What was the problem with family autonomy in the countryside in ancient times?

The governance of the countryside in many ancient dynasties was maintained by the family, and the fact that the imperial power did not go down to the counties gave many families room to govern. Families could achieve a high degree of autonomy, and as long as things were handled clearly within the family, they would not be exposed to the officials. Thus, the big families had a certain system of power. However, it was easy to go to extremes and problems in dealing with things.

Many dynasties have the concept of "family world", which requires scholars to cultivate themselves and their families, and to rule the country and the world, while family governance is the equivalent of small-scale national governance, and national governance is the equivalent of large-scale family governance. However, very often, the two are not the same, have their own closed system and power to exert territory, seem to have some of the same attributes, in fact, only each fighting, and must be a good surface article.

The emperor must take the lead and set a good example, but also to make annual sacrifices to the ancestors, sacrifices to the sky, sacrifices to the ground, praying for the wind and the rain, the five grains. When ruling the world, one must follow the laws of the ancestors and not change them at will. Most of the civil ministers and military generals under their command had to be loyal to their duties, and although they could engage in some silver-collecting business, and engage in some falling out with each other and standing in line, they still had to fulfill their duties in the end. They do not always handle things well, but report them well. Even if they don't handle it well, they can still be rewarded for reporting it well.

As long as they can keep a lid on it and not publicize the bad things, they are considered to have done a good job. If you send silver to your superiors and deliver it to the position, you can get a promotion. So, they all understand these unspoken rules of the officialdom, but also really do that, of course, will be invincible. If someone did a bad job, did not cover the lid, was heard by the emperor, will be punished. Of course, colleagues will be in collusion, will give him a plea, as far as possible to let the emperor lenient punishment. Even if some had been relegated to remote areas, they would still be re-instated after a period of time. It all depends on whether the colleagues in the court give a damn or not, and whether they can enter some good words for the emperor.

The same is true of the great clans, which have their own clan temples, and every year a clan elder must bring people to worship their ancestors. And the administrators of the clans were the de facto officials, all of whom had to be appointed from within the same clan and carried kinship ties with each other. They could form a unified opinion in dealing with things and screw together. Those who are ungrateful will be judged by the clan and eventually forced to be filial to their parents.

When there are couples fighting, the clan will intervene and bring the couples back together. When there are chicken thieves and dog thieves, the clan will intervene to punish the thieves. The clan will also intervene to save face when a man and a woman are involved in a scandalous affair. When a family wants to get married, the clan will help with manpower and material resources, and when a family dies and has to have a funeral, the clan will still help with manpower and material resources. In other words, in the process of clan management, it realized the punishment of evil and good within the clan, and also realized the mutual help within the clan, which was relatively harmonious, as long as there were no big problems, even if it was an excellent village power system, it could be developed for a long time.

However, the clan is not so ideal, but a kind of feudal yoke. "During the May Fourth period, people had long criticized the idea of the clan. The clan's internal administrators were all relatives of the top administrators, which made it easy to create a lopsided public opinion, and very easy to create personal vendettas. Moreover, the management system was xenophobic, and did not allow people who were distant from the clan elders to join, let alone those with foreign surnames. And not everyone in the village is from the same clan, there are those who have moved out here but are not recognized by the clan and have become marginalized.

If something goes wrong, the clan doesn't care. In this way, the out-migrated households were somewhat aggravated, and even if they were killed, the murderer could not be found. The clan would step in to shelter their own people, and would also keep a lid on the scandal. If there were thieves within the clan, the clan administrators were powerless to do anything about it and would just ignore it, objectively encouraging the thieves. As for men and women, most of them only punish the women, and even let the women be immersed in pigsties, while the men run away long ago and come back after a period of time, and then it will be fine. In fact, the patriarchal phenomenon of the clans made a big bias in judgment. A man who makes a mistake is treated differently from a woman who makes a mistake, and he will definitely not be exposed. Thus, the clan dealt with things with favoritism.

Favoring the men, favoring those close to the administrators, and sometimes facing criminal activity, surprisingly, for fear of getting into trouble, the administrators would not say a word. Then there must be bullying within the clan, or the clan order itself is the result of bullying. Originally, clans were set up to create a space for public ***** cultural activities, and at the same time to administer justice, coordinate resources, and allow people to help each other to achieve a high degree of village autonomy. However, the managers within the clan are not of high quality, and are not even elite intellectuals at all, but utilitarian people who only do one thing on the surface and another thing behind the scenes, and who use their power for personal gain. Many clan administrators have small wives, and they also get a lot of silver from the collective property of the clan, which is said to be administrative expenses, but in fact it is just a loss of public money for personal gain, and it is not yet rooted out. It's like the officials, who themselves have salaries, but still have to raid the people's fat and wealth, the people do not know what's going on, but can only be slaughtered.

The clans rely on law and morality to govern their internal affairs, but once power lacks scrutiny, it can proliferate. Many clan elders simply don't care about the law that way, and just govern based on morality, and won't be held accountable even if they kill people hastily. As a result, there were many intellectual elites who attacked the feudal clans, saying that they stifled humanity and could even kill innocents, and that they had to escape from the feudal clans in order to find their freedom.

That is to say, not only did the extended family manage the internal affairs of their own family, but also each family would formulate their own family rules and disciplines based on the extended family's management set, and use the family rules and disciplines to manage a family. Layers and layers of management, according to all feudal morality, also all existed in disregard of the law but to stifle human nature. As a result, many revolutionaries fled their homes and families to join the revolutionary cause of building a world where all people are equal.

At a certain point in history, family autonomy served a good purpose, but at a certain point in its development, problems arose, and they were so deep-rooted that they could not be changed. To solve the problem, the family administrators would quit, and without a solution, the family would exist in name only. Eventually, the feudal family fell apart, perhaps, from the feudal family problems can be seen in a feudal state problems, at the same time to be vigilant about the family's problems at the national level to repeat, but also to be vigilant to cover up the behavior as well as people's silence for a long time.