'You can't grow up if you don't know honor and disgrace.' This is a famous saying passed down for thousands of years. From ancient times to the present, Chinese civilization has always maintained basic cultural values ????through a strong sense of shame. Boyi Uncle Qi was ashamed to eat Zhou Su, and Xiang Yu was ashamed to meet his elders in Jiangdong. All these proud and proud people originated from the sense of shame in Chinese culture.

However, while Chinese society has achieved rapid development, our national culture has also changed. The traditional sense of shame is constantly being corroded, between loving the motherland and harming the motherland, between serving the people and betraying the people, between advocating science and being ignorant, between hard work and indolence, between solidarity and mutual assistance and self-interest at the expense of others. , between being honest and trustworthy and being unjust for profit, between obeying the law and breaking the law, between hard work and being arrogant and extravagant, the boundaries between honor and disgrace have quietly become blurred in the minds of many people. No wonder some scholars exclaimed, The most serious value crisis in contemporary Chinese society is the dilution of shame consciousness and the collapse of bottom-line ethics.

It is against this background that the socialist concept of honor and disgrace represented by the "Eight Honors and Eight Shames" has been established. The demand immediately aroused strong protests in the entire society, setting off a new wave of accelerating the construction of a socialist concept of honor and disgrace. If the concept of governing the country according to law is regarded as the way to govern a modern country, then it has a long history. For China with its Confucian moral tradition, the establishment of a socialist concept of honor and disgrace to govern the country by virtue will lay a solid foundation for political morality for the ongoing reform.

The rule of law or the rule of virtue seems to have always been the choice. It is a topic that experts and scholars have debated endlessly. In fact, it is not difficult to find the exquisite explanation of the dialectical relationship between virtue and law by ancient sages in the essence of Confucianism and Legalism: "Mencius Li Lou Shang". Only good deeds are not enough to govern, and only law cannot be used by oneself." How can today's great cause of building a harmonious socialist society be deviated from the track of moral construction?

To the extent that some public officials even openly try to cheat Asking for bribes destroys the fundamental principles of being an official, doctors accept red envelopes and write large prescriptions, which brings shame to medical ethics, academic corruption of scholars and advocating for interest groups tarnishes the reputation of scholars, as small as the lack of awareness of social ethics, and the prevalence of extravagance and lewdness... The hot and difficult livelihood issues that people are currently paying attention to are all inextricably linked to moral deficiencies. Of course, the government can introduce laws and regulations to rigidly regulate behaviors that exceed the social moral bottom line. However, there are some legal blind spots or gray areas. Regarding the issue of moral categories, moral power is also needed to restrain citizens' self-behavior and withstand the impact of the collapse of bottom-line ethics.

It is undeniable that the concept of market economic interests has had a great impact on traditional social ethics. The diversity of modern social life also gives everyone the freedom to choose their own lifestyle. However, no matter how they choose, the bottom line of social morality cannot be coveted, and the right and wrong, beauty, ugliness, and good and evil cannot be reversed. The "Eight Shames" clearly distinguish between right and wrong in the moral field, becoming a benchmark for what the public insists on and what they oppose, and a caliper for what social fashions advocate and resist. Keeping in mind the "Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces", our moral principles will naturally be clear and clear.