First, the external rhetoric is absolutely true in insisting on these orders. Tell your story as the inevitable result given and created by the great God or the laws of nature. If we want to say that everyone is unequal, it is not because of what Hammurabi himself said, but because of God’s will. If we want to say that all people are equal, we cannot say that it was Jefferson himself who said this, but rather that it was the grace of the Creator. If we want to say that the free market economy is the best economic system, we cannot say that it is Adam Smith who said it himself, but rather that it is because this is the unchanging law of nature.

Second, the same set of principles must be thoroughly implemented in education. From the moment we are born, we are constantly reminded of this order constructed by our imagination. Whether it is fairy tales, operas, paintings, songs, architecture, recipes, fashion or political propaganda. They all allow us to continue to accept and identify with the order.

Because the order constructed by imagination has been deeply integrated with the real world and is inseparable. Secondly, it has completely shaped our desires, producing romanticism, nationalism, capitalism, humanism, etc. This makes each of us the most powerful guardian of the fictional order. In the end, even if we use some supernatural power to let our desires escape the order, it is still only me. There is simply no way to break the order itself.

Let’s take the previous example of Mercedes-Benz, which is a common imagination that exists in the minds of countless people. You believe it, I believe it, everyone believes it. And if one day, even the chairman of Mercedes-Benz does not believe in the existence of Mercedes-Benz cars, what will be the result? He will soon be sent to a mental hospital, and someone will immediately take his place. So if we want to solve Mercedes-Benz, we need to imagine something stronger, like a legal system. And if we want to solve the legal system, we have to imagine greater national power. And if we want to solve the country, we must imagine a more powerful story.

Regarding the topic of contradiction, let me make a few digressions. When we look at the same thing, we often hold opposite views, so it becomes red-faced to argue with the other party. But as we come into contact with more and more viewpoints, we will gradually find that there are contradictions in the knowledge we have learned. As the contradictions continued to accumulate, I finally understood that the process of expanding my cognitive boundaries was accompanied by the process of constantly shaping myself into a contradictory body. Do we seek knowledge to obtain the truth? But some people say that the truth itself is like a watch whose back cover can never be opened. We never know what the truth contained in it is. What we call knowledge is to constantly interpret the information that the watch hands want to show us, and then analyze what its core truth is. We often think that we are getting closer to the truth, but what if the information shown to me by the hands of the watch is actually far from the truth at all?

The answer is yes. Over thousands of years, we have seen small and simple cultures gradually merge into larger and more complex civilizations. As a result, the number of large cultures in the world has gradually decreased, but their scale and complexity are far greater than they were yesterday.

If we look at it from a micro level, every time several cultures merge into a large culture, we can also see the fragmentation and disintegration of the large culture. Just like the Mongol Empire, although it once dominated Asia and even conquered parts of Europe, it eventually fell apart. Like Christianity, although it has hundreds of millions of believers, it has also split into countless sects. The same is true for Latin. Although it once circulated in Central and Western Europe, it was eventually transformed into various local dialects and evolved into the languages ​​of various countries.

However, it is only a temporary situation that a long period of time will lead to division, and a long period of time will inevitably unite. This is the unchanging general trend.

If you want to observe the direction of history, the key point is which height to use. From an ordinary bird's-eye view, looking at the development trend over decades or centuries, it may be difficult to judge whether historical trends are dividing or converging. So we have to zoom up to a height similar to that of a space satellite, and look at a span of not centuries, but thousands of years. This kind of height allows us to see clearly at a glance that the historical trend is that the long-term separation will inevitably lead to convergence. As for the previous examples of the Schism of Christianity or the collapse of the Mongol Empire, they are like small bumps in the road of history.

Today, almost all human beings accept the same geopolitical system. The entire earth is divided into different countries, but they are all internationally recognized. The whole world uses the same economic system, and even the most remote corners of the earth are influenced by the capitalist market economy. shaping; the whole world adopts the same legal system, at least in theory, human rights and international law are universal; the whole world also accepts the same scientific system, whether in China, the United States, Australia or Brazil, experts on atomic structure or tuberculosis The opinions on therapy will all be the same.

Therefore, our cultural development is undergoing the process of globalization.

There is a darker side to money. Although money can build trust between strangers, people trust not people, communities, or some sacred values, but only money itself and the system behind it that operates without human values. We still don’t trust strangers, we still don’t even trust our next-door neighbors, but we trust them with their money. No money, no trust. When the infiltration of money breaks down the dam built by society, religion and country, the world becomes a huge and ruthless market.

First, the empire must rule over many different peoples, each with different cultural identities and independent territories.

Second, the territory of the empire can be flexibly adjusted and expanded almost infinitely.

According to this concept, the empire must rule more than three peoples, and the empire can incorporate more other countries and territories without adjusting its own basic structure and national identity.

First, it is said that the empire's system is unworkable and difficult to govern. But in the past 2,500 years, empire has been the most common political form in the world, and it is also very stable. Most of the time, it's not a problem to defeat the rebels within the empire. Empires are usually overturned because of external aggression or internal strife among the ruling elite.

Furthermore, when an empire collapses, it does not mean that the subjects can become independent. Instead, every time an empire disintegrates, a new empire will take its place and continue to rule.

In addition, we do not deny that the establishment and maintenance of an empire is indeed accompanied by tragic massacres, and the survivors after rule will also be brutally oppressed.

However, when it comes to the Empire, I feel that everything about it is evil and cruel, and all related things should be abandoned, and it is too one-sided. The Empire is not completely harmful and useless.

In the process of the integration of many small cultures into large cultures, the influence of the empire played a major role. Whether it is the spread of ideas, population, goods or technology, the speed of spread within the empire is more convenient and faster than that of different regulated areas. Also, the most important thing is that the empire itself deliberately spreads various ideas, systems and norms. This is for two very simple reasons.

From the beginning a small group of people built a large empire and formed an imperial culture. As the empire expanded externally and conquered more and more ethnic groups, the cultures of many ethnic groups that entered the melting pot of the empire continued to merge into one. The culture of the empire gradually gained recognition and acceptance from its subjects. Then, the natural thing happened. The subjects began to demand equal status in the name of common imperial values, which caused the founders of the empire to lose their original dominant position. However, the imperial culture continued to flourish and flourish. This set of logic is the most basic process by which empires promote globalization and promote the integration of all mankind.

In the chapter on the vision of empires, the author also makes an interesting point, that is, it is easy for us to simply divide everyone into good guys and bad guys, and all empires will probably be classified as bad guys. After all, nearly all empires are built on blood and maintain power through oppression and war. However, most of today's culture is a legacy of the empire. If the Empire is by definition a bad thing, then what have we become?

Now, a whole new empire has emerged, a truly global empire. Unifying the world is probably not far away from us. Because now nationalism is rapidly losing its status and globalization is sweeping in violently, more and more people believe that the real political authority should come from all human beings, not from members of a specific nationality, and the political power of human beings The direction should also be to protect human rights and safeguard the interests of all mankind.

Gautama Buddha, the central figure of Buddhism, is not a god but a human being. Buddhist scriptures say that when Sakyamuni saw the people around him deeply mired in suffering, he became intolerable. He saw that people, regardless of gender, old or young, not only often suffered from the pain of war and plague, but also were not immune to all kinds of anxiety, depression and dissatisfaction. It seemed that all these were inevitable things in life. Human beings pursue wealth and power, acquire knowledge, have children, and build palaces. But no matter how many achievements you have made, you are still not satisfied. The poor dream of becoming rich, and those with a million want ten million. And even if they are really rich and famous, they are still not satisfied, they still have endless troubles and worries, and cannot escape from birth, old age, illness and death. Until the day of death, everything disappears like a dream, and life seems like a meaningless pursuit. However, how can we escape from this reincarnation?

Chaotic systems are divided into two levels. The first level system means that it will not change due to prediction. For example, weather and earthquakes are first-level systems. Although they are extremely complex and difficult to predict, we can build computational models and continuously input more and more factors to make weather and earthquake predictions more and more accurate.

The second-level chaotic system will be affected by predictions and change. So it can never be predicted. For example, if the current crude oil price is 90 US dollars per barrel, and we predict that it will rise to 100 US dollars tomorrow, businessmen will immediately rush to buy it in order to profit from the expected price increase. But the result is that the price of oil will rise to $100 today instead of waiting until tomorrow. So what will it be tomorrow? Nobody knows. Furthermore, politics is also a secondary chaotic system. Suppose that in 2010, a genius developed an algorithm that could predict whether a revolution would occur. So he sold the service to the Egyptian president in exchange for a large sum of money. He told the president that he predicted a massive revolution in Egypt within the next year. How did the president react after hearing this? He will immediately lower taxes, spend large sums of money to subsidize people's lives, and at the same time strengthen the police force to maintain stability. So, all this had an effect, and a year passed without a revolution. The result must be that the president arrested this so-called genius and yelled at him loudly: "Your algorithm is a lie! If it weren't for this thing of yours, I wouldn't give all my money to others. I would "Build one more palace!" The scientist would definitely argue: "But it was precisely because we predicted it that the revolution didn't happen." "You mean, you predicted it, but it didn't happen?" The president will definitely kill him. .

So why should we study history? History is not like physics or economics, where the aim is not to make accurate predictions. The reason why we study history is not to know the future, but to expand our horizons and understand that the present is neither "natural" nor inevitable. The possibilities for the future are far greater than we imagine.

From the moment we discover our own ignorance, we begin to feel the need to seek out new knowledge. Therefore, mainstream modern research methods will assume that old knowledge is insufficient or wrong. So the focus at this time is not on studying the old knowledge system, but on new observations and experiments. Observations and experiments alone are not enough. In order to understand the universe, we must sort out the results of various observations and experiments and summarize them into a complete theory. At this time, mathematics was raised to unprecedented heights, because early knowledge systems often used "stories" to form theories, while modern science uses "mathematics."

We modern scientists are obsessed with using mathematical formulas to express all the laws of the world. Starting from Newton's three laws of mechanics, Newton told us that the writing language used in the book of nature is mathematics. Some scholars began to imitate Newton and organize biology, economics and psychology into simple formulas. However, they found that these fields were too complicated to express using mathematical formulas, and it was impossible to copy everything. In order to deal with the more complex aspects of reality, mathematics developed a new branch: statistics.

At the same time, the author tells us that mathematics is actually another subject that is very troublesome for humans. This mathematical language is difficult for the human brain to grasp, and the results often contradict common sense. Of the 7 billion people in the world today, how many actually understand quantum mechanics, cell biology, or macroeconomics? Despite this, science enjoys a lofty status because it has brought so many new abilities to mankind. While presidents and generals may not understand nuclear physics themselves, they know a lot about what nuclear bombs can do.

Knowledge is power and the real test is practicality. What allows us to make new things is knowledge. Technology and war are the most typical symbiotic relationship that promotes each other. Today's wars are the product of science, and the development of science is funded and guided by the military.

In the next few hundred years, whether it was the Americas, Oceania, the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean, they were completely dominated by Europeans. As a result, the Europeans accumulated a lot of wealth and resources, which finally gave them the ability to invade Asia, and worked together to defeat the major empires. After that, the Europeans divided the spoils among themselves. By the time the Ottomans, Persia, India, and China woke up, times would have changed and it would be too late.

At the same time, science also provided righteous endorsement for the imperialists’ colonial legitimation. For example, their biologists, anthropologists and even linguists have put forward some so-called scientific evidence to prove that Europeans are better than all other peoples and therefore have the right to rule others. But then again, some say that the conquest of the empire brought progress and improved life, while some say it brought death and injustice. But no matter what, the empire did bring huge changes to the world, and it is difficult to simply classify it as good or evil, right or wrong.

To sum up, scientists provided the empire with a variety of practical knowledge, ideological foundations, and technological tools. Without them, Europeans would not have been able to conquer the world. On the other hand, the conquerors repaid the scientists by providing all kinds of information and protection, as well as funding for various scientific researches, and allowing scientific thinking to spread to every corner of the earth. Similarly, without the support of the empire, science would not be able to flourish.

Does it sound a bit like a Ponzi scheme? But our entire modern economy is actually a scam, an astonishing exercise in human imagination. What really makes capitalism work is our trust in the future. Trust is the only backing of capitalism.

Returning to the bakery example, if there is no capitalist imagination that allows money to flow in a trustful manner, then Miss C will be desperate in an instant. Because without a bakery, he can't bake bread. If she can't bake bread, she can't make money. You can’t hire a contractor if you can’t make money. If she couldn't hire a contractor, where would she find a bakery?

We humans have been trapped in this cycle of death for thousands of years, and it was not until the emergence of the concept of credit that we finally escaped from this predicament. Behind credit is a basic assumption, that is, the resources in the future will definitely far exceed the present, which means that when we use future income to invest in the present, it will bring many new and wonderful business opportunities. Tomorrow's cake will definitely be bigger than today's. Otherwise, how can we have any trust in the future? I believe that the global economic cake has unlimited potential because the scientific revolution has brought people the concept of progress. After admitting our ignorance, as long as we invest and research, everything can get better and better. This idea was thus applied to economics.

This is the fly in the ointment of free market capitalism. There is no guarantee that profits will be earned fairly and distributed equitably. And on the contrary, because humans have the desire to pursue profits and economic growth, they will decide to blindly eliminate all possible obstacles. When "growth" becomes the supreme goal and is not subject to the checks and balances of other moral ethics, it can easily lead to a disaster. There are religions that kill millions of people out of hatred. Yet capitalism has also killed millions of people out of apathy and greed. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade was not caused by Europeans’ racial hatred of Africans. The people who bought stocks in slave trading companies and the managers who managed slave trading companies never cared about Africans at all. Not to mention the owners of sugar cane estates. Many of the owners live far away, and the only thing they care about is how much money they make.

Another most important point is that if another war breaks out between two countries that currently possess nuclear weapons, it will be tantamount to collective suicide. Therefore, conquering the world by force has become an impossible task. Therefore, this has allowed the cause of peace in our world to enter a virtuous cycle. The threat of nuclear apocalypse promotes pacifism, and as war breaks up trade flourishes. As trade grows, peace becomes more profitable and war becomes more costly. As time goes by, this virtuous cycle creates the most important obstacle to the war.

After investigating the data, we came to two intriguing conclusions.

But precisely because our own expectations are so important, looking at the history of happiness as a whole comes to me from a more convincing angle. For modern people, although we have a variety of painkillers at our disposal, we increasingly expect more comfort and pleasure, and are less and less able to endure pain. The result is that we experience more pain than our ancestors did.

Unfortunately, our body's biochemical system has limitations on happiness, and it will maintain happiness at a constant level. Because happiness does not conform to the law of natural selection. If a happy and lonely hermit is compared with two anxious couples all day long, the former will definitely become extinct, while the latter will pass on the gene. The role of pleasure and pain in the evolutionary process is only to encourage or hinder survival and reproduction. Therefore, it is not difficult for us to imagine that the result of human evolution is that we will not be too happy and not too painful. Happiness is very short-lived, and soon we feel pain again.

As an example of how to face death, this is not an isolated extreme hypothesis. We think, if the meaning of life in the Middle Ages that you can enter heaven and obtain eternal life after death is an illusion, then modern scientists consider themselves to be human knowledge Is the meaning of life in expanding new frontiers also an illusion? Some soldiers feel that their life is meaningful because they are defending their home and country. However, we said before that the country is just a story that exists in the common imagination of all of us. There is no essential difference between the underlying concepts of the country and God. Then Is the meaning of defending one's country and one's country as much an illusion as going to heaven after death? In the same way, entrepreneurs who want to start a new company think this is the meaning of life. Similarly, some people believe in God, read the Bible, participate in jihad, and build temples. They also think this is the meaning of life. But are these one after another? Illusion? If we put it this way, the so-called happiness is probably just a synchronization between our own illusion of the meaning of life and the collective illusion. Can you understand me? This means that I can get happiness from joining the army because everyone thinks that doing so has the meaning of protecting the country. I feel happy when I start a company because people think it is meaningful to contribute to the social economy. So as long as my own thoughts and the expectations of everyone around me can be consistent, then I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and I can get happiness from this belief.