My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 367: Rewarding the Good and Punishing the Evil, Rewarding Merits and Punishing Demerits

To put it bluntly, in terms of "rewarding merits and punishing faults", the most fundamental difference between nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization is that nomadic civilization attaches too much importance to obligations, especially natural obligations;

At the same time, people take rights too lightly, especially rights earned through hard work.

Slaves are born to a life of toil and hopelessness;
It is natural for herders to be self-sufficient and provide for the rulers;
A warrior is born to fight bravely against the enemy while also taking care of his own survival.

and many more.

In contrast, agricultural civilization has abandoned many obligations of "some people are born to be this or that", while at the same time fully recognizing the correctness of various classes and groups striving for their rights and interests through acquired efforts.

—Aristocrats may be born aristocrats;
But if he doesn't know how to restrain himself, there may come a day when he will no longer be a noble.

—Peasants may be born farmers;
But as long as he is diligent enough and seizes opportunities, he may become rich and even become a noble or prime minister.

In fact, the advancement of agricultural civilization compared to nomadic civilization is not a comparison of the advancement between different civilizations, but the relative advancement of different stages of civilization.

To be more precise: it is not the nomadic civilization that is backward, but the civilization process that nomadic civilization has reached at its current stage of development - slavery.

That’s right;

The present-day Huns, and even many nomadic civilizations thousands of years later, are, in fact, still in the backward slave society in their civilization process.

In contrast, Chinese civilization has begun the process of developing from a slave society to a feudal society almost since the beginning of historical records.

By now, the Han Dynasty had completely entered a feudal society.

Indeed, whether it is the past thousands of years, the present Han Dynasty, or even the next thousands of years, Chinese civilization still has remnants of slave society to varying degrees.

But what is undeniable is that no matter how many or how few these "residues" are, they are always residues, not the main body.

From this perspective, everything becomes understandable.

——The Chinese agricultural civilization also experienced a slave society.

At that time, the Chinese civilization, which was in the slave society stage, was not much more advanced than the Huns today or other nomadic civilizations in later generations.

As for the lower classes, the Chinese rulers at that time also overemphasized natural obligations and firmly denied the correctness of striving for rights acquired after birth.

Sayings like "a dragon gives birth to a dragon, a phoenix gives birth to a phoenix, and a mouse's son will dig holes" also began to appear in that era.

However, after going through an entire slave society process, Chinese civilization discovered through summary and induction that such a social system had major problems.

Slaves are born slaves and always will be slaves;

So they have no pursuit and no vision for the future.

Therefore, in social production activities, they have no desires or demands, and even the most basic desire for survival is always hovering between having and not having.

A setback that is apparently too small to be any smaller may very likely make them have negative thoughts like "Forget it, I might as well just die."

The reason is that there is nothing worth lingering in this life where they can neither move forward nor take a step back.

But from slaves up one level, the situation is much better.

——Farmer.

As a class group that is equally miserable but has basic human rights, occupies an important part of civilization and accounts for the vast majority of its members, peasants are undoubtedly more motivated than slaves.

Although, like slaves, peasants were born peasants and could never advance further to join the ranks of the nobility, there was one crucial difference between them and the lowest level of slaves.

——Slave, I have hit rock bottom.

No matter how badly you play, it's just a dead end;

There was no lower class, no worse situation, threatening the slaves to "work hard or things will get worse."

But farmers are different.

As individuals with human rights, farmers need to work hard in exchange for enough food to survive.

At the same time, as the second-to-last class in the social class pyramid, there is also a slave class at the bottom, which "threatens" the peasants at all times.

——Farm well!
——Otherwise you will become a slave!
This sense of urgency, and the threat that 'things may get worse', forces farmers to live more actively and engage in social production activities.

To describe the farmers at that time, we can use a phrase that people in later generations often use: working hard will definitely not make the situation better, but not working hard will definitely make the situation worse!
So, the peasants worked hard and toiled all their lives, giving everything they could to maintain their identity as "peasants" and to ensure that they would not fall to the lowest level of slaves.

After discovering this, the rulers began to think.

——Since slaves have no initiative, the main body of society cannot be composed mainly of slaves;

Otherwise, the entire society will be like a walking corpse with no enthusiasm and no sense of urgency. Not to mention whether there is progress or not - just the inheritance and maintenance of civilization will become a big problem.

Therefore, the main body of society must be changed from slaves without desires to farmers with pressure and motivation.

Thus, the slave society that had lasted for thousands of years came to an end, and the feudal agricultural society officially arrived.

This stage probably occurred in the early Zhou Dynasty and was still in the early stages of feudal civilization.

It was not until the Zhou Dynasty became weak and Chinese civilization experienced the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period that an opportunity for progress from the early feudal civilization to the middle feudal civilization appeared.

This opportunity came from the Qin Dynasty's reforms.

——Before the Qin Dynasty's reforms, not only Qin, but all countries in the world still agreed to the way of governing the people of "only talking about obligations, not rights".

Although the main body of society has changed from former slaves to equally lowly and poor peasants who have some human rights, the core of the ruling ideology is still that of the slave society.

You should farm!
You have to sell the grain you grow to me no matter how much I pay!

The war has started, and you have to go to the battlefield if I tell you to!
If you die after the battle, it is bad luck for you;
If you are lucky enough to survive, you deserve to be disabled, and if you are healthy, you are just lucky.

Anyway, the war is over, go back to farming your land and continue to support the nobles...

From this line of thinking, it is not difficult to find that: in fact, nothing has changed.

It is said that it was the early stage of feudal civilization, and that the main body of society changed from slaves to peasants, but in fact nothing changed.

The lowest class in society, although they have their own land, still have to pay high taxes to the ruling class;
Although they have a certain degree of human rights and autonomy, they still cannot fully control their own lives and bodies.

——Hundreds of years ago, nobles made slaves cultivate the land; now, nobles make peasants cultivate the land.

——Hundreds of years ago, nobles used slaves to fight in battles;
Now, the nobles sent peasants to the battlefield.

Slaves in the past were not well fed or well clothed, and the same is true for farmers today.

In the past, slaves often died violently on the battlefield, with their lives and deaths controlled by the nobles at all times. The same is true for farmers today.

It is as if the entire Chinese nation has merely changed the name of "slavery" to "feudalism", which sounds a little better, but the essence is not any different at all;

And the "slaves" at the bottom of society simply changed their names to better-sounding ones: farmers.

It was not until Shang Yang came to Qin and carried out reforms that Chinese civilization began to think again and realize this.

--yes!
——This so-called feudal system is nothing but slavery with a fig leaf!
——It’s just the same old story, different soup!
And the peasants are clearly just slaves with a different name!

This……

There won't be any problems, right?

The vast majority of people believe that nothing will go wrong.

In their view, the once lowly slaves have now become farmers who can own their own land, marry and have children independently. This is the greatest "gift" that can be achieved.

Having received such a blessing, farmers dare not have any greater greed and should just farm honestly.

When they were full, they would share some of the food for the nobles to enjoy in luxury;
Even if you are not full, you still have to pay tribute.

As for starving to death after paying tribute?
Okay, I get it. Just starve to death at home, but don't die at my doorstep and cause me trouble...

That is, when the vast majority of people were not aware of the problem, or even if they were aware of the problem, they were not far from solving it, the appearance of Shang Yang once again verified the value of that famous saying.

——The truth is often only in the hands of a very small number of people.

By summarizing past experiences, especially the problems that arose in Chinese civilization during its development process from a slave society to the early feudal society, Shang Yang finally discovered that the problem in a slave society was that slaves had unlimited obligations but no rights at all.

The reason why people in the early feudal civilization since the Zhou Dynasty felt that peasants were just slaves with a different name is that the obligations of peasants in feudal society were not much less than those of slaves in slave society.

At the same time, the rights that peasants had in feudal society were not much more than those of slaves in slave society.

Land ownership?
Useless!
Maybe one day, the king will grant me and my land to some nobleman as a 'fief'!

What is the difference between this and the past when slaves were given by their masters to another nobleman?
The right to marry and the right to reproduce?

Well, this one does have a little bit of use.

But the problem is: I myself am a poor man who writes like a peasant and reads like a slave;
Aren't the offspring I give birth to still slaves of you noble lords?
Therefore, under this system, the only thing that supports farmers to work hard to live, rather than completely becoming zombies like slaves, is simply a sense of urgency that "if you don't work hard, you will become a slave."

In order to strengthen this sense of urgency, the rulers even constructed a whole theoretical system to force the peasants to avoid becoming slaves.

There are three kinds of unfilial behavior, and the worst is to have no descendants.
What do you mean by being a slave and going to the underground to not be able to face the ancestors?
The purpose of instilling values ​​at many levels is to enable farmers to actively participate in production activities.

And in the process, the peasants became slaves with a little dignity;
As for the remaining slave class, they became the chicken that the nobles used to scare the monkeys and warn the peasants.

--have a look!
——If you don’t work hard and become a slave, this is what will happen to you!
From a certain perspective, the remnants of slavery in Chinese feudal society may exist precisely because of this need.

The rulers need to use the existence of slaves to constantly warn the peasants of what a terrible outcome it would be to fall into depravity.

In the process of thinking about this problem, Shang Yang noticed that the most basic human nature makes everyone yearn for a better life.

It is not endless desire, but just the simplest one: the yearning for a better life.

For example, if you give a slave a chance to become a farmer, he can wield a hoe and a wooden spear on the battlefield and fight desperately with the enemy nobles who are fully armored!

A peasant, as long as he is given the possibility of having enough food to eat and warm clothes to wear, he would dare to plot against the monarch of the enemy country!
And this does not require you to make a promise or put it into action that all slaves will become peasants or all peasants will become nobles.

Just leaving a gap so that slaves and peasants can have a one percent or even one thousandth chance of achieving class advancement is enough to mobilize the enthusiasm of the entire group.

Slaves would not say: Among a hundred slaves, only the most diligent one can become a farmer. The chance is too small, so I won’t do it.
Instead, I would say: As long as I work hard enough, that spot will definitely be mine!

The peasants would not say: It takes a hundred of us to kill one enemy noble. How many people will die?
Instead, I would say: That nobleman’s head must be mine!

The military merit will definitely be mine, and I will definitely be the one who succeeds!
Thus, after Shang Yang's twenty years of reform in Qin, the once poor and weak Qin, in just one twentieth of the time of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, had the potential to completely unify the world!

The Qin people, who once engaged in private fighting but feared the thought of war, now became the ferocious Qin army that terrified the entire Guandong area!

Qin Nong, who used to be muddle-headed and unable to even fart, has become an enterprising radical who is always ready to kill the enemy, make meritorious contributions, and move up the social ladder.

At this time, Chinese civilization finally realized that there was a difference between feudal society and slave society.

What the peasants need is not only the punishment of "if you don't work hard, you will become a slave", but also the reward of "if you work hard, you will become a noble".

Since then, the idea of ​​clear rewards and punishments has become mainstream and has become the most core component of the Chinese civilization's ruling machine.

Rewarding good and punishing evil, rewarding merits and punishing faults, has also become the most advanced ideological concept in the feudal society of agricultural civilization.

The real backwardness of nomadic civilization, on the one hand, is that at this stage, it is still in the slave society period. It is the process of civilization, not the backwardness of civilization itself.

On the other hand, the transience, volatility and resulting non-sustainability of nomadic civilization made it difficult for it to enter a more advanced feudal civilization after hundreds or thousands of years of accumulation and development.

——It is like the former overlord Donghu, who was replaced by the Xiongnu people today before they realized the disadvantages of slave society;

According to the original historical process, the Xiongnu people, who had been strong for more than fifty years, would decline within the next thirty years and lose their status as a unified regime of nomadic civilization.

Later generations such as the Xianbei, Tatar, Mongols, and Jurchens basically repeated this cycle.

——A unified regime was established, became strong, declined, and collapsed.

In this process, nomadic peoples have never - never - had the awareness similar to that of the Chinese agricultural civilization to reflect on the gains and losses of previous dynasties, preserve the achievements of previous dynasties, and promote social progress.

Therefore, Chinese civilization has a history of 5,000 years. Even though there is a 300-year dynasty cycle, which makes civilization repeatedly experience the turmoil of changing dynasties, the entire civilization process is still spiraling upward and advancing;
On the other hand, nomadic civilization is a spiral, always going in circles.

Almost every unified regime of a nomadic civilization has completely retraced the path of its predecessors - without learning any lessons from the collapse of the previous dynasty, and ultimately becoming the previous dynasty that the next regime disdains to learn from or reflect on.

It was not until modern times that the Industrial Revolution completely liberated productivity and nomadic civilization completely withdrew from the stage of history.

(End of this chapter)