Issue147 【六人作文小组】第1周第6次作业

levinshireUID: 2559564

TOPIC: ISSUE147 - "Tradition and modernization are incompatible. One must choose between
them."
WORDS: 519          TIME: 3:08:30          DATE: 2009-1-14

提纲：
1.有时候传统和现代剧烈对抗
2.更多的时候传统和现代的分界不是那么清楚
3.一个人可以既传统又现代

The conflicts between tradition and modernization have always been happening in human society,
and especially significantly in the recent time. But tradition and modernization are not
always incompatible. Although in some cases they fiercely oppose to each other, most of the
time the boundary between tradition and modernization is not so clear that one has to choose
between them.

It is true that sometimes tradition and modernization are incompatible. That happens
especially during the periods of great revolution in the societies, or when more advanced
civilization brings in its influence. Under such circumstances, two distinct cultures clash
together and exclude each other, which makes people must choose either of them. The North
America Indians invaded by the West Europe had offered a good illustration for such
circumstances. Facing a totally different culture from the other continent, the Indians who
had been living in North America for 10 thousand years must choose either to accept the alien
culture, or to fight to insist on their own custom and way of life. In short, when society
experiences large and sudden changes, breaches often appear between tradition and
modernization.

However, most of the changes in human society happen slowly and silently along with the social
economic development, so more of the time it is not fierce conflict but slow evolution that
marks the relation between tradition and modernization. As a result, there is not always a
clear boundary that tells tradition from modernization completely, and therefore one hasn't to
be neither extremely traditional nor extremely modern, but in somewhere medium. For example,
in many nations traditional marriage is arranged by the parents, while in a modern way young
people look for their spouse all by their own will. But in the real world today, there are
seldom parents who force the children to married the ones they don't love, nor young people
who get married without any informing of or consulting with their parents.

In addition, it is possible for one single individual to be traditional in some actions while
play the modern ways in other actions. I know an engineer in IBM who loves to wear bizarre
dress, play computer games, listen to Rock music, and at the same time, go to church every
week. There is nothing contradictive or unnatural in him. From that simple proof, we can see
that tradition and modernization could be combined even in one person. And if we take a
careful look around us, we will find that most of us are acting just the same way. There are
few people who do everything only in the traditional way, or only in the modern way.
Generally, we are all mixtures of tradition and modernization.

As a conclusion, the conflicts between tradition and modernization are sometimes fierce enough
to create an incompatibility that one has to choose between them, but most of the time the
boundary between them is not that clear and we are actually standing in the midst of the two
extreme. What's more, it is the fact that tradition and modernization can even be compatible
in a single individual.