Reading helps us better understand how people should make choices. Most of our experience actually comes from exams, which are often multiple-choice questions, right? One of the characteristics of multiple-choice questions is that you can guess wildly if you don’t know how to answer. Isn’t there a formula for doing well on multiple-choice exams?
The mantra is that with three longs and one short the answer is the shortest, and with three shorts and one long the answer is the longest. Choose B if the length is different, and choose D if it is uneven. However, the choices we make in real life are not the result of such simple rules. They are not always immediately right or wrong but are the result of a long-term decision-making process.
Let’s look at the Chinese historical story of the Tang Dynasty. In 626 AD, we all know what happened this year. Li Shimin launched the Xuanwu Gate Incident. This was a very difficult choice for him. Was this choice a success? You have been very successful historically. For Li Shimin, the political enemy killed the father, so that the emperor became the emperor for himself, then. In the future, the rule of the Zhenguan Gold Age will be achieved. Li Shimin became an emperor through the ages, and the ending is rights and interests.
However, this is not the whole truth. We read a lot of history books later about that dynasty, and we didn’t know where such a good gaining thing was. The consequences of a choice are very abnormal, and I will show you bit by bit.
Through the change of Xuanwu Gate, Li Shimin actually set a very bad precedent for the Tang Dynasty, that, the royal family, especially between father and son, can mutually be killed. Li Shimin was doing it himself, his son had rebelled, and this curse has been throughout the history of the Tang Dynasty, even the Anshi Rebellion.
If you really seriously analyze the reasons behind it. This has a lot to do with the suspicion between Tang Xuanzong Li Longji and his own prince. The emperor is also afraid of the prince and why? Because their dad and their grandpa did similar things, so why can’t the son or grandson do it? There is a precedent, this is the consequence of Li Shimin’s choice at that time. Li Shimin suffered a lot from this incident in his later years, even to the point of committing suicide. You can see that this is also the consequence of the Xuanwumen Incident, but this kind of consequence has to be revealed slowly.
Isn’t there a famous saying? What Steven Zweig said, evaluate the queen of Louis 16. What Marie Antovalet said, said that he was too young at that time, and he didn’t know that all the gifts given by fate had already secretly marked the price. Yes, this is what we can gain from reading.
In the world of books, the choices of all important figures in human civilization at critical moments are actually stored, that is, by reading their scripts. We have the opportunity to know the real consequences of those important choices over a long period of time.