The Value and Significance of Traditional Culture

Traditional culture helps to consolidate social stability. Traditional culture is an agricultural civilization formed on the basis of agricultural production, which constructs an ethical norm based on filial piety, a political structure with the same structure of family and country, and a cognitive way to distinguish things from themselves. In the long feudal society, although the political power changed in different dynasties, the cultural tradition and political structure dominated by Confucianism have not fundamentally changed because the economic base of agricultural production and traditional culture remained the same. Therefore, traditional cultural genes and feudal political system showed historical continuity and stability, thus maintaining the ruling order of feudal society. Of course, the natural economic basis of traditional culture and the political conservatism of culture itself will suppress the vitality of economic development and slow down the pace of social progress to a certain extent.

Traditional culture contributes to the formation of family-centered ethics. Traditional society is based on blood relationship. Compared with public society, it is a collection of fixed consanguinity and kinship centered on productive labor, and it is an acquaintance society. Therefore, traditional society pays attention to interpersonal context and family affiliation, and constructs a "filial piety-oriented" family relationship model. In life practice, individuals depend on their families, and the behavioral consciousness of "parents don't travel far away", "being cautious to the end and being virtuous" has been solidified into the idea of "moving to another place" since ancient times. The relationship between "country" and "home" is "one and two" and "two and one" in the traditional social structure. The country is the enlargement of the family, and the filial piety of family ethics is reflected in the value concept of "loyalty" at the national level. Of course, the ruler "takes the country as his own private interest", and the unified control of family ethics will also lead to the lack of public norms.

Traditional culture helps to cultivate personal value orientation with "morality" as the core. In family-based social cognition, traditional culture pays attention to the formation and cultivation of human virtue. The Analects of Confucius begins by saying that "learning from time to time is unpleasant", in which "learning" and "learning" refer to the cultivation and practice of virtue. The same is true of "University": "The way of a university is to be well-known, to be close to the people, and to stop at perfection." Therefore, "gentleman's virtue", as the value destination of individual morality, is the content that focuses on learning in traditional culture. At the national level, the ethical norms of "fatherly filial piety, brothers, friends and brothers" further shaped the political ecology of "the monarch is the minister, the father is the son, and the husband is the wife", which played an important role in maintaining the ethical and political order of the family and the country.