I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 28 Helping Farmers
Yuan Shu was certainly aware of the outside world's doubts.

Of course he knew that fishing requires making a nest and catching mice requires bait. As the saying goes, you can't get a tiger cub without risking it, let alone a human.
If you want to get a large group of people to take the bait, become their supporters, and follow you wholeheartedly, and use conscience as a weapon to wipe out the darkness, what you need is not only doctrines and emotions, but also real actions and results.

Can appealing to conscience really help us rebuild our spiritual support and get rid of confusion and anxiety?
of course can.

At this point, Yuan Shu began to promote the theory of "human nature is good".

Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there have been two opinions: that human nature is good and that human nature is evil. Some people think that human nature is good, while some people think that human nature is evil. They each saw facts that were sufficient to support their own theories, so they each firmly believed in their own views.

When Confucianism became the only doctrine respected, Xunzi, an alternative figure in the Confucian school, was deliberately denied and criticized for his remarks that human nature is evil. He was not widely recognized and the theory of human nature being good became popular.

This theory holds that human nature is inherently good, and that acquired education is more about teaching people to distinguish right from wrong, further cultivate their good thoughts, and not let their good thoughts be misused.

Based on this theory, Yuan Shu can naturally extend from the theory of human nature to conscience - conscience exists in the heart and exists naturally without the need for special educational intervention. What we should do is to follow the conscience of our heart and act in accordance with our conscience.

This is called appealing to one’s conscience.

But in fact, Yuan Shu was also stuck in a bug.

The theory of original sin must have had its own soil for growth. Not to mention those bad people with low morals, people with innate antisocial personalities also exist objectively. They are born assholes in the legal and moral sense and are beyond redemption.

This situation is the biggest blow to the theory of human nature being good.

But the problem is that human nature is good, which is a kind of political correctness, and the many social political correctnesses derived from this political correctness are Yuan Shu's greatest help.

For example, everyone knows that corruption is wrong and integrity is right.

Everyone knows that loyalty is right and betrayal is wrong.

Everyone knows that engaging in production is right, and not being productive is lazy and wrong.

Everyone knows that bullying the weak is wrong, and caring for the weak is right.

These political correctnesses are widely present in this society. They are important and valuable political and moral assets brought about by the prevalence of Confucianism in the world.

Although these political correctness may not necessarily be implemented by people, as long as it exists, no matter how powerful a person is, he cannot openly say in front of everyone that these political correctness are bullshit, and he will be restrained to a certain extent.

What Yuan Shu calls "awakening conscience" is to implement political correctness on this basis.

The person who created political correctness may not have good intentions, but Yuan Shu wanted to use his mind to accomplish something good.

In other words, scholars cannot separate themselves from the working people, but must get close to them personally, experience the sufferings of the world, and then achieve the state of "loving the people" and realize a thorough understanding of farmers' lives and agricultural production.

Agriculture is the foundation of the country. This is first of all a political correctness. Combined with other political correctnesses, Yuan Shu’s action plan is completely a super political correctness with a lot of political correctness stacked on top of it.

Do you want to retrace the path of sages and implement their teachings?
First of all! Help the farmers!

At the end of December in the eighth year of Yan Xi, Yuan Shu formally gave a speech, saying that he would personally lead everyone to begin personal learning and practice of "reaching conscience."

The specific plan is to "help farmers".

Helping farmers is the initial action point for the study of conscience.

Everyone knows that agriculture is the foundation of the country, but how many people can fully explain why agriculture is the foundation of the country?

Judging from the current situation, is agriculture, the "foundation of the country", valued and supported by the imperial court?

Are farmers producing enough food to survive and reproduce?

Why is there famine and starvation everywhere in the world?
And if there was no perfect agricultural production, what kind of disaster would have happened to the Han Dynasty?
After this series of buffs are stacked up, the agricultural assistance campaign is officially launched, and the target is the self-cultivating farmers in Maoling County.

The land under the jurisdiction of landlords and powerful people was not within the scope of helping farmers, because Yuan Shu believed that these powerful people each had their own savings and assets, and the land and tenants were their private property, so they should help themselves and be responsible for themselves.

The agricultural assistance campaign is aimed at self-employed farmers who are responsible for their own profits and losses, produce their own products, and face cruel taxation.

"I have heard that the lives of self-cultivating farmers are difficult and the taxes are heavy. In times of disaster, self-cultivating farmers often lose their families and have to sell their children. Countless people are displaced. Their misery should be remembered by our conscience. Therefore, helping farmers is to follow our conscience."

Initially, there were more than 500 specific participants in the action, all of whom were ardent followers and participants of the study of conscience.

Yuan Shu selected more than 200 strong men among them, and led himself, the Thirteen Guardians and Lu Zhi. At a command, he divided the troops into four groups and led everyone to leave the county in the cold winter, go deep into the settlements and villages of self-cultivating farmers in the wilderness, investigate the living conditions of the self-cultivating farmers in the Maoling area, and inquire about their difficulties.

Then, all the situations were combined to develop an implementable agricultural assistance plan to help the self-cultivating farmers in Maoling area solve their livelihood and production problems so that they could maintain their lives and reproduce. As for the results, even though Yuan Shu had been fully prepared for the hardships of farmers in this era, he still felt shocked when he saw it with his own eyes.

First of all, what he saw were not living people suffering from starvation and freezing, but dead people.

On the way deep into the village, one could see a frozen corpse naked on both sides of the road from time to time, which scared some young students who had never seen a corpse and made them scream.

These bodies were lying naked and miserable on both sides of the road. They were often skinny and looked like mummies, with no one to collect them or take care of them.

That is, in winter, when the climate is extremely cold, corpses decay more slowly. But if it is hot, once the corpses decay, they become a breeding ground for bacteria, and it is unknown how big a plague will be caused.

After going deep into the self-cultivating peasant village on the plains, Yuan Shu also saw with his own eyes what kind of houses the farmers of that era lived in.

There was no construction technique at all. There were dilapidated thatched houses that were leaky and light-permeable, mud houses with holes here and collapses there, and cave houses that were half above ground and half underground, similar to cave dwellings.

Occasionally, you can see one or two Syrian war-damaged wooden brick houses built with a few pieces of broken wood and stones, which can almost be considered mansions in a village.

Even a complete house is considered a good residence, but most of the time there are "houses" without doors, windows, and just a roof without surroundings.

If the houses are like this, the people are even more miserable.

In those incomplete houses, one could see at a glance that a family of five, six, seven or eight people, young and old, men, women and children, were huddled together in the cold, wrapped in rags, straw, and broken furs of unknown birds and animals to barely keep out the severe cold.

The old people's faces turned pale and purple from the cold, the children's faces turned red and they were shivering from the cold. Most of them were not wearing complete clothes and just barely wrapped the cloth around their bodies.

Thick smoke billowed out of the old and broken stove, making it impossible for people to open their eyes. With Yuan Shu's 1.5 eyesight, he couldn't tell what was cooking in the pot on the stove.

And these people seem to have a natural fear of people who are dressed gorgeously and neatly.

Those who lived in the house, even if they were making a fire and cooking, would immediately flee into the house and close the door, pretending they did not exist.

What was even more miserable was that those families who did not have complete houses, when they saw Yuan Shu and his group, who were dressed neatly and gorgeously, they thought that they were officials coming to collect forced labor from them. They were so scared that men, women, young and old, fled in groups despite the severe cold and their nakedness.

Those two white buttocks didn't look funny at all, only full of sadness.

There were also some men and women who were unable to move and escape, and seemed to be accustomed to this scene. They had lost the desire to live and could only shed tears with numb faces, sitting quietly and waiting for death.

There were still some who still had the will to survive. They knelt down and kowtowed to them with miserable faces, begging for mercy, saying that they really had nothing to give out and only had their worthless lives left.

Yuan Shu had no idea how they survived or how they struggled to survive.

Seeing this, Yuan Shu couldn't help but turn his head and look towards the direction of the Ma family mansion.

Not far from where this group of people lived, the Ma family mansion stood tall, with numerous pavilions, rockery and ponds inside, decorated with red gauze and the floor paved with cushions. Every time it was time for dinner, a big bell would be rung and musicians would play music, making it seem like a home with plenty of food and no worries about starvation.

That life is so delicate.

But in a village not far away, there was a scene of ice and fire.

Seeing this, some disciples and students with ordinary or humble backgrounds sighed deeply and wiped away tears quietly, feeling that they were in the same boat.

Some disciples and students who came from privileged backgrounds generally showed expressions of disbelief, as if they couldn't believe that there were people in the world whose lives were worse than those of their big yellow dog.

Yuan Shu was silent for a moment, and asked Xu Chong, Wei Jia and others around him for some clothes they had with them. Then he stepped forward and handed the clothes to those who were either begging for mercy or numb with an expressionless face.

"It's cold, put it on."

After saying this, he turned and left under the astonished gaze of these people, returned to the side of the team, and told everyone to sort out the unused clothes and the dry food they carried with them, and distribute some to every household.

It doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t want to open the door, just put it at the door.

Then we set off to our next destination.

After this group of people left, the stunned people holding the clothes in their hands did not react.

The people who were huddled in the dark room and shivering opened the door and looked through the crack at the pile of neatly stacked clothes outside, with the same feeling of shock.

These nobles dressed in gorgeous clothes...are they taking the wrong medicine and being kind?

(End of this chapter)