A composition about my understanding of China's traditional culture.

On the one hand, he advocated learning from virtue heroes, but on the other hand, he warned evil villains.

Composition Me and Traditional Culture

. Just after broadcasting all kinds of entrepreneurial deeds, it is a series of anti-theft door advertisements. As ordinary people, they can't be heroes and don't want to lose money or life. They can only be vigilant at all times: don't let strangers into the house, don't eat strangers' food, don't accept strangers' help, and so on. In this way, when we look at the world with alert eyes and guard against others, we are always watched with alert eyes. So we live in a world of "villains". So when I took the bus in Switzerland and found that there was no ticket inspection, when I checked out of the hotel in Japan and found that there was no need to turn around, I was deeply moved. I experienced the dignity of a person as a capital and the pleasure of a "gentleman" society. I can't predict how long it will take China to enter such an unguarded era, and how long it will take not to press the security doors and windows. But relatively speaking, China people can already enjoy standardized professional ethics services in air travel, catering and shopping today. This gives us hope that down-to-earth professional ethics construction is expanding to other fields in Changde, and the moral level of our whole nation is improving. Of course, I know even so, we still have a long way to go.

China's traditional virtues are often opposed to modern Changde.

I emphasize the arduousness of Changde's construction because it is an "innovation project" of our nation, and the traditional culture of China lacks the ethical elements that support modern Changde: some so-called traditional virtues are just opposite or even contrary to Changde's norms in modern life practice; As the core rational element of modern Changde, traditional morality is scarce. This involves a new understanding and evaluation of traditional morality, especially Confucian ethics. Limited by the space and the theme of this article, I will only make a brief explanation.

For a long time, we have held a split attitude towards traditional morality with Confucian ethics as the core, thinking that we can abandon its feudal dross and inherit its virtue essence, ignoring the essential difference between Confucian morality and modern morality. The author thinks that Confucian honesty ethics is also a feudal moral system with virtue ("self-denial and courtesy"). Although some of its norms can be inherited by modern family ethics, it is difficult to directly transfer them to the modern moral system, let alone as Changde norms. Of course, we need to avoid the symbol trap here. We can't abstract the traditional concepts such as conscience, honesty, integrity and benevolence into modern connotations like some scholars, and then talk about the contemporary significance of Confucianism, calling it "virtue ethics" and "humanistic spirit with universal human significance" and so on. In order to discover the negative influence of traditional virtues, we must explore the internal connotation of traditional virtues.

Like honesty. In Confucian culture, honesty is the foundation of saints, believers and gentlemen. The problem is that honesty, as a Confucian ethical norm, only obeys the general ethical norms of loyalty, filial piety, benevolence and righteousness, and serves to consolidate the poor social structure within the "six relatives" or "five ethics". In other words, within the relationship of human relations and family ties, China people are honest, and it is a great sin to bully the monarch and the private. However, leaving a specific human relationship and deceiving strangers other than "six relatives" is not necessarily morally condemned. Westerners who came to China since Ming Enpu found that China people lacked the "quality" of honesty. Some people think that this is a colonial discourse that vilifies the image of China people. In fact, this is an alternative expression of China people's honesty: because cheating "foreign devils" is not treachery at all in the eyes of China people. This kind of "sincerity" tied to love is obviously contrary to the sincerity of modern Changde. As mentioned earlier, China people's various acts of favoritism, dishonesty and bending the law are thus given moral protection-for example, revealing the case to relatives. Isn't it "honesty"?

Of course, this is no stranger to the author. Liang Qichao has long discovered that China people are "lacking in public morality" and "favoring private morality". Just according to his definition of "anyone who can be immune to it is called private morality", China people have no private morality, because once they enter the field of public affairs, it is difficult for China people to be immune to it. For example, people in a certain unit go out for a ride collectively, and everyone is a gentleman. Everyone gives in to each other and is afraid of rushing up. But when these people ride with strangers respectively, the gentleman's wind disappears, and everyone rushes to grab seats for fear of falling behind. A more typical example is farmers. Once farmers leave the local villagers, their moral constraints are almost completely ineffective, and there is no obstacle to the free transformation of their dual identities. As long as rabbits don't eat grass beside their nests, let alone petty theft and counterfeiting, even if the trafficker Wang Yang returns to the village, he will not be condemned by moral public opinion. So strictly speaking, what China people have is a kind of "group morality" (patriarchal morality) that exists in interpersonal relationships. This kind of "group virtue" is beautiful, loving and boundless in a love relationship. However, this kindness and friendship are different inside and outside. The Book of Rites says, "Kissing is three for five, five for nine ... Kissing is over". When the kiss is over, love will stop and morality will fail. Ming Enpu once described the real moral situation of China people a hundred years ago: one person is in trouble, and everyone is watching. Lu Xun also expressed great indignation at the indifferent spectator behavior of Chinese people. Today's people in China have "improved", from silently watching guests to loudly encouraging others to commit suicide! Therefore, when I recently read the news that a psychopath in a city jumped to his death because of the cheers of the onlookers, I could only feel sad and angry. The key point here is that there is no love relationship between the questioner and the jumper; If one of the spectators is a relative of the jumper, it may arouse everyone's sympathy, and this tragedy may not happen. Thus, China's traditional "virtue ethics" is incompatible with modern Changde, and there is no relationship between them.

Further exploration, why can't we push modern Changde from Confucian virtues? This involves understanding the deep structure of moral culture. Confucian morality, which is adapted to the monarchism of traditional culture (literally people-oriented), has no concept of personal value, and is a moral system that maintains moral norms and ethical standards, emphasizing "self-denial and dedication to the public." Modern Changde, on the other hand, recognizes the rationality of individual rights on the basis of humanism, is a moral system that maintains the power standard of the convention and emphasizes "self-discipline and law-abiding". Although modern Changde also stresses conscience and honesty, this kind of conscience and honesty is not only a promise to people, but also a promise to abide by the rules of the game. Various game rules define interest boundaries; Self-discipline and law-abiding means respecting and safeguarding the rights of others, including the interests of the collective and the state, while protecting their own interests. It is always inevitable to infringe upon the interests of others and the public. As a result, Changde norms such as fairness and justice came into being naturally, and the legitimate interests of citizens, collectives and countries were defended by safeguarding the justice and dignity of the law. Obviously, this is the opposite of the Confucian moral concept of "respecting others as benevolence". In China's traditional culture, feudal ethics and laws maintain a hierarchical system that values the monarch over the people rather than individual rights and interests. Therefore, it is difficult to form rational moral norms or value norms such as self-discipline, law-abiding, justice and fairness that consciously safeguard social contracts. Therefore, it is not difficult for us to understand why modern Changde is absent after the social transformation in contemporary China, because we simply do not have these norms! It is completely wrong to blame the moral decline on the interruption of Confucian tradition, and the prescription prescribed by Neo-Confucianism is self-deception.

Therefore, the construction of Changde in contemporary China needs to be accompanied by the popularization of education, the deepening of reform and the development of market economy.