Original text

Confucius said: "If we have different ways, we will not conspire against each other."

Translation

An eternal famous saying, not translated.

Notes

"Tao" here refers to values ??such as aspirations and opinions.

"Plan" here refers to planning things.

Comment

Confucius believed that if we have different ambitions and opinions, we cannot work together. Because *** are complicit in things, they need to achieve *** consciousness under the same goals and objectives. If each has different ambitions and opinions, it will be impossible to achieve unified consciousness and act in a unified manner. Therefore, it is said: "If the ways are different, we should not conspire against each other."

Building a team requires like-minded people, and the same goes for building a society. The larger the scale of society and the more complex its structure, the higher the demand for like-minded people in social governance. Because if the "Tao is different", society will have many disadvantages due to the inability to form political consciousness, which will make social governance inefficient or even impossible to achieve effective governance. Ji Kangzi, the chief minister of the State of Lu, wanted to form political consciousness through "killing without moral principles to establish the moral principles", while Confucius opposed the use of killing in politics and believed that it should be formed through the civilized method of "education without discrimination" ***Knowledge (see "The Analects of Confucius" 15.39).

The famous American political scientist Francis Fukuyama pointed out in his 2014 article "Failure of the United States—The Roots of Political System Failure": The higher the political awareness, the better able to adapt to globalization. The era; the higher the degree of homogeneity, the easier it is for a society to form independent consciousness; cultural diversity will increase the difficulty of forming independent consciousness. One of the "root causes of the failure of the political system" in the United States is that it is difficult for parties, ethnic groups, and society as a whole to form political consciousness on some important issues due to differences in values. As the saying goes, "Those who have different paths cannot conspire with each other."

Therefore, it is not advisable to ignore differences in values ??and blindly and without discrimination encourage the introduction of immigrants and cultural diversity, because that will make it more difficult for the entire society to form a cultural consciousness. This is especially true for those "aggressive" cultures. The vile racial discrimination and persecution recorded in history, the religious wars that lasted for hundreds of years, the brutal persecution of scientific and civil figures, and the terrorist acts of extremist religious forces have fully proved that an "aggressive" culture can easily It is difficult to truly "exist in diversity" with other cultures, just as it is impossible for a wolf to live in the same room as a sheep.

If human beings want to avoid the low level of consciousness caused by "people with different paths do not work together" and prevent it from becoming an obstacle to social governance and the process of globalization, they must first become "comrades in the same path" "Chinese people, let the different concepts of civilization become the basis for gathering international knowledge. The famous British historian Dr. Toynbee, who has a profound study and clear understanding of Western religion and culture, believes that only Confucian thought and Mahayana Buddhism can fulfill this unified civilization and education. Only the Chinese civilization can adapt to the needs of the future development trend of human unification, and can eliminate the differences between nations and countries in a civilized way of "education without discrimination" instead of leading mankind into the abyss of self-destruction through violent killings or selfishness.

Therefore, for those who aspire to Taoism, promoting the excellent Chinese culture is not only related to the revival of Chinese civilization, but also related to the future of human civilization.

Therefore, it is said: "Isn't it important to consider benevolence as one's own responsibility?"