The greatest vanity of humans is to override all the others and become an emperor, or a new human God-the course of Western Civilization

preface

This is the third subsection of section 3,” Greedy and degenerate of human nature” of Chapter 1, “Religion and life,” in the first part of “The History of Western Civilization”. I renamed it “To helm over the U.S., become mentors, is the impetus for Obama and the D.E.M. to form a big government”. This article discusses that the greatest greed and degeneration of humans is vanity, face, and a man of surpassing others, The pleasure of being above others, for this reason, urges humans to conquer the world and become the emperor over thousands of people. This is also the fundamental reason why human society often falls into autocracy and monarchy. Vanity is also the reason why Obama, Biden, and the Democratic Party of the United States are trying to form a big government. They want to control American society, control everything in the United States, become masters, mentors, and turn into leaders and new God of humans. We can see that everything the Obama ,Biden ,Democratic administration has done is taking any reason to control, whether it is climate change theory, clean energy, or mandatory vaccines? They are all for coercion, control, and control of society and the lives of Americans with lofty, classy high-sounding reasons.

This section also discusses that China’s Confucianism is extremely mature and is the greatest secular theory because it is in line with the hierarchical pyramid structure of secular society. It takes the emperor and bureaucratic class as the spire; their number is small, arranged downward according to the level, the number is increasing, and the bottom is countless people who have been cruelly exploited

The greatest vanity of humans is to override all the others and become an emperor, or a new human God

In addition to these three deadly things, there is also a fatal thing I left here to emphasize. That is, reputation is far more harmful than other sensual pleasures. People use other pleasures of the body to enjoy themselves. The consequences are just entertainment to death due to excessive indulgence at most. It only harms them individually, affects their family and friends as much, and can’t hurt others, But reputation is different. It may even damage the whole society and humans.In fact, reputation is actually the face we often talk about in our lives, a kind of vanity, a so-called feeling of superiority over others. It is also what the Chinese people often say. ” Only those who endure the most should become the highest”; “No gains without pains”, and others. Our secular life pursues excellence and superiority. These all belong to reputation, vanity, and face. The most common topic we chat about is that we are richer than Zhang San, possess rank higher than Li Si, have children smarter than Wang Wu’s, and so on. We enjoy the pleasure of superiority.

My fellow-townsman Lin Yutang says the following about vanity and face, “face can’t be translated and defined. It is like honor but not honor; it cannot be bought with money; it can give men or women a real sense of pride. It is empty, men fight for it, and many women die for it. It is invisible; it can exist only by showing to the public. It lives in the air, but people can’t hear its respected, solid, reliable voice. It doesn’t obey reason but obeys habit. It prolongs the lawsuit, bankrupts the family, and leads to murder and suicide. And it can also make an unrighteous person get righteous due to the reprimand of fellow villagers. It is more valuable than any other secular property. It is more powerful than fate and grace and more respected than the constitution. It often determines the victory or defeat of a military operation, It can overthrow a government ministry, and the Chinese live on such vanity. “① There are many misunderstandings about my fellow-townsman Lin Yutang. I’ll say a few more words here to recover his good name. Most people think he specializes in writing essays about elegant life and leisure life, but he refuses that. In “art of living”, he talked more about philosophical thinking and always thought he was a thoughtful and profound writer. It’s a pity that many people haven’t read his book “art of living.” I happened to see it at a reading party merely, but I can say for sure that Lin Yutang is beyond a writer who specializes in leisure and elegant life. From the above notion, we can see that his thought is exceptionally profound.

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When we observe carefully, we find that vanity is derived from comparing with other people. Only when we are connected with others can we have vanity. If there are no others as references, there will be no vanity. Sartre said that ‘others are hell’. Of course, the premise of ‘others are hell’ is others are better than you. If you are more excellent than others, then others are not hell but a poor reference. You can see that the pursuit of vanity is an infinite process, and you can never be satisfied because sometimes human’s vanity extends to thousands of generations. Hence, the world is equivalent to having an unlimited number of others. Indulgence can lead to death, but vanity is never-ending. There is never an end to our pursuit of being superior to others because the body can’t limit our vanity at all; that is, people often say, “how big the heart is, how wide the world. “

Since the vanity is a relationship with others, a feeling of being superior to others, and the pursuit of vanity is endless and never feels satisfied. When thinking about the relationship between people in our secular society, you will first find a creepy thing. The biggest vanity in the relationship between people is to make others surrender and become slaves. The biggest vanity is the unequal state in the relationship between people, which can make people feel the greatest pleasure.This is the fact in real life. The victorious tribe in the primitive society reduced the defeated tribe to enslaved people. It was normal for ancient society to plunder slaves through war. Ancient Rome developed and grew by plundering slaves through continuous war. It proves that humans have regarded other people’s enslavement as a complete conquest since ancient times and have pursued the maximum human vanity of being superior to others all along. It can be imagined that owning a slave who is extremely loyal to you and considers everything for you is more worth flaunting than owning a loyal dog.

Many people are strange that slavery still appeared in southern American plantations in the 18th century. Isn’t human development linear? First, human development is not linear but repeated. There are also many slaves in China’s so-called feudal society, but we deliberately ignore them. The maid-servants and official slaves in film, television, and novels are some kinds of slaves. Second, slavery is always an ideal system hidden in the hearts of many people and will often appear in human life. Looking at today’s North Korea, what is the difference between North Korean society and slavery? Moreover, North Korean society is more advanced than ancient slavery. Through modern technology of brainwashing, people can become slaves voluntarily. There is no sense of resistance, and even whips and chains don’t need. Isn’t this the repetition of slavery, and the slavery emerges in a higher form? It should point out here that another system in ancient society was primitive democracy, which was also an ideal system in the hearts of humans. Compared with slavery, one represented the evil of human nature, and the other represented the good left in the heart of humans. Democracy was used inside the tribe, and slavery was used outside the tribe. Humans always struggled and repeated between the two systems representing the extremes of good and evil; human history is far from the so-called linear development.

When we get back to the topic and infer, we will find that since vanity is endless, we will soon be dissatisfied with the slavery that only makes tens of thousands or even millions of people become slaves. We also want all other people to become our slaves, and we become the masters of all people. This seems an ultimate vanity and dream of humans, that is, the emperor of China. However, this is also far from the human ultimate vanity and dream because we still want to descend the emperor’s throne to our generations. Hence, no one knows what human ultimate vanity and dream are? In fact, the emperor’s dream is yet the dream of each of us. Even today, many advertisements still advocate imperial enjoyment, royal treatment, secret palace recipe, and so on, all of which expose the emperor’s dream in everyone’s hearts. So many people hit the roads to conquer other people for this ultimate dream and embark on a long journey for this ultimate human vanity. It first combined many clans into one tribe and then merged many tribes into one vassal state. Finally, countless vassal states united an imperial dynasty, which was also the forming process of the Xia Dynasty, the earliest dynasty. Each process was full of bloody killings, and the river ran blood because everyone wanted to be the emperor of all and master anyone else; I didn’t know what to do except blood killing.

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Many people think that my inference from human vanity to the certainty of the emperor lacks reasonable. Is the jump in the process too big? Then let me explain slowly. During the spring and Autumn periods and the Warring States period of Chinese history, only seven countries in the Warring States period left from more than 100 vassal states in the spring and Autumn period. Everyone thought it was very natural, but why didn’t you ask further? Theoretically, If more than 100 countries defied war, would it be better for everyone to live together peacefully and work comfortably? But everyone knows this is impossible; we all believe it is natural for a big country to annex a small or weak country. We all feel other than that things are strange, so no one thinks deeply about this? However, if you ponder the reasons behind the annex? Will you find that conquering the world is the emperor’s dream exactly? Moreover, the emperor’s dream is not only his own domination of the world but descends to thousands of generations, that is, the dream of hegemony for thousands of years. Ordinary people, unless they are brain dead, no one wants to break out war because they would sacrifice themselves or their brothers and sons on the battlefield and destroy their own estates and properties. As a bureaucratic class, for their own interests to get a share of the conquering neighboring countries, they may have the motivation to launch a war, but in most cases, this motivation is under enough. As an official, it is better to do less than more. Even if you win, it may not be good because high achievements always make your boss feel uneasy or insecure and lead you to death; the consequences will worsen if you lose. Therefore, the main driving force for initiating annexing warfares comes from the king, but why did the king launch the war? Few people can compete with a king, especially a powerful king in the world, in terms of material living conditions and social status. Why did they waste lives and money to annex and conquer neighboring countries?Why?It’s just for the dream of an emperor conquering the world and the dream of being an overlord for thousands of years. From my analysis, it should be very clear that the vanity of humans is the main reason for giving birth to the emperor. It can be added here that when the dynasty Qin annexed the six countries, Qin Shihuang used the military merit badge system, which enfeoffed land according to the size of military merit and encouraged soldiers to fight and loot on the battlefield. However, it was Qin Shihuang who introduced this system. Qin Shihuang initiated this system for his future hegemony, and he slowly recovered the land to the country after unifying the world. It also can be seen that the motivation for annexing the six countries came from him, not others.

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In fact, the wisdom of China’s secular society is unparalleled. Chinese thinkers have long recognized that the monarchy is the most reasonable system because countless bloody battles have proved that humans pursue ultimate vanity, making other people subjects and slaves and making themselves emperors. Nothing can stop the greedy human nature at all, and nothing can keep humans from rushing to this goal, the throne of emperors. Since it can’t stall the birth of the emperor, why not clarify the rationality of the monarchy and establish an emperor early so that living beings can be saved from being burned to the ground. Chinese thinkers have long recognized that only an emperor’s society can be free from the scourge of war and is the most stable society. There are no two suns in the sky or two emperors on the earth.Therefore.Guan Zi said, “a person who is an emperor stems from the origin of all things, and the officials’ position is also.” Han Feizi said, “Tao is different from all things, virtue is other from negative and positive, balance is different from weight, inked lines are different from shape. And tuner is different from dry and wet; a king is different from all officials. All these six, from which the Tao comes out. “Since the monarch is directly generated from the Tao, it is inevitable that the monarch surpasses all his subjects.②

Confucianism strengthens the monarchy from the most natural and empirical view. From the common sense of blood and human relations, Confucianism concludes that the difference between humans and animals is’ ceremony ‘. ” What is ‘ ceremony ‘? noble and humble are different, old and young are dissimilar, and the distinct of weight and light, rich and poor are also unlike “. On this basis, Confucianism comes to a conclusion that “monarch, emperor, minister, subject, elder, father, younger, son”, “wives are the helper of husbands, sons are the assistant of fathers, Ministers are the aide of monarchs”.There are many specific contents of rites. In short, the most basic spirit of Confucianism is “three cardinal principles and five permanent principles” , that is, respect the authority of parents absolutely. Confucianists believe that, compared with ministers, sons, and wives, monarchs, fathers, and husbands all have the identity of parents. Among them, monarchs are the largest parents in the whole society, “the son of heaven is the parent of the world,” and husband power is another form of expression of parents’ authority. Parents at all levels have unique supreme authority within their own jurisdiction. As Xunzi said, “the king is the prosperity of the country; The father is the prosperity of the family, ” .He emphasized that “there are no two skies, no two kings for the people, no two monarchs for the country, no two authorities for the family, and only one rule”.③ From these discussions, we can see the greatness of Confucianism, which can be said to accord with our secular experience completely. A family has a few people at least or dozens of people at most, but the father is the supreme authority in any case. Only such a family can be stable and orderly. And society is similar to these; society must also have ultimate authority. So that society can be stable and orderly. This supreme authority is the emperor. This deduction process is extremely natural, reasonable, and irrefutable.

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Moreover, as far as our eyes can see in our lives, the world is in perfect order. The sea, Yangtze River, rivers, and streams are well ordered from large to small. The towering forest, tall and strong trees, and graceful small trees are best orders alike. Every Monkey herd has a monkey king in the animal world, and the monkeys under it also have a hierarchy. Every honeycomb has a queen bee, while male and worker bees are arranged around her in rank, with the same strict hierarchy. There are plenty of such phenomena, which I will not list here. All prove that the Confucian hierarchy and monarchy are extremely natural and reasonable theories. Therefore, Confucianism puts a gentle veil on the monarchy that pursues the ultimate human vanity through these common human relations principles.

In addition, giving the emperor the hugest vanity of the emperor, Confucianism also satisfied the vanity of the bureaucratic class, the elites who assisted the emperor in his governance. Then, “men and women are distinguished from one another, and there is an orderly hierarchy of superiority and inferiority”.Confucius’s “Book of Rites” stipulates this hierarchy system, specifying each level’s etiquette, clothing, and pomp. ④Therefore a pyramid-shaped hierarchical structure is produced; each elite occupies his own position according to virtue and ability. Under each level, there are inferior levels as reference objects to set off elites’ superiority. No other country ever has another book to describe and regulate the hierarchical system in such detail. Therefore, I have always stressed that Confucianism is the greatest secular theory of humans. At the bottom of this pyramid-hierarchical system are countless immoral and incompetent people, but they are a common herd who can only exist as a reference to set off the excellence of elites. It is emphasized here that the emperor’s power is supreme in Confucianism. In fact, these bureaucratic elites are also the slaves of the emperor. The emperor can decide their life and death at any time. The so-called ” kings and bears often worry their keepers even since ancient times. ” the king calls the minister to die, and the minister has to die” is that. Therefore, the servility of the Chinese bureaucratic class is also the most abundant, which is unparalleled in the world.

Note:

① Lin Yutang “Chinese face”, people’s Literature Publishing House,

②Liu Zehua “Chinese kingship: an investigation of the characteristics of traditional society and thought”, Shanghai People’s publishing house, p 116

③Liu Zehua “Chinese kingship: an investigation of the characteristics of traditional society and thought”, Shanghai People’s publishing house, p 302

④ Book of rites, people’s Literature Publishing House, Confucius

The greatest vanity of humans is to override all the others and become an emperor, or a new human God

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