I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 73: Farming and Fighting for Conscience

Gradually, the reputation of Liangzhuang for its high treatment and its reputation for its strong martial virtues spread.

It quickly spread in the Sanfu area, and then spread among the Qiang and Xiongnu tribes in the eastern part of Liangzhou and the northern part of Zuofengyi, and had great appeal to the lower-class Han, Qiang and Xiongnu people.

It even spread across the Qinling Mountains to Hanzhong, causing a small but obvious population siphoning phenomenon here.

What does this mean?
This shows that people vote with their feet.

Even though the famous Eastern Han general Duan Xing successfully suppressed the Qiang rebellion during the years when Yuan Shu was in mourning, the trend of a large number of "refugees" moving towards Liangzhuang did not change.

The Han-Qiang War, which lasted for a hundred years, came to an end in the early years of Jianning during the reign of Emperor Ling of Han through the violent means of Duan Xing.

Although this ending is unstable, it is similar to the extent that Captain Chang Kaishen nominally unified China after the Central Plains War.

But at least on the surface, the Qiang people no longer had the ability to threaten the Han Empire from a military perspective.

Duan Xing fought with the Qiang people for several years, engaged in more than a thousand battles, beheaded more than 30,000 people, and destroyed countless Qiang tribes. The Eastern Qiang who moved to Liangzhou surrendered, while the Western Qiang who remained in Qinghai were killed and were on the verge of death, making it difficult for them to seek justice.

Amid the rolling of heads, a terrifying peace finally arrived.

Although it is terrifying, it is indeed peaceful and there is no more war.

This fully demonstrates that war is indeed a major channel to peace. I don’t know whether I should be happy or sad.

But Yuan Shu was far from relaxing.

He doesn't know when the foreign invasion will come back and his teammates are always doing bad things, all of these make him very alert and vigilant.

Therefore, while strengthening his own military strength, Yuan Shu did not forget to consolidate his foundation in other aspects.

He recalled the nine-character mantra that Zhu Yuanzhang had used during his puberty.

Build walls high, accumulate grain, and slowly become king.

This is definitely the best development strategy when we are weak and the world is not changing. It is also the development strategy for the entire group at a macro level.

In addition, the eight-character mantra of determination, diligence, responsibility, and correction is also the personal cultivation strategy of the Yi Xin Hui, the ruling group under Yuan Shu, and has been repeatedly emphasized and actively promoted by Yuan Shu.

The Eight-Character Mantra is the guiding ideology for developing and maintaining the One Heart Society at the political and academic levels.

The Nine-Character Mantra is the guiding ideology for developing the practical affairs of the entire Liangzhuang, including the Yi Xin Society.

One is to train the breath internally, and the other is to train the muscles, bones and skin externally. They are interdependent and neither is indispensable.

So sometimes, Yuan Shu felt that what he was doing was a combination of Zhu Yuanzhang and Wang Yangming's ideas. He tied these two tough guys together and created his own unique governance system.

Youfufeng is vast and sparsely populated, with insufficient security and constant military threats. This is very conducive to the construction of self-protective farms such as Liangzhuang, and is very suitable for the limited reconstruction of the Qin State's farming and warfare system.

With the help of high-quality agricultural tools, sufficient oxen, and the development of water conservancy projects, it is possible to produce grain far exceeding the scale of other regions with a relatively small population.

With enough food, we can use it as a foundation to train soldiers and build our own base.

Moreover, Yuan Shu took over the academic status from Ma Rong. He had his own theoretical system based on psychology and his own school of thought. As long as his beliefs remained firm, there was no possibility of his ideological foundation being undermined and him surrendering directly.

On the contrary, this was very helpful for him to establish an idealistic country within a country based on the farming and warfare system, and to embark on a completely new path different from that of the Han and Qin dynasties.

Taking conscience and the unity of knowledge and action as the guiding ideology, improving the overly harsh, overly absolute and overly utilitarian Legalist political colors in the farming and warfare system may give it new life.

Yuan Shu is doing this now. Liangzhuang is his experimental field. Here he uses his understanding of the psychology system to improve the farming and warfare system so that the two can be compatible with each other.

The Legalists' farming and warfare system and the Qin Dynasty's military merit system were mutually reinforcing. In order to consolidate the results of the reform and fight against the old aristocracy, they were too obsessed with plunder and expansion.

With plunder and expansion as its underlying logic, it is naturally highly enterprising and aggressive. However, once plunder and expansion are no longer possible, the underlying logic of this model will collapse.

The reason for this is that this is a wartime logic. Everything is rooted in war. Once the war is over, the military merit group that replaced the old aristocracy as the largest interest group will have no source of interest.

Therefore, this system is bound to collapse and cannot be used to rule the country for long.

In practice, Yuan Shu adopted some rules and regulations and operating methods of the farming and warfare system to standardize the governance of Liangzhuang, established rules for Liangzhuang, registered households and all the people, so as to facilitate the most efficient use of people's manpower.

However, Yuan Shu modified the underlying logic of Liangzhuang's farming and warfare system to pursue conscience, and constructed a logical theory of "farming and warfare for conscience".

The old Qin people farmed and fought for military merit and titles.

Yuan Shu's farming and fighting were intended to implement the concept of pursuing conscience.

Farming is agricultural production and the most important conscience in the world. It is the concrete manifestation of Yuan Shikai’s emphasis on agriculture and also the greatest political correctness of Yuan Shikai’s philosophy of mind.

The purpose of the war was to protect agricultural production, safeguard conscience, eliminate the unscrupulous, and maintain a stable environment for agricultural production, which was also politically correct. Therefore, the underlying tone of Yuan's farming war was not aggression or plunder, but rather the dual political correctness of doing everything possible to protect and develop agricultural production.

War is not about killing, but about obtaining more land, cultivating it better, developing agricultural production better, obtaining more food, and achieving the high ideal of "no starving people in the world".

Yuan's war was to eliminate starvation in the world.

Yuan Shu elaborated on his own logical theory in detail at an internal propaganda meeting, and incorporated the theory of "farming and fighting for conscience" into Yuan's psychology system, making it one of the important methodologies for grassroots governance and mobilization, and was widely praised by members.

Fighting for selfish desires is unjust and incorrect. A warmongering nation will inevitably lead to its destruction.

However, fighting for agriculture, fighting for land, fighting for a world without starvation and for world peace, is absolutely right. It is a just war, a war of "benevolence and righteousness" that Mencius repeatedly emphasized.

They strongly support Yuan Shu's theory and believe that this theory should officially become the Han Dynasty's national governance theory in the future.

They farmed and fought at the same time, so that “there were no starving people in the world”, laying a solid material foundation for the highest ideal of “all under heaven as one family”.

At this point, in addition to the components of Yuan's philosophy of mind, such as pursuing conscience, integrating knowledge and action, helping farmers, and everyone becoming a sage, there is also the concept of "farming and fighting for conscience".

Following this series of ideological reforms, Yuan Shu focused on developing agriculture in Liangzhuang, invested a lot of resources in encouraging people to engage in farming and sericulture, continued to increase the land area of Liangzhuang, and accumulated a large amount of harvested grain and built many granaries.

In this regard, Yuan Shu and the farmers in Liangzhuang agreed that the imperial court's taxes would be levied strictly in accordance with the amount set by the imperial court. Liangzhuang would collect a fixed resettlement and protection fee, and the rest would belong to the farmers.

The more farmers grow, the more they can keep.

Therefore, the production enthusiasm of farmers in Liangzhuang is generally very high.

The Logistics Department followed Yuan Shu's instructions and purchased a batch of surplus grain from farmers at the market price, in addition to taxes and resettlement and protection fees.

Most of it is used for storage in case of "emergency".

A small portion is resold to people in need in various places.

The price of this batch of grain is not high, and it is at the level of stabilizing grain prices. In order to prevent people from arbitrarily raising grain prices, Liangzhuang's grain will be sold at a fair price wherever the grain price is high, to prevent the rise in grain prices and crack down on unscrupulous grain traders.

Since there is basically no money to be made in this situation, Yuan Shu can be considered to be doing good for the society, giving back to the society, carrying out his oath to follow his conscience and integrate knowledge and action, and helping farmers to the end.

In the past two years, no matter what happened in other places, at least in the Sanfu area, there was no unrest caused by soaring food prices.

Among them, Yuan Shu and Liangzhuang made great contributions.

Although it did not make any money, it gained fame, popularity, and people's hearts. After two years, even illiterate old farmers knew the names of Yuan Shu and Liangzhuang.

Therefore, Liangzhuang and the grain produced by Liangzhuang were extremely famous in the Sanfu area. The good reputation of Yuan Shu, the descendant of Ma Rong, who ran Liangzhuang to stabilize grain prices also spread throughout the Sanfu area, and even spread as far as Liangzhou, Shuzhong, and Guandong.

For Yuan Shu, these are actions to lay the foundation and consolidate the base. In order to make further progress in the future, the foundation must be consolidated now. If the foundation is not solid, the earth will shake.

As your reputation improves, your doctrine will become more and more famous, more widely known, and more and more easily accepted by people.

As the content of Yuan's philosophy of mind continued to be enriched, after Yuan Shu completed his masterpiece "On Knowledge and Action", he also officially gave the study of conscience the name "Xinxue" and raised its official banner.

This discipline has its origin in "Mencius", and its important textbooks include "Mencius Interpretation" written by Yuan Shu before Ma Rong's death and "On Knowledge and Action" written after Ma Rong's death, which has created a real academic group.

However, compared with the name of Xinxue, some people inside and outside the Yixin Society prefer to call this discipline "Yuanxue" to contrast it with Zheng Xuan's "Zhengxue" which is developing rapidly in Qingxu.

This group studies psychology, recognizes Yuan Shu's ideal of "rebuilding spiritual pillars and creating a better future", recognizes that the unity of knowledge and action is a way to test a student's learning outcomes, practices the concept of conscience, and has strong cohesion and action.

At least according to Yuan Shu's own judgment, there is no political and academic group in the entire Han Empire that is more cohesive and more motivated than his own Yi Xin Hui.

There used to be, but not anymore.

As a result, Liangzhuang has developed extremely rapidly in the past three years, and has even shown signs of surpassing Maoling County, a county with a long history.

Including most of the Yi Xin Hui members who reside in Liangzhuang, the total population of Liangzhuang now exceeds 70,000. Before Liangzhuang was established and developed, Maoling County had a population of just over 20,000.

At present, the population of Liangzhuang is larger than the original population of Maoling County. Strictly speaking, even if it is separated from Maoling County, Liangzhuang has the qualifications to become an independent county.

The key supporting facilities inside Liangzhuang are complete and have everything they need, just like a county-level society.

An idealistic county-level society based on a more moderate farming and warfare system.

A county-level society that is not poor at all and even has a high residents' happiness index.

From this small society, Yuan Shu saw infinite hope for the future.

With such hope, Yuan Shu spent the three-year mourning period which seemed long but was actually not long at all.

(End of this chapter)