Rousseau, a French thinker, famously said, "Whoever controls people's thoughts can control people's actions." Zeng Guofan deeply understands the benefits of brainwashing.
He confided and wrote letters to friends and family, and always regarded brainwashing as a unique skill. He held the golden cudgel of Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism "Preserving righteousness and destroying human desires" and hit the other side firmly on the head. He reads the hoop three times when he is free, which makes people really unbearable, but they have to accept his "hospitality".
Isn't Zeng Guofan's sincere efforts to convert to Confucius and Mencius world-class? Mencius said: "A person's hardships are a good teacher." Zeng Guofan got the disease by brainwashing people.
However, he brainwashed people. You can be baptized in the light and refuse to be baptized in the dark, which is obviously different from Hitler's fascist brainwashing. If we must evaluate it objectively, Zeng Guofan's achievements in brainwashing are not too high to compliment. The most typical example is his eldest son Ceng Jize, who was taught by strict father for many years, but once he gave up what he had learned, he lent it to Russia, accepted foreign women, followed foreign customs, performed foreign ceremonies and was absolutely obedient. Zeng Guofan can only turn a blind eye to this and let it go.
The funniest thing is that Zeng Guofan, a brainwashing master, accumulated decades of "teaching experience", but finally abandoned it, changed the consistent face of Neo-Confucianism, and showed people the sympathy of Yin and Yang.
According to Zhu Kemin's "Rain Window in Summer", "I told Wu and Guo Songtao that the inscription behind me must belong to two monarchs. He acted as an ornament and wrote a postscript. I went my own way and said, "Don't trust books, trust luck, speak frankly and pass it on forever." "When he was dying, the formula of Zeng Guofan's descendants turned out to be' don't believe in books, believe in luck'. Why not teach children, friends and subordinates to break thousands of glasses on the spot?