Lao Tian | Why
are the farmers in their hometown "superstitious again"?
2021-4-26 14:23
Originally by: Lao Tian
Introduction.
Author: Lao Tian
The small river
in my hometown is notoriously steep and scouring, bringing with it the
potential danger of erosion.
During the Mao
era of collective farming, the brigade pooled its labour force during the
agricultural leisure period and invested huge amounts of working days in
renovating it, with which most of the hidden dangers were eliminated. Since the
dissolution of collective farming, it has not been possible to organise the
amount of "annual repair work" needed for maintenance, not to mention
the huge effort required to build similar projects - and the amount of
maintenance work is far greater than the maximum organisational capacity and
investment, with the result that it has been in decline ever since.
In the Mao era,
when industry was not developed and farmers had little access to reinforced
concrete, they had to choose to use 'boulders' to build up their protection
against the scouring of the river - using the great weight of the stones
themselves to increase the scouring resistance of the works. The problem with
choosing large stones is that the weight of the individual boulders greatly
exceeds the maximum capacity of an individual and can only be moved in a
cooperative manner, and without a locomotive, the cost of moving them by hand
increases several times.
Generally
speaking, if a stone is about 50 kg, a strong labourer can pick two stones and
walk, if a stone is over 200 kg, four strong labourers will still struggle to
carry it. Therefore, the use of large stones for construction work, whether for
carrying or stacking, was particularly labour-intensive, and the number of
working days required to complete the same amount of stone work was very, very
high.
For this reason,
in the old days, even if there were good people who were interested in this
type of work, it was often seen as a daunting task, and so, before the Mao era,
small rivers were largely left to run their own course. This was only owing to
the fact that effective protective works required too much investment, many
times over the maximum funding capacity - whether by charity or otherwise - to
raise the investment capacity above the threshold target.
Nearly forty
years after the division of the land (in my hometown, the land was divided by
lot after the autumn of 1982), the same shrinking capacity has returned. As a
result, the protection works of the collective era are in a constant state of
decay, while the small rivers of water regain their "scouring
vitality".
The picture on
the right above shows that some of the protective stone banks still exist and
are still partially protected.
The picture on
the left above shows that the collapsed section of the river, which has lost
its protective capacity, has shown a clear tendency for the river to 'diverge
convexly' as the water washes over it.
It seems that
the Maoist era was the most unusual, both in comparison with the past and with
the future. The fundamental difference is that the collective input capacity of
the Mao era was so high that people were able to expand their efforts to a
great extent "against the adverse trends of nature". It seems that
the peasants' rationality and planning capacity is related to the actual input
capacity that exists, and that the relevant rationality is 'clouded' when the
input capacity falls below a threshold level.
The size of the
input capacity is one thing, the choice of input direction is another, and the
contrast between the two graphs below is also very thought-provoking.
The picture
below left shows a floodgate built by the production team in the collective era
on the ridge of a water pond, the stones used were all from old-era gravestones
and were taken from the village's ancestral graveyard hill nearby.
The picture
below right shows a luxurious graveyard and tombstones built by private
individuals in the new era.
In contrast, the
peasant's overall capacity to invest did not decline, but the institutional
platform for centralising power was completely dismantled, so the decline of
water facilities followed the decline of this capacity. At the same time, the
individual financial resources of peasant families increased, but instead of
investing in farmland improvements or other public facilities, they were
heavily used in 'competition for face' - as is typical in the construction of
ancestral tombs: one more luxurious than the other, one more extensive than the
other.
Coincidentally
with the rise in competition for face is the extreme vulnerability of the
elderly who are incapacitated in the countryside, as Professor He Xuefeng's
team has shown in several surveys: the proportion of rural elderly people who
choose to commit suicide at the end of their lives is not low.
In fact,
although "changing customs" was advocated during the collective
farming period, the elderly in their hometown did not "forget their
ancestors" or disrespect their elders. The whole village would send the
deceased to the mountain. According to the teachings of Chairman Mao in
"Serve the People":
“When someone
dies in a village, let a memorial meeting be held. In this way we express our
mourning for the dead and unite all the people.”
In most cases,
the production team cadres will be on hand to preside over the memorial
service, and when the eulogy is delivered, the entire village stands at
attention, bows, and offers condolences…
I have attended
many of them as a child, and I can still remember the scenes vividly. Confucius
said "If I don't attend the sacrifice in person, it's the same as if I
didn't hold the sacrifice", but if we look at it from the point of view of
reverence for the deceased, today is just not as good as it was; in fact,
today, it is only a superficial effort to have a big cemetery, a distortion
that reflects the competition for face or "superstition" among the
living.
In terms of
mastery of the present world, the level of commitment seems to be a function of
the level of "rationality", and it is only when the level of
commitment is above the threshold level that rational planning and action can
occur, for which it is of course necessary to invoke the relevant scientific
knowledge. The lower the level of mastery, the more the resentment towards
being manipulated by fate is distorted into "superstitious beliefs"
in various "supernatural powers", and then in the middle of the
imagination with the help of various "kingdoms of heaven" or
"hells". The "heavenly" or "hellish" paths are
then used in the imagination to try to intervene in a world full of risks and
uncertainties.
March 26, 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment