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Issue 147
In the era of rapid development in technology and society, modernization has brought drastic changes to people's lives as well as traditions that they once valued. Confronted with such trend, many people assert that tradition and modernization are incompatible and one must choose between them. However, in my opinion, these people have put the relationship between tradition and modernization into extremes, indeed tradition and modernization are not mutually exclusive, and far from it, they usually complement and benefit each other to a large extent.
On the one hand, tradition which has been characterized as the established values, beliefs and customs handed down from generation to generation serves as the root for modernization and the identify of a particular culture. Without tradition, modernization would lack solid ground to hold itself fast in the streams of the human progress. Tradition has provided us with a precious heritage of wisdom and experience from our predecessors. Many of their great ideas are still treasured in the process of modernization, or even enhance the performance of the modernization. For example, "The Art of War" which was introduced by Sun Tzu thousands of years ago in ancient China, now has great value not only on the military strategy, but also on the decision making for many entrepreneurs in the business world. What is more, tradition always reflects the values, beliefs and customs of a particular culture. Every culture has its own traditions which discriminate them from other cultures in the world. If a culture has lost its own traditions, then it would also loss its identity. Therefore in the trend of modernization, tradition should be preserved rather than discarded. Admittedly, some traditions seem out of date or contradict the common beliefs that held by most people today, such as the slavery, inequity between men and women, etc. This kind of traditions should be discarded, and that is one reason why modernization is needed.
On the other hand, stemming from the roots of tradition, modernization would contribute a lot to the development of human civilization and lead them to the bright future of prosperity. Without modernization, we would probably still live in the primitive state as our ancestors did, and there would be no progress in the human civilization. As a result of modernization, we can now communicate with people all over the world through telephone and E-mails; we can now be able to study at home with the connection to schools all around the world; we can now travel to other places more conveniently and promptly; we can now enjoy the beautiful sceneries in different places of interest throughout the world by internet and television. All of these fantastic changes to our daily lives are brought by modernization. Admittedly, modernization has its drawbacks in various fields. For example, in the realm of science, the human cloning has aroused a heated debate, which is contradict to the basic ethic beliefs held by most of the people, and that is one reason why tradition should be preserved to regulate this kind of harmful modernizations.
Furthermore, combining tradition and modernization together is not only possible, but also necessary for the benefit of the whole mankind. For example, Beijing now preserves many traditional buildings, and at the same time constructs many modern buildings. This combination not only maintains the history it possessed, but also reveals the progress it has made. Another case in point is the construction of PETRONAS Twin Towers in Malaysia. As the highest building in the world, it not only adopts modern technologies to ensure its safety, but also instills the traditional esthetic values on symmetry to both its inner adornment and outside appearance, which makes it unique in the world.
In all, we can see that tradition and modernization could be and should be combined together to better lead us toward the bright future of prosperity, neither one should be discarded.
73 min, 644
[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-14 at 18:12 ] |
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