Chapter 59 Luxembourg Urban Logic

Nationally, Luxembourg is a small country, but financially, it is a big country.We tried to photograph their Bank Street, but were immediately blocked. The blockers were not the police, but employees of a bank.Seeing that we were carrying the camera and preparing to take a panoramic scan, he ran towards us like an electric shock, raising his hand while running to signal us to stop shooting. This made us very strange, because the street where we were standing was still quite a distance from the gate of the bank. How could photography not be allowed on the street? The clerk had already arrived, and he spoke German, which we couldn't understand, and he said in English that filming is not allowed here.When we asked him why, he shook his head and didn't want to answer.This made us a little angry, saying that we were filming at their government building and the gate of the High Court just now, and we were not stopped.

At this time, a gentleman wearing glasses walked over quickly, claiming to be the general manager, with a very polite attitude and talking to us in French. We hoped that he could speak English, but everything he said in blunt English was too complicated for us to understand. clear. So, the two partners wrestled with them in language, and the other partners and I stepped aside to guess the reason why they banned us from filming. The first reason for guessing is that banks have their own dignity, and we are not polite to them by taking pictures without their permission; the second reason for guessing is that there are many bank robbers in the world today, a group of unknown identities Some people took pictures of the bank's gates and windows from far and near. Who can guarantee that it has nothing to do with certain robberies in the future?

Just as we were thinking about a few more reasons, a local friend we met the day before yesterday came suddenly. He was proficient in several languages. After chatting with the general manager for a while, he turned around with a smile and told us: There is only one The reason is that they are to protect customers entering and leaving the bank and to ensure that they are not captured on camera. I was a little surprised when I first heard it, but I immediately understood it within a few seconds, and understood the tight logical network behind the rejection. According to Western legal concepts, the transfer of personal property is an important privacy of a person. However, people are not willing to seek legal protection after their privacy has been violated, but hope that all links of deposit and transfer can reject the possibility of being violated.It is this kind of hope that constitutes the credibility foundation of the modern financial industry and also becomes the competition platform among the same industry.The rapid development of small Luxembourg into a world-renowned financial kingdom within 30 to 40 years is also related to its strict bank secrecy regulations.

The Bank of Luxembourg promises to customers from various countries that all customer information will not only be kept confidential from others, but also kept secret from state agencies, even the national financial agencies cannot know the customer's situation for the purpose of taxation.The bank has declined to testify in the civil proceedings beyond the criminal proceedings.If the bank violates these regulations, it will bear criminal responsibility instead. This makes it clear why the Bank of Luxembourg is so vigilant against its customers entering other people's cameras. It seems to have gone too far, and now there are a lot of miniature photography equipment that can not be detected, but their large movements of blocking the camera with their hands from the staff to the general manager have actually surpassed the actual function and become a way to express modern financial logic. Action statement.

I think that such a small matter has touched the meridian system of European civilization, which contains a series of social principles such as personal rights and private property rights. Once it is damaged, it will shake the whole world, so they carefully set up various taboos. This kind of taboo is most commonly manifested in traffic rules, and it has gradually become popular in China.However, we may not be able to understand the logic behind the traffic rules. Many people think that obeying traffic rules is for personal safety and smooth traffic. What other logic is there?One day, a German scholar and I were waiting for a red light at an intersection in Stuttgart. By the way, in this sparsely populated city with deserted traffic, there were no shadows of vehicles, even if we went straight to the red light. There is no danger, but people still wait in good order. From a sociological point of view, what kind of constraints are there?

I said, still subject to a public behavior rules.Such rules do not take into account specific exceptions, and only unconditional obedience is valid. He said that there is a strict logic behind the rules, which is enough to offset all exceptions. I asked him to deduce the rigorous logic, and he deduced the following points 1. According to statistics, among urban street walkers, the group most injured by traffic accidents is children; 2. Children receive too much behavioral education from adults, but experiments have proved that the most effective education comes from their own observation;

3. According to statistics, an important place for children to observe the world is their own window.Therefore, when you look around with no one and no cars, and feel free to cross the red light, there is no guarantee that there will be no children watching the countless windows of high-rise buildings lined up on the roadside; 4. So you have entered into a logical paradox: when you pass through the red light safely, it is equivalent to teaching children a lesson that there is no danger in crossing the red light.Only when you suffer casualties can you give your children the right education, but you are not willing to pay such a heavy price for such education;

5. In the face of such a paradox, the only correct way is to give up crossing, neither let the children see the safety of crossing, nor let the children see the danger of crossing, stop immediately when they see a red light, let the children To see a norm of life that does not require the supervision of others. Although this deduction is from the child's point of view, it fits perfectly and it is difficult to refute. I think, just from the two ends of the above-mentioned financial rules and traffic rules, we can roughly explain what the modern urban logic is all about. These little things make people deeply grateful for the Enlightenment.Kant said that the great effect of the European Enlightenment was to allow reason to permeate all daily life.

It is a pity that when Chinese cultural people accept Western civilization, including the Enlightenment, they always stay on some big and distant concepts, which are rarely connected with daily life.As a result, the rational principles they propagate are often empty and dry, unhelpful and untested by life; at the same time, the lives they themselves lead are often out of rational control, and even very illogical.For example, it is ironic that the people who spread rumors most vigorously in Chinese society are cultural groups. In fact, there are too many collective behaviors in our lives that need to clear the logic, and there are too many industry logics that need to be coordinated as a whole. This is the position that cultural people should take, but the strange thing is that many cultural people do not like to do these things. I don't want others to do it, but I am happy to be whimsical in some of the most illogical emotions.

In the long history of the past, there were few opportunities for cultural people to participate in the construction of urban logic. Maybe the history at that time did not care about the city, maybe the city at that time did not care about logic, and maybe the logic at that time did not care about culture.The vicious results of this situation are now jointly borne by the city, culture and cultural people, because they have all been alienated from their own logic.Now that everything is facing a major transformation, will the situation be better? In my fantasy, the best situation is that among the young scholars who have just graduated from university, some of them are not busy learning about language violence and finding targets to attack, but calm down and carefully study the international Comparing with the civilized behavior norms in the history of our country, and comparing the negative examples of the real society, write books such as "Behavioral Reasons", "Necessary Taboos", and "Urban Contract".

Of course, this is just an illusion. What is more likely is that many people repeatedly want to enter this process and are dispelled again and again, because the power of disintegration is deep and ubiquitous, and it is easy to interfere with several logical programs.