He once wrote a story in which there was a dialogue between two characters. The content of their conversation is to say, imagine, there is such a terrible killer, who is extremely vicious here in France, and now runs away, where did it go? Going to the faraway coast of China, will you worry about the Chinese there?
The dialogue between the characters, that person said that he didn't seem to be worried. Then he said why? He said because if he ran to the Seine River in Paris, he would be worried, but he ran to China, which is far from France. Then the character asked him back, and he said, don't you worry that he will kill people and set fires everywhere in China like we do in France?
This question is interesting. That is to say, for a European, China at that time was a very distant country, so Diderot especially used China as a very distant place in his imagination. That is to say, if you think about it, there is a murderer in Europe who goes to China. Europeans no longer seem to be afraid or worried, because he will not harm others, but those who are unfamiliar and unfamiliar. , the distant Chinese.
The story was later transformed several times, and a famous writer, Chateaubrier, made the story a little more complicated. He discusses the hypothesis that if a European, he doesn't know why today, has a very magical power, a very mysterious superpower or something that allows him to use this power to kill A millionaire in China. Then, for some unknown reason, his hukou on the European side gained a lot of money, and he inherited all the property of the millionaire who died in China.
But no one in the middle would know what happened, how the Chinese millionaire died, the villagers and fathers on his side don't know. And the Europeans here don't know that he suddenly got this extra wealth from heaven. It turned out to be obtained through such a despicable method of murder.
Then Chateaubrier asked, if you had this ability, would you like to use it like this? What is this question about? It is a very sensitive moral issue, that is, whether we can do some bad things to benefit ourselves without knowing it, and if we guarantee that there will be no punishment, and if we guarantee that no one will find out, can you do it? Would you like to do it? The original story was asking, do you have compassion and the ability to empathize with people in faraway places? The difference between this story and the previous one is that there is such an additional problem.
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