Inheriting the Toynbee chapter

Born in London, Toynbee was sent to an aristocratic boarding school as a child, attended Winchester College, graduated from Oxford University at the age of twenty-three, specialized in ancient history, and later studied at the British School of Archaeology in Athens, Greece, where he was to train as a historian.

His grandfather, Joseph Toynby, was Britain's first ear, nose and throat specialist and a renowned philanthropist who dedicated his life to improving the working conditions of workers in the industrial revolution since the Industrial Revolution.

His mother's interest in history, a historian, fueled his intellectual curiosity, and in his early years of history study, he shared our aversion to memorizing chronologies and the birth and death ages of important figures, but he was interested in exploring the unknown world of history.

Enambi worked for the British Intelligence Service during the First World War, and in 1919 he became a representative of the Paris peace talks.

He witnessed the loss of many friends during the war, and he found that this kind of suffering has occurred repeatedly since the beginning of human history, which made him want to find the knowledge and methods of human understanding from the study of the historical evolution of different civilizations, and this concern and sympathy for human suffering prompted his long-term and unremitting research work.

In his later teaching of Greek history, he discovered that the history of classical Greece had something in common with the evolution of modern Western history, which inspired him to use a broad perspective to take human history as a unit of study according to "civilization".

He gave "Egyptian civilization", "Syrian civilization", "Indian civilization" and "Chinese civilization", as well as some extinct civilizations, a total of thirty-one civilization models. Using these 31 civilizations as samples to study the evolution and process of history.

Most of these thirty-one civilizations are dead, and only Christianity, Orthodox Christianity and its branches, Russia, Islam, India, China and its branches, Japan and Korea, and three other stagnant civilizations, remain.

With the exception of Christian civilization, the rest is in the process of disintegrating. Even Christian civilization today is showing signs of decline.

Civilization often refers to the architectural, economic, and military levels of a country, while culture is the description of the literary soul and the expression of language. Philosophical significance.

In addition, there are people who often use the term "civilization" and "culture" as a mixture. To put it simply: culture or civilization is a tool for human beings to survive and grow.

If civilization is not up to the challenge, culture cannot keep up with the times, and the country will inevitably be surpassed or destroyed and replaced by another dynasty. The same is true for the church, if it cannot accept the challenges of the times. It is likely that the church will close its doors.

Toynbee's historiographical thought has a strong flavor of "historical philosophy". He also learned that there is no such thing as an immutable "historical fact", and even the most faithful historical materials inevitably contain various opinions and opinions. Even prejudice.

This is also the reason why postmodernism constantly denies the existence of objective history, and they emphasize the grand narrative and how readers interpret those histories.

Toynbee believes that a modest challenge can not only motivate the challenged person to get a more successful response, but also help them gain a "motivation" that can drive them to take a step forward, from the existing status quo to the struggle for a new life.

He believed that the structure of a civilized society is mainly composed of three levels: political, economic, and cultural, of which "culture" is the essence of a civilized society.

"Culture" is a spiritual activity unique to a civilized society, and the symbol of this spiritual activity is a "value system" based on religious beliefs.

Therefore, he pointed out that the real source of vitality for the formation and development of civilizations is religious belief, especially Christianity.

When faced with these challenges, do the state, society, and church accept such challenges, and learn to respond positively to these challenges, or do they simply follow the trend of contemporary thought?

We should be ahead of the curve, not just hide behind closed doors and keep shouting that we are going to face challenges.

There are many challenges to be faced today, such as: the leadership of thought, the mode of behavior, the transformation of ideological trends, interpersonal relationships, and the establishment of ethics and morality, all of which need to be faced all over again.

Historical philosophers look at the value of a civilization (or culture) and do not care how much wealth and technology it creates, nor how much land it occupies, nor how many peoples it has conquered.

Toynbee has come to the brilliant conclusion that religion is the navigator of history, and whether Toynbee can also take this idea to heart and continue to carry it forward.

Historical Studies contains the history of the rise and fall of 26 civilizations.

Compared with Spengler's "The Decline of the West", Schienbee's "determinism" is pessimistic, while Toynbee uses historical evidence to deduce a set of formulas for decline and death, which is more optimistic. Tong's historical formulas still give people the impression of "determinism".

Begupbi pointed out that Tong's definition of civilization is not clear enough, and his doctrine is based on Western civilization, represented by Athens (rational and humanistic civilization) and Jerusalem (religious civilization).

It is believed that a highly rational humanistic civilization must be built on an unequal social class system, just like the Greco-Roman civilization. Only religious civilization is the only solution to human society.

It is proposed that the reason why Chinese civilization originated from the Yellow River, the Yellow River is "vicious", and the Yangtze River is "benevolent". The Chinese civilization was divided into two "Chinese civilizations" - the Han Dynasty and the "Far Eastern civilizations" after the Wei and Jin dynasties, but after the Tang Dynasty admitted that his division was wrong, he realized that the Confucianism, centralization, agricultural economy, and bureaucratic system of Chinese civilization were throughout China.

Worried about the development of science and technology, excessive material civilization, and the wars and dictatorships that have led to it, and oppose nationalism and capitalism.

Insisting that the essence of Western civilization is not science in religion (Christianity), in modern times, because it is far away from religion, nationalist pan-scientific substances have invaded human civilization.

"Humans have indeed conquered nature with technology, but it is technology and not humans who have won. 」

Hopefully, there will be a world government in politics. The economy is a reconciliation of capitalism and socialism, and the spirit must return to religion.

As he gets older, the more he feels that there can only be a take-off in life, and he can do something that he thinks is worthwhile and can be done well.

So every time he drove past London's famous concert halls, he saw many people entering the venue, and the couple was also envious, but he also knew that he still had homework to do in the evening when he "went home" (the frontispiece of his memoirs quotes the Bible Psalm: (Go out to work, and toil until the evening).

Toynbee had more friends than he was a "well-read" person, and even read all the Greek and Roman things in the world. But "one thought is wrong". Without any writings, he brought learning to the grave, while Toynbee wrote equal works.

Toynbee had anxiety about publishing during the long years of writing Historical Studies. Andrew Marvell's poem keeps coming to my ears: "But behind me. I often hear the winged car of time. Hurry away, so, walk towards him. 」

"Because a man has only one life. It's short, so make the best use of your time. ("The Dead Are Like Us")

History is of little value if it is not used, because all intellectual life is action, but to be able to understand the age of the ancients, can only be done in your own time, and only then will you be alive" ("Unknown life and death. 」)

In the preface to Toynbee's dialogue, "the mood is nearly dusk" but full of wisdom.

Toynbee responded to Kant's worth or dignity with the Gospel of Mark, Matthew, "What good is it for a man to gain the world and lose his life, and what can a man exchange for his life?"

Toynbee's theme is that human dignity cannot be achieved by the skills that man is best at, but can only be measured by ethics (acts of compassion and love).

In the preface to the book, Toynbee argues that this kind of spiritual self-transformation is the only effective means of social change.

Toynbee was fortunate enough to have many bosom friends in Japan, and the former president of a Japanese bank bought the copyright of his "Historical Research" and translated it for the rest of his life after retirement.

Toynbee in "A Historian's View of Religion" (the people of Sichuan, the title of the book is not well translated, it is the author's experience and reflection with Christians as "agnostic").

In the preface to the second edition, Toynbee's wife quoted Toynbee as fond of the Romans: "One can never reach such a great and mysterious center by a single path"—in which he writes: "The ultimate is a mystery, and there is more than one path to it." "Believers take different paths, but they seek the same goal

I remember saying more than a year ago that personal broadcasts are all about what you want to say at the moment, and there is nothing that cannot be said, and then I received a few messages saying that I don't like to listen to your words and don't pay attention to you. It's good to cancel if you don't pay attention, what's the point of running to tell me?

I met again today, it's really funny, come and go with each other freely! I have no quarrel with the world, you don't agree that it's your family's business, what's the matter with me!(I should have said something similar before)

Pull it off, in fact, it's very simple for newcomers to write books to get my alliance leader, you just need to tell me, "Brother Long! I read most of the text in your book, and I think my writing skills are better than yours!"

Really better than me, then Xiaomeng your book must be there, and then it will be recommended! When I am in a good mood, I will give you more than a million leagues (in fact, when I have money, the chance of rewarding when I have money is much higher than that of ordinary people, because I have evidence to keep, and the online literature industry can prove it), because you are worthy, and because I personally like Chinese characters.

Last night, before going to bed, I watched a movie called Pacific Rim Machines and Monsters, only scenes, no content, and found that the movie words I said before were going to be corrected.

In the past, I said that it was good to watch movies for entertainment, and it felt good to watch them, no matter what artistic level it was, now I think it should at least have some absorption and novel content, otherwise it is better not to watch movies at all, and it is the same as books and music!

Then when I wanted to continue to open Ailing's prose book, I had the thought, I had fallen asleep, I had a dream, I forgot in the dream, I only remembered that my chest was full of pain, I wanted to smoke less, and then I woke up, it didn't hurt, and when I dreamed, I seemed to wake up and felt pain in my chest, and I smoked for many years!

I can't quit, smoking is my real lover, without her company, my soul is alone, alone!

Watching the American professional basketball game in the morning, the Rockets played against the Toronto Tyrannosaurs, the main bet is to play the big score, and the Rockets win by 9 points at home, and the two teams have a total score of more than 203 points to win.

After the regular game, fortunately it was a tie, with a score of 174 points, and 190 points after 5 minutes of the extended game, but fortunately, the two teams were still tied, and it was extended again, and the last was 214 points, and the Rockets won by 6 points.

Guess correctly under Dafen, guess wrong under the rocket to win more than 9 points, and after adding and subtracting on both sides, you don't lose money, and you are in a happier mood. After reading it, it was already past noon, I thought of the company, and thought that it seemed that I had only slept for 1 hour and had a dream, so I simply continued to sleep until I was woken up by a message at four o'clock, and went out to the company after taking a shower.

I took the same route, bought the same coffee, the same cigars, joined the same company, said the same work gossip, turned on the computer, went out to buy lottery tickets and scratch cards.

If you want to travel far in November, you should take a look at it once and refer to it here. What about December? It's almost the New Year, are you ready? If you have time to think about it, put on your headphones and listen to a few songs......!