Issue147,限时[Flamy July]作业,请拍:)

jetflameUID: 206544

TOPIC: ISSUE147 - "Tradition and modernization are incompatible. One must choose between them."
WORDS: 537          TIME: 0:45:00          DATE: 2006-7-21

Are tradition and modernization really incompatible and one must choose between them? I can not agree with this assertion, since tradition and modernization are not necessary mutually exclusive alternatives. We will benefit a great many from the combining of them both.

On the one hand, tradition is mostly about the culture of a country, which mainly involves the beliefs, values, customs, ways of life and so on. In other words, tradition, more like a spiritual leader, directs people's life, their work, direction of the development of human society. Thus, without tradition, we will lose the objects of our technological endeavor, and as a result, we will never make significant progress which will lead us to a better life both on material and in spirit.

On the other hand, modernization, which involves urbanization, industrialization and democratization, is the power that enables us to strike forward. Lacking the process of modernization, it is totally impossible to gain today's great achievement by our human beings. For example, without industrialization, maybe we still live in poverty and hunger; without the introduction of computer and internet, probably we still live separately and can not enjoy the fruition of globalization and greatly increased economy; without democratization, we will still keep fighting with each other all the time for human right and surely our tradition will be ruined without any sympathy.

Therefore, in my view point, combining tradition and modernization is both beneficial and necessary to our rapid societal development. Only if that happens, the society will become more and more feasible to live for human beings, in that culturally, we keep our convention which supports us in spirit and technologically, we rely on the power of modernization which supports us on material. Take the tradition of flying kites for example. This convention bears the dreams of flying of our forefather. Yet now, because of the rapid progress of science, we can achieve the object of our old tradition, indicating that tradition do show the direction of our development, which can be strongly support by technology in modernization.

Admittedly, there are chances when tradition and modernization conflict with each other, such as the appearance of internet breaks the tradition that people usually visit each other to enhance their communication and relationship. When we face to such difficulties, serious consideration should be take on whether to abandon the tradition or to make the new technology compatible to our convention. In the above case, thanks to the internet, in fact, we can communicate with our friends much more convenient than ever. As a consequence, we accept the technology but however keep the tradition of visiting each other whenever is possible, for that the real feeling of a face-to-face chat will never be instead by any technology and what is more, elder people would rather choose the latter form.

In conclusion, there are still several other aspects relevant to the issue under discussion, which, unfortunately, I have no sufficient time to explore in detail. But the above-discussed content should to a large extent justify my claim that combining both tradition and modernization will give us a promise future. In the final analysis, whenever we come to the condition that tradition and modernization are incompatible, we should decide seriously which one to follow in order to make our society thrive and people’s life more comfortable.