This paper studies three realms of reading history.
The first level of reading history is politics. Many people may look down on trying to learn politics from history. In fact, people who understand politics are mature people.
To truly understand history, the minimum understanding is that there is no absolute distinction between good people and bad people. People who take the romance of ghosts and gods as their history may think that Zhou Wenwang is excellent and Shang Zhouwang is extremely bad; However, if you read the serious books Huai Nan Zi and Mencius, you will find that Shang Zhouwang is not as abnormal as described in the novel. If you read the professional history book Historical Records, you may find that Zhou Wenwang may not be as sacred as described in the novel; If you had read Zuozhuan and Shangshu earlier, your final conclusion might even be Zhou Wenwang and Shang Zhouwang. It's really hard to say who is good and who is bad. (Reference: Link Source)
China people always like to use moral standards to measure historical figures, and then they want to create a loyal, treacherous, good and evil figure. However, real history is not like this at all. It is very dangerous to look at history by the standards of good and evil, and the biggest victim may be Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor. When he found out that Mr. Zhang, whom he greatly respected, had extravagant and corrupt behavior, he was completely disappointed with the society after his beautiful image was shattered, and he simply refused to go to court for decades. Nowadays, parents only let their children watch PG-13 movies, all of which are from Zhu Yijun, but they don't know that R-rated movies can cultivate real talents.
The concept that good guys and bad guys are inseparable in political struggle was first popularized among ordinary people, probably because of a TV series called Yongzheng Dynasty. In fact, this film is still a little deliberately beautifying Yongzheng. When "Harmony with the DPRK * * *" came out, everyone's thoughts completely collapsed, only to find out how Li Hongzhang and Cixi did reasonable things. Until recently, people began to call on Qin Gui to become ordinary, and even criticized Yue Fei, which people have become accustomed to. Since the reality is so cruel, it is better to learn more politics. People who watch Yongzheng Dynasty all day play office politics with those who watch Princess Zhu Huan. Isn't that a matter of looking at their palms?
Reading Historical Records from Lecture Room Wang Liqun takes this route to help you analyze the success or failure in the power struggle. Many politicians, such as Zhang Xueliang, like reading Ming History very much, probably because it is fun to struggle with others. Today, Mr Wu Si is the most famous person in the history of political science. His hidden rules have long been deeply rooted in people's hearts and become a new vocabulary in modern Chinese. Later, the combined edition of the blood reward law was called "Hidden Order" with the subtitle "Dismantling the Historical Game", which was full of political science. I remember the reporter asked him if you were worried that someone would read your book as an official guide. Wu Shuo, there's nothing he can do. This is just a simple advertisement.
In fact, there are also advanced political skills. For example, the warring States policy is much more advanced than larded school, and it is not shameful for soldiers to be cunning.
Those who have reached the first level of reading history have entered a state of ignorance of good and evil.
The second realm of reading history is the general trend of the world. If people who reach the first level are the best among people, then few people reach the second level, because only by reading history can they reach this level.
Do people change things or do things change people? Only by grasping the general trend of the world can we truly understand those historical figures: they are not only thinking about their own power and status, but also what China should do. To reach this state, not only will it not be good or bad, but it will also be found that it is meaningless to evaluate historical figures by moral standards. Take Wu Zetian as an example. Most people may be most interested in Wu Zetian's "face" problem and criticize her with it; The "historians" in the first realm will comment from the perspective of court struggle and summarize how a woman is called a queen and how to slaughter dissidents. However, if you look at the general trend of the world, you will notice even more that despite the bloody events in the imperial court at that time, the lives of ordinary people were actually not bad.
To see the general trend of the world, we must first look at the overall situation. China's history books especially love to write about court struggles, but they don't describe the overall economic and social situation enough. If someone finds out the newspapers of our time after 100 years, it is likely to come to the conclusion that the reform of higher education in recent years has failed because the tuition fees are too expensive and everyone complains. But what is the overall situation? It is 5.4 million college students in 2006, five times that of 1998! Today's college students who complain about high tuition fees may not even have a chance to go to college if they don't reform. Now the gross enrollment rate of higher education in China has reached 23% (link source), which is called the overall situation.
Secondly, we should put the overall situation in the historical background. The general trend of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not a "score of long-term stability", but an episode in which the ruling group in China changed from the aristocratic class to the gentry class as a whole. If we grasp this general trend, we will pay more attention to people like Yuan Shao and Yu Xun rather than the stories of Lu Bu and Di Xin. The last episodes of Yi Zhongtian's recent "Pin San Guo" are about the general trend of the world, and the realm is obviously much higher than that of Wang Liqun's court struggle.
People who study the general trend of the world don't care about Zhu Yuanzhang killing heroes at all. More importantly, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system and promoted stereotyped writing. It is not important whether Yongzheng used the guillotine, but his policy of dividing fields and acres.
Studying the general trend of the world depends mainly on the evolution of the system in politics and policies and figures in economy. Why did the Ming Dynasty perish? To explain from Chongzhen's character, it is better to analyze from the perspective that the tax policy and low tax rate of the whole Ming Dynasty caused the country to fail to do great things.
However, it is difficult to grasp the general trend of the world, and the historical field is inconclusive, so we can only rely on our own experience. In fact, middle school history textbooks have always emphasized the general trend of the world, but Guo Moruo's theory of dividing China into slave society and feudal society is correct? Guo Moruo analyzed Li Zicheng's failure from his personal qualities. How much truth did the "Three Hundred Years Celebration of Shen Jia" create? It's hard to say.
Even though we know that policy is more important than moral quality, we really don't know whether the specific policy is right or wrong. For example, in Yongzheng, it is obviously beneficial to the people to tax according to the land area instead of the poll tax. This is a good policy, right? Not necessarily. It is this policy that led to the population explosion, and without advanced irrigation technology, the population explosion may be the most important reason for poverty and weakness in China after Qianlong.
Another example is the eight-part essay exam. Now the mainstream opinion is of course that it restricts people's thinking. But stereotyped writing also has a positive side, which is to ensure fairness. If the style and content of the article are casual, it is conceivable that the children of Beijing's big family must be well informed and write better articles than the children in mountainous areas. For example, when the national college entrance examination questions were unified a few years ago, Beijing scored low and the admission rate was high. The Beijing Education Commission's defense is that although our Beijing children have low scores, they are knowledgeable! Hearing this statement, the children in the border area will definitely ask, "Do you know how to recite a few lines of A Chinese Odyssey?" Is this knowledgeable? The advantage of stereotyped writing is that it can't pass the Chinese Odyssey. Stereotyped writing, like the GRE test, is a kind of "ability" test to ensure fairness as far as possible, and to ensure that Hainanese can also have a place in the officialdom, just as Chinese mainland students generally surpass American students in GRE scores.
Propagandizing an advantage has a disadvantage, and really choosing a policy is really treading on thin ice.
Those who have reached the second level of reading history have entered a state of not knowing right or wrong.
The third realm of reading history is purely for history. Most people study physics in order to pass the exam, some people study physics in order to serve people with the laws of physics, and only a few people study physics purely out of curiosity. They are uneasy about the inconsistency between relativity and quantum mechanics. In fact, the two realms of reading history mentioned above are somewhat borrowed from history, and the real mainstream historians, such as "Are we Rome?" Most western historians introduced in the new book actually think that it is meaningless to make the past serve the present and that history is useless. Yi Zhongtian also said in an interview with Cui Yongyuan that he did not advocate making the past serve the present, which was obviously more professional than Wu Si.
Politicians especially like to cite history to illustrate today's actions. Because in the past, when the ancients encountered this situation, they all did so. What this tells us is that. . . But historians will tell you that this is not the case at all: what happened to the ancients was not what you said, and what they did was not what you said. Perhaps historians will tell you whether this ancient man exists or not, and we are controversial.
My view on this issue is that if you want to make the past serve the present, it doesn't really matter whether it happened in history or not. You don't need to look at the real history when you enter the customs in Qing Dynasty, but you did look at the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Moreover, it is successful to frame Yuan Chonghuan with the story "The hero was trapped by Jiang Gan", even though "Jiang Gan's trap" is actually a fictional story of Luo Guanzhong. From novels, fables and myths, we can learn that the past serves the present and can really be used. The most important criticism of Nan in academic circles is that he uses allusions, regardless of real or fictional history. In fact, nan huaijin made it clear that everything in the newspaper could be true except the name. Everything in the novel may be true except the name. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with Shuihu's analysis of the Jianghu struggle.
Real historians study history for no utilitarian purpose, they just want to know what happened at that time. History books are also written by people, and Sima Qian also has subjective emotions. It is a challenging job to break through the fog of history and analyze the real situation.
People who have reached the third level of reading history have entered a state of not knowing whether it is true or not.
If you don't know good and evil, right and wrong, true and false, you are a real expert in history!