However, it is undeniable that the constant change of state power and dynasty replacement are the main driving forces in the historical process, and the twenty-four history of China is the history of the rise and fall of dynasties from generation to generation. The ultimate goal of any political power is to safeguard its rule and the interests of vested interest groups with the supreme ruler as the core and the scholar-bureaucrat elite as the backbone. In this relationship, the broad masses of the people are not only creators of social wealth, participants in social construction, but also actual contributors to the development of human civilization. However, these are only subsidiary products passively formed by the ruling class in the process of realizing the rule, and the most essential role given to the people by history is only as the object of being ruled and exploited.
As far as the history of China is concerned, social strata can be roughly divided into rulers, literati dignitaries, social elites and the bottom people. The first two categories are mostly hereditary. Although they admire each other, compete for advantages, and the parties fight against differences, as interest groups, when foreign forces threaten their interests, the officials protect each other and unite with the outside world. All struggles and cooperation are contradictions within the small circle of the ruling class. As the bottom people, to get rid of the fate of exploitation, the only pursuit is to become a social elite. Although social elites are only migrant workers of the ruling class, they can help the rulers to maximize their ruling interests because of their certain cultural knowledge and skills, so they belong to senior migrant workers and can obtain higher social status and more social resources. At the same time, in order to maintain the stability of political power, the rulers must always guard against the resistance and threats from the bottom of society, among which the literati with a certain level of knowledge and high thinking strategies and the so-called heroes with courage and appeal, the so-called social elites, are the biggest threats and the main targets of prevention. The long-term stability of the regime cannot be separated from attracting these elites, and providing them with channels to prevent them from becoming hidden dangers. However, the methods of wooing these social elites in different dynasties are similar, so I have to mention an article here.
"Dajiangdong is calm, Su Dongpo has missed the past for thousands of years, and countless romantic figures have been drowned in the torrent of history. As a great writer, Su Dongpo is also a social and political expert with profound insight. His book On Cultivating Literati discusses the means of attracting social elites in various dynasties. Su Dongpo divides nurturers into four types: wisdom, debate, courage and strength. Wisdom is cleverness. Argumentation is the art of argument, specializing in means, not taking the right path and taking the wrong path. Courage is courage, and strength is strength. A brave man may not have the courage. Teach him to go forward bravely. A tall and mighty man who sacrificed for his country may not be able to take the lead. This is strong and brave. To sum up, there are two kinds of people, mental and physical. Su Dongpo believes that these social elites often need support from others and cannot stand on their own feet. Only by relying on powerful people can we make great achievements and accomplish great things, but without powerful people, we have no ability to accomplish things alone.
"A gentleman learns to love others, but a villain learns to love others easily." In order to make full use of and appease these people, we must teach them Tao. The way of education in every dynasty is: no school for more than three generations. From the Warring States to the Qin Dynasty, I was a guest. After the Han dynasty, a county official was appointed. Since Wei and Jin Dynasties, it has always been based on justice. Sui and Tang dynasties, the imperial examination. To put it simply, in the period of Yao Shunyu, social elites were educated through official schools, and then they were made to serve the country. From the Warring States to the Qin Dynasty, they became guests by attaching themselves to dignitaries. After the Han dynasty, he was appointed as a county official. Since Wei and Jin Dynasties, it has been recommended by Zheng Zhi, a Chinese wine product. After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, until today, China was selected through the imperial examination and the college entrance examination.
Su Dongpo, through the investigation of the rise and fall of generations, thinks that the basic reason for the long-term existence of the Six Kingdoms in the Warring States and the rapid demise of the Qin Dynasty in the later period is the different arrangement of social elites. The emperors of the six countries exploited the people as much as Qin in the later period, but the social elites of the six countries supported them as rich guests, so the country was stable. After the Qin dynasty unified the world, it thought that talents were useless and the law was enough to govern the country, so it burned books to bury Confucianism, degraded talents to the people, and wandered in the fields, just like putting millions of tigers and wolves into the mountains to starve to death, which led to their extinction in just over a decade.
There are four kinds of talents in any society: smart, argumentative, brave and strong, but in different historical periods, due to their unique social, cultural and humanistic environments, the ways and functions of these four talents may be different. However, all roads lead to the same goal. For rulers and people, the social roles played by these social elites are similar at all times!
In today's 2 1 world, who does "wisdom, debate, courage and strength" correspond to in society?