Bloody Lessons: Mutual Fighting between Brothers

 Everyone in the world comes for profit; Everyone in the world goes for profit. Records of the Historian.

 Throughout the history，the most shocking two things might be: “Mutual Fighting between Brothers”, and “Sharing the Same Boat between Enemies”. The two sharply contradictory phenomena have been appearing repeatedly in all dynasties and all eras.

 Mutual fighting between brothers is quite common in history. In the period of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Zhi was forced by his elder brother Cao Pi (both of them were sons of Cao Cao, king of Kingdom Wei) to compose a poem within seven steps of walking(or else he would kill Cao Zhi), and the poem came out like this (in meaning): “When you cook the beans by burning the beanstalks, the beans in the cauldron are crying to the beanstalks: We were born of the same root, why are you burning us so cruelly?”  The reciting of the sad poem seems to be still lingering in our eyes；The great wise ruler of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin, killed two of his brothers in the incident of Xuanwumen Gate in a struggle for getting the crown；In the late Kangxi Period of the Qing Dynasty, fights among princes for the crown became white-hot, mutual conflicting and killing were too horrible to see…

 The opposite example is the story of sharing the same boat by State Wu and State Yue. In Sunzi’s Art of War, the story is like this: “Those who are good at fighting are like the snake of Changshan Mountain. When you strike its head, its tail will come to help; when you strike its tail, its head will come to help; when you strike its middle, both its head and tail will come to help. Can we use the army like the snake of Changshan? Yes. The people of State Wu and the people of State Yue were enemies to each other, but when they took the same boat, they helped each other, so, when a storm came, they saved each other, just like the two hands in a body.” In other words，they could reach the high degree of integration and harmony like the snake of Changshan. That is the classical allusion of “Sharing the Same Boat by Wu and Yue”.

Mutual fighting between brothers and helping each other between former enemies are very common in modern history, too. For example，China and USSR, China and Viet Nam, used to be the closest “brothers”, but later they became enemies suddenly and killed each other brutally. On the contrary，the cooperation between the Communist Party of China and the National Party of China, and the Sino-American alliance, were examples of sharing the same boat between former enemies. When China and USA came together, China had just stopped cursing “Yankee imperialism” in its newspapers and periodicals, and when Nixon landed on China, his first sentence was “I have come for the interest of USA”. The common interest turned enemies into friends, and turned fighting into cooperation.

 Everything is determined by the interest. When the interest is different, even blood brothers will fight against each other；When the interest is the same, even enemies like State Wu and State Yue can share the same boat.

 The difference or sameness of the interest may determine the splitting or joining of the world or society, determine fighting between brothers or sharing the same boat by former enemies.

 That is the greatest secret history has told us!

 Today，mankind’s danger does not come from the outside, but from the inside. Mankind’s current major contradiction is not the contradiction with Mother Nature, but the contradiction within mankind. We spend huge manpower, material resources, financial resources and energy in quarrelling with each other, in intriguing against each other, in dog-eat-dog struggle, even to the extent of perishing together. That is just the basic root of world crises and human tragedies.

 Kaal Dojicj, a scholar in the science of international relations, has pointed out: “If mankind’s civilization is throttled within the coming 30 years, the killer will not be famine，nor will be a plague，but foreign policy and international relations. “For many years，human beings have been on the jig all the time, living in the great terror of nuclear warfare, and this terror is still going deeper and deeper. The fast technological progress has not ended the terror, but on the contrary, it has made the world even more horrible. While the nuke shadow is expanding continually, biological weapons with the same destructive power or even more terrible are appearing. Once these “demons” are mastered by terroristic organizations, it is very likely that mankind will be wiped out! The “9.11” attack was just a rehearsal. Mankind has already lost the least sense of security!

 By what can we save this tottering world?

 Only by mankind’s common interest!

 Splitting of the human world results from splitting of human interest. Each nation is struggling for its own interests and rights. Hence，only by finding out the common interest of mankind, setting the common goal for realization of mankind’s common interest and making mankind aware of the common interest and common goal, can mankind go from splitting to alliance and harmony, so as to eliminate all terrors, calamities and tragedies in the human world.

 Becoming immortal together, or evolving into immortals，is mankind’s maximal common interest and common goal.

 Whether you are an oriental or an occidental；Whether you are a yellow person or a black person；Whether you are a Chinese or an American or an European；Whether you are a Jew or an Arab, or a German… we are all human, and our common enemy, real enemy and greatest enemy are just one, that is, death.

 Faced with death，there is no escape for anyone.