads us to misunderstand modernity.
The concept of "lagging behind will be beaten" is a summary of China people's painful experience in the process of modernization. China did not join modernization voluntarily, but was forced to embark on the journey of modernization. First of all, because of "beating" and repeated "beating", China people's innate sense of superiority was destroyed, China people's sense of backwardness and inferiority was created, and the concept of "being beaten behind" was also created.
In the pre-modern cultural ecology, backwardness doesn't have to be beaten. Not all people who are beaten are backward, and they don't feel inferior when they are beaten. Those who are beaten are not necessarily backward ethnic groups, but may also be advanced ethnic groups. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War, but it cannot be said that Athens was behind Sparta. China was attacked by barbarians in the north many times in history, even though he was often beaten, but China people never felt backward or inferior to those who fought in the war.
It often happens that all civilized nations are beaten because the savage and martial nation is aggressive, while the aggressive nation does not have advanced culture. After their military victory, they are often assimilated by the conquered culture. Several foreign invasions in the history of China belong to this category.
Civilized nations have become weak and can't stand the blow of primitive nations of barbaric militarism. However, once these barbaric peoples mastered the military victory and gained political power, they entered the process of civilized education, gradually assimilated, cultivated and educated, and began to become weak and weak, and suffered another blow from the new barbaric peoples. From this long-standing ecological landscape of cultural blending, we simply can't see the logic of "being beaten behind".
However, the modernization wave set off by westerners is a wave that destroys both natural ecology and cultural ecology. It has created some general standards and integrated progress, development, prosperity, civilization, advanced and developed into a single evaluation system. It created a "civilized" aggressive and aggressive civilization system. Its value standard and evaluation system have been forcibly extended to the whole world through expansionist commercial trade, and mankind has entered the era of globalization, and the cultural and ecological landscape of pluralistic coexistence has begun to wither.
Modernity breaks the previous cultural ecological pattern, and at the same time creates a new logic of cultural evolution, that is, a one-way linear view of social and historical development. Enlightenment thinkers tried to regard human society as a development process from low level to high level, from primitive barbarism to civilization, and all nationalities and cultures in the world could be included in this single development track. It is with this one-way linear development concept that a series of shocking comparisons are made between advanced and backward, civilized and barbaric, developed and underdeveloped.
In the word "backwardness", there are many conceptual premises of modernity. First, it assumes that human culture is usually in a dynamic mode. On the contrary, if all cultures are only distributed statically, they cannot be said to be advanced or backward. The second premise assumes that all cultures are in the process of one-way movement. On the contrary, if their development direction is different, they can't talk about advanced and backward in a meaningful way. Backward and advanced In track and field, everyone is running towards one goal and one direction, so some are advanced and some are backward. If there is no common goal and direction, even if everyone is running, they can't tell who is advanced and who is behind.
The one-way linear concept of civilized development brought by the word "backward" is a reaction to the concept of cultural ecology. From the perspective of cultural ecology, the evaluation of a civilization is not marked by its position in the so-called universal historical development track of mankind, but by its own internal vitality and position in its own life cycle. Because every civilization, like a tree, has its own history of growth and decline, its own glory and life characteristics. The principle of treating cultural ecological landscape should be mutual admiration, appreciation and tolerance. Whitehead said well, people hope that his neighbors are similar enough to understand each other, but different enough to admire and appreciate each other. This is the aspiration of human beings and the basis of maintaining cultural ecology.
Culture is a living organism, which adapts to the environment and has the function of regulating environmental changes; It has the functions of assimilation and alienation, can fully absorb nutrients and dissolve toxins harmful to itself. The more vitality a civilized system has, the more it can adapt to the great changes in the environment and ensure its independence and integrity.
China has a long history of civilization of 5,000 years, which is the only one of the four ancient civilizations in the world. China's civilization is profound and self-contained. It adapts to this specific historical and geographical environment, to this specific nation and culture, and evolves and flows quietly and slowly. It constitutes a stable cultural ecosystem, which continues to multiply and grow.
In the thousands of years of pre-modern history, no force can break this stable cultural ecosystem and change the internal trend of Chinese civilization. Whether it is the dynasty change caused by internal crisis or the survival pressure of foreign invasion, it is ultimately integrated and solved. The internal crisis was pacified and the barbarians were assimilated. For thousands of years, it has been continuous, showing the vigorous vitality of this ancient civilization.
In the early days of the invasion and expansion of the western world, they didn't really win militarily. On the one hand, this is because the Qing empire was in its heyday, the country was rich and powerful, and the army was strong. On the other hand, it is also because the rapid growth of the market economy system has not accumulated enough money for itself. By the middle of the19th century, the rule of the Qing Dynasty itself was in crisis and began to decline. However, the big industry has made great progress in the western world, and the invasion of colonialism and imperialism began to work.
Western colonial forces have met with different degrees of resistance in Asia, and also produced different types of modern countries. India completely lost its resistance and became a British colony; Japan completely westernized and became a new modern power, and then let the Asian people accept the brutal aggression of modernity; China has the strongest cultural cohesion and the strongest resistance, but the increasingly decadent Qing regime has been unable to resist the beating of European style and beautiful rain, thus leaving China in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial situation.
I don't want to discuss here how the decision-makers in China made mistakes again and again in the face of the unstoppable wave of modernization since the Qing Dynasty, so that an ancient country that created a highly brilliant civilization became a poor and backward country today. From today's point of view, we can indeed point out many historical mistakes and how and to what extent they have delayed the modernization process in China. But all this is still only a utilitarian vision, not a historical vision; This is a scientific and shrewd calculation, not a philosophical thinking.
Putting aside the consideration of reality and utility, China's traditional civilization was forced to stop and join the trend of the modern world, which is not something that really deserves our cheers, but should be regarded as a great tragedy in cultural ecology. Just like the extinction of many other indigenous people and cultures around the world, this is a serious cultural and ecological disaster caused by modernity. One of the basic principles of ecology is that diversity leads to stability. Only a pluralistic culture can create a prosperous and diverse living environment, thus forming a situation in which people are in the same boat and help each other, and human beings can live peacefully on this planet. Today, when all countries, all nationalities and all people join in this aggressive modernization, will the world be peaceful?
In fact, many decisions that we regard as backward and ignorant today are specific reactions made by traditional culture. Today, we look backward and ignorant only because we have completely abandoned this cultural tradition. But there are many ideas and spirits among them, which are the new life ideals that modern ecologists are striving for.
Since the "limit of growth" sounded as an alarm for more than 20 years, people began to feel that "small is beautiful". Green economics increasingly advocates self-sufficient regional economy and community economy, and opposes cross-regional trade; More and more people advocate small-scale humanized manual production and oppose non-humanized large-scale industry and assembly line; More and more people advocate the virtues of limited consumption and thrift, and oppose unlimited consumption and extravagance.
Looking at China before modern times, it was precisely the large-scale trade that was restrained, agricultural manual labor was the main body of economic activities, and frugality was the green economic model of virtue. However, on the day of modernization, such China was ridiculed. Adam Smith, a British economist, wrote in his The Wealth of Nations (1776): "China seems to be in a state of stagnation for a long time, and its wealth may have reached the limit allowed by its legal system long ago, but if it is easy to adopt other legal systems, the allowable limits of its soil, climate and geographical location may be far greater than the above limits." China is not unaware that changing the system will bring greater "economic benefits", but this change cannot be tolerated by the deeper cultural traditions behind it.
The same is true of technological progress. China always keeps its own scientific and technological development within a certain range, which is not mainly used to conquer and control nature. Doesn't this make today's postmodernists full of praise? Yes, China invented gunpowder, but it was used for folk entertainment (fireworks) instead of war. Is this stupid or great? China has sufficient material and technical conditions for ocean voyage. Zheng He's superb technical level and huge fleet left Columbus behind. However, China people did not use it to develop land that did not belong to them, to slaughter and exterminate the indigenous people there, but to spread the spirit of kindness to the whole of Shidewei. Is this stupid or great?
Closely related to the backwardness of modernization is the backwardness of science and technology. Needham, a British scholar, devoted his life to the study of China's scientific and technological civilization, pointing out that China's scientific and technological achievements before modern times were far less than those of the West. Then, he raised a famous question called "Needham puzzle", that is, since ancient science in China was so developed, why didn't modern science first appear in China?
Needham's question, like his research on the history of science and technology in China, implies a one-way linear universal axis of scientific and technological development. His research on the history of science and technology in China mainly arranged the achievements of China people on this axis, thus discovering the "advanced nature" of China's science and technology in the pre-modern period. Therefore, the Needham problem is only a problem in modern discourse. It holds that there is a universalist science, which ignores the inseparable relationship between science and cultural system in the pre-modern period.
If western culture and China culture grow independently like two trees, then the question of why what grows on one tree does not grow on another tree is of little significance. We simply don't have a transcendental standard to measure which is more advanced, China's traditional science or western modern science. Backwardness is only a concept of modernity. Until modern science was introduced into China, China was dragged into the general modernization process, and China talents fell behind in modern science.
First of all, this backwardness is because we are "backward"-China is not the hometown of modern science, just as China is not the hometown of Buddhism. However, the backward can be advanced. For example, Buddhism is carried forward in China and neglected in India. Therefore, the meaningful question is, China people are not stupid, why do modern science learn so slowly, and why can't they always excel in Lanzhou? There are many social reasons for this.