I stole divine power in Daxia

Chapter 568 Shinto Core
"Yes, if the truth is not revealed, it is not enough to judge right from wrong."

On the main seat, the colorful light of the sun behind Zhou Tieyi's head grew brighter, showing his satisfaction with He Qigong's strategy.

Then he glanced at the two pacification envoys who were sealed, then looked at the other pacification envoys and Prince Ning, and said loudly, "God saves the world. In the past, the teachings of Shinto were all about God loving the world, but I think this is inappropriate."

When King Ning saw Zhou Tieyi's last gaze fall on him, he understood that he needed to ask questions. Of course, he was also very curious about how Zhou Tieyi would change this fundamental theory.

The foundation of God's love for the world in Shinto is almost as strong as the Confucian theory of "Mandate of Heaven". It is the source for God to explain his own legitimacy and why he governs mankind.

King Ning bowed and said, "I would like to hear your opinion."

Zhou Tieyi raised his eyes and looked down at the entire palace with golden and stone pillars and overlapping patterns. "Today, the Queen Mother and I had an argument. At that time, a minor official under the Queen Mother's seat said, 'Power comes from above', trying to express that thunder and rain are all grace from the emperor, but I replied, 'Power comes from above, and it wreaks havoc on those below', so now Yujing's financial system is in disarray."

Having said that, Zhou Tieyi paused, giving both his ministers and outsiders like King Ning time to think.

Of course, for everyone, from different perspectives, their understanding of the meaning is not exactly the same.

King Ning thought carefully for a long while, picked up the wine glass in front of him, "I heard He Sheng's 'God's Strategy' earlier and thought it was a good strategy, but compared with these eight characters, it is far inferior. The wisdom of the God is indeed as vast as a mountain and as deep as an ocean. I would like to pay my respects to him."

Prince Ning raised his glass, and immediately resolved the confrontation. However, his words were not entirely flattery, but came from his own perception. In terms of national policy, He Qigong's previous policy was far inferior to Zhou Tieyi's two strategies of heaven and man and the subsequent calculations, but it was enough to maintain peace in a corner and stabilize the current situation in Taihang Mountains.

The real national policy is what Zhou Tieyi wants to say now that "power lies with the upper class and tyranny lies with the lower class".

Considering the current situation in Tianjing, King Ning understood that Zhou Tieyi's words contained at least several aspects.

The first aspect is that, speaking from the perspective of a monarch, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the Queen Mother's use of cruel officials. Even if he affirms that power comes from the monarch and that the monarch is not to blame, the monarch also needs to govern the country through his "servants". If the "servants" cannot be effectively restrained in this process, then even the glorious and unimpeded power of the monarch will become a scourge that harms the people.

The second aspect is that from the perspective of Zhou Tieyi's identity as a "minister". If the minister recognizes that all power comes from the king, then if the king is moody and exercises power easily, causing the minister to be unable to sleep or eat, then will the minister still recognize the king's power?

Thirdly, from the perspective of the common people, Zhou Tieyi and the Queen Mother are both "superiors", and their struggle for power has directly led to the current fluctuations in the price of gold and silver in Tianjing, making the common people uneasy.

But the three different aspects ultimately come down to the issue of limiting power, which is an eternal political issue but rarely mentioned.

King Ning was very curious about how this issue could be combined with the fundamental Shinto theory of "God loves the world", which led to Zhou Tieyi's reform of Shinto theory.

Hearing Prince Ning compare his strategy with Zhou Tieyi's words, He Qigong was so shocked that a cold sweat broke out on his back. He quickly stood up, raised his glass and said, "Compared with the master, my intelligence is even greater than the gap between a firefly and the bright sun. How can I deserve the praise from Prince Ning? What I have achieved today is all the grace of the master."

He glanced at Prince Ning who had just raised his glass to make the atmosphere peaceful. This invisible murderous intent was the most deadly. If he had reacted a little slower just now and just understood Prince Ning's efforts to ease the atmosphere and accepted the comparison, even if Lord Zhou Tieyi would not have any grudges in his heart, didn't he see that Hong Yang, who had the look of an eagle and a wolf, and was already a second-rank god in the Divine Court, was looking at him with a faint smile?

This power struggle really cannot be neglected for a moment, even in a peaceful atmosphere. Thinking of this, He Qigong suddenly had a deeper understanding of how power is in the hands of the upper class and wreaks havoc on the lower class.

Zhou Tieyi chuckled and didn't care about the intrigues below. This was partly due to his subjective reasons. Even he himself could not avoid the saying "power comes from above and abuses those below".

But having it is one thing, and how to control it to a level that does not harm the regime is another. This is why he wants to talk about this matter in the Divine Court today.

The leader of any force may not be able to command troops, may not be an expert in logistics, and may not be able to make fair judgments, but he must not be without a strategic program. Especially during a period of huge power transformation, you need to let the smart people below understand what they are fighting for. You cannot simply bind people's hearts with favors or even benefits.

Zhou Tieyi returned to the previous question, "In my opinion, 'God loves the world' and 'rights come from above' are essentially the same. Neither of them explains the most core issue clearly, which is that both of them unilaterally believe that rights or obligations are unilateral and given without compensation. But the fact is that any unilateral and gratuitous giving cannot be maintained for a long time. Even if it is a favor, such giving will eventually lead to hatred."

“Therefore, there is a saying among the people: ‘A pinch of rice is a token of gratitude, a peck of rice is a token of resentment’ and ‘Giving a man a fish is worse than teaching him how to fish’. This is the truth.”

Although Ju Zidan has already achieved the first-grade "People's Livelihood" through the Divine Talisman of the Red Emperor, his way of achieving this is just like the great aspirations of Buddhism, which are all shortcuts. If he really wants to perfect this path, he still needs to practice it himself.

At this time, hearing Zhou Tieyi's explanation of the fundamental concept, he became more and more engaged, "So the Lord said before that 'power comes from the people', but he did not completely deny the existence of 'the Lord'."

Zhou Tieyi looked at Ju Zidan and asked with a smile, "The way of cultivation, starting from the third level, is the way of gathering all living beings. Even at the end, the saints can influence all living beings with a single thought. Since the existence of saints is reasonable and realistic, how can we deny the existence of 'above'? It's just that most of the previous theories only focused on 'above' and ignored 'below'." "Even if there are theories that see the people below, such as the Taoist saying that water stays below, so it is the best, but there is no dialectical explanation for the transformation relationship between the two. Therefore, Taoist practitioners eventually break away from the secular world and pursue self-transcendence. They gain great wisdom, but cannot deal with great stupidity. In the end, they can only call stupidity good, so there is the saying of abandoning saints and abandoning wisdom."

"But I don't think so. According to the Taoist method, managing a hundred people is the best strategy, managing a thousand people is the middle strategy, but managing ten thousand people is the worst strategy. If a hundred people want to live and work in peace and contentment, they only need to find a piece of Feng Shui treasure land with natural fertile soil. Everyone can cultivate and everyone can eat what they get."

"If a thousand people want to live and work in peace and contentment, a piece of land with good feng shui is far from enough. They need to reclaim farmland from the surrounding forests and build dams at the water sources. But the people who build the dams don't cultivate the farmland, so how do they get their food? Therefore, exchange is necessary. More complex production relations lead to more complex distribution relations. The labor paid is difficult to measure, so there is naturally a difference in the amount of food. Therefore, there is a gap between people and there is injustice."

"When 10,000 people want to live and work in peace and contentment, they have to continue to change the original natural environment and compete with wild animals for living space, so they need an army to protect property. The army controls force but not production. The distribution between the two is more complicated than the distribution between carpenters and farmers. Therefore, domination and exploitation are generated. This is determined by human development itself. We should not feel ashamed, but should objectively understand this process and find a solution. I call the above process "socialized division of labor". It is precisely because of the socialized division of labor that we have the current social structure. The more people there are in the world, the more complicated their demands are, and the more chaotic they are."

Zhou Tieyi smiled and looked at his subordinate gods, "I think you should know this better."

Cao Shan sighed, "It is indeed as the Lord said. I was just a fifth-rank minor god before, with only a few thousand followers, mostly chefs. All they asked for every day was that the fire would not go out today and the dishes would be delicious. Now I am honored to be the Lord of the Divine Court, sorting out the wishes of 100,000 followers. Their requests are so complicated that even gods like us are daunted."

Zhou Tieyi continued, "There are actually two solutions. One simple way is to ensure that the believers have their most basic living needs, and then let them spend the rest of their time praying to the gods. If we make their lives simpler, they will have fewer needs. If anyone objects, we can just use 'God loves the world' to attack them."

After hearing this, everyone's expressions changed from being fascinated to being stunned. They didn't expect that in the theory explained by Zhou Tieyi, the Taoist concept of abandoning wisdom and sainthood, which was considered to be the teachings of saints, actually had a certain coincidence with Shintoism.

But if you think about it the other way around, it seems to be somewhat correct.

Although the current Great Xia Dynasty looks down on Shintoism and does not believe in the theory that God loves the world, it also admits that the gods were once glorious and powerful for a period of time and that there are gods comparable to saints in the world.

Therefore, comparing the theory of God's love for mankind with the Taoist theory of abandoning wisdom and sainthood cannot be regarded as an insult to the doctrine. It can only be said to be a contest between two different concepts.

But unexpectedly, these two seemingly completely different concepts actually have the same foundation in Zhou Tieyi's analysis.

The two pacification envoys who were most opposed to Zhou Tieyi wanted to say that Zhou Tieyi was quibbling, but at the same time they also realized why Zhou Tieyi was unwilling to argue with them, because this set of "evil words" could really "confuse the people". Zhou Tieyi did not need all the people in Daxia to believe in his words, but only needed 20% of the people in Daxia to believe this passage, which would be enough to pose a fatal threat to Taoism, no less than the previous blow to Confucianism.

Fortunately, there is a second solution, King Ning thought in his heart with some relief. He also became more and more aware of how restrained Zhou Tieyi was and how much he had controlled his power in order to maintain the current situation.

"What about the second solution?"

King Ning asked.

Zhou Tieyi smiled and said, "In the process of optimizing the social structure and enlightening the wisdom of the whole people, there will indeed be what Taoists call intrigue and unfair distribution. But while we acknowledge that this is an objective fact, we must also take action to solve this problem, rather than just going with the flow like water."

"We must recognize that the optimization of social structure is directly and inevitably linked to social productivity. Each stage has its own corresponding supporting methods. Continuously improving and developing to adapt to the current social productivity is the core governance logic. Therefore, all great ways are easy and difficult. At the current stage, the people cannot have their own food, their own place to live, and their own benefits. Therefore, we need to gather the power of the people, so that all officials have their own power and the emperor has his own destiny. We need to gather thousands of wishes into one person's wish. This wish is that everyone in the world can be a scholar, have their own wisdom, work hard, make the country peaceful and the people safe, and make humanity prosperous."

When answering this question, Zhou Tieyi further elaborated on his philosophy and ambition that "everyone can be a scholar". He has always been closely related to humanity, so this statement naturally aroused a reaction from humanity.

Boundless human luck gathered from all directions, and the Taiyi Jade Disc behind his head, like the sun, shone brighter and brighter, allowing the fire of human inheritance to burn from the past to the present, and then penetrate into the future.

The illusory Taoist tradition emerged from Zhou Tieyi, but at this time it could no longer be described simply as "illusory", because everyone present could see that countless people lived in peace and contentment between high-rise buildings, traveling thousands of miles only required a day, and they had enough grains for three meals a day and enjoyed the prosperity of the country.

This is the general trend. Prince Ning resonates with Zhou Tieyi's Taoism. On the one hand, he feels extremely happy as if he could die in the evening after hearing the Taoism in the morning. But at the same time, he is also deeply worried about the future of Daxia. He really cannot imagine how Daxia can resist Zhou Tieyi, who has such a Taoism.

Zhou Tieyi gathered his own doctrine and continued, "So, whether God loves the world or power comes from above, it is essentially one-sided. Power comes from the people, and God also comes from the people. At the same time, the people elect the people, and God agrees with their hearts. The two complement each other and transform each other. This process has produced our current country and all the systems. If the gods abuse their power, it will naturally lead to the collapse of the country and the court of God. But if the people do not want to make progress and only want to cheat and play tricks, then the gods have the right to punish according to the laws of the country and the court of God."

After Zhou Tieyi finished explaining the core of his theory of gods, even the two people who opposed him the most remained silent for a long time. They really couldn't find a better reason to oppose, except to curse like a shrew to make themselves appear to be at a loss for words. It seemed that they had no choice but to go back and ask Confucian scholars to help them resolve this issue.

Zhou Tieyi continued, "Everyone, I have come to this point and explained my philosophy of governing the world. As the saying goes, people with different ideals cannot work together. If you agree with me, you can naturally help me. If you don't agree, you can just wait and see if I succeed or fail. Of course, if someone insists on his own way, doesn't agree with my ideas, and can't come up with a better solution, and just makes trouble, I will not hesitate to use thundering means!"

(End of this chapter)