issue88 【0710G-HIT坚持交作业小组作文大帖】SavileRow

SavileRowUID：2284947

题目：ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."
字数：481          用时：00:45:00          日期：2007-8-16 10:20:38
又没写完，无语了，时间到的时候还差最后两段，最后应该是有快700字

提纲：
１背景式开头，认为技术影响但是不决定社会习俗和道德
２技术改变我们对自然的看法，从而改变社会习俗和道德，是直接的
３技术改变我们对社会的看法，从而改变社会习俗和道德，是间接的
４技术不能决定社会习俗和道德
５结尾
Evolving development of science and technology has changed our society upside down.　Some might wonder how powerful technologies are,　and besides the aspects of material life, can technologies influence ,even determine our social customs and ethics? As I see it, technologies can only influence our social customs and ethics through changing our minds towards nature and society, but are not that powerful to determine them because they lie in people's inner side deeply.

On one hand, the development of technologies has changed our opinions towards nature and thus our social customs and ethics changed afterwards. Without a doubt, nature is the most important medium in which we live and interact with other social members. Consequently, what and how we see nature influences severely our opinions about the world. Take one origin of religions for example. In the primitive time, because of under-developed science and technologies, our ancestors were completely clueless about those natural phenomena. Without being equipped the proper knowledge to explain nature, they resorted to believing certain invisible figures--deity. They believed that the phenomena were the results of some related activities of deity. For example, when it rained with thunder, they thought the deity was so furious that he threw everything away which made the noise of thunder, while his wife was crying whose tears became rain drops. The original feeling of awing about nature gave birth to the preliminary religion. However, as science and technology developed, people got to know better about nature and they understood the causes of these natural phenomena has nothing to do with the deity. People started to see nature as an objective to conquer. Thus, people abandoned the deity and tuned to science and technology instead. This change accelerated the dimming out of the primitive religion; at the same time it added new elements to religion to push it to an advanced level. Finally, the society grew to be science-and-technology-dominated and science and technology are seen as a nouveau religion. The different attitudes towards nature transferring from fear to mastery brought by technologies deeply affect social customs and ethics. And this function of technologies is in a direct way.

On the other hand, technologies affect social customs and ethics in an indirect manner through influencing people's conception about society. Technologies are capable to change the structure and percentage of population which is the most significant factor influencing social customs and ethics. Once the upheaval in population took place, a series of conceptions towards society followed immediately. The aging population issue makes a compelling example. Nowadays, advancement of technologies has dramatically meliorated people's living conditions on both the diet and environment aspects. Besides, more diseases that used to be fatal could be eradicated. Hence, people's lives are prolonged thanks to technologies. Then here comes a social phenomenon, since people are enjoying longer lives generally, the society becomes fraught with more elder people than ever before. Although the notion of respecting the elder has a long history, we never feel so deeply and truly until we witness the increasing trend around us. This genuine impact drives the whole society to ponder on the issue and carry out practical measures specially designed aiming at caring about the elder, helping the elder. Ultimately, a new custom about the elder people is formed. The demographic change resulted from technologies guiding people to focus new issues we never considered before and forces us to make prompt decisions, as aging population issue demonstrated above. This is the indirect influence of technologies on social customs and ethics.

However, the role of technologies is confined to influencing; it cannot be promoted to a higher level--determining customs and ethics. The reason is that customs and ethics are rooted in the inner side of society. Only the inner upheavals are able to decide the birth of new customs and ethics, and to decide the death of old customs and ethics. The role of technologies playing is to function as catalyst; they can only accelerate or decelerate the process. Moreover, no matter how powerful technologies are, there are changeless values we want our children to get to know and to make them their own: honesty, fairness, friends and family, self-discipline, freedom to practice one's faith, fidelity to tasks, royalty and love of country.

In a nutshell, when we admit technologies indeed change social customs and ethics, we cannot overestimate their influence. They are not predominant enough to determine our social customs and ethics. After all, customs and ethics are the externalizations of our spiritual universe. And this last wonderland is free from somehow "mundane" technologies.