莫平的英文私塾

p. 18 在儒家文化哩, 在傳統的親子教養裏, 沒有孤獨的立足之地.

In the Confucian culture, there is no room for solitariness in the traditional parent-children relationship.

p. 19

儒家文化不談隱私, 不注重個人的私密性. 一個連私人空間都不允許的文化, 當然也不存在孤獨感.

Privacy is ignored in Cunfucianism. Solitariness, undoubtedly, doesn't exist in a culture that does not even allow private space.

若是個人隱私可以被公開在媒體上, 任人指指點點, 就表示儒家文化還是無遠弗屆.

If one's private affairs can be made public and open to comments, it means Confucianism still prevails in our society.

我們不允許別人孤獨, 所以要把別人從孤獨時刻裡拉出來, 接受公共的檢視. 同時我們也害怕孤獨, 所以不斷地被迫去宣示: 我不孤獨.

We don't allow others to be alone, so we pull them out of solitariness and let the public examine them. At the same time, we are afraid of being solitary, so we're forced to constantly claim that we're not alone.

p. 20-21

典型的儒家思想, 沒有人敢特立獨行, 大家都遵守著 "中庸之道"...儒家思想歌頌的是一種群體文化...群體的公權力, 遠大於任何法律.

Nobody dares to be different in a typical Confucian environment. Everybody sticks to the idea of "being mediocre"...What the Confucianism champions is a culture of "the mass." The authority of the mass is much above any law.

p. 23

在魯迅的小說 "藥" 裡, 寫的是秋瑾的故事. 當時村子裡有個孩子生了肺病, 村人相信醫治肺病唯一的方法, 就是以用饅頭蘸了剛剛被砍頭的人所噴出來的血, 吃下去. 強烈的對比是這部小說驚心動魄之處. 一方面是一個希望改變社會的人被斬首示眾; 另一方面是愚昧的民眾, 拿了個熱饅頭來蘸鮮血, 回去給他的孩子吃. 我相信, 五四運動所要對抗的就是這一種存在於群體文化中, 愚昧到驚人的東西.

"Medicine," a short story by Lu Xun, is about Qiu Jin. A kid in the village has a lung illness. The villagers believe that the only way to cure the illness is to eat a bun dipped into the blood that gushes out of a freshly cut human head. The most extraordinary aspect of this story is the sharp, painful contrast. On the one hand, a person who wants to change the society gets beheaded. On the other hand, an ignorant villager takes a bun and dips it into blood so he can go home and feed it to his kid. I believe the May Fourth Movement was meant to fight against this amazing stupidity in a culture of the mass.