Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional festivals - What is the reason why Chinese civilization has not been interrupted?

What is the reason why Chinese civilization has not been interrupted?

China's traditional culture has a long history and is profound. In its long-term development and evolution process, due to the promotion of people's social practice and the generalization and refinement of thinkers of past dynasties, it has gradually developed into a high-level cultural form with both the general characteristics of civilized culture and China characteristics. Today, if we want to successfully build an advanced socialist culture with China characteristics, we must correctly understand and grasp the traditional culture of China, the mother of China's advanced culture. From the investigation and comparison of the whole history of world civilization and cultural development, we can find that China's traditional culture has unique advantages and advantages among the world's cultural forests. These advantages and advantages are mainly manifested in the following three aspects:

It has tenacious vitality and far-reaching cohesion function.

As far as the world is concerned, although China's ancient culture is one of the oldest in the world, it is not the earliest in origin. However, among all the ancient cultures in the world, only China culture is an uninterrupted cultural type. After thousands of years of internal and external troubles, it has been preserved, continued and developed to this day. In the history of world cultural development, many excellent cultural forms were interrupted by foreign invasion. Among the four ancient civilizations, Indian culture is Aryan, because the Aryans invaded; Greek and Roman culture was interrupted by Germanic invasion for thousands of years; Egyptian culture changed its face constantly because of the changes of the invaders. It was Hellenistic, then Romanized and then Islamized. Only China's culture is endless, showing an unparalleled life extension.

There are many reasons why China traditional culture has such tenacious vitality. Externally, this is due to the mutual influence and restriction of relatively isolated mainland areas, self-sufficient agricultural economic structure and patriarchal social organization structure, forming a stable survival system. But the main reason is internal, that is, the diverse vitality, unified assimilation, inclusive integration, ethical affinity, changeable creativity and continuity of national historical consciousness contained in China traditional culture itself constitute the source of strong vitality of China culture.

In the continuation of this strong vitality, China culture has shown a strong assimilation and cohesion function. China traditional culture is ethical culture, and ethics is its basic feature. Although this kind of ethics has a negative impact, some ethical concepts deeply accumulated in the consciousness of Chinese people, such as respecting teachers and filial piety, self-cultivation, pragmatism, thrift and so on, have undoubtedly played a positive role in casting the souls of Chinese people and have a far-reaching impact. The ethics of China's traditional culture creates a strong sense of identity and affinity. This sense of identity and affinity is reflected in the self-identity of cultural psychology and the sense of belonging of cultural groups that transcend regions and national boundaries. It makes China people at home and abroad have the same feelings as "blood is thicker than water" and "relatives are not relatives". No matter the Han nationality or other ethnic minorities, they all have the national concept of "the same root and the same ancestry". Many overseas Chinese who have roamed the world have children in foreign countries, but they have not been completely westernized, and their cultural umbilical cord is still closely related to Chinese mothers. In their consciousness and subconsciousness, they never forget that they are sons and daughters of China, and they still maintain the traditional cultural concept of China, and have similar value pursuit with China people. This shows that the thinking mode, value orientation, moral concept and code of conduct contained in China culture have a strong sense of identity and appeal. It has been passed down from generation to generation, restricting and influencing the descendants of the Chinese people all the time, showing the same spirit and culture and the cultural cohesion of the Chinese nation on the vast land. The strong cohesion of the Chinese nation is not only a kind of intense national emotion, but also a kind of conscious consciousness and calm rational thinking. It makes every member of this nation have a profound understanding and lofty sense of responsibility for the survival and development of their own nation and country, and for their own future and historical destiny, and inspires people to work hard and make selfless contributions to the prosperity of their own nation and country.

It has distinct subjectivity and powerful integration function.

China culture formed its own unique system earlier in the historical process of its development. Archaeological data prove that China traditional culture, as a local culture, originated in ancient times. Since then, our ancestors have not only created Chinese characters and their phonetic and semantic systems, but also created their own cultural and ideological systems such as philosophy, morality, religion, literature and art with square characters as the carrier, forming the unique etiquette system, customs, national psychology and national spirit of the Chinese nation, which has made China's traditional culture distinctive. However, China's traditional culture is not a closed cultural system, but a "multi-integrated" culture with strong inclusiveness and integration. It not only contains the cultures of all ethnic groups in China, but also absorbs various foreign cultures. It is developed in the long-term collision and agitation with different cultures, selection and integration, absorption and reference, and "harmony without difference", and it is the crystallization of various cultural accumulations in Tao Zhu.

The subject of China's traditional culture has a conscious initiative when absorbing various foreign cultures, instead of passively accepting them, it actively influences and transforms the objects. Historically, whenever a foreign culture enters China, most of them will gradually go to China and become a part of China culture. For example, Buddhist culture was introduced into China and reached its peak in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. After hundreds of years of transformation and absorption, Buddhism in China has been formed. China's traditional culture completely digested the foreign Indian Buddhist culture and absorbed its thinking method, forming a brand-new theory-Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties. Moreover, the absorption and transformation of Buddhism by China's traditional culture has gone far beyond the scope of religion, and penetrated into various fields of culture such as language, philosophy, literature and art, astronomy, medicine, architecture and even folk customs, making it an organic part of China's traditional culture. The successful absorption of Indian Buddhism shows the full openness, high toughness and good digestion of China's traditional culture, and shows the strong and distinct subjective consciousness of the Chinese nation, that is, taking myself as the main body and giving consideration to everything, thus realizing the successful exchange of Chinese and foreign cultures.

China culture has shown diversity and regionality since it came into being. This is caused by many reasons, first of all, because of the complex and diverse geographical environment. China has a vast territory in history, and its natural conditions vary widely from place to place. Different geographical environment and material conditions make people form different lifestyles, concepts and customs. Because of this, China's culture must be diversified. Secondly, due to the complexity of the blood composition of the Chinese nation. As the predecessor of the Han nationality, Huaxia nationality was not developed from a single tribe, but formed in the process of the integration of many tribes. If the nation is not unified, the culture will not be unified. The complexity of ethnic consanguinity is one of the important reasons for the cultural diversity in China.

It has lasting spiritual motivation and dynamic continuation and innovation functions.

For thousands of years, China's traditional cultural ideas have exerted a subtle influence, accumulated into common psychological factors of the people, and regulated and dominated people's thoughts and behaviors. The existence of this ideological tendency, which originates from the past, melts into the present and goes straight to the future, is the spiritual source to revitalize the people's struggle for the reunification of the motherland, the prosperity of the nation and the prosperity of the country, and has a dynamic role in stimulating national self-esteem, self-confidence and pride. It is the excellent ideological spirit in traditional culture that inspires the long-term vitality of our nation and forms valuable creativity and cohesion. For example, the concept of "harmony" has always played a great role in the unity of the Chinese nation, thus maintaining the unity and integrity of the Chinese nation for thousands of years. In the traditional culture of China, "harmony" represents prosperity, so most literati groups in China regard the establishment of a harmonious and unified society as their political ideal. Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and Mohism, the main representatives of ancient culture in China, all take it as their responsibility to build a harmonious and unified society. After thousands of years of continuous efforts by thinkers, the concept of "harmony" has spread to all levels of people's lives in China and penetrated into the hearts of everyone in China. Governing the country and maintaining peace, emphasizing "harmony without difference" and "harmony without difference", emphasizing "harmony without difference" in managing the family, and adhering to the golden mean of "harmony while preserving China" in dealing with others, so as to achieve a peaceful realm in life cultivation. It is precisely because of this "harmony is precious" thought that it has been widely recognized by the whole nation, and it has cast the overall situation concept and cooperation spirit of the people. It has long been a code of conduct hidden in people's minds that individuals obey the collective and individuals obey the ego. This whole code of conduct. Although it was once used by feudal rulers to serve their vested interests, from the perspective of the thinking direction and actual social effects of the whole nation, it is of great significance to cultivate the collective values of the people and cultivate the ideological style of putting national interests first. The lasting spiritual inspiration generated by the national spirit deeply accumulated in the whole national psychology will surely become an inexhaustible motive force for the people of China to move towards modernization in the new era.

China's traditional culture is more continuous than any other culture in the world. This continuation is a process of continuous innovation on the basis of tradition. China's traditional culture is rich in the belief that the universe is creative, which is actually an affirmation of people's creative ability. Inspired by the endless creative spirit, human beings can renew their virtues, renew their undertakings and create great undertakings full of new virtues. It is the endless creativity generated by the transformation of China's traditional culture that makes the peak of China's traditional culture endless. A cultural history of China is a history of cultural change and innovation. In the pre-Qin period, from the cultural change of Zhou people to Confucius' reinterpretation of Zhou Li; From Mencius' deepening and development of Confucius' thought to Xunzi's academic summary and integration of hundred schools of thought's contention in the pre-Qin period, it embodies the unity of continuity, innovation and innovation. As for the cultural and ideological changes and innovations after the Qin and Han Dynasties, there are countless more. For example, Dong Zhongshu of the Han Dynasty absorbed the ideas of Yin and Yang, Tao and Law other than Confucianism, and then further reformed Confucianism. In Song Dynasty, Zhu innovated Confucianism by integrating Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. The creation in these integrations includes not only the inheritance and innovation of local culture, but also the absorption and transformation of foreign culture to make it China. This shows that the profound China culture is not a static existence, and its ideology, value orientation and knowledge system have continued, changed and developed in different times. With the changes and innovations that keep pace with the times, China culture will radiate more dazzling brilliance.