What is culture?

What is culture?

Culture is divided into three levels, one is the level of artifacts, such as the Forbidden City, Great Wall, guns, scientific instruments, etc.; the second is organizational systems, such as feudal autocracy, democratic republican systems, etc.; the third is the core value system, such as " Zhouyi theory, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Western competition theory, etc.

Since the late Qing Dynasty 1840, due to the backwardness of my country’s economy and technological tools, it has been repeatedly invaded and bullied by Western powers, causing countless of our ancestors to lose their national self-confidence, thinking that we are inferior to the West and that everything is good for the West. We do not have a good thing. In fact, it’s not that we’re all bad, but the first level of our culture, the tool level, and the second level of organizational system, the feudal and authoritarian system of our country is also behind, due to the long-term official standard of thought. Regarding science and technology as the “nine-rate”, ignoring technological progress and invention and manufacturing has also caused the situation that technological tools are lagging behind and being beaten. However, with the development of Western technology, it seems that the development model of Europe and the United States has come to an end, because of the development of Western high-tech. It has brought serious crises such as environmental pollution, resource depletion, wars , plagues, cruel competition, moral decay, crisis of trust, melting icebergs, frequent natural disasters, and so on. Some of their experts and leaders had to seek wisdom in ancient China. In 1989, the World Nobel Prize winners gathered in Paris and issued a statement saying: “If mankind wants to achieve sustainable development in the future, it must seek wisdom from Confucius more than 2,400 years ago.” He also said: The world cannot be without Eastern culture, if it lacks the East. Culture, that will cause great harm to the world, so Western psychologist Jung said: "If human society has wisdom at all, then China's "Book of Changes" will be the only wisdom treasure."

More and more experience tells us that the third level of Chinese culture, namely Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, and the core value system of Zhouyi are not behind. It is an important force for us to build a harmonious society today. The reason why our society today encounters such a crisis of trust, belief, and disaster is closely related to our complete abandonment of traditional culture since the end of the Qing Dynasty. Traditional culture is the soul of a nation. It has been tested and tested for thousands of years. Enrichment has proved to be the essence that is conducive to the long-term stable development of the nation. In history, there were two dynasties that abandoned traditional culture and ended badly. One was the "burning of books and Confucianism" in the Qin Dynasty, and the other was the barbaric rule of the Yuan Dynasty. Fortunately, our country has begun to restore traditional culture. This is really a wise move!