The Changing Face of the Past and the Present

The starting point of modern thought, and arguably almost every problem of modernity, lies in this starting point.

This starting point is called the "change of the past and the present", that is to say, the transition from antiquity to modernity. The essence of the change is that the "natural" has become the "unnatural".

This is not to say that ancient times were better than modern times. It's not that ancient times were better than modern times. It's as if it's natural for people to get sick, and it's unnatural for people to have surgery, but it's unnatural for that "unnaturalness" to be life-saving, and it's very good for us. I would like to share with you three stories from which we can understand the change between ancient and modern times.

The first story is about marriage.

We often hear people joke that "marriage is the grave of love", but this also means that there has to be love first, and then you need to build a "grave" for it. And jokes aside, today we all know that marriage can't be completely devoid of emotion.

But that wasn't the case in the past. In medieval France, there was a kind of court of love that ruled on love disputes for the nobility, and it is said to have ruled that if a noblewoman married her lover, she could start looking for a new one. Because there is no love in marriage, getting married meant that the relationship between those two people was over and a new one could begin.

Now we would find this strange, but the view at the time was that the spirit of marriage was one of duty, and that marriage was about protecting property and family continuity, and had little to do with love. It was even said that love corrupted this serious duty.

Engels also said that bourgeois marriage was about the stable retention of property and population reproduction. That's why we used to say that marriage should be between the right people and of the same class. In modern times, while these factors are also important, a new and most crucial question has arisen: do I like it and do I want it.

Another example is that in the past, if we liked a book, a piece of music, or an actor, we always had to say something about the reason, and you had to know something about the field, and say one, two, three, four, in order to be convinced. Now it's much simpler, basically "I like it" is enough.

When did "I like" become so important?

That's not a bad thing. "Respect for the individual is a prerequisite for personal liberation, a force for breaking down old hierarchies, and a foundation for democratization.

But on the other hand, this phenomenon confuses us: no matter how great, sublime, or beautiful something is, nowadays it only takes one sentence, "I don't care," to seemingly negate its value. When discussing issues with others, it seems that if you say "I like it" or "I want to" on some topics, the other person can't refute it. This kind of flippant arrogance would have been unthinkable in the past.

When our highest benchmark for making choices is subjective will, "choice" becomes a solitary evidence. There is no equally strong circumstantial evidence other than "my will". Choice becomes fragile and unstable. We may not even be able to believe in our choices ourselves.

So we are in the relief and excitement of liberation on the one hand, and the uncertainty and anxiety of uncertainty on the other; we are accustomed to "reckless arrogance" while often feeling frightened and uneasy.

In short, in the past, we paid more attention to the intrinsic objective values of things, and subjective opinions could not easily shake these objective values. But now, the value assigned by the individual's subjectivity has become so important that it can sometimes override all other criteria. This is one of the ways in which the past and present have changed.

"My destiny is not my destiny," then?

The second story is a thought experiment, which I've simplified a bit.

Two kids are playing together and they start fighting over a flute among their toys. If you were to judge, who do you think it would be fair to award the flute to?

We would basically agree that the flute belongs to whoever owns the pile of toys.

But if Aristotle were to judge, guess what he would say?

He would say that the flute should belong to whoever plays it better.

Wouldn't you think that Aristotle seems to have gotten off the point: we're talking about ownership, what does that have to do with sounding good or bad?

Aristotle wasn't off-topic, and the answer comes from his philosophical view that there is a natural order in which "everything has its own purpose". The purpose of the flute's existence as a musical instrument is to play beautiful music, so whoever is better able to fulfill the flute's purpose should be the master of the flute. This is justice.

What does this "justice" mean? It means that everything has its own definite meaning. We should act according to this meaning. And this meaning is naturally given, that is, taken for granted.

There were people in Europe who used to say that the blood of the nobility was blue, which sounds ridiculous now, but why did people in the past listen to such a ridiculous statement? Because it was believed that the blood of nobles was more noble than that of commoners, and since this was the case, there was nothing strange about the different colors of blood.

But we moderns don't really believe in natural predetermined meanings anymore, there is no such thing as "born this way". We now believe in "I am what I am", and by abandoning the myth of the natural order, we are free.

But this doesn't come without a price. If everyone believes in a ****same myth, we have a ****same standard of good, bad, right and wrong. But with the loss of the ****same myth, whether it is God or tradition or heaven, we have a problem: it is very difficult to distinguish between high and low values, and each kind of reasoning has its own reasoning, and conflicting ideas, and often no one can convince anyone.

The myth of ***same*** binds us, but it also gives us ***same*** guidelines. Having freed ourselves from this myth, we have freedom, but are left in chaos and confusion.

This is the second point of the change between the ancient and the modern, where the natural order in people's conceptions is broken by reason.

Now move on to the third story, which speaks of a new order.

Now suppose an alien comes to Earth, and if it happens to coincide with the Spring Festival, the alien must be confused.

What are more than a billion people running thousands of kilometers and mobilizing so many social resources for? It is specifically to go and eat and chat with people playing mahjong and setting off firecrackers, can't these things be done in normal times? Aliens are ridiculous, he does not understand our traditional Chinese culture. But if you think about it, Chinese New Year is traditional culture, but Spring Festival is not. China's history is thousands of years old, and Spring Festival has only been around for the past few decades.

The reason why spring transportation has become a "new tradition" is that too many people are now working abroad, which has created this new tradition. Leaving one's hometown to work and live abroad used to be extremely unnatural and against tradition.

This new tradition has arisen because modernization has changed the way our society produces and organizes itself. It used to be natural for us to work with people we knew. But then more efficient ways were found to bring together large numbers of laborers and centralize production. So there was industrialization and urbanization, and people began to gather in cities and work extensively with strangers.

The natural order was broken, and we established a new order of rationality, which is the third point of the change between ancient and modern times.

Modern commerce and industry grew as a result, but new problems arose. The logic of rational computation keeps moving forward, leading to consequences we don't like, such as "work 996, get sick in the ICU", and people become wearable parts of the industrial chain.

The ideological impetus behind the change

The absolute elevation of the subjective value of the individual, the breakdown of the natural order, and the establishment of the rational order are all part of the change of the past and present. Simply put, the change of the ancient and the modern is that the natural has become unnatural.

This is not to say that the objective world has changed from natural to unnatural, but that the way we view the world has changed. Ancient people believed in a natural order external to man, an order that had its own meaning. But now we no longer believe in a divinely ordained meaning; we believe that meaning is given by man.

The changes in history between the ancient and modern worlds occurred gradually in the evolution of a series of social events, including the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and so on.

The most important ideological impetus behind the change of the past and present is the concept of "reason", or more precisely, the rationalism advocated by the Enlightenment. It can be said that Enlightenment rationalism is the engine of modern society's thinking, and this huge force pushes us forward, changing the world, but also bringing great challenges to mankind.

If people no longer believe in God, no longer believe in tradition, and no longer believe in the way of heaven, what should they believe in? In other words, what is the meaning of human life? We use reason to answer this question, and we will find it very difficult, even powerless, so we feel anxious and empty from time to time. How should we face these spiritual dilemmas? How can we find the meaning and reason of life? This is a difficult problem.

In the new order based on reason, natural hierarchies have been dismantled, and we believe that everyone is free and equal, so who should rule over whom? At this point both rule and obedience require justification, so do those justifications stand up to rational questioning and discussion? Social order is built into our answers to these questions. This is the second conundrum.