Issue88 Thrive小组第4次作业 求拍！谢谢！～

vic_rainUID: 2304309

TOPIC: ISSUE88 - "Technologies not only influence but actually determine social customs and ethics."

WORDS: 634          TIME: 00:45:00          DATE: 2008-2-26 15:09:33

I concede that technologies influence social customs and ethics, sometimes deeply, especially in such a competing society, but they do not determine them. Actually, it is people themselves who determine social customs and ethics by their own thoughts, standards of activities, perspectives of value and life through a long period of time rather than technologies.

To begin with, as technologies are increasingly developing, our social customs and ethics have changed much more beyond our ancestors could image. In terms of social customs, gradually appearing phenomena reveals amazing improvements. As a result of human industrialization, technical facilities officers offset female people's weakness in strength, and enable them to play a more important role in modern society rather than old female customs. Huge emergences of computers, network and cell phone, radically change our styles in life and communication instead of face-to-face communicating in old customs. Moreover, ethics have also experienced big changes. Technical research on genetics enables us to know disadvantages in intermarriage, while our ancestors considered this to be a better relationship between relatives in old ethic. From these aspects, we indeed decide the startling influences on our social customs and ethics from technologies.

However, technologies, by themselves, would never truly determinate social customs and ethics. The system of social customs and ethics has experienced a long period of trial and errors from initialization, modification, and replenishment till to mature. In ancient society, our ancestors need work together to prey on wilder animals, or else they would confront with the danger of starvation. Teamwork, a basic social customs, came into being. And when they allocate what they hunted more to the old and young who are weaker in strength, we know the origin of the basic ethic of respecting the old and caring for the young. Later on, they bartered what they could not consume at once, then the equity, another basic ethic, also appeared. it is difficult to enumerate the origins of all social customs and ethics, but each one has a enduring progress before it can be confirmed, no matter how technologies develop in this progress.

Furthermore, technologies can enrich content of social customs and ethics, but also can not determine them. We are accustomed to sending SMS and Email by cell phone, but the traditional custom of expressing our loves and concerns for someone would never disappear or change no matter how technologies develop. And whenever we enjoyed a high glory, the ethic to respect the elderly and take good care of the young always accompany us in whatever highly developed technology society.

In fact, by contrary, social customs and ethics can feed back to influence technologies, resulting in either promotion or restriction. Consider the popular social custom of expecting live longer. This persistent custom challenges medical technology at present for a better improvement, thus stimulate our medical scientists to research on relative fields and medical technology develops. On the other hand, consider another controversial technology named human cloning. As this technology disobeys the traditional ethics about position in the family hierarchy, it is legally abandoned in many countries. Therefore further development of cloning technology in many countries almost halts.

"Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved." This quotation from Bertrand Russell well illuminates the influence of technologies, the application of science, on ethics. Within the range of technologies, one society itself can choose and determine what ends it wants. Since all nations share common basic needs lying in human natures, we can easily find similar social customs and ethics between countries having similar technologies. Yet, the other social customs and ethics have been developed according to each nation's characters and value system for a long period of time.

[ 本帖最后由 vic_rain 于 2008-2-26 15:34 编辑 ]