My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 600: Do what you think is best.

In fact, a few years ago, Liu Rong had also held a few imperial examinations in a rather serious manner.

At that time, Liu Rong was not unaware that the Han Dynasty had too few scholars, knowledge was not yet widespread, and there might not even be a suitable environment for knowledge dissemination.

However, Liu Rong resolutely pushed the imperial examination system forward by hundreds or even thousands of years, bringing it onto the stage of Chinese history.

why?
Liu Rong's main purpose was certainly not to select officials.

There are only tens of thousands of scholars in the whole world, old and young. If you remove a group of bookworms and old pedants, it's unclear whether there are even 30,000 to 50,000 left.

What kind of selection process is this?
A decree should be issued to bring all those willing to serve as officials, thereby strengthening the central government's control over local areas and promoting centralized power. This is what Liu Rong should have done.

But Liu Rong still chose to take the imperial examination.

The purpose of doing this is to promote scholars and 'knowledge' through this almost transparent and tangible selection method that does not regard social status.

Liu Rong wanted to use the imperial examination to show the world that, besides joining the army, fighting on the battlefield, and making contributions, ordinary people did have another way to rise in society.

Especially for ordinary people and poor farmers, supporting a scholar is much easier than supporting a warrior or a fierce person who can achieve great things on the battlefield.

Again.

The cost of supporting a martial artist, especially a formidable warrior who can roam freely on the battlefield, is immense.

From childhood to adulthood, food, exercise, medicine, and famous figures are almost indispensable.

Taking time off work is a logical next step.

Such a training model is undoubtedly a pipe dream for a farming family that is barely making a living.

—A man who could have helped with farming is instead kept out of work from a young age and doesn't participate in any household labor, which is a huge cost in itself.

Not to mention the expensive meat, medicine, and the unlimited cost of renowned teachers—none of which are beyond the reach or even aspirations of the lower classes.

What's particularly problematic is that this training model doesn't guarantee that a powerful individual will emerge, achieve great success on the battlefield, and bring prosperity to the entire family.

Martial arts training requires a certain amount of talent.

Such a massive amount of resources, poured into this project over a decade or two, could potentially produce a brainless coward—a man all muscle and no brains, who would wet his pants on the battlefield.

Even if you're lucky enough to successfully train a fierce and brave person, they might still fail and die on the battlefield before they can achieve great things.

Therefore, for farmers at the grassroots level—and even for any family—this training model is one that requires extremely high investment and costs, but also offers extremely high returns if successful. At the same time, it carries extremely high risks, with a considerable probability of failure and extremely severe consequences if it fails.

The reason is very simple.

For a farming family to raise such a martial artist, it would likely require the combined efforts of several families, including brothers and sisters, who would endure years of hardship, often going hungry and patching up their own clothes, just to barely afford it.

The result has been given, but it might not be of any use.

Even if they are useful, they might die on the battlefield, making all the investment and hardship of the past ten or twenty years go to waste, not to mention losing a strong laborer.

The cost was too high and the risks too great; it was simply beyond the means of ordinary people to bear.

Even without training martial artists, the loss of a strong laborer in an ordinary farming family would severely damage their vitality, and might even lead to the destruction of the family!

A family, or even a clan, might dedicate everything for ten or twenty years, almost gambling with the fate of the clan, to train a martial artist, only to have that martial artist become cannon fodder on the front lines.

This lower limit is far too low and far too unacceptable.

In contrast, for people at the bottom of society, reading is not as risky.

Martial artists demand good food and drink, nutrition, renowned teachers, and weapons and armaments, with no room for negotiation.

Scholars don't have so many rules.

Pen, ink, paper and inkstone?

Would it work to write on the ground with that stick?

Expert guidance?

Is it permissible to climb over the wall and eavesdrop on the old scholar's chanting of scriptures?

There are ways to save money, or even acquire knowledge at almost zero cost.

Moreover, the consequences of 'whether or not one completes the training,' namely the upper and lower limits, are relatively easier for farmers to accept.

So what if you can't read it?

Whether you're an accountant or a letter writer, it's still a job.

At worst, even if one didn't actually finish their studies, it would only be a period of more than ten years of being off-the-job training.

Even if they can't read it anymore, they can still be brought back to help with farming and become strong laborers in the family again.

Surely not reading can kill a person just because they can't understand it?
This is often the case for ordinary people at the bottom of Chinese society.

They are the most honest, yet also the most shrewd, the most pioneering, and the most cautious group.

When you want to mobilize them and promise them great things, telling them things like "If you succeed, this and that will happen" or "If you succeed, this and that will happen" does have some effect.

But no matter how effective it is, it can't compare to saying: Even if it doesn't work out, there's still this or that.

Even if we fail, it won't be a big deal.

Just like in the later new era, the development of Cuju in China was dismal—the worse the development, the less parents wanted their children to play, and the fewer children played, which in turn led to the worse the development.

Why don't parents let their children kick?

Is it really because Chinese Cuju (ancient Chinese football) is not developing well that children don't have the opportunity to play in the World Cup or become world-class football stars?
However, that's not entirely true.

Often, when planning for the future of their children, Chinese people—especially those at the bottom—focus more on how low the lower limit is rather than how high the upper limit is.

If you tell a Chinese parent that their child has talent and that as long as they learn Cuju (ancient Chinese football), there is a high probability that they will become a star player, they might be tempted, but they will still be cautious.

But if you tell them: I'll take your child to train, and even if he doesn't improve, I can still guarantee his academic performance and ensure he gets into university, then the parents will most likely stop objecting.

Ultimately, the grassroots people of China are an extremely realistic group.

They might dream of a windfall, but they would never make a huge investment for such a vague and uncertain possibility.

They fantasize about winning the lottery, but they would never sell their house to gamble it all.

They dream of making a fortune, but they would never take the plunge.

They always leave themselves and their children a way out, and then tell themselves: if all else fails, at least there's always another option.

On the positive side, this caution has created a level of risk resistance among the lower classes of Chinese society that is far beyond their means, given their social status and the social resources they control.

From a negative perspective, this can also be considered a cognitive limitation.

However, you absolutely cannot say that they are ignorant or lack perspective.

The reason they have been able to pass on their lineage from generation to generation, and to ensure the continuation of the Yan and Huang bloodlines for five thousand years, is precisely because of this instinctive caution in leaving themselves a way out. Always leaving themselves a way out and never pushing their own path to its limits is the fundamental reason why the Chinese nation has been able to endure.

For Liu Rong, studying was the path to upward mobility that was low-risk, low-cost, and with less severe consequences of failure that he found for the Chinese nation and the common people of the Han Dynasty in this era.

—Martial arts practitioners cannot be cultivated by the common people.

Training a martial artist who ends up filling the meat grinder on the front lines is an unbearable price for the common people.

But scholars and people from the lower classes can still afford to be educated if they grit their teeth.
Scholars who failed to achieve their goals were ultimately forced to return to the fields and become farmers again, a fate that was relatively easier for the lower classes to bear.

The former is no less than investing everything to train a gladiator who could die at any moment—it's pure gambling.

The latter involves having a male employee take a break from work for over a decade to try it out, and if all else fails, to return everything to its original state.

In this era—an era in which scholars were scarce and the imperial examination system had no foundation—Liu Rong's determination to hold the imperial examinations still stemmed from this very purpose.

A reminder to those at the bottom of society: education can also lead to success.

Raising a son to be a scholar is not that costly, that risky, or that disastrous if he fails.

If the goal is achieved and all the people of the world become aware of this, then Liu Rong will have successfully completed the first step.

Once this first step is taken, the second and third steps will naturally follow.

When the whole world realizes that there is a way out called 'cultivating scholars', at least a small number of people will try it.

Today, there are more than five million households in the Han Dynasty. Even if only one out of every hundred households dares to try, there are still 50,000 households.

As the saying goes: even if a genius is one in ten thousand, there are still 130,000 in the new China.

Even if only one person from a hundred households is lucky enough to be selected, the Han Dynasty could still have as many as 50,000 people.

As long as these 50,000 people begin to study with the support of their families and clans, Liu Rong is confident that in the next few decades, he can bring more than half of them into the Han Dynasty's official system.

Then, people at the bottom who see the benefits will spontaneously and more actively try it.

The number of scholars is increasing, the quality of officials is improving, the country is becoming stronger, the central government is becoming wealthier, and the treatment of officials is getting better and better...

Once this virtuous cycle is established, Liu Rong will not worry about the future, as China will no longer lack 'scholars who can become officials'.

Unfortunately, Liu Rong's wishful thinking ultimately could not withstand the relentless march of time.

—The dissemination of knowledge had no fertile ground in the Han Dynasty at that time.

Firstly, paper was not yet widely available and could not become a medium for 'popularizing and disseminating knowledge'.

Secondly, the limitations of the era meant that the monopoly of knowledge by academic cliques and nobles remained in an unshakable, primitive stage.

The nobles and academic cliques simply did not realize that knowledge needs to be disseminated to become more valuable.

They narrowly believed that since only their family possessed this book, any future ruler who needed its contents would have to rely on their family.

Those who possess knowledge keep it hidden, while the common people pursue education in five different subjects. Even with Liu Rong's divine vision and his ability to see the future, he doesn't have a good way to deal with them.

— Forcing a cow to drink water will either drown it or cause it to gore you to death.

The same principle applies to matters of national importance.

No matter how correct or positive a policy may be, if it lacks the necessary conditions for implementation and widespread acceptance, forcibly pushing it out will only lead to two consequences.

Either the policy has been distorted, deviating from its original intention, resulting in a counterproductive outcome and good intentions gone wrong.

Just like Wang Anshi's reforms a thousand years later, the starting point was so great that it couldn't be greater, but the result was so absurd that it couldn't be more absurd.

Or, it could lead to a strong backlash from vested interest groups—such as Liu Rong's death and the end of his policies, or even being purged in reverse, or having his history reversed by future high-ranking officials.

Left with no other choice, Liu Rong even began to appreciate the virtues of Confucianism.

No matter how much you argue, no matter how many times you say Confucianism is wrong or bad, you can never truly discredit Liu Rong's principles of "education for all."

Especially in this era of severe knowledge monopoly, where it is even generally considered 'as it should be', the fact that Confucianism can shout this slogan and put it into practice undoubtedly demonstrates its unique vision and foresight.

Although there was only one Confucian school, Liu Rong didn't particularly like it;

But it's okay.

The existence of Confucianism provided Liu Rong with a starting point, or rather, a 'lack of thread,' to solve this problem and untangle this tangled mess.

—The worst thing is comparison.

Just like companies in later generations, if everyone just gives up and does nothing, they might still be able to live in peace.

But once a "king of rolls" appears, everyone will have to roll whether they want to or not.

Because there is a comparison.

Because of this reference point, the boss realized that you were just slacking off.

This fish, no matter what, is simply impossible to touch...

Confucianism~

"Um……"

Having made a general plan in mind, Liu Rong no longer hesitated and immediately summoned several Confucian scholars and masters who were qualified to represent Confucianism to the court for an audience in an informal oral manner.

Among these people, some were in Chang'an—such as Gongsun Hong and Dong Zhongshu;

Some were in Guandong, such as Yuan Gusheng, Lu Shenggong, and Hu Wusheng.

Liu Rong summoned these people not because he had nothing better to do, but to make an example of them. By praising the Confucian school's merit in educating all without discrimination, he wanted to force other schools of thought to learn from the Confucian educational philosophy of "education for all".

Liu Rong knew that this approach might not succeed, and even if it did, the results might not be very good.

But Liu Rong didn't care.

For feudal emperors, whether something could succeed or be effective was not a question they needed to consider beforehand.

It's not even a problem that needs to be reflected on afterward.

If things don't work out in the future, Liu Rong won't reflect on whether he should have done it in the first place.

Instead, he would sternly rebuke other schools of thought: "I've already spoken so bluntly, how dare you still be so disrespectful?!"
OK!

You are all not subjects of the Han Dynasty!
I'm angry!!!

You guys figure it out yourselves!

Liu Rong was certain that as long as he could utter such a sentence, then the concept of "education for all" would no longer be a unique educational philosophy of Confucianism.

The Hundred Schools of Thought were all just a bunch of plagiarism!
They copied everything else, so how could they leave out something as rare, positive, and beneficial to China as 'education for all'?
(End of this chapter)