Ming Dynasty and New Rome and Infinite Magic Machine

Chapter 1518: Lao Zhuang
Shangluo and Zhu Xianxin quickly read through today's lecture notes.

Although there is a textbook in today's class, not all textbooks will be used. According to the course schedule, the lecture process is mainly based on the handouts. Only when necessary, the teacher will ask everyone to turn to the page in the textbook.

Today's handout is five pages long. Fortunately, we haven't covered the "Heaven is Dead" part yet. But looking at this progress, it will be next week or the week after next.

Neither of them knew what to say.

The current Ming Dynasty actually has a core that cannot be touched - the orders of the Taoist Lord and the Heavenly Masters, which even the emperor will not disobey. Because the old men have occupied all the positions of Heaven, Earth, Lord, Parents and Teachers.

After all, as the Taoist ancestor and the imperial ancestor, the person in Yuxi Palace is indeed Zhu Xianxun's direct ancestor, that is, the ancestor of his family.

Emperor Taizu Gao had made a clear order that when the emperor was in power, all royal relatives, regardless of their seniority, had to pay homage to the emperor. Because what was being discussed here was not the relationship between relatives, but the relationship between the emperor and his subjects. In order to avoid being caught in a dilemma between relatives and the emperor and his subjects, Emperor Taizu Gao also made a patch for this situation - the emperor ruled on behalf of the ancestors, which was equivalent to the ancestors.

But for Daozu, this rule is invalid because he is also the Heaven, Earth, Emperor, Parents and Teacher.

Especially the last "master". He is indeed Zhu Xianxin's teacher. Zhu Xianxin's alchemy skills were all taught by Daozu. If the previous heaven, earth, emperor and parents are too far away, the last master is the one he cannot disobey no matter what.

In fact, he spent more time with Daozu than with his own father.

This is "holding grandchildren instead of sons". Zhu Xianxun has been with Daozu since he was very young.

He held his head in his hands: "But we can't let the Heavenly Master come to my place to talk about Laozi and Zhuangzi. He knows how to scold Hai Rui for being fatherless and unloyal, and he knows how to put the hat of Huang-Lao school on Hai Rui's head. Why is he attacking me again this time?"

"Maybe. Maybe the Taoist didn't actually mean this?" Shang Luo guessed.

"Hmm?" Zhu Xianxi asked, "What do you think?"

"I think that the situation described by Huang-Lao is actually the situation of early human beings."

If there are many animals and few people, it will be easy to have enough food and clothing; if there are many people and few animals, the competition for profit will become more frequent.

This actually describes a state of "primitive abundance".

Rather than saying "the richness of primitive society", it is better to say "the primitiveness of richness".

When humans first began to establish order and expand their order outward, they always felt that the world was a fertile field and a blue ocean waiting to be developed.

This happened many times, not just once. The flame, the throwing, and the wheel were the three fertility events.

"So, Senior Brother, let me tell you about the worldview of the Romans. They believed that humans experienced three magical revolutions in the embryonic period of civilization. And through the magical revolutions, they achieved three major events of abundance."

At the beginning, it was the real "primitive abundance" that occurred in primitive society. Humans are not very clear about how to obtain the magic of fire, but it is the first magic that humans have mastered - the first time to use their own order to tame the product of nature. Among the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Suiren is the first of the Three Sovereigns, which is the collective memory recorded in the classics. Fire is really important.

After that, it was throwing. Although throwing was not recorded clearly in history, it is very clear from modern research that the extinction of the mammoth species was closely related to humans. Because mammoths are giants that are incomparable top-level herbivorous beasts in the natural environment, but in front of humans who have mastered the "magic" of throwing, they are just a moving mountain of meat.

Throwing spears are generally called "spears" in the East, and have been widely used in the military from ancient times to the present. However, in the East, such as in the early modern Ming army, spears were generally used as secondary weapons. For example, the swordsmen in the mandarin duck formation would carry some spears as spare long-range weapons.

After this, the magic of the wheel was widely recorded in history books. But this time it was not used to hunt wild animals in nature, but to hunt other humans.

In the early Western Zhou Dynasty, after King Wu defeated King Zhou, the Zhou Dynasty began to launch large-scale wars and set up vassal states. Armies drove heavy chariots, accompanied by music, spears and spears, and marched from the capital to the territories of the barbarians. Then, relying on their absolute technological advantages, they took root there and used either forced violence or slow accumulation to drive the organized barbarians out of the living space of China.

For a long time after this, chariots were the main weapon among the vassal states. After killing almost all the barbarians, the vassal states started chariot competitions, and began to crush each other with wheels, which led to the emergence of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period. Then, a new round of reforms began, and a new "magic" was discovered - great unification.

After that there was the magic of gunpowder, the magic of the Industrial Revolution, and so on.

But if we trace everything back to the very beginning, the order of the three ancient dynasties advocated by Huang-Lao philosophy was after the first magical revolution and the second magical revolution - to be precise, it was the period from when humans began to use throwing to hunt natural creations until humans began to kill each other with wheels.

Because this period is the most wonderful and abundant time for human beings to display their characteristics as the most intelligent creatures. When the whole earth is filled with moving meat mountains, every human being becomes a top predator. All you need to do is sharpen a wooden stick and throw it forward with a spear thrower - no matter if it is a jackal, tiger, leopard, wild boar or fat sheep, they can't withstand such a blow.

This is the happiness of the "ancient times". This kind of happiness is simply unimaginable to later generations. Why? Because there were few people at that time.

At that time, there was no need to raise pigs as fat as elephants, because there were elephants everywhere. If the whole tribe killed one, it would be enough to eat for half a year, and then they would kill another one in the second half of the year. In between, they could kill some goats and mountain deer to make up for the loss. For humans at that time, nature was a supermarket, and they could live a wonderful life that later generations could hardly imagine without any effort.

However, this time was short-lived. After all, people would start to reproduce once they had food to eat. At first, killing one mammoth would provide food for half a year, but later, killing one mammoth would only provide food for one month. However, mammoths do not grow every month - mammoths are just a representative. When the natural environment could not keep up with human consumption, humans began to move their hunting grounds. As the total number of humans increased, humans squeezed each other's living space, and the prosperity brought by the second magic revolution came to an end.

Cities, states, and even countries were formed in this environment. As the total number of humans increased, humans began to have to rely on violence to maintain their own production.

In fact, early human states often experienced many ups and downs, such as the phenomenon of civilization regression in Liangzhu. Modern views believe that this was because the surrounding natural environment improved, allowing the residents there to return to abundance for a short period of time, and maintaining the state and society became no longer necessary - this is also one aspect of the spiral upward trend of history.

However, the overall development of mankind will eventually rise to a level that our ancestors could not imagine, until the total number of humans crosses the red line that can no longer return to primitive society, and order takes root permanently for the first time. Because at this time, there are too many people, too many people. There are no more meat mountains everywhere like mammoths. If you go around the mountain with a spear, you can only see another hungry hunter.

"So that's how it is." Zhu Xianxi nodded, "In fact, to some extent, this is close to our view of ancient history. But I don't know what the Heavenly Master would think."

Before he finished speaking, Master Zhang, who had been waiting for everyone to finish reading the lecture notes, began his lecture.

"Break the bamboo, connect the bamboo. Throw away the soil, chase the meat." The sloppy Taoist who called himself Zhang San said on the podium, "Everyone, that was the best time in human history. So, do you think we should go back to that time? Our lives now are not as easy as they were back then. Today, you have to study and take exams. If you want to eat canned meat stew, you need to spend a lot of effort to find your own job, and then use the rewards from your work to obtain these resources - this is already a kind of progress.

"Let's go back to the Hongwu and Yongle years. There was no industrial revolution at that time. People all over the country didn't have much meat to eat. They were lucky to have a few mouthfuls of white rice. This life is far worse than the era of 'breaking bamboo, connecting bamboo, throwing soil, chasing meat', isn't it? So, do you think primitive society is better, or agricultural society is better?"

Everyone was silent. Because in theory, people in a fertile primitive society would eat better.

“If you can’t answer this question, it means that our Economic History course is very necessary. This is because you don’t realize a very basic problem - let me tell you a story.”

He told the crowd the story from Zhuangzi: Autumn Water:

Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River when the King of Chu sent two officials to invite him to serve. Zhuangzi held on to his fishing rod and asked, "I heard that there was a divine tortoise in Chu that lived for 3000 years. Its skeleton was enshrined in a temple after its death. Which of you two think is better for the divine tortoise to be enshrined in a temple after its death, or to crawl in the mud with its tail dragging?"

"Of course it's better to crawl in the mud."

"Then let me also crawl in the mud with my tail dragging."

Zhang San looked at everyone and said, "Everyone, when considering this question, any hesitation on your part would be a disservice to Shennong's grains. Because if you were in a primitive society, then based on the scale of the human population in that society, none of you would have been born! At that time, the scale of the human population was only a fraction of what it is now. If you wanted to be born as a human being at that time, the chances would be even more difficult than eating meat every day in an agricultural society. So, students, don't think that we are taking this course to recall the abundance of human life in ancient times. That abundance was only because there were fewer people.

"That's why the first paragraph in the handout says: If there are more animals and fewer people, food and clothing will be easy to obtain; if there are more people and fewer animals, competition for profit will increase. This sentence means that competition for profit is the nature of human society. It is describing a basic fact, not telling you to kill 90% of the people to avoid competition for profit and return the world to a world with more animals and fewer people. Although that kind of life is easy to obtain, it is better not to live in that way."

He raised a finger: "Today, we are not here to promote the good of primitive society. What's the point of running around naked? We want to study the truth of all this with a historical attitude. And use history as a mirror to see how our society should develop in the future and how we should choose our own life path."

As soon as these words came out, thunderous applause broke out in the huge classroom - not just because it was well said, but because they were just scared! They really thought that this Zhang San was going to criticize the court like a lawless lunatic. Now it seems that this class is normal, it really is normal.

Among those who clapped was Zhu Xianxi, who clapped particularly loudly, with a look of relief written all over his face: "I'm so scared. I'm so scared. If he really does Laozi and Zhuangzi, I won't be able to listen to him, and I won't be able to ignore him."

Shangluo also breathed a sigh of relief.

"But then again, we know from the previous paragraph that striving for profit is the nature of human society. Confucius and Mencius said that human nature is good at birth, which is true. Individuals are indeed good. But are the people who make up society good by nature? No, they are profit-seeking. The teachings of Confucius and Mencius are meant to emphasize human nature and suppress the instinct of seeking profit. So, everyone." He knocked on the table:

"When the great principles are abandoned, there will be benevolence and righteousness; when wisdom emerges, there will be great hypocrisy. If you abandon sages and wisdom, the people will benefit a hundredfold - what does it mean? That is to say, if you want to make a 100-fold profit, you must throw all benevolence, righteousness and morality behind your head. Where is the way to make money? In the criminal law! Okay, now let's turn to page 42 of the textbook and compare it with the handouts. I will tell you why being an outlaw can help you develop the economy."

Zhu Xianxi banged his head on the table and said, "I was careless. I was careless. I thought he was a fundamentalist who was studying Laozi and Zhuangzi, but I didn't expect that he was a modernist who was studying Laozi and Zhuangzi."

“Isn’t this a little too new?”

"This is so new! He really doesn't advocate destroying human society. He advocates that abundance can only be obtained by destroying order. Why do you want mammoths? As long as you are a lawless maniac, your mammoths are everywhere. As long as you are a lawless maniac, the world is rich for you, and there are opportunities to make money everywhere. It scares me to death! This is even scarier than the first level! If it goes on like this, I don't even dare to imagine what he will say when he talks about 'the sky is dead'!"

(End of this chapter)