Gunpowder and Sanitation (7)

Didn’t Confucius say not to speak of the uncanny and the supernatural? You’re not unaware of that teaching, so why are you paying attention to such things?

Put simply, when Confucius said not to discuss the uncanny and the supernatural, he meant that he would not talk about things beyond human common sense and excluded them from discussion altogether.

Whether it’s what becomes of the soul after death—hell, heaven, or whatever else—or the principles behind lightning, there’s no way to figure it out no matter how hard you study it, so he meant we should focus on the life we’re living now.

Because of that, the early Joseon scholar-officials, living in a Confucian state, officially distanced themselves from Buddhism, which spoke of the afterlife, calling it uncanny and supernatural, and they also suppressed shamans.

Confucius only said not to discuss it; he didn’t deny its existence, did he? Local magistrates even summon shamans to hold rites when a drought drags on.

Joseon is a country that officially denies superstition, but will use it whenever it helps.

So when public sentiment turns bad, the royal family will even spend the budget to hold a Suryukje rite and pray for wandering souls to be reborn in paradise.

According to the Annals, that bastard Ryu Jeong-hyeon also seems to have thought in his later years that he’d go to hell when he died, because he spent 5,000 seom of white rice on a Suryukje rite.

In the Joseon of my previous life, though, I was branded a traitor and executed before I ever got to hold one.

Holding a rainmaking rite doesn’t make rain fall, and holding a Suryukje rite doesn’t send the dead to paradise. But if we can use such methods to manage public sentiment and calm discontent, then we do it even if it counts as something uncanny and supernatural...