What does Lu Xun mean by "holding and digging"?

There is a famous joke in "Laughter in the Woods". A magistrate celebrated his birthday. Because he was a mouse, his subordinates raised money to cast a golden mouse as a gift. After the magistrate accepted it, he was very inspired, so he found another opportunity to tell everyone that next year happens to be my wife's birthday. She is one year younger than me, and she is an ox. You see, a mouse can feed a magistrate's appetite as big as an ox. 1925 12 10, according to this joke, Mr. Lu Xun wrote a short article, saying, "He would never dare to think of Taurus without giving the golden mouse first. Once released, it will be difficult to clean up. " No matter whether you have the ability to send Taurus, "even if you do, I'm afraid his aunt is an elephant." This is called a rising tide lifts all boats. If the subordinate initially sent a cucumber to the magistrate of a county, although he would be unhappy at that time, at least he would send half a basket of cucumbers for his next birthday. Or in a fit of pique, don't even want a birthday in the future. In the relationship between superiors and subordinates, subordinates often complain that when someone is not an official, he is quite like a person. Once you become an official, you don't look like a person. What does this mean? I mean this guy. When he became an official, he became greedy. Strange officials? They must have unshirkable responsibilities, but I think subordinates seem to have more responsibilities. Take a new official as an example. As soon as he took office, his main business was to greet and see him off in a bustling way. Either this phone call or that compliment. "Send clothes today (19 10 years-Wei note), and send wings tomorrow. Even he himself was carried away, and the result was that he gradually became an old bureaucrat and began to scrape the ground. " (Lu Xun's language) In other words, the appetite of corrupt officials is mostly fed by subordinates or important officials. What will happen? Lu Xun made an analogy. Officials are like rivers, he said. The more you take, the higher the river will be, so that "the river is much higher than the roof." At first, it was natural to prevent it from collapsing, so we put a little soil on it; Unexpectedly, the higher the paddle, the greater the disaster once it is broken. As a result, there are all kinds of tricks, such as "grabbing the embankment", "protecting the embankment" and "preventing the embankment from breaking", and everyone suffers. If I saw the river flooding at first, I didn't raise the embankment, but dug the bottom. I thought it would never happen. "Because in the process of holding and digging, holding is the most labor-saving and has benefited a lot from each other, so everyone is happy. Naturally, people just grasp the river problem and don't dig. Extending to the official road, digging is exposing criticism, hostility, and not keeping a high degree of consistency with the boss. Such an alternative, no matter where you go, is doomed to be unpopular and even hit a wall everywhere. In contrast, "everyone suffers" is easier to get psychological comfort than a person suffering alone, so people are in groups, willing, wave upon wave, regardless of the consequences. I have a cartoon by the Danish painter Peter stroop, named "The Result of Worship", which reproduces such a scene. The main idea of the cartoon is: a thin man is giving a speech and several people are applauding him; The speaker was cheered up by admirers; People who worship God are getting fatter and fatter, and many people admire and even bow down. Finally, the admirer was as fat as a sumo wrestler, and all the admirers were crushed and tortured under his fat body. Whether it is Lu Xun's "Peng Dig" or Peter Stroop's "The Result of Worship", people are warned that infinite worship and praise of a person or a thing will definitely harm the initiator, which is called self-inflicted.