Mozi's "Susi theory"

Answer: Mo Zhai once criticized the Confucian scholar Gong Mencius for his contradictory view of both acknowledging the theory of destiny and emphasizing human learning efforts. From this, he elaborated on the influence of environment and education on the formation of character. Mo Zhai's contribution lies in proposing the "plain silk theory", which is said to be "dyed with green, it will be green, and dyed with yellow, it will be yellow". He used plain silk and dyed silk as metaphors to illustrate human nature and its changes and formations under education. In Mo Zhai's view, first of all, human nature is not innate, and human nature is just like plain silk to be dyed; secondly, the color of the dyeing vat will determine the color of the silk, that is, the environment and education. That’s what kind of person you create. Therefore, we must be careful about what we dye and choose what we dye.