Looking up: A Mental Attitude Wang Kailing? (Recommended reading)

We can't imagine what our ancestors thought when they first looked up at the starry sky, but we know that the vast starry sky overhead once ignited the birth and prosperity of many civilizations. When human beings begin to look up, it means philosophical thinking and awe, which is the best gesture of our human mental state.

We live in the gutter, but there are still people looking up at the stars.

? Oscar Wilde

Among the voices of predecessors about life, time and space, and belief, one sentence is the most incisive and perfect expression for me, and that is Kant's epitaph: "The deeper I stare at them, the stronger my awe and admiration will be, that is, the starry sky above my head and the moral law in my heart."

Looking up at the starry sky-for many years, this simple behavior, its life aesthetics and religious feelings have always touched and influenced me. In my eyes, this is not only an affectionate action, but also a ceremony of faith. It taught me infatuation and gratitude, taught me how to protect my childhood conduct, how to look at the world carefully with piety, and learn humility and loyalty from subtle things ... humility, only by restoring humility can life be supported by God, and the soul can give birth to the height and dignity of bamboo branches.

If "looking up" has a spiritual pronoun, I think it should be "longing, piety, keeping promises, conversion, loyalty ..." and so on. "Looking up"-make people stand tall! It is not only the pride of natural significance, but also the worship of social attributes; It can refer to a person's life action, and it can also symbolize the cultural character and spiritual attitude of a generation. Over the years, I have developed an observation habit: to see if there is piety in a person's attitude towards the starry sky and whether there is a temperament that matches it. In a sense, watching how a person consumes the starry sky can roughly judge how he consumes his life. The same is true of groups of an era.

In ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and ancient China, when you trace back to the source of civilization, you will find that the earliest cultural inspiration and life wisdom-all conceived by staring at the sky, were born from the inspiration of Yulu sky and the instructions of the moon halo.

Myths, hymns, seasons, calendars, totems, rituals, philosophy, poetry, divination, religion, art ... are all exceptions. The sun and the moon overlap and the stars turn to fight; Rain or shine, the situation changes; Culture and heaven and earth inhabit, and human relations and gods share the same interests; When the Milky Way is bright, it is also a season of high tide of humanities. Starry sky, for people who walk on the ground, is not only a physical dependence, but also a spiritual dependence; It is not only the source of light, but also the source of poetry and dreams, divinity and reason.

From "Know Yourself" in Athens Temple to "My Kingdom is in Heaven" by Beethoven; From Qu Yuan's question about "What's the virtue of shining? How can you be born after death" to Zhang's exclamation about "Who sees the moon at the riverside and shines on people at the beginning of the river" ... It is under the care and lingering of starlight that human beings confirm their feet, establish infinity and finiteness, feel the eternity and reincarnation of heaven, and thus obtain the peace of life in the coordinate system.

Without the shelter and nourishment of the starry sky, how gloomy and cold the night will be.

Above life, it is the top of the mountain. Above the top of the mountain, there is a god. For people on earth, the starry sky is the only God and the brightest spiritual roof, which endows you with majestic, mysterious, poetic, pure, vast, profound, generous and infinite time and space.

Chinese word formation is really wonderful. If you take the word "faith" apart, you will find that the relationship between faith and worship is so close-those who believe, worship; People who admire, believe. Only those who admire believe, and those who believe admire.

The aesthetic attitude and consumption pattern towards the starry sky can often be seen from the survival character, cultural habits and value beliefs of an era. I found that an era of virtue and faith must be an era of humility, an era of respect for all things, and an era accustomed to worship and looking up; Every season when idealism and romanticism are surging, it must be the most affectionate and focused time to stare at the stars.

It should be said that half a century ago, the consumption of starry sky was basically a pure, childhood-style cultural and spiritual consumption, and more importantly, people stared at it with an aesthetic and religious line of sight. But since modern times, with the expansion of technological ambition and flying tools, people have become practical and greedy, and started to get their hands on her in an impatient physical way ..... Brothers looked at her instead of touching her. There is a milestone here: On July 20th, A.D. 1969, as the Apollo lunar module was slowly opened, an earthman named Armstrong planted a star-spangled banner on a bare land where humans had never set foot.

When the starry sky becomes "space", the artistic conception becomes territory, when imagination becomes scientific and technological strength and productivity, "moths to the fire" becomes space competition and star wars-human consumption of the starry sky has also been smuggled from "love" to "possession", and the investigation of it has also changed from romance to science and technology and politics, and worship has become getting their hands on and stealing. Not only did the love song end, but innocence also died.

At this point, Kant and Newton's spiritual night was completely over. Their starry sky has been completely materialized.