Teacher's Humanities Reader - (Full Two Volumes) (Revised Edition)

Author: Zhang Minsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-06-01
Features: Strictly speaking, everything requires "time." Time testifies to everything because it changes everything. The changing of seasons, the growth and decay of plants, and the journey from birth to death cannot exist without time and are all influenced by it. It is often said that "the meaning of life" or "the value of life." In reality, the true meaning and value of a person's life amount to possessing a few decades of time. Without him, the world has no meaning or value during his lifetime; when he cannot live any longer and dies, he no longer has life, and thus, naturally, no meaning or value either. It is as if the ignorance of the majority and the intelligence of the few all draw similar conclusions about life: "the meaning and value of life are to live for a few decades," thereby affirming life. So they eat, drink, sleep, fight, love, and live, waiting for death, and after death, a coffin carries them, earth buries them, and worms dispose of them. The explanation of the meaning of life is as simple as "live, live, fall, die." It is a bit frightening. Therefore, the second-tier intelligent people and the second-tier ignorant people draw a second conclusion about the meaning and value of life: "how to spend these few decades." Though they also affirm life, eat, drink, sleep, fight, and love, there are differences in gains and losses, choices, and so on. These differences are clear at a glance. Broadly speaking, intelligent people seek to understand life, while the ignorant seek to habituate to it. Intelligent people believe that the present is not entirely good and that everything should be better than it is, and they strive to pursue that ideal. The ignorant are completely satisfied with habits and content with the status quo, ensuring habits (in secular observation, these two labels are often reversed: those who are content with habits are called intelligent, while those who hold ideals are deemed foolish). Although both groups have the same plan for "how to spend these few decades," their achievements may differ when their careers are the same. Similarly, those who want to conquer colors and lines as painters, those who want to conquer musical instruments and sounds as musicians, those who want to conquer wood, stone, bronze, and other materials as sculptors, even those who want to conquer human behavior as emperors, or those who want to conquer human hearts and beliefs as thinkers or religious leaders—all achieve different results. Therefore, there are great poets in the world, alongside poor poets, great revolutionaries alongside hypocritical revolutionaries. As for those with different purposes and careers, the differences are even more apparent at a glance. Once one realizes that the meaning and value of life are like this, yet they wish to give life a special meaning and permanent value both before and after death, their nature is extremely intelligent, yet their behavior seems foolish.,, in history are such people. These people may withdraw from the world, enter it, revolutionize, or restore the past, and yet, in life, they appear foolish, but after death, they seem great. Qu Yuan can be considered a different kind of such person, and such people are not very common in history. However, one or two appear in every era, and they are quite impressive. These people can only live for a few decades, but their ideas, opinions, demeanor, and writings can live in human memory for thousands of years. Everyone's life is limited by time, but the lives of such people seem to be less constrained by this limitation. To say that everything must be proven by time, yet time itself is an extremely abstract concept, no one can clearly explain what time is like. Time does not exist alone. Time is formless, voiceless, colorless, and odorless. To explain the existence of time, one must return to things to seek evidence. From the coming and going of the sun and moon, from the growth and decay of plants, from the existence and demise of life, one finds evidence. Precisely because everything can serve as an annotation for time, time itself is often overlooked. Therefore, when most people ask about the meaning and value of life, none dare say, "the meaning and value of life is just a pile of time." "Before me, there were no sages; behind me, there will be none," these are the words of someone who truly understands the meaning and value of life. The old man knew the loneliness in his heart when he said these words! Those who can say these words are, and those who can understand them are not ordinary people. Most people today remember these two sentences, but only those who have been dragged from sunlight into prisons or led from prisons to execution grounds with a can understand their meaning. Because the lives of those who say these words and those who understand them are different yet the same in their end—both frown at facts yet dare to to ideals. Their methods are different, their eras are different, their environments are different, and their experiences are different; what is the same is their hearts, all leaping forward for the progress of humanity.