The existential relationship between Chinese civilization types and geography

Traditional Chinese culture has an inward-looking temperament, a harmonious style and an ethical kernel, and these characteristics are closely related to China's geographical environment.

(I) Inward-looking Temperament and Geographical Environment

"Closed on the outside, active on the inside", separated by deserts and oceans, and rich in internal resources, with no need to ask for help from other countries, the Chinese people created an agricultural civilization with their own characteristics and a typical inward-looking cultural temperament.

This inward-looking temperament is manifested in many ways. For example, "China is the center of the world" fully reflects the global view of the ancient Chinese people; in terms of architectural culture, China's enclosure wall is particularly developed, the traditional residential area is also a high wall enclosure, the space is closed, the permeability is poor; on the development of the country, focusing on the development of the land, the interior, and never to the overseas development; spiritually focusing on the development of the inner world, secular life and the real world, and practical life and the real world, practical, neither like the Greek culture focuses on the development of the natural world, nor like the Middle East - Indian culture focuses on the development of the world of the gods, not to mention the Western culture focuses on the development of the natural world, religious life and the future world.

(2) Harmonious style and geography

Although China is backed by the desert and facing the sea, the interior of its territory, especially the Middle East, is characterized by thousands of miles of fertile fields, beautiful mountains and streams, lingering smoke, and the evening singing of fishermen, which makes it seem as if it were an extraordinarily large "paradise in the middle of the world", with its grace, tranquillity, and harmony. Harmony has gradually become the basic style of Chinese culture.

Harmony of the cultural style of the Chinese people in dealing with the relationship between man and nature, man and man, pay attention to harmony and unity, love and goodwill, harmony and courtesy. The philosophical concepts of the Chinese are also permeated with the ideas of "unity of heaven and man", "unity of knowledge and action" and "unity of situation".

The harmonious cultural style has influenced the social psychology and way of thinking of the Chinese people. In ancient China, most of the philosophers took it as their responsibility to establish an ideal society of unity and harmony. The rulers hoped for a "peaceful world" and the oppressed hoped for a "peaceful world".

The over-emphasis on harmony and unity, and the rejection of "too much" and "too little" were, to some extent, one of the reasons why China's backward and relatively stable feudal society continued for a long time. Harmonious cultural style also makes the Chinese way of thinking there are some inherent defects, due to the habit and satisfied with the intuition from the general grasp of the nature of things, ignoring the things themselves in-depth anatomy.

(3) Ethical Kernel and Geographical Environment

Chinese culture is people-oriented, focusing on the basic cell of society, the "family", and then from the family to the state, constructing a "patriarchal" society in which the family and the state are one. "

Chinese culture is people-oriented. On the one hand, the minister is loyal to the king, the son is filial to the father, the woman is obedient to the husband, and the brother is fraternal to the brother; on the other hand, the minister is loyal to the king, the father, the husband, and the brother. On the other hand, the ruler, the father, the husband, and the elder brother must care for their subjects, sons, women, and brothers, who are the inferior and younger ones. The interplay between the two constitutes a relatively harmonious Chinese interpersonal relationship centered on ethics and morality. Therefore, ethics and morality have become the core of Chinese culture and the most basic feature of Chinese culture. In comparison, some people call Greek culture "scientific culture"

, Roman culture "legal culture", and Chinese culture "ethical culture".

The ideological basis for the emergence of ethical culture is the feudal patriarchal concept under the conditions of agricultural society. When China's history was in transition from a clan society to a slave society, there was no process of overthrowing the clan aristocracy by the slave-owning democrats as in Greece and Rome, but the clan leaders were directly transformed into slave-owning aristocrats. In other words, when China entered a class society, it was not the slave state that replaced the patriarchal society, which was linked by the blood ties of the clans, but rather, it was the family that moved towards the state, which sustained the slave system by blood ties and formed a pattern of "one family, one state". In this way, the disintegration of our clan society is very insufficient, and the remnants of the patriarchal system and its ideology in the clan society have accumulated in large quantities.