Ba Jin's representative works are undoubtedly Home, Spring and Autumn. Almost everyone has a positive attitude towards these three works, but I, a self-proclaimed neo-Taoist, want to peel off its flashy mask in order to return to the original.
In his masterpiece, Ba Jin criticized the so-called feudal family's destruction of human nature. There is no doubt that this kind of extended family once existed widely in China. Under the highly autocratic system in China, the economic and political organizations spontaneously formed by people from different families are highly dangerous. Therefore, the extended family with blood ties grew up under the protection of traditional filial piety, and it also plays the role of economic organizations and welfare institutions. It can be asserted that this is a spontaneous order that adapts to China society. Although this spontaneous order has been distorted and developed under China's authoritarian system, it has its own rational core as an economic organization and welfare institution formed through long-term evolution.
In modern times, with the changes of society and culture, such a big family not only lost its former scenery, but also lost its ideological legitimacy. Even more deadly, this extended family is often the target of extortion by the authorities and some violent groups (unless it has nepotism with these groups). Later, this kind of big family was destroyed one by one under the banner of revolution, which was the conscious and unconscious pursuit of all China people, including Ba Jin. It can be said that we have destroyed the traditional social ecosystem in China. Sadly, after we destroyed all this, what we got was not a magnificent palace, but a ruin.
The most valuable thing about American civil rights movement in 1960s is that it did not regard long-term evolved enterprises and companies as evil capitalism. It is to curb the infringement of workers' rights through workers' free association and collective bargaining, and to curb its destruction of free competition through anti-monopoly law ... how consistent these are with the principle of "one yin and one yang". If we treat and protect such a big feudal family as a family business, if the workers' movement won the right of free association and collective bargaining for nannies and employees in that big family (not for regime change), if young people had more freedom and choices ... then we wouldn't have experienced so many ups and downs and experienced so many historical cycles.
Sima Qian's Historical Records said: "Taoism ... uses consistency. It is not suitable to keep pace with the times, adapt to changes in things, establish customs and do things. " Here, following the trend and keeping pace with the times seem to be contradictory. But after we have experienced the lesson of throwing water on children, I think we should be more sober.