Those conventions

I recently read Wang Xiaobo's "The Silent Majority", which was a bit obscure at first. Because I didn't read much, I wasn't very interested in his quotations from scriptures. But after reading it, I became happy again. He didn't use curse words when he cursed people. Harming people without weapons is just a joke about those experiences, and it makes you understand a lot of truths and see where you overlap with them.

He said that his wife once went to a small mountain village in the south for investigation. The village was not big, so everyone lived under the eyes of others. "Everyone is scolding others, and everyone is being scolded." When she went to investigate, the locals were building their own tombs, and the nearby hills were covered with chair tombs. This kind of tomb was extremely ugly. Wang Xiaobo said that it looked like a mangy tree. But the local people fell into this trap and lost their sense of aesthetics. Each of their families was proud to build such a tomb

This paragraph directly reminded me of the story of my mother who slept flat in the north some time ago. Come play, touch the youngest's head, his eyes are full of dissatisfaction with me, "Look, this child, tsk tsk tsk, this head, this spoon, how can you be a mother? You have such a good head to let you sleep Such a virtue!"

"What virtue? The back of the head is quite plump, I think it's pretty." I also touched the back of my little daughter's head.

"What does it look like? The head has no blessings at all, just like these southerners, not good-looking or good-looking." The old lady shook her head in disgust as she spoke. She really looked down on him from the bottom of her heart, as if there was dysentery on the back of her plump head.

I suddenly remembered a piece of news on the Internet. A Northeasterner went to study abroad. Because of her flat head, she was repeatedly asked if she had any head disease. It looked like a deformity. I turned it out to her. The old lady looked arrogant and nonchalant, "I want to learn from those foreign devils!"

I dug out the online literature and showed her the dangers of sleeping with a flat head, how it affects intelligence and decreases brain capacity. Later, there were restrictions on hairstyles. Girls don’t look good in ponytails, and berets can’t be hung on their heads. Wait, wait, etc., I read it to her while I read it. Gradually, she became silent, but she didn’t give me a good look either. After all, she insisted on it herself. With more than sixty years of perspective, I could only make her temporarily doubtful, but could not completely change her perception.

This is what Wang Xiaobo mentioned later. He understood a term "norm", which can be translated as "norm". Those cultural conventions are different in different places, usually in a certain region. Most of the things that are agreed upon and must be abided by, in the regional environment, are both ugly and shady, and it is even difficult to distinguish between right and wrong.

Just like the mother’s understanding of flat heads, only by stepping out of her environment and contacting and understanding the larger area outside can it be possible to actively change.

There are many similar conventions in life, such as getting married and having children when you are older, giving up your seat immediately when seeing the elderly, weak, sick, etc. Sometimes they are also called "stereotypes". They are like ropes. Some are to tie up your life, and some are to kidnap your neck.

In order to distinguish the rope, we must not lose the habit of thinking alone, we must not be bold enough to follow others' opinions, and we must not blindly make comments for others...

Afterwards, the old lady went home, often righteous and awe-inspiring. He reprimanded other elderly people, "Don't be superstitious, don't sleep on your head, it's not good for your children, it's not smart to sleep with them... Look at those big flat heads before, how ugly they were..."