Chapter 2917: Continue to Fool People

Shentong hopes to build a city where everyone lives in harmony. This wish is obviously unrealistic, but it is in line with his character of pursuing the best of both worlds in everything.

To build a city, you must first complete the original accumulation, which depends entirely on everyone's support for Shentong and convenient transportation. It is not because ordinary people live with the magician that the original accumulation is completed. Ordinary people these days have little culture, and they still need to spend money to popularize education before they can develop.

Once the infrastructure, education, and medical care of a big city are established, it will inevitably attract outsiders from the surrounding area. These outsiders either come to pan for gold or settle down. The limited conditions of the city cannot include everyone.

If public facilities for 1,000 people are built first, then 1,100 people will be attracted, and the next 100 people will not be included. If facilities covering 10,000 people are built, 11,000 people will be attracted, and so on... There will always be a part of the people who are not included in the public facilities and cannot receive education and medical protection. At the same time, because there are constantly new people coming in, the asset prices in the city will remain high.

But big cities represent information priority, and information priority represents opportunities, which will continuously attract more people.

Therefore, it is almost impossible to stop urbanization. The only way is to let the rich drive the poor. Cities that have developed first based on the geographical environment can develop other places without geographical advantages. Only in this way can we ensure that the contradictions can be eased.

However, Shentong obviously did not have such an idea. He just naively thought that building a harmonious city would be enough.

"Then why do we have to live together? Don't we have other goals? Without goals, ordinary people have ordinary people's interests, and the magicians have the interests of the magicians. If the contradictions between them cannot be reconciled, then the city will be full of various conflicts. In the end, Shentong An will stop at second-rate talents and cannot become first-rate."

Duran's requirements are still very high. He said that if An is just harmonious for harmony, it is impossible. Harmony is for a greater goal, a great goal that everyone can accept compromise.

"Your requirements are really high." Jie has completed his revenge and defeated the Fire Nation in the war, but he is still confused about the future. He also recognizes An's goal, a city where everyone can live in harmony, but now after listening to Duran's various explanations, he finds that the most important thing to achieve the goal is actually culture, a culture that allows everyone to trust each other.

Why should ordinary people and magicians trust each other? How to trust each other? These problems are not solved by magical powers.

Just like how could the nobles and the barbarians in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period trust each other? It is definitely not enough to rely on Shang Yang's South Gate Standing Wood. Although the law can stipulate that the benefits are transferred from the nobles to the barbarians, it is impossible to determine whether the two sides can really trust each other.

Shang Yang's approach is expansion. As long as the benefits are sufficient, everyone will share the spoils. There is no trust or distrust, and everyone is on the same rope.

But expansion is not forever, and in the end it still depends on Mencius's righteousness. When the expansion is over, it is necessary to rely on justice to redistribute resources. Sacrifice life for righteousness and regard righteousness as the highest standard. Abandon the altars and rituals of the nobles, use justice to regulate the nobles and the barbarians, ensure mutual trust between the two, and use righteousness as the distribution standard.

Faced with the trust crisis between ordinary people and the art of controlling magic, An can't handle it. An will make laws and rely on his own moral character to set an example, but he has not created a culture that both sides can accept. Then when the benefits are not enough to be divided, when An dies, the contradictions will erupt in a concentrated manner.

Because there is no foundation of trust, both sides do not know what to do to gain the trust of the other party.

The reason why Shentong is trusted is entirely because of the accumulation of Shentong in the past hundreds of generations. Even if An disappeared for a hundred years, once he returned, everyone would continue to trust him. You should know that the ending of the first generation of Shentong was very bleak. He wanted to create peace all his life, but peace did not come in the end. He also had to fight on the battlefield at an old age and finally died on the battlefield.

The trust that Shentong gained did not appear out of thin air, but was achieved by the Shentongs of all generations setting an example.

Unfortunately, it is too difficult to create a set of culture. It is difficult to get everyone's recognition and to make everyone accept a set of values. As the old saying goes, one of the most difficult things in the world is to turn other people's money into your own, and the second is to put your own ideas into other people's brains.

There is no brainwashing device in this world, and there is no good thing that can make everyone believe in the same idea with just one click.

"The time is right, the place is right, and the people are right. I think now is the time for the birth of a new culture." Duran believes that now is the opportunity for the birth of a new culture. If Shentong can seize the opportunity, he can reduce a lot of trouble later.

Jie doesn't understand it very well, and of course he doesn't know how to invent culture. What is the definition of culture?

"Culture is the ritual, text, and ideology that can make people accept the unfairness in the distribution relationship, and make different classes in the distribution relationship trust each other and cooperate. " Duran said that culture is necessary.

This is really difficult to achieve. Anyway, Jie can't do it.

An can't do it either. Although the city construction is going smoothly and many people are willing to settle here, overall, everyone is now looking at the face of the magic power. When everyone's strength increases and the magic power is removed, the deterrent power of the magic power will be reduced a lot, and then the disobedient people will emerge one after another.

At the same time, as the city develops, more and more people will come to the city to make money, not only honest workers, but also some criminals who want to get rich quickly. These existences will deepen the contradictions between ordinary people and the art of controlling.

After the contradictions deepen, ordinary people and art of controlling will create oppositions in order to protect their own interests, and there will be a chain of suspicion. People with ulterior motives will also add fuel to the flames and destroy harmony, and finally there will be war and tragedy.

"So now we must first let everyone get a new identity, and then we must care for the vulnerable groups."

"Why should we care for the vulnerable groups?" Jie asked.

"Here, here, this is the question that cultural creators must answer." Duran was very happy that Jie asked this question. On the contrary, there is another question: why should the vulnerable groups believe in the strong groups?

Confucius did not answer this question, but Mencius answered it, so the teachings of Confucius and Mencius were connected together, because Mencius supplemented Confucius' benevolence.

Why do we need benevolence? Why do we need righteousness? If we only start from interests, we can ensure our own interests, why bother to care about the vulnerable groups?

The ruler is the ruler, the minister is the minister, the father is the father, and the son is the son. If we only consider the interests, the ruler and the father are the father, and the minister and the son can be completely ignored. Why do we need benevolence? Why should the ruler care about the minister and the father care about the son?

Mencius believed that this is because people have four beginnings: compassion, the beginning of benevolence. Shame and disgust, the beginning of righteousness. Refusal and yielding, the beginning of propriety. Right and wrong, the beginning of wisdom.

People have these four beginnings when they are born, so human nature is good, and everyone should trust each other. Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom are all formed spontaneously in the heart, and everyone has them. Because human nature is good, it is natural to care for the disadvantaged groups, just like seeing a cow being killed will make you sad, seeing a child fall into a well will make you anxious, all of which are human instincts. It's just that when people grow up, they are blinded by interests, so they have doubts about caring for the weak.

Later, anyone who wants to do big things will flaunt their loyalty, and the main manifestation is to care for those who are weaker than themselves. And the weak should also use their actions to protect the rules of the strong and form a complementary relationship. Establishing a trusting relationship through this interactive behavior is righteousness.