Burdened as a man may be with the weight of tradition, he can yet prop open the gate of darkness with his shoulder to let the children through to the bright, wide-open spaces, to lead happy lives henceforward as rational human beings. — Lu Xun, “What is Required of Us as Fathers Now” (1919)
Simple Picture
A father stands in a dark corridor. Behind him, centuries of accumulated weight pressing the walls inward. Ahead of him, his children. He cannot dismantle the corridor. He cannot lighten the weight. What he can do is brace his body against the gate and hold it open long enough for the children to pass through into the light. The gate does not stay open. It closes behind them. But they are through.
The Anonymous Enforcer
Lu Xun’s most devastating insight is not about any individual tyrant but about the mechanism of tradition itself. The principles vaguely transmitted by the majority of ancient people are utterly unreasonable — yet they use the power of history and numbers to crush those who displease them.
In these anonymous, unconscious murderous hordes, countless people have perished throughout history. — Lu Xun, “My View on Chastity” (1918)
No single person enforces the tradition. No individual is responsible. The enforcement is collective, unconscious, and anonymous — which makes it harder to resist than any individual oppressor. You cannot argue with history. You cannot negotiate with numbers. You can only shoulder the gate.
This is manufactured-scarcity at the level of virtue: the system demands suffering and calls it merit. Chastity and martyrdom are “extremely difficult, extremely painful, undesired by those who experience it, yet benefiting neither self nor others” — and the system produces them relentlessly because suffering is the currency that keeps the moral economy running.
The ten commandments of Chinese harmony are the specific operating rules of this anonymous enforcer. Each commandment looks reasonable in isolation — honor your parents, endure hardship, continue the family. Together they form a system that devours individuality and calls the devouring love. Displacement is what happens when you are transplanted out of the system and suddenly see it from the outside — the identity it built for you crumbles, and what remains is either nothing or the beginning of something real.
The Three Duties
Lu Xun’s principles for the awakened parent are radically simple:
1. Understand. The world of children is fundamentally different from that of adults. Europeans misunderstood children as preparations for adulthood. Chinese misunderstood them as miniature adults. Both are wrong. Without prior understanding, blind action — however well-intentioned — hinders development. This is knowing the name applied to parenting: calling yourself a “good parent” means nothing if you have not studied what a child actually is.
2. Guide. Elders should be guides and counselors, not commanders. They should not demand that the young support them. They must devote all their energy to cultivating in the young the physical strength to endure labor, pure and noble morality, and a broad and free spirit capable of embracing new currents — the power to swim in the world’s new currents without being submerged. This is leader-leader applied to families: the parent who commands produces followers; the parent who guides produces agents.
3. Liberate. Children are both me and not-me. Because they are me, fulfill the educational duty — give them the ability to stand on their own. Because they are not-me, release them completely — give them entirely to themselves, making them independent people.
The sequence matters: understand first, then guide, then liberate. Liberating without understanding produces chaos (the empowerment paradox). Guiding without liberating produces dependence. Understanding without acting produces the intellectual who sighs but changes nothing — and Lu Xun had no patience for sighing intellectuals.
Reproduction Is No Favor
Lu Xun demolishes parental authority at its root with a single biological argument: eating nourishes yourself — you owe yourself no gratitude for it. Reproduction produces children — you owe the children no debt for it either. Before and after, all proceed along the long road of life, differing only in sequence. Who can say who receives whose grace?
This directly challenges the fourth commandment — gratitude as guilt. The Chinese system runs on the premise that parents sacrifice everything and children owe everything in return. Lu Xun says: the parent did not do the child a favor. The parent followed a biological impulse. The child owes nothing. And the parent who demands repayment is indistinguishable from a thief who made his fortune with stolen money and now demands respect.
The Chastity Trap
In Essay 1, Lu Xun dismantles the virtue of female chastity with surgical precision:
- Is it painful? Extremely painful. Men know this, which is why they honor it.
- Do women desire it? They do not. Everyone fears it will attach to themselves or their family.
- Does it benefit anyone? It benefits neither self nor others. It contributes nothing to society.
- Then why does it persist? Because the power of history and numbers crushes anyone who deviates.
This is corpse morality given its Chinese name. The system demands women die — literally or socially — and enters their names in a gazetteer that no one reads. The suffering is real. The honor is empty. And the moralists who enforce it would be horrified if it were applied to their own daughters.
The parallel to the empty handoff is exact: adults who enforce chastity do not believe in it — they fear it. They pass down the tradition not from conviction but from terror of the anonymous enforcer. The gate is heavy because every generation adds weight to it.
Dimwit / Midwit / Better Take
The dimwit take is “respect your elders — tradition exists for a reason.”
The midwit take is “tradition is oppressive — reject everything from the past.”
The better take is that tradition is not a single thing to accept or reject but a gate that must be held open. Some of what passes through is wisdom worth keeping. Much of it is accumulated weight that crushes the living to honor the dead. The awakened person’s task is not to tear down the gate — they cannot — but to shoulder it long enough for the next generation to pass through with the wisdom and without the weight.
Main Payoff
The revolution must reach even to the fathers. Lu Xun wrote this in 1919. A century later, the harmony machine still runs. The anonymous enforcer still crushes. The gate still needs shouldering.
The parent who wants to liberate their children must first liberate themselves — not by rejecting tradition entirely but by distinguishing what is alive in it from what is dead weight. Then: understand the child’s world as genuinely different from your own. Guide without commanding. Liberate completely, giving the children entirely to themselves. The parent who cannot do this will reproduce the gate instead of opening it — and their children will inherit not wisdom but the weight.
References:
- Lu Xun (鲁迅), “My View on Chastity” (我之节烈观, 1918)
- Lu Xun, “What is Required of Us as Fathers Now” (我们现在怎样做父亲, 1919)