新旧|New and Old

这是之前在春季学期上的作业，我正好直接拿出来之前自己写的一篇文章做了分析，现在更新上来。

New and Old

More and more technology is appearing. They changed the world greatly. For example, human’s head circumference is increasing in recent years (Grossman, Richard 1304). One guess is that because of the increasing usage of caesarean, the pelvis shape of women will not affect the newborn’s head circumference and thus those who have large head could also birth (Fischer, Barbara, and Philipp Mitteroecker 5658).

Besides, some people are discovering the conditions one needs to have to birth to make an artificial uterus so that both the women and the foetus could be safer and more pregnancies can result in a living child (Taylor, Howard P., et al 1296).
However, many people do not accept these tools, and instead, they prefer natural birth because of natural beliefs (Preis, Heidi, et al 48).
In the above story, there is an organization named them Nature Guards, who is extremely for natural birth. They destroy the machine to prevent the newborns from birthing from any places but women’s uterus. This kind of action comes from deep belief. The conflict between new things (such as technology or new science discovery) and old beliefs continues for a long time.
Nicolaus Copernicus was thrown into prison because his discovery of the laws of celestial bodies was far from what people believed. In China, during the Qing Dynasty, the construction of the railway was not quite successful due to the complaint of the government officials, saying that the noise train made will disturb the god of the land.
In modern society, this kind of things happened on the vaccine (Phadke, Varun K., et al 1150). What’s more, there are also people sticking to what sacred scriptures tell them and be against anything that is against what they believe.
These are all the example of what Douglas Adams writes in The Salmon of Doubt that “Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
We can not divide nature and human beings as if we, human beings, are not part of nature. We are part of nature, so it is wrong to say that something artificial is not natural.
Actually, those who are against new technology, highly praise nature do not do what nature people(i.e. traditional people) do. What they eat comes from modern agriculture. What they wear comes from the modern textile industry. Without electricity, what people produce by many types of artificial machine, they could even not post their view on new things people discovered or invented.
So we will find that why people are for nature is not because those they for are really natural but because they are afraid of having changes.
They are against these new things because of their fear. In the old days without these new things, they can have a good life but what will happen after applying new things is quite uncertain even if there is scientific evidence showing that nothing bad will happen after applying new things.
There are many reasons.
First, religion tells people to accept the present. Christianism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism and many other religions all tell people to accept a kind of fixed sacred scriptures which is written several centuries ago. Fixing them means fixing the old things. Besides, in ancient, people can not change the world efficiently. So people have to suffer the terrible environment and work.
These religions are invented to give people the belief that what they suffer is reasonable to let them not revolt but to accept. However, in a century when everything is changing quickly, some parts of the religions do not keep pace and ban the world from improving.
Second, trying new things needs cost. People are used to the old things and be familiar with them. So when they are asked to try new things, they will get a sense of strangeness, which means people must pay more attention to them as learning something new.
In this case, both people familiar with old things and people who have no idea of old things all need to start learning from scratch, meaning that they could not have an advantage in competing with younger people. Staying in the comfort zone and enjoying a sense of superiority is a better choice for those who take lead in the old things.
Third, the complex background of people and endless conspiracy theories make things worse. Many people do not believe in science or related scientific research, making it harder to explain and remove their fear. Some people also use this kind of fear to gain interests, causing conflicts one after another.
In brief, the ideas of the previous generation (religion), the inborn action force (not willing to try new things) and the control of some people make the introduction of new technology hard. The violence happened then.
How to avoid it? Pessimistically, I think it is impossible due to the instinct of people to suspect. Human beings will fall into a spiral of war with the development of technology and the huge gap between different classes, which will breed conspiracy theories and make people hard to understand each other.

Works cited

Grossman, Richard. “Are Human Heads Getting Larger?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114.8 (2017): E1304-E04. Print.
Fischer, Barbara, and Philipp Mitteroecker. “Covariation between Human Pelvis Shape, Stature, and Head Size Alleviates the Obstetric Dilemma.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112.18 (2015): 5655-60. Print.
Taylor, Howard P., et al. “Attempts to Make an “Artificial Uterus”: Part I. The Adaptation of Blood Pumps and Oxygenator for This Purpose.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 77.6 (1959): 1295-300. Print.
Preis, Heidi, et al. “A Quantitative Investigation into Women’s Basic Beliefs About Birth and Planned Birth Choices.” Midwifery 63 (2018): 46-51. Print.
Phadke, Varun K., et al. “Association Between Vaccine Refusal and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States: A Review of Measles and Pertussis.” JAMA 315.11 (2016): 1149-58. Print.
Adams, Douglas. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. London: Macmillan, 2002. Print.