When Confucius said "serving the people", he meant serving your father. If you can't be loyal and filial when your father is alive, you can't be filial to ghosts and gods after your father's death. He wants people to be loyal and filial to your father. It shows Confucius' basic attitude towards ghosts and gods, life and death. He doesn't believe in ghosts and gods, nor does he care about the afterlife or after death. He should have been loyal and filial before his father died, so there is no need to mention anything about dealing with ghosts and gods.

I haven't figured out the living, and I haven't figured out how to be alive. How can you have time to study the things of the dead and do something for them? See The Analects of Confucius Advanced XI for the original words.

This dialogue embodies the essence of Confucius and Confucianism: opposing blind worship of ghosts and gods, and opposing spending time, energy and money on worshipping ghosts and gods instead of doing a good job in the world, and advocating the humanistic spirit of putting people first.

Extended data:

"Advanced Chapter XI", there are 26 chapters in this chapter, among which the famous sentence is: "How can you convince ghosts if you can't convince people?" "unknown life, how to know death"; "Too much is too late" and so on.

There are 26 chapters in this article, among which the famous sentence is: "If you can't convince people, how can you convince ghosts?" "unknown life, how to know death"; "Too much is too late" and so on. This paper includes Confucius' evaluation of disciples, and takes this as an example to illustrate the golden mean thought of "going too far is not as good as going too far"; The relationship between learning all kinds of knowledge and becoming an official in the future; Confucius' attitude towards ghosts and gods, life and death.