In the flow of human culture, there has always been both primitive sensory culture and mature rational "civilized" culture. In the past, it was believed that these two types of culture had distinctions in superiority and chronological order. However, today's research on Nuo culture reveals that culture not only undergoes reversal and development but also experiences "rational divergence" and "long-term coexistence." Abundant evidence shows that as a form of primitive life culture, it not only precedes civilized culture but can also coexist with it after civilized culture matures. The two cultures complement, interpenetrate, and even share many common forms of expression.
This primitive state of culture, besides preserving some of its original forms and modes of expression, has also been deposited in people's deep consciousness and social psychological mechanisms for generations, secretly intervening and manipulating all higher-level and more intelligent spiritual activities, conscious activities, and emotional activities of humans. We can summarize the characteristics of this primitive state of culture from different perspectives, such as its utilitarianism, irrationality, chaos, and arbitrariness. However, any of its manifestations (or variants of these forms) have multiple meanings and functions, especially the function of deriving "truth" and "beauty" from "goodness." In modern society, where civilized culture is increasingly prosperous, primitive culture continues to maintain practical, sincere, joyful, and aesthetic multiple qualities. This "omnipresent, ubiquitous, and universally known" primitive state of culture, although different regions, eras, ethnicities, and countries may have different names for it, can be defined as "Nuo culture" from the perspective of the form, sound, and meaning of Chinese characters, which should be fully recognized in terms of qualification.
For the world of Nuo culture, due to different human situations, it sometimes appears to be an illusory, barbaric and ignorant, mysterious and ferocious, deceptive absurd world, while at other times it seems more like a trustworthy, humane, naive and simple, devout and sacred world. Moreover, no matter how sacred the Nuo altar is or how solemn the atmosphere, Nuo culture has in fact stepped out of the altar and entered the secular world, resonating with people's hearts and giving them a new sense of security and some dreams to look forward to.
Like religious beliefs, the belief in "Nuo" as an innate "innate tendency" of human instinct is an extremely complex and powerful force in human psychology. It can be considered a deeply rooted part of human nature, a way of perceiving life existence and the mysterious forces that threaten it, as well as a self-explanation and self-statement of all the unknowns in the external world. Nuo culture, as an important domain in human behavioral patterns, is created and maintained collectively by members of human groups. Civilized culture is deeply rooted in it and continues to influence this highly scientific world. Within the emotional atmosphere of Nuo culture, people believe in these supernatural arbitrary explanations and conclusions with absolute loyalty, psychological reverence, and spontaneous restraint. To this day, as humans increasingly realize the loss of love and will, the crisis of isolated survival, and various considerations for quick success, Nuo culture becomes even more deeply ingrained in people's hearts. It ingeniously transforms within the civilized cultures of various ethnic groups worldwide, becoming a solace for human tension and a compensation for cold and ruthless science. Although civilized culture has unlimited prospects, and scientific materialism has provided a more indisputable truth, human desires for explanation, conquest, worship, and entertainment are unstoppable and endless, and the gap between ideal perfection and realistic defects is difficult to bridge.
Scientific civilization has made people more aware that humans are far from being able to do as they please in nature. Abundant material life does not necessarily bring spiritual clarity to people. Humans often turn their gaze towards the distant, primitive cultural origins to seek those unpolluted primitive dominions and life forces. Those fantasies from human childhood are still hidden deep in human "memory," constantly awakened by realistic desires. The return to simplicity in Nuo culture can obviously play a role in easing emotions, adjusting spirits, compensating for monotony, enriching interests, and entertaining life. Thus, it is understandable that even today - a highly scientific, industrialized, and rationalized era - humans still "turn natural things into emotional things, into subjective, that is, human things" (Feuerbach). This is a constant balance in constant "loss." Who can say that it cannot arouse human creativity to change their living environment to a greater extent? Who can think that it will not become a completely new future culture?
Whether to define this human spiritual phenomenon and behavioral pattern as "Nuo" culture is not particularly important, nor is it particularly important whether people in the spiritual atmosphere of Nuo culture truly believe in "Nuo." What's important is that this spiritual cultural phenomenon has its eternally reasonable basis for existence. It is a lost foundation of humanity, both a sensory understanding of life and a comfort to the alienated modern soul. When all "orthodox" and "mainstream" cultures fall into a state of weightlessness, humans can find support to bravely face existence from this more instinctive primitive state of culture. Nuo culture thus becomes a reference, background, and basis for human activities, omnipresent and ubiquitous.
The distance between possibility and reality for humans is still very far, and realized dreams will bring more and stronger desires. No matter how high a level of intelligence humans evolve to, how brilliant their scientific thoughts and lofty their self-perception, no matter how complex human existence will be in the future, the pulse of Nuo will stubbornly beat, and Nuo culture will always have contemporaneity with its emotional charm and psychological attraction. Nuo culture is not any "living fossil"; Nuo culture is eternal.
Faced with such a rich, complex, mysterious spiritual cultural phenomenon that has continued for millions of years, our research can only provide a tentative interpretation of Nuo culture rather than a standard answer. If Nuo indeed has an initial meaning, over millions of years, it has interpreted a vast set of concepts through various absurd forms, rituals, and divinations, and deposited these concepts as a culture, fusing them into the deep layers of people's consciousness and social psychological mechanisms. Rather than calling it a belief, it might be better to say that it is a way for humans to release and satisfy their own anxieties and wishes through the absurd form of Nuo. Until we can truly explain the initial meaning of Nuo, we will have finally understood Nuo. So far, whether Nuo is a material entity, such as limited to Nuo rituals, Nuo altars, Nuo operas, Nuo dances, Nuo Masks, etc., or a specific civil activity, such as various folk activities of "performing Nuo to fulfill vows"; whether it is a pure belief, such as belief in ghosts and spirits, worship of deities, etc., or an emotional phenomenon, such as the release and satisfaction of human nature. For this widely spread Nuo, the inaccuracy of definition or conceptual ambiguity might be due to its content being so rich that it's impossible to determine, leading to the indeterminacy of its extension. Rather than pursuing a simple and precise definition, it's better to seek a flexible and broad range from the perspective of sets.
Based on this understanding, we interpret "Nuo" as a pan-world cultural phenomenon. Although "culture" is also a concept with many meanings, it does not leave one at a loss. The first to use "culture" as a specialized term was the "father of anthropology" in England, Tylor. In his book "Primitive Culture," he defined culture as "Culture is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." To date, there are more and more definitions of "culture," but in terms of content, at least three similar aspects can be summarized: First, the ideological aspect (or conceptual aspect), including people's worldview, thinking mode, religious beliefs, psychological characteristics, values, morals, standards, cognitive abilities, etc. Second, the lifestyle aspect, which is people's attitudes towards clothing, food, housing, transportation, marriage, funeral, birth, aging, illness, death, family life, social life, and the methods adopted in these aspects. Finally, the aspect of spiritual materialized products, which are things that appear to be material in form but can reflect differences and changes in people's concepts through material form. From the cultural scope summarized by these three aspects, "Nuo" has involved all aspects of culture. The ancient divine color preserved in Nuo belief is reflected in the theological concepts of Nuo altars, reflected in various taboos and worships, revealing both the limitations of cognitive ability and the emotional orientation of thinking modes and values.
In Nuo altars and Nuo sacrificial activities, the grandeur of "performing Nuo to fulfill vows," the complexity of Nuo ritual procedures, "walking on knives" to fulfill "passing-through vows" for children, "knife-flipping sacrifice," "biting red teeth," "replacing the fetus" performed during exorcism and epidemic expulsion, etc., are all programmed special behaviors caused by concepts. All court Nuo dances and folk Nuo operas can naturally be viewed as artistic manifestations included in Nuo culture, that is, the body and outer garment of Nuo. With their aesthetic charm, they become the materialized forms of Nuo's spirit. Our understanding of Nuo culture obviously makes us understand it as an organic whole, a process, a human psychological journey that has accumulated thousands of years of historical sediment and is constantly enriching and renewing. It is by no means a simple superposition of Nuo, Nuo, Nuo, and concepts of ghosts and spirits. In the atmosphere of Nuo culture, human psychological states, life attitudes, thinking modes, and behavioral orientations will correspondingly change. Some of these changes are difficult to explain by the pure scientific logic of civilized culture. What's important is that in this perceptual world of Nuo culture, through the various absurd logic and inexplicable procedures of Nuo rituals, we feel the naive understanding and simple resistance of people throughout the ages towards the world, especially realizing the unremitting efforts of human ancestors to conquer nature under natural worship, to manipulate ghosts and spirits under the concept of ghosts and spirits, to understand and affirm themselves under ancestor worship, and their restlessness towards fate. Such conquest color contained in the worship of heaven, earth, gods, ghosts, nature, and fate makes Nuo maintain the positive nature of humanity and the cultural psychology of pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty under its absurd and negative form.
Nuo, as a pan-cultural phenomenon, is as ancient as human history. With its unique cultural form, it has become a universal and special form of culture among various ethnic groups worldwide. Its existence is historical and global, reflecting human pursuits and expectations from ancient times to the future. Nuo culture permeates all material and spiritual life of society. For civilized culture, its penetration and influence are extensive and far-reaching. It not only promotes the formation of new culture but also preserves the forms and values of old culture. With its heart-stirring and magnanimous emotional charm, it regulates the sense of crisis and loss in modern society, dilutes the coldness of science, and eases the anxiety caused by facing numerous unknowns. Nuo culture thus becomes a culture of human self-catharsis and self-satisfaction.
