Is it human nature gone bad when traditional virtues are lost?

I remember when I was a child, my village was very poor, but the neighbors were very friendly. When the Zhang family harvested new wheat and made preserves, they would send a few to the Li and Wang families next door to try. When the Li family picked watermelons, they would also give them to the Zhang and Wang families. When the Wang family opens a jar of kimchi, the children will give a bowl of kimchi to their neighbors. Liu family threshing field suddenly encountered a rainstorm, the neighbors left their rice bowls to copy to help. Sun family house, the villagers even put down their own land matters, but also to help a few days busy, in addition to the craftsmen, a longing for the house down the small workers all free of charge. In case a fire accidentally occurs in the village, a shout, everyone woke up from sleep to pick up buckets of water to the fire. ------- If there were documentaries at that time to record these scenes, people would have said that farmers are really kind, farmers are really great! In my childhood memories, although there were conflicts and quarrels and fights between the villagers, they were as close as family afterward. They worked together during the day and got together at night to chat. On summer nights, children and adults gathered on the grassy slopes in front of the village. When the children returned from school, if the parents hadn't finished their work in the fields, the neighbors would ask them to join them for dinner. If the host is not at home when guests arrive, the neighbors will treat them as warmly as if they were their own guests. Peasants are sticklers for traditional culture, and the impact of the Four Olds, the Cultural Revolution, and the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology is far less severe than people think. The memories of my childhood were generally good. I don't know from that day on, people became slowly strange. Wasteland and barren slopes were reclaimed and claimed as their own. Public drains and roads were dug up and filled in for their own convenience. With more machinery, there was no longer any need to help each other to plow the fields; each family could do it. When houses were built, laborers began to be paid for their work. There were fewer and fewer gatherings, fewer and fewer door-to-door visits, no audience for the opera, and fewer and fewer people at the movies. Households closed their doors to blow fans at home when it was dark, and they no longer got together to cool off and chat. After the nineties, with more and more people going out to work in the countryside for business, the social landscape is changing even more rapidly. In the past, when there was a large collective, people from all villages knew each other and their roots, but now, in a village, old people and young people don't know each other. The environment has deteriorated, the river in front of the village is full of garbage, the village is full of pig and cow dung, and the roads and water conservancy facilities are seriously damaged. The state of Ye'an has also deteriorated. In the past, no house was closed during the day and no object was lost at night, but now every house has a high wall, and the chickens, cows and sheep kept in the yard are still often stolen. Even when the crops in the field are ripe, if you harvest a little slower, they will be stolen and cut overnight. You can't grow vegetables in the vegetable field, and even if you live in the countryside, you have to buy food like city people. If you work outside a few years back home, will inevitably be surprised, although the hometown of the new house more, the standard of living has improved, between people and people but only the hypocrisy of politeness, familiar with the countryside is more and more lack of human feelings. You can not help but exclaim: the hearts of rural people have become bad! Now the countryside, only the old and weak women and children remain at home, young adults can go out as far as possible out. The original four generations, three generations of the same family has long been disintegrated. It is a family of siblings are all over the world, or even a year is rare to see one side, some children can not see their parents for several years, the feelings of their parents are also becoming more and more diluted. The drastically changing rural society can no longer be summarized by saying that people's hearts have changed. The loss of faith and the loss of traditional virtues are not limited to the cities, but to the whole society. Is it human nature that has changed for the worse? Many experts and scholars give this answer. There are also more pointed criticisms that the destruction of traditional moral beliefs by the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology and the Cultural Revolution has caused people to lose their spiritual attachment. These are all right, but not all right. Because at the beginning of the reform and opening up, the people in the countryside were still very simple, and believe it or not, even today if you can go to those poor and remote villages, you can guarantee that the people there are still very simple. Some traditional culture adherents even came to the conclusion that "the pursuit of materialistic desires has led to the loss of the spirit of modern man, the pursuit of material wealth is the source of evil". But Europe and the United States developed countries, compared to China to the material I do not know how many times richer, why are the people of those countries are not like the Chinese people so selfish, loss of integrity, to the evil as a source of pride? Visible, material developed and spiritual contraction is not a cause and effect relationship. If we still stay in the human nature good and human nature bad level of argument, self-deception that the development of perfect Marxism can save faith, think that the restoration of traditional culture can return to the traditional virtues, undoubtedly, we will still be in the cognitive misunderstanding in the circle, will also take a detour in history. In fact, the most fundamental reason is that we are in a period of great changes in the economic system. The establishment of a market economy, the change of production relations, there must be a culture and system that is compatible with it. Let's analyze and compare: the traditional small peasant economy is a closed, self-supporting form of economy. Because of the low productivity, people as individuals, whether against natural or social risks, must cooperate in groups, and so people formed groups in the form of clansmen. People must be interdependent, no matter which one is harmed, it is a weakening of the strength of the group, so people must be like brothers and help each other. For example, as mentioned earlier: before the rural wheat threshing with a small machine, you need about twenty people to run, so there must be twenty people without pay to help each other to complete, you do not want to help others your own wheat can not be threshed. Nowadays, with the large harvesters, the wheat is threshed in the field and is just waiting to be sold, so there is no need to help each other. Another example is the fire, we must work together to extinguish, you less a point of effort, it means that the whole village will be affected, their own house will not be protected. In modern cities, fires are fought by professional firefighters, and your house is miles away, so of course you can just sit back and watch. The same applies to resisting social risks. When a village is subject to external aggression, the whole village must unite to resist it, so when an individual villager is subject to external aggression, in order to preserve the strength of the village, people of the same village (clan) must unite to help each other. As for the ancient times when productivity was much lower, people were much more dependent on the group, and when such altruistic mutual aid behaviors became habitual, virtues were born. Another example is filial piety, the core foundation of traditional culture. Ancient agriculture did not have a specialized agency to teach technology, so agricultural knowledge relies on the accumulation of experience, land, houses rely on all rely on the inheritance of the fathers, so the elders are not only the transfer of knowledge and skills, but also holds the right to distribute property, so the elders have the supreme and absolute authority, as the younger generation does not respect the elders means that they can not survive, which is our filial piety culture based on. The so-called traditional culture and traditional virtues are actually based on the economic foundation of high dependence between people. Traditional virtues are nothing more than what people have accumulated over a long period of time in the practice of life, and then through the synthesis and organization of norms by literati such as Confucius and Mencius, our Confucian culture was formed. In fact it is a product of the small peasant economy, it is a product of the individual's lack of ability to live independently and high dependence on the group, so Confucian culture is authoritarian culture. If you do not believe me, you can go to the remote villages of ethnic minorities, or simply go to the primitive villages in Africa. In these groups which have not been indoctrinated by Confucius and Mencius, we can feel the same simple and kind-hearted people's customs, and we can feel the same virtues as those in our tradition. The so-called traditional virtues are in fact based on a high degree of economic dependence between people, and altruism results in self-interest. Therefore, although cultural morality was put forward by certain sages, it was not established out of thin air. It was a product of the productive forces of the society and the social life of the time, and it was built on and adapted to the economic base. Once the productive forces increase and the economic base changes, the culture and morality should also change accordingly. If the economic base changes and the culture and morality remain at the old level, it will inevitably collapse because it is not adapted to the new economic base, and the whole society will be in a state of chaos and imbalance. This is exactly what is happening in China today. Our political system, culture and morality cannot keep pace with the market economy. It is like driving a car in the same way as an oxcart, it is strange that there is no chaos. The so-called market economy is in fact a product of modern industrialization in Western countries. The industrialization process generated by the technological revolution gave birth to the European Renaissance and the rise of humanistic thinking at the cultural level. It was only after hundreds of years of capitalist practice and lessons learned in Western countries that today's mature market economy system and the liberal ideology that goes with it, i.e. today's modern civilization, were formed. Its foundation lies in the increase in social productivity, the relative independence of human economic status, the refinement of the social division of labor, the diminishing interdependence of human beings, and the greatly increased privacy of human beings. Comparing the different economic environments, we will find that in the social sphere of the small peasant economy, those who are unethical will be severely punished by their clans, and in the commercial sphere, those who are unethical will not only suffer from the backlog of commodities due to the damage of their business reputation, but will also be subjected to the strict rules of the guilds and gangs. In such a closed society of acquaintances, if an individual's behavior infringes on the group, the members can immediately perceive each other and will be punished, and those who are unethical will even lose the conditions on which they depend for their survival. It is because of the high degree of interdependence between people and the high social cost of failing to act morally that morality has an extremely strong soft binding force. However, with the rise of the capitalist economy, the division of labor in society has become more and more refined, and the relationship between people has become relatively independent and unfamiliar, and the privacy of people has greatly increased. Even if you kill people in the city, in the eyes of the neighbors, you can pretend to be a good gentleman; even if you make and sell counterfeit goods, after cheating this and that, do not have to worry about the past acquaintances of the society spread all over the townships at once. As the economy becomes more and more independent, people's dependence on the group and family becomes smaller and smaller, the traditional ethical and moral values collapse, and people's selfishness gets unprecedentedly inflated because of strangeness and privacy. Once upon a time, when landlords seized other people's property and corrupt officials seized money, the victims knew it all. Nowadays, interest groups have plundered people's property through a complex business machine, and the victims do not have a clear sense of it. Corrupt officials have appropriated the wealth of the public ****, and there are no visible traces. The single-level direct exchange of the small peasant economy has become the multi-level hidden exchange of the market economy. It is precisely because of the privacy and invisibility that monopolization and corruption have become the persistent problems of the present society. Because there is no direct object of victimization for the immoral person who no longer has a tormented conscience, and because there is no direct loss for the victim who does not feel any concrete pain, the binding force of the traditional ethical and moral concepts is almost non-existent. It is not necessary to go into a lengthy discussion, for Confucian culture, which originated from a small peasant economy, can only be adapted to a society with a small peasant economy. It is a matter of common sense that a market economy, which began in a capitalist society, can only be adapted to a capitalist Western culture. The only way out for China now is to introduce liberal values compatible with the market economy, to strengthen the sense of contract, and to build a democratic political system compatible with the market economy. Economic freedom must be accompanied by the corresponding freedom of political rights, and morality must manifest the values of equality and freedom. Once upon a time, people were simple, kind and helpful in order to make their lives better in a community of acquaintances. Today, people are selfish and self-serving in a society of strangers, again for their own betterment. The moral dimension has degenerated and hearts have changed, but human nature has not changed and remains the same as it has been for 2,000 years. If we keep arguing about whether human nature is good or whether it has become evil, we will never get out of the wrong zone. Morality is not a castle in the air, it is built on the corresponding economic foundation. Human nature is selfish, people always choose to maximize their own interests. As for interests, the vast majority of people understand as wealth, a few people understand as reputation, and very few people understand as the pleasure of life above all, this kind of people we regard as saints, but each individual life will make the choice to maximize the value of the choice, this is the objective law, not subjective will and change. Therefore, in the new economic system, it is necessary to have a moral concept that adapts to the maximization of human value. No matter how much we flaunt the banner of traditional culture or dig deeper into Marxism, they are no longer possible to build such values, and the abandonment of these two moral values is the inevitable choice of every intelligent individual life. The reason why the present Chinese society is corrupt but not chaotic is that the traditional ethical and moral values still play a framing role. First, it is because of cultural inheritance and historical inertia. Secondly, it is because China has only just begun the process of industrialization, the majority of the population is still farmers, and even though the cities are still not a highly civic society, the degree of dependence on acquaintance groups is still very high. However, as marketization deepens, the division of labor becomes more refined and people become stranger to each other, the collapse of traditional ethics and morality is bound to accelerate. Abandon the outdated values of the small peasant economy and construct the values of the market economy. Undoubtedly, it should be liberal values based on equality, freedom and fraternity. People who love traditional culture need not be overly pessimistic. Those virtues that have been handed down for thousands of years, the reasonable elements of which are suitable for human development, and the universal values that belong to the spirit of mankind, will not be obliterated by the times. As for those who are not adapted to the irrational components of human development, eliminated by the times do not have to regret. The real love of traditional virtues, is to inject it with new ideas and vitality, rather than to hold on to the old. For example, loyalty is no longer a stupid loyalty to authority, but loyalty to the faith of the heart, loyalty to their own souls; filial piety, is no longer a stupid filial piety, but from the heart of the elders of respect and love. Another example: benevolence is love, not only for human beings, but also for nature; righteousness is justice, not only the righteousness of acquaintances, relatives and friends, the righteousness of the family and the nation, but the justice of the whole society; courtesy is equal respect, not only for the authority of the elders, but also for the weaker ones; wisdom is no longer the art of power and strategy, the wisdom of ruling people, but the respect for rationality, the respect for science; faith is honesty, the observance of the contract, is the foundation of the civil society. The observance of rules is the cornerstone of civil society. ------ This virtue is no longer a virtue! Morality can never be independent of its material basis. Once upon a time, we adhered to the traditional virtues because it allows people to obtain the greatest value of life; today's social chaos is due to the loss of faith, the political system is seriously lagging behind, and the greatest value that people seek can only be reflected in the materialistic level; only by constructing an ethical system that allows people to obtain a greater value will people strive to pursue it and follow it. A new economic system and new production relations must have values that are compatible with it. It is a law of nature that economy or culture must be favorable to human development for it to exist and develop. It is our historical mission to reconstruct the values and morals adapted to the modern society.