Salvation and Self-help

The general mediocrity of spiritual life is an obvious fact of our times. This fact is so obvious that one does not need to have a keen mind to feel it. Its main manifestations are: first, the loss of faith life. Life lacks a spiritual goal, neither traditional support nor ideal guidance. What is particularly sad is that people even lost their at least serious attitude towards the issue of faith, laughed at it and boasted of no faith. Second, the reduction of emotional life. Abnormal urbanization blocks the sympathy between man and nature, and the expansion of utilitarian consciousness leads to the weakness of true feelings between people. Emotional experience loses its individuality and essence, and degenerates into imitative and similar popular lyrics and gift card language. Third, the vulgarity of cultural life. The mass consumption culture that appeals to the senses is rampant, and the serious culture that appeals to the soul is in trouble. Entertainment media pretend to be the mainstream of culture, and journalists and stars who have no cultural literacy pretend to be cultural protagonists, which has almost swept the world.

There is no doubt that anyone who pays attention to spiritual life holds a negative and critical attitude towards this mediocre phenomenon. However, there are differences. According to my observation, it can be divided into two categories.

A group of people have a strong sense of social responsibility and take saving the world as their own responsibility, and their reactions are different due to differences in temperament and ideas. Generally speaking, religious and moral people mainly show anger, regard this world as the last time, condemn it justly and even curse it, in order to alert the world and find the prosperous times, or-judge the world and predict some kind of doomsday judgment in a prophetic tone. Zhang Chengzhi is the most typical representative today. Rational people are mainly worried, regard this world as troubled times, and try to plan some kind of salvation plan in order to rebuild the order of spiritual life and restore or build their mind to govern the world. A considerable number of humanities scholars are trying their best to do this. Regardless of anger or anxiety, salvation is the same position, so I put the two into one category.

The other kind of people are more personalized intellectuals. Relatively speaking, they have no direct ambition to save the world, but pay more attention to their independent spiritual exploration and cultural creation activities. They are equally disgusted with the process of spiritual mediocrity as a social reality, but it seems that they are not as painful as the former kind of people, and they are on pins and needles. Because they live more in a fairly stable spiritual world of their own, they are detached from or detached from the external changes they dislike to some extent. Their reaction is mainly not anger or anxiety, but rather a kind of indifference and contempt that is almost tolerant. Generally speaking, those who belong to this category are artists who are really fascinated by art, scholars who are really fascinated by academics, and philosophers and wise men who are obsessed with thinking about the fundamental problems of life and mankind. In the eyes of such people, eschatology or chaos seems to be alarmist. This world is not fundamentally different from other worlds, but it is just a secular world. With the changes of the times, the expressions of vulgarity are different, either official or business, and spirituality is one. Therefore, they always keep a distance from the secular world, and regard spiritual independent pursuit and self-improvement as the foundation of life in the world. In this sense, their position can be summed up as self-help.

Of course, the above division is only relative. After all, there may be some intellectuals with strong personality and sociality, on whom the positions of self-help and salvation will overlap. I don't want to judge the pros and cons between these two positions. In my opinion, sincere saviors and self-rescuers are precious. We lack inspiring preachers and enlightenment thinkers, just as we lack cultivators who are immersed in their own gardens. However, for now, to be honest, I'm really tired of listening to all kinds of cultural discussions, and I only hear an impetuous and empty from all this excitement. In fact, neither the retro idea advertised as "New Sinology" nor the academic collage that decorated the present situation in the name of "Postmodernism" has put forward a practical good strategy to save the world, and it is likely that it has only fulfilled a personal utilitarian desire. As for all kinds of lamentations about "cultural loss" and "humanistic spirit loss", most of them reveal a restless mentality. In this case, I would rather defend the position of self-help, although the real self-rescuer does not need any theoretical defense.

A person's determination to engage in spiritual exploration and cultural creation should be based on his own inner spiritual needs. He almost certainly has great confusion within the scope of spiritual life, so for him, no matter what the world is like, he must save himself, and only by saving himself can he live. However, between spiritual life and secular utilitarian life, his value orientation is clear and firm, and there will be no substantive confusion. Zhang San was intolerant of poverty, abandoned literature to do business, and became a rich man. Li Si's literati was incompetent and vulgar, and became a big shot. What did all this have to do with him? He is doing what he wants to do most in this life and can't help doing. As long as the environment allows him to do it (in fact), what is the loss? A person based on self-help is calm when facing the outside world. Those who face the impetuous world and have an unbalanced mentality may be eager and sincere to save the world, but at the same time I doubt that they lack a solid foundation of spiritual life, or they would be so nervous.

In today's era, perhaps some intellectuals with strong elite consciousness and ambition to help the world are most likely to feel lost. They want to be people's ideological leaders and spiritual mentors, but the tide of commercialization has washed them to the edge of society and left them in an embarrassing position. It is hard for them to be lonely, because they just need a vigorous stage to play their role. I don't think intellectuals should be divorced from social practice, but I think there are too many elites or people who want to be elites in China, and too few wise people. By wise men, I mean intellectuals who keep a certain distance from the trend of the times, do not value achievements, but always think about the basic problems of human spiritual life and pay attention to the basic trend of human spiritual life. They guard the holy grail in loneliness so that it will not be submerged by the surging secular trend. I believe that the existence of such a person itself will have a beneficial check and balance effect on the social process. A wise man will never feel lost. A leader can't be a leader without the people, and a mentor can't be a mentor without disciples. However, for a wise man, as long as he guards the most basic spiritual values of mankind, even if no one listens to him, he is still a wise man.

I really believe that at least in the field of spiritual life, self-help is a more practical way to save the world. Today's world is not like an era when new saviors and new beliefs can be born, but this does not prevent everyone who loves spiritual and cultural undertakings from engaging in independent exploration and creation in their own fields. With more people like this, the spiritual and cultural level of the times will naturally improve. Regrettably, we have many unwilling believers, spiritual cheerleaders and cultural discussants, but few are true believers in religion, philosophy and art or even true nihilists. To put it bluntly, the real spiritual thing is completely independent of the times, and its roots are much deeper, rooted in some eternal relationship between human beings and the earth. Only from this root can genius and spiritual masterpieces grow. They do not belong to the times, but the times will follow them. Of course, it is uncertain whether a person is a genius or not and whether he can create spiritual masterpieces, which is actually not important. The important thing is not to lose contact with this eternal source, if so, he will certainly have a relationship with Roman? Roland has the same belief: "There is no spiritual death or rebirth here, because its bright not fade away, it just disappears and shines again elsewhere." So he won't be pessimistic and disappointed in any world, because he knows that human spiritual life as a whole has never been and will never be interrupted, and his seemingly lonely spiritual journey belongs to this whole, and no force can make it disappear. Consumption = enjoyment?

I hate all kinds of asceticism. People live all their lives, live and die, and suffer enough. Why not enjoy it when you can? Enjoyment is a natural part of life. Montaigne even called being good at enjoying life "the highest and most sacred virtue". According to him, Caesar and Alexander regarded enjoying life as their normal activities, and regarded their all-powerful war careers as abnormal activities.

however, how can we really enjoy life? It is inevitable that people have different opinions on this. In my opinion, one of the misconceptions of our times is that consumption is regarded as enjoyment, but in fact the two are totally different. I don't want to get involved in the debate about whether high consumption can promote prosperity, because that is an economist's business, not a philosophy of life. I have no intention to oppose cars, villas, high-grade furniture, four-star hotels, KTV rooms, etc. I just want to point out that all these are only in the category of consumption, and luxury consumption is not a necessary condition for enjoyment, let alone a sufficient condition.

Of course, consumption and enjoyment are not absolutely mutually exclusive, and sometimes they overlap. However, the difference between them is obvious. For example, pure erotic activities are only sexual consumption, and the love between soul and * * * is the true enjoyment of sex; A cursory tour of scenic spots is only tourism consumption, and it is the true enjoyment of nature to be between mountains and rivers; Using TV, newspapers and books to relieve boredom is only cultural consumption, and reading and artistic appreciation that enlighten the mind are the real enjoyment of culture. In short, true enjoyment must involve the participation of the soul, which must include the so-called "joy and sublimation of the soul" factor. Otherwise, spending more money can only be called consumption. The difference between enjoyment and consumption is equivalent to the difference between creation and production. Creation and enjoyment belong to spiritual life, just as production and consumption belong to material life.

It's a muddled view to think that the quantity of consumption will be directly proportional to the quality of enjoyment. Socrates looked at the stalls on the streets of Athens and exclaimed, "How many things I don't need here!" Every reader with a little understanding can't help but smile when reading this story. Seneca put it well: "Many things, only when we can cope without them, do we find out how unnecessary they are. We used to use them, not because we needed them, but because we had them. " On the other hand, because we have too many things that we spend money on, we ignore the enjoyment that we don't have to spend money on. "You don't need to buy a cool breeze and a bright moon", but where can we remember them when we are in front of the TV every night? "Where there is no moon, there are no bamboos and cypresses, but there are few idle people like me." Today, when everyone is busy making money and spending money, where can such idle people find it?

So, isn't there pure physical and material enjoyment? Yes, people have a body, and this body likes to enjoy it very much. In order to enjoy it, it also needs material means. However, if we think about it carefully, we will find that people's physical needs are limited by its physiological structure, so the pure physical pleasure obtained by meeting this need is almost eternal, and it is nothing more than eating, eating, eating, and being healthy. Yin Zhou Wang "takes wine as a pool and hanging meat as a forest", but he only has an ordinary stomach. Qin Shihuang built Epang Palace, "5 paces from east to west and 5 feet from north to south", but he was only five feet tall. What a passionate gourmet, he must have a break in his eating, otherwise he will have indigestion. What a hard-working lothario, he must also be temperate in his bed, otherwise he will have kidney deficiency. Every kind of physiological desire | hope will be satisfied, and strictly follow the law that too much is not enough. Delicious delicacies, spending money like water, are more ostentatious. Take a concubine with a hidden charm, and the beauty is like a cloud, more for vanity. The greatest happiness brought by great wealth is not the direct material enjoyment, but the joy when the miser counts the property and the pleasure when the black sheep squander the property. All these things are beyond the scope of physical satisfaction, but it is disgusting to call them spiritual enjoyment. They are only a kind of psychological satisfaction at most.

I believe that people must have a soul, and the soul and psychological phenomena such as feeling, thinking, emotion and will must belong to different levels. The soul is the dwelling place of people's spiritual "self", seeking sincere love and solid faith, and paying attention to the realization of the meaning of life. Happiness is only a matter of the soul, it is the enrichment of love and a distinct feeling of living meaningfully. The body will only have pleasure, not happiness. The luxurious lifestyle brings people at most a shallow sense of superiority, not to mention happiness. When a lucky man who enjoys the splendor of the world is still worried about the emptiness of life, what he hears is the sigh of his soul. Love this family

There is a widely spread theory that the family is the product of a certain stage of social and economic development, so it will surely die with the high development of the economy. This theory ignores one point: the existence of family has a profound basis in human nature. Some people call it "family nature", and I appreciate this concept. I believe that in human history, the family will only change its form and will not die out.

Man is really a greedy animal. He often wants to get contradictory things at the same time. For example, he wants peace and freedom, a warm nest and romantic drifting. It's easy for him to look at other mountains, not satisfied with what he has and yearn for what he hasn't got, so he has the confusion and tossing in and out of the "besieged city". However, as far as most people are concerned, they would rather restrict their freedom for peace. This is also proved by the fact that modern people who once spurned their families are now returning to their families and cherishing harmonious marriages. The reason is very simple. After all, man is a social animal, and the family, as the cell of society, can satisfy people's social nature most often and most closely.

in this world, no one wants to be completely lonely. The loneliness of genius means that his thoughts are not understood, but in real life, he is also willing to have a good partner. If not, it is bad luck, not his active choice. No matter how great or ordinary people are, true happiness is very ordinary and real. Talent and career can only determine whether a person is excellent, not whether he is happy. We say that Beethoven is an unfortunate genius and Tagore is a happy genius, based on their different experiences in marriage and family issues. Practical people in China regard marriage and family relations as the first of human relations, while God-fearing Hebrews regard a good partner as a gift from God and marriage as one of the highest achievements in life, all of which have their own reasons. Family is the most natural social organization among all human social organizations, and it is the main link that connects people with the earth and the source of life. Having a good partner, building a good nest, having children, caring for the old and caring for the young will give people a solid sense of life. Homeless people are light, but I'm afraid this light is sometimes unbearable, which easily makes people fall into a feeling of nothingness that has no foundation in this world.

of course, I'm not indiscriminately singing hymns for marriage. My value orientation is that it is best to have a good partner, followed by no partner, and the worst thing is to have a bad partner. Whether a partner is good or not depends on whether there is love. It is not easy to build a good home. Of course, the premise is to have love, but it can't be achieved by love alone.