issue88 十二月高强组第一周周二作业

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题目：ISSUE 88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
字数：499          用时：1:07:03          日期：2006-11-21

论点：科技决定风俗习惯但不决定伦理道德
1 风俗习惯与伦理道德的不同
2 科技影响甚而决定风俗
3 是道德约束科技，而不是科技决定道德

Does technologies determine social customs and ethics as the speaker claims ?I concede that technology have great influence on every aspects of a society, including customs and ethics, and nowadays the social customs are in some extent determined by technologies. However, in my view, the ethics is determined not by the technologies but by the human nature.

To begin with, the customs and ethic are two distinctive aspects of a society therefore they are different in being impact by technologies. Before we make deep analysis about this topic, I want to point out the differences between customs and ethics. In some respects, they are very similar in that they are all social regulation which restrict our behavior, and they are distinct aspects of a certain society, However, from my eyes, the major difference between them is that ethic are more likely to be determined by the human nature, while the customs are more susceptible to outer environment. In other words, the customs are a collection of group behaviors and such behaviors are vulnerable to the change of the circumstances geographically and socially. To illustrate the form of the customs, we could easily find out than people in different regions or social status, have different customs. While their ethic rules may mostly the same. Another example is that, in different cultures, religious and other sorts of group disciplines, although maybe they are hugely vary in forms, rituals, and considerations about value, in some parts pertinent to the moral, such as telling people to be tolerant, conscience, and helpful to others are mostly the same.  The ethnics are rooted in the human nature, which are comparatively steady to customs.

As the aforementioned dissimilarity illustrated, in the process of human evolvement, moral, otherwise ethics are more stable than customs simply because customs are the fruition of people to adapt the environment. In this case, regardless the ancient time, our living conditions are widely determined by the advancement of the technologies. Which in turn, determine our customs at present. For example, while the of the Chinese traditional customs such as the New Year greeting in person become rare, the new forms of customs that greeting through short messages or emails exit. Admittedly, the reform of customs is a time-consuming process in which the tradition also plays a significant role.

Meanwhile, with the development of technologies, our ethic principles primarily remain the same. We still judge the morality of a person by the rules the same as our ancestors. It is our ethic to restrain the development of the technologies, not the technologies determine our ethics. Take the well know case of human clone for example, even the technologies are advanced enough, we have to prohibit human clone concerning the uncertain consequences human clone would bring about.

To sum up, while the technologies and along with the influence of tradition determine our customs, technologies have little to do with our ethics. In which means, our society remains stable and flexible as well.