[ISSUE 147] by CHERISH

kidloveUID: 2814224

TOPIC: ISSUE147 - "Tradition andmodernization are incompatible. One must choose between them."
WORDS: 626
TIME: 00:45:00
DATE: 2011/2/12 11:59:18

Does modernization outweigh tradition indefining our daily lives? Or does tradition lies in the very foundation ofwhere we are derived from? Are they exclusive to each other? In the statement,the author claims that we, as social people, have no choice other than chooseone between them. However, I concede the otherwise with what the author thinks.

First of all I should admit that sometimesmodernization do replace the tradition in some ways. For example, in ancienttimes, the social level of women in China was very low, men did not allow womento eat with them on the table instead that the poor women only could eat in thekitchen. But in modern times, women's social level has been greatly elevated,the idea of All Man are Created Equal has been spread al over the world and theChinese women have witnessed the change in their daily lives. Several decadesago, people seldom traveled to other places for lack of efficienttransportation, trips to other countries or other distant part of the globe wasbeyond their imagination. But today, people can travel to everywhere they want,even into the space through efficient and fast means of transportation createdby the modernized improvement and development, such as trains, planes, shipsand even spacecrafts. Modernization has greatly replaced the backwardness andinefficiency of the tradition and brought tremendous benefit to people.

However, as cultures and civilizationpassed down through thousands of years, tradition and modernization have theirown originality and both have done merits to human life. The tradition carriesits splendid culture and history where human are stemming from. Chinese peoplealways claim that they are descendents of the dragon and worship the totem ofdragon. Thanksgiving Day always reminds the American people the origin of themand that the gratitude for the kind helps of the Native American. Traditionsare those with supreme taste and are adored by ordinary people. The mostexpensive and elegant shoes are from Italy, where shoes are made by hand withskills back to early times. On the other hand, modernization as well bringsgreat benefits to our lives. The development of technologies and science haschanged our mind into more intellectual and more open one. Numerous kinds ofrecreational facilities, abundant of information both in papers and on theInternet, bridged distance between people and convenience of communication arebenefiting people' lives. Modernization is upsetting the traditional minds ofpeople which had dominated human minds in centuries. Today's people are moreused to sending an E-mail to their friends than sending them a postcard whenit's Christmas; they tend to be informed of current news report on Internetrather than reading newspapers, etc.

But the fact is that neither extreme praisein tradition and modernization is applicable, the best way for us to maintainboth of them is to reconcile them into an integrated one. The wars in moderntimes are depend on advanced technology of weapons which even don't need humanto control them, they are no longer the same with that in ancient times, butthere's no easy victory by solely rely on advanced weapons and ignore the greatintelligence of ancient sages. Every wise commander of the military must haveread the famous war strategy book named Sun Tzu's Art of War, for in the bookcontains various strategies that are useful during warfare both in ancienttimes and our time.

In conclusion, both modernization andtradition are essential in our daily lives, for the former one bring us convenienceand easiness in exploring a wider world and future, while the later one definesus from where are we derived and the splendid culture we should preserve andworship in a fast developing time.