New Shun 1730

When this editorial, which was like the ravings of a madman and a Dutch version of the article that encouraged everyone to drink big bowls of wine and eat big chunks of beef and to weigh gold and silver, came out, Kang Budai finally got some of the flavor.

Seeing the popularity of "Water Margin", I knew that the world would be in chaos.

The person who wrote this inflammatory article was obviously sarcastic in the last paragraph. But it was so sarcastic that Kang Budai felt that there must be someone who instructed and deliberately did it. Could it be that Anthony and others actually instructed it?

He had also read the book "Fable of the Bees", a bestseller in the Netherlands. The reason is actually very simple. According to Kang Budai's understanding, it can be said in one sentence: if everyone wants to pluck other people's hair, then the world will eventually form a perfect society where no one plucks a hair.

However, the original intention of this book is definitely not to incite complete anarchy and chaos.

It is nothing more than facing the counterattack of the "rule the world with virtue" thought of various countries, and the views in this book were indeed banned by various countries, except the Netherlands.

Britain felt that this book was morally corrupt, at least it did not conform to religious morality, and banned it.

In France, Enlightenment scholars generally do not read such pamphlets.

Only in the Netherlands, this book is widely circulated.

Borrowing the truth of bees and bee colonies, I want to say that it is purely a "romantic fantasy" to use moral preaching as a means and "public spirit" as a basis to build a prosperous society full of virtues.

It is not the virtues and goodness of people that build a good society, but institutional rules that enable bad people with bad morals to serve the welfare of society.

But how did this institutional rule come into being? It is precisely because of everyone's selfishness that it is generated in human practice full of sinful and deceptive commercial behaviors.

Everyone is selfish and seeks their own interests, and the final result is a compromise: I am selfish and of course I am willing to cheat, cheat, steal, but what if I encounter someone who is better at cheating, cheating, stealing and killing than me? I love money and have money, of course I hope that all the money belongs to me, but what if I encounter someone who has no money but holds a knife in his hand?

In the end, there will definitely be a kind of law, norms, and system that allows everyone to weigh the pros and cons and maximize the benefits to the public.

The situation in the Netherlands is very special, so the content of this book is liked by most people.

Merchants believe that it is not wrong to seek personal gain, so what this book says is right.

Regents and nobles were criticized by the elites for living a luxurious life and being corrupted by the French system. This book can be interpreted as: the pursuit of a luxurious life is human selfishness and evil, but it can greatly promote the development of industry and commerce.

Just like a beaver hat, if no one wears it, how can the hunters who catch beavers and the tailors who sew hats live?

The Netherlands itself is a Protestant country.

Protestantism has a concept of "vocation": that is, what you do in the world, your profession, and your work are all arranged by God.

Everyone is a unique life created by God, and everyone's work is meaningful. Secular labor and work are the way and expression of human beings to glorify God. People work according to God's instructions, and the purpose of labor is to serve God.

Everyone's sweat and contribution to secular work are sacred. Labor is both God's will and a duty that people should fulfill to God.

Work, like fasting, chanting, meditating, and practicing alchemy, has a spiritual meaning beyond reality.

How to prove that you serve God well?

Get rich.

The more money you make, the better you perform your "vocation".

Of course, the words cannot be understood directly in this way, but need to go around in a circle:

Since they are all "vocations", then, in theory, you are just a manager of God in the world to manage these wealth in the world.

God's purpose is to redeem all people.

So if you use this money just for your own extravagant enjoyment, then it is definitely wrong.

However, when you wear a beaver hat, you feel that you are not enjoying it yourself, but helping the hunters who catch beavers and the collectors who make hats; when you eat a big meal, you feel that you are not enjoying it yourself, but helping the cooks and those who prepare the ingredients - so that they also have the opportunity to perform their vocation.

If you don't live a luxurious life and don't wear a beaver hat, then don't you give those hunters and tailors the opportunity to perform their "vocations" and go to heaven in the future?

As long as you think you are not extravagant, but are fulfilling the mission God has given you, and are doing it to help more people, then you will be able to go to heaven in the future.

This kind of logic, like taking off your pants and farting, has been explained by similar logic when Christianity faces the issue of interest - interest is not interest, but a subsidy for the risk taken to help the lender.

Including killing, invasion, massacre, etc., can actually be explained. This is the significance of the Reformation. Look at the Middle East, which has not undergone religious reform. It is not allowed to lend money. You have to buy the collateral first (actually a loan), and then rent the collateral to the lender to collect rent every month. The rent is collected, not interest, to avoid it. This is not the same as the direct theological explanation as reasonable.

One is that a white horse is not a horse.

The other is to paint a horse yellow and say it is a cow, and cows are legal.

With such a religious foundation of Christianity that has been modified by magic, it is very easy to understand why this book is very popular in the Netherlands.

In this era of religious decline, in this era when everyone is beginning to pursue rationality, the religious set is not very useful, so one needs to use "rational" analysis to prove that personal pursuit of self-interest promotes progress.

It was just a religious explanation originally.

Now it is a rational explanation.

As for the logic of this set of things, it is not much different, but because rationality is now superior to religion, it is more fashionable.

The viewpoint of this editorial cannot be said to be completely contrary to the original intention of "Fable". It is nothing more than an extreme accelerationism-since this rule that allows evil people with bad morals to serve the welfare of society requires a long time for everyone's selfishness to form in the sinful human practice, then I can speed it up, right?

Direct anarchy, killing indiscriminately, robbing, killing, smashing, looting, beheading, occupying and forcing, and releasing all the demons in everyone's heart immediately and without limit.

Killing to the end, can't it accelerate the emergence of this "rule that allows evil people with bad morals to serve the welfare of society and everyone recognizes it"?

The new rules of compromise that would have taken hundreds of years to form, if they were accelerated and bloodshed, might be formed in three to five years.

It sounds like the ravings of a madman, but Kang Budai believes that it is absolutely inciteful.

Moreover, the person who wrote this editorial was deliberately pretending to be crazy.

The following paragraphs about freedom and the unreliability without guns to defend it are not something that a madman can write.

The satire of the centripetal force of pseudo-natural law derived from the will of God and the fact that monarchy is the way of nature, and it is directly aimed at the Three Bonds and Five Constant Virtues of Dashun, which made Kang Budai call him a master.

The really lethal content is precisely the paragraphs about "guild militia, citizen participation in politics, and defending with guns" sandwiched in between pretending to be crazy.

This also hit the heart of Kang Budai, a Dashun man.

He thought, this is right, what's the point of arguing? Isn't it still necessary to rely on Emperor Gaozu to kill the snake and Huang Chao to write poems? Picking up a gun and doing it is the right way.

Think of my Emperor Taizu, who was also a proper tax farmer in Mizhi back then, "making the main tax collection and self-sufficiency" - since he came to the Netherlands, you can know that it is really strange to turn the tax farmer industry into a debtor. A bunch of brothers who can be founding generals are so good at fighting. If they really have to be ruthless, are they afraid that the tax revenue will not be collected?

He became a tax farmer based on his conscience and actually owed a lot of debts, but he did not argue that the court's tax system was unreasonable, but directly took up his weapons and did it. Only by doing can you make a clear world; talking, what's the use of talking?

The situation in the Netherlands is different from that of France and Russia in later generations.

France is a monarchy under absolute centralization, so before the monarch is beheaded, it is impossible for the republicans to fight first.

And the Netherlands... Let alone the 40 years of no ruling era that just passed, just say that William IV's power can really be compared with the French king and the Russian tsar?

It is not really a republic, but to say that the Netherlands is an absolute monarchy is simply a lie.

In this case, overthrowing the monarch of the "uncrowned monarchy" is not the most important thing.

This thing, at least in the eyes of the various factions in the Netherlands, is a fragile one and does not need to be overthrown with all efforts.

Therefore, the situation in France or later Russia, where the monarch is first unanimously overthrown and then a life-and-death struggle, is impossible in the Netherlands.

On the contrary, whether the Netherlands will be a united Dutch Republic or a scattered seven-province confederation in the future has become the primary life-and-death issue in the Netherlands.

How can all factions in the Netherlands accept a compromise result and temporarily put aside the dispute?

Simple, find a common enemy.

So, who is the common enemy of those who are arguing now?

Not France, nor Britain.

But the people of the Netherlands, the people, and those radical enlightenmentists who want to make sovereignty belong to the people.

Whether it is the decentralization faction or the regent faction, they have not provided a path like that in 1993.

The virtue theory of the decentralization faction requires that only those with a property of more than 100,000 guilders are considered human beings; the regent faction does not care about the people at all, because many of them are tax farmers themselves.

The Enlightenment itself has just begun, and Rousseau, the initiator of the most powerful thought in the 1993 incident, is still writing operas. The radical ideas in the Enlightenment faction are not mainstream yet.

But this kind of thought that is not mainstream for the time being is the most terrifying for the people of the first and second estates in the Netherlands.

The two sides have debated so many scriptures before, but they are not as powerful as the editorial proposed to organize militias and defend freedom.

This means that someone may turn the people of the third and fourth estates in the Netherlands into a part of the real nation.

And this will be a result that neither faction can accept.

The dispute between the two factions is a dispute between people in the first and second estates, a dispute where the meat is rotten in the pot. But if the people of the third and fourth estates take advantage of the situation, it will be troublesome.

Excluding the last part of the nonsense in this editorial, this editorial is quite dangerous to the first and second estates of the Netherlands.

As expected, soon after this editorial came out, the direction of the entire Dutch debate changed drastically.

Not long ago, the fight was fierce, with the decentralization faction accusing the centralization faction of being the supporters of the tyrant; the centralization faction accusing the decentralization faction of being the culprit for the division of the Netherlands.

Now, they are unanimously criticizing this editorial that calls on the third and fourth estates to take up arms.

They are unanimous, and the supporters of the editorial have also begun to confront each other.

The original content of the debate in the pamphlet was whether to decentralize or centralize power.

Now it has become a debate on whether the general public should participate in politics or whether only the rich and the upper class can participate in politics.

The Leiden citizen militia already elected their own commanders, which actually controlled the ruling power of the city. Some places have already started to practice it.

If this matter continues to develop, the Orangemen will certainly be restless, and the Republicans who had been arguing fiercely before will have to temporarily unite to fight against the untouchables.