Responsibility of One Human Being


This is the preface of Saving Human Beings, written by Liu Tingzhao.

On the morning of April 25, 2007, the 17th Session of National Book Fair was opened in hongqing. After listening to the first open speech given by Liu Binjie, who took up the post of president of Administration of Press and Publication of P.R.C, I hurried up to the exhibition section of Tongxin Publishing House. Hardly had I sitten down, when an energetic and middle-aged man hurried to me and handed me a thick book with big and remarkable words on the surface: Saving Human Beings.

“My name is Hu Jiaqi, the author of Saving Human Beings. This book is very important to me and it has cost me 28 years to finish it…” His bright eyes were full of wisdom. His quick words with a dialect of Hunan were showing his strong passion, which shows that his hot blood near boiling point was rushing in his chest.

The topic was our common concern, so we felt familiar when communicating. Due to my work experiences in the press and publication for more than 30 years, I have sharp eyes and have become frank and concise. So our talk directly went into key points and further state step by step, with ideological collisions and view clashes nearly resembling questioning and answering.

What is the real cause of human extinction? Do you really believe that there are aliens?

The improper use of the fruits of science and technology will surely exterminate human beings. But can the final salvation of human beings be realized without the development in science and technology?

What is the relationship between the “universal unification” you've mentioned and the Great World Harmony in Chinese ancient Confucianism, or International described by Marx?

You have appealed to 26 top world leaders to construct a new and universally unified society with un-competitiveness and equal wealth. What are the differences between the new society you mentioned and the utopian socialism depicted by Owen and Fourier or the Global Village predicted by Marshall McLuhan? …

The wisdom inspired by questions and answers kindled excitements of each other again and again. We felt that we were matches in playing chess or meeting bosom friends, so we talked a lot and eloquently.

Knowing that Mr. Hu Jiaqi came to Chongqing with his book intending to find the most suitable publishing house, I told him sincerely that Tongxin was a small publishing house without popularity. I persuaded him to go to other great ones to find chances. As an author, he had full rights to choose among publishing houses. If he still intended to publish here after comparison, he should come here at two o'clock in the afternoon.

At two o'clock, he came here as expected and decided that the book of Saving Human Beings would be published in Tongxin Publishing House, and he wanted it to be published as soon as possible. I held the book of 800,000 words and promised that I would read it in 10 days and give him the opinion of amendments after the Labor Day.

In the next dozen days this book was accompanying me, including the Labor Day.While my eyes were moving between the sentences, I felt that my body seemed to be rambling among the universal spaces. While my eyes sparkled in turning pages, my soul seemed to be traveling in the time-spatial tunnel.

“Clad in the rainbow, riding on the wind,

The lords of clouds descend in a procession long.

Their chariots drawn by phoenix disciplined,

And tigers playing for them a zither song.

Row upon row, like fields of hemp, immortals throng…”

(Quoted from Tang Poetry, translated by Xu Yuanchong)

This is the fairyland depicted by Lee Bai, the ancient Chinese Immortal Poet, which can be felt when reading relevant chapters about the universe in the book Saving Human Beings.

This book seems to have strong magnetic field, which can suddenly push you into the deep crust to sense the roasting of hot magma; suddenly it throws you into the star cluster billions of light-years away from Earth to validate the systems of the universe and primary origins of Earth; suddenly it absorbs you into the nucleus of cell to observe the most essential part of the organizational structure of human beings; and suddenly it sends you into the ancient times when Pangu created heaven and earth and dinosaurs dominated the whole world to testify the mystery of the birth of our ancestors.

Geocentric theory, heliocentric theory, continental drift theory, theory of evolution, Malthusianism, General Relativity, Red Shift, Doppler effect, Big Bang, Black Hole, Red Dwarf, Dark Matter, Minoan Civilization, Alexander Anabasis, Renaissance, the Enlightenment, industrial revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, survival of human beings, feeling of happiness, intergenerational justice, Red Giant disaster, Schwarzschild radius, threats of micro-black hole, Ecliptic Plane, solar wind, interstellar magnetic field, Extraterrestrial life, universal paging, UFO puzzle, DNA, SARS, clone, cold weapon Era, world war, modern terrorism, ozonosphere layer destruction, Montreal Protocol, harm of global warming, acid rain, Ectopistes migratorius extinction, convention on biological diversity, nonrenewable resources, land desertification, World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, population boom, Group of Eight, Transgenic biological toxin, Internet, hacker, external threats, good and evil of human nature, strengthening effect of science and technology, self threats of human beings, Manhattan Project, Technological Key, nanorobot, superior genetic toxin, principle of circular breakthrough, principle of accelerated fission, National Society, vicious spiral, effect of double strengthening, “three increasing” rules of extreme means, philosophic inference of self-extinction, only choice of saving human beings, disarmament, United Nations Day, universally unified society, political orders, International Law, globalization, core nations, comprehensive national strength, world federation, soft environments of unified society, principle of relaxation and expansion, brand new un-competitive society, single nation, compound nation, commonwealth, and so on.

 There are so many knowledge points and keywords in this book, which are collected along the line of existing fate of human beings. Natural sciences and social sciences are in complete harmony, and the whole content involves various fields of astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, philosophy, ethics, history, politics, economy, society and religion, etc. This book may after all be accepted as popular and concentrated encyclopedia of Chinese style. Hu Jiaqi who passed the college entrance examination with a score of 99 ponits (total score is 100 points) in physics is really an expert in producing the pearl necklace of knowledge. He uses the gold line of meticulous rational thinking to knit all pearls of profound knowledge into strings of encyclopedic necklaces, which are bright and dazzling with rings closely connected. He can continuously and pleasantly depict many profound scientific theories and abstract knowledge points with easy, living and humorous languages full of human kindness and attraction. Therefore, this book can be attractive and easy to understand.

I believed in and practiced the ancient doctrine of “Read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles.” I was curious by nature and liked to ask questions. With the occupational advantage of being a journalist, I do believe that I have experienced a great deal of life. But since I plunged into this book, I surprisingly found that in this book I could find all my memories and bygones from my life of over half a century, especially unforgettable anecdotes, doubts and suspicions causing vagaries, feelings shuddering with fear, like leaves depending on the trunks and roots of a tree; like drops of water feeding into this word onrush of depicting the survival and development of human beings.

From childhood I looked up into the starry sky to find Cowherd and Weaving Maid star to the time when we make a toast to worship Chang'e (the goddess of the moon — the lady in the legend) in every Mid-autumn festival; from the abundant bloodstain of Roman abattoir to the cold iron chains left in the rooms of slaves in western Africa; from the experimental place where Japanese army made germ weapons in northeastern China to the mushroom clouds raising into sky from cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima; from the head bone fossil of Beijing ape man in Zhoukoudian to the bronze mask of vertical eyed people of San Xing Dui; from the anti-Darwinism lab founded in Cambridge to the nebula picture of the Big Bang taken by the Hubble telescope exhibited in Greenwich, and so on.

Oh, what an insignificant and weak human being, what a pitiable and regrettable human being! What a human being with great wisdom and capability to accomplish great deeds.

What has attracted me most is those strings of encyclopedic pearls, while what has moved me so much between lines is the grand and saint feeling of mission that he takes concern about the fate of human beings as his own duty.

A man who concerns about the nation and people can be considered as someone with great ambition. However, the passion of the author of this book is more than love to the nation and his motherland; this is a kind of great love to all mankind beyond the boundaries of countries and nationalities which has exceeded the concerns about nation and people. What he worries about is mankind, earth and heaven, the global world and even the universe.

It is incredible how an ordinary citizen of Beijing, an ordinary graduate, a scholar and entrepreneur could produce this kind of great love and willingly take the task of saving human beings as his own.

Everyone has his own opinion about life, society, world and the future, but not all people have such deep love and saint feelings of mission. Mankind is comprised of each individual; only the joint efforts of each person can human beings undertake and complement the historical momentous task of saving human beings.

Is there any topic greater, more urgent or more important than that of saving human beings for a publisher or everyone living on this planet?

What really shocks me is the harsh alarm given to the dangerous place of the entire human race: singing and dancing to extol the good times cannot conceal the survival crisis of human beings like eggs that are piled up; what we are happily doing and talking about may be the action of suicide, like quenching a thirst with poison. These remarkable, forceful and shocking alarms are not groundless worries but rather objective realities. Confronted with the heavy topic of the survival of human beings, each person is sure to feel insignificant and shocked no matter if he is a grand official or rich man. It goes like what a poem depicts: “The person intending to rise into the top official will calm down after seeing the mountain peak, while the person busy working for his purpose will forget to go back home after seeing the valley” (Wu Jun: A Letter to Song Tuansi). The mountain peak and valley here refer to this book.

“Only after all human beings are liberated can proletariats finally liberate themselves.” This famous enlightening remark prevailing in that time has been our guiding beacon and remembered deeply in mind up to now. As for the definition of proletariat, with the events of the October Revolution, the proletariat won the regime and was the ruler until the dissolution of former Soviet Union and eastern European group. Besides, with the Chinese reform and opening-up, economic development and practices of national removing poverty and becoming rich, the definition of proletariat has new meaning. With the spirit of keeping up with the times, we should change this remark into “Only after we have liberated all human beings can we liberate ourselves.” Saving Human Beings adopts abundant undisputable realities, researching fruits and scientific conclusions to tell us that if we fail to concern ourselves with the present survival realities of human beings rationally, effectively improve various kinds of factors threatening human beings, effectively adopt the revolutionary and global measures of self protection and even self defense and treat human beings well, it is possible that human beings will be extinct before the liberation day of all human beings. It is self-evident that salvation is more important and urgent than liberation.

China has joined the WTO, which greatly boosts the unification of global economy and culture. The development of modern science and technology, especially the global coverage of the Internet, makes the communication of world family very easy. The old statements about opportunity and challenge in the traditional sense are necessary to be replaced with new contents: it is to utilize the chance of structuring harmonious society and realizing world unification and meet the challenges of survival confronted by human beings.

Mr. Hu Jiaqi owns a strong and intense character of eating pepper, the revolutionary potential and feeling of historic mission which Hunan people especially have. He has grand verve of keeping the whole world in mind and taking a broad view of the universe, profound knowledge of extensive reading and rigorous scholarship. These entire characters make him not only produce the great topic of saving human beings with heated passion, but also submit the idea of universally unified society after evaluation of the justice of social systems and the realization of value of human beings. It also gives elaborated designs and scientific exposition to its basic structure and social and moral value standards.

Hu Jiaqi, as an individual person who concerns about all human beings and takes the fate of all human beings as his own duty, advocates and canvasses for the realization of unified society is out of the ordinary. His perseverance is surely exciting and impressing. How could we remain indifferent to this kind of alarm?

It is true that each author and each book should have some limits and it is impossible to be perfect, but as the general planner and publisher of the book Saving Human Beings, I solemnly recommend this book to readers. I think you can at least get broad views and become tolerant and lofty after reading it. You can transfer concerns about yourself to all human beings, concerns about present realities to the history of thousands of years. Your mind can break the original narrow survival time-spatial radius and expand to China, the whole world and even the whole universe.

It is not groundless worry or anxiety to show the survival crisis to alarm the whole world and take the business of saving human beings as the saint responsibility. The old saying goes: “If one cannot plan for thousands of years, he cannot plan business for a short time; if one cannot plan the whole business, he won’t plan things of one field.” For this, everyone living in the present world should examine himself by self-reflection:

He laments mournfully for the declining world and praises the flouring world. Who could keep the flourishing world on forever?

Think about forefathers and consider the descendants. What outstanding achievements have modern people effectively done?

Universally unified society proven and exhibited in the book Saving Human Beings can be considered as a scientific and excellent ideal pursuit of modern human beings, a continuance of Chinese traditional idea of “Great World Harmony” and theory of scientific socialism of Marxism. On the basis of present world material civilization and spiritual civilization, this is an innovative idea of “Great Harmony”. I think that the day when the world of great harmony comes into birth is the very time when this small earth becomes perfect. So far, I am so full of emotion with it that I write a poem of Great Harmony to express my mind which follows the style of the poem finished by Eugène Pottier:

 

Stand up, brothers from the whole world,

Stand up, people unwilling to be destroyed,

My heart is boiling with blood enthusiasm,

We should fight for Great Harmony.

The New world is full of fresh flowers and green water, go into action, my friends,

Never say that we are incapable, we are all the masters of the whole world.

This is a sacred fight, we should unite,

Internationalism is sure to realize;

This is a great fight, we should unite,

Internationalism is sure to realize.

Having read Saving Human Beings, I’ve truly got benefited a lot and followed the requirements of Mr. Hu Jiaqi to write this essay about my impression as the preface.

June, 2007.

Beijing

(The Author of this preface is the general planner of Saving Human Beings, publisher, president and general editor of Tongxin Publishing House of Beijing Newspaper Group, superior journalist.)