In a dilemma-
The relationship between tradition and modernity
Reflected in technology transfer
For developing countries including China, the relationship between tradition and modernity is a very important issue. This is because although developing countries have made great achievements in the process of implementing technology transfer and promoting their own social development, they have encountered the following dilemmas: First, if technology transfer is implemented comprehensively and deeply, although it will promote the rapid development of their own technology and economy, with the continuous input of foreign technology, the spread of culture will have a serious impact on the traditional technology and culture of our nation or country. As a result, our traditional technology and culture may lose their independence or even collapse. Secondly, if we absorb foreign technology and exclude its culture just to strengthen national consciousness and carry forward traditional culture, it will run counter to the objective requirements of modernization, hinder the in-depth development of technology transfer and may lead to.
Then, how to correctly understand and deal with the relationship between Chinese traditional technical culture and foreign modern technical culture, that is, how to correctly understand and deal with the relationship between tradition and modernity? Theoretically speaking, traditional technology and culture are mostly special, while modern technology and culture are mostly universal. Therefore, the relationship between tradition and modernity can be attributed to the particularity and universality of technology and culture. This problem has attracted the attention of many scholars. UNESCO also held an international symposium entitled "Modernity and Individuality" around this issue.
Different attitudes-
Foreign technical and cultural views facing the relationship between tradition and modernity
In ancient times, China and China made great achievements far ahead of other countries in the world at that time. Therefore, they have formed a "cultural centralism" and a foreign technical and cultural view of worshipping foreign things, that is, China is the center of world culture, and there is no need to learn from other countries. Only by surrendering to China can all countries in the world survive and develop. This attitude decided that the technology transfer at that time could only be one-way export. Instead of actively introducing technology at the same time, as a foreign scholar said, "During the two thousand years from 200 BC to AD 1800, China gave more to the West than she got from the West." In modern times, although China was opened to the outside world by western powers, they still didn't change the above attitude, still despised western technology and culture and hindered the transfer of foreign technology. China changed the above attitude, and formed a foreign technical culture view of "learning from China and using the West", that is, without changing his traditional social culture, he incorporated western technical artifacts into China's technical culture system and applied them. Influenced by this, although modern China introduced advanced western technical objects, especially advanced military weapons, it failed to absorb the advanced western technical management system, social system and cultural ideology in time. For example, the management system of "government-run" or "government-supervised business-run" in China enterprises has restricted the development of enterprises and made little progress in technology transfer. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, the reformists promoted the technology transfer by implementing cultural changes such as the Reform Movement of 1898 and the Revolution of 1911, that is, recognizing and introducing the western technical system and cultural and political system, thus correcting the "Chinese style and western use". As a result, the cultural transformation has not been finally completed, and the theory of "Chinese style and western use" has not been completely changed. Under the restriction of feudal and corrupt political system, technology transfer failed to promote the rapid development of modern science and technology culture in China. After the founding of New China, under the situation of international political struggle at that time, China fully understood and introduced the technology and culture of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to build socialism. During the Cultural Revolution, China basically rejected foreign technology and culture and independently developed its own technology and culture, which led to the stagnation of technology transfer. After the reform and opening up, China began to actively introduce western technology and culture, and at the same time actively exported its own technology and culture.
Japan was backward in ancient times.
In China, the foreign technical and cultural views of "training people with rope soul" and "training people with harmony soul" have been formed, in which "training soul" refers to the ideology of "sharing the same life * * *" spontaneously produced by ancient Japanese, which is the embryonic form of "harmony" thought; "camouflage" means including
Mainland science and technology, including China, refers to the Japanese in the era of "rope pattern-yayoi" (equivalent to China from the end of primitive society to Qin and Han dynasties), who coexisted and unified local science and technology culture with foreign science and technology culture and formed their own science and technology culture. "Harmony with Soul and Talent" is derived from "Seeking Soul and Talent". Harmony soul not only includes "rope soul", but also refers to the technology of China after the Han Dynasty, including not only the technical artifacts in Camouflage, but also the technical system and its concepts. Under the guidance of the above ideas, the ancient Japanese actively introduced and absorbed China's technology (such as various ironware) and culture, and innovated technology and culture with their own national characteristics. In the face of threats from western powers, modern Japan initially adopted an exclusive attitude like China. However, after the Meiji Restoration, it changed its attitude, that is, it changed from "being a Chinese talent" to "being a foreign talent", that is, it adhered to its traditional technical culture and applied modern western technical utensils and social and cultural systems, which promoted the development of technology and economy and made Japan quickly become a capitalist power. Of course, Japan's thought of "harmony with foreign talents" also has its shortcomings, that is, when introducing western political and legal thoughts, Japan chose to absorb German nationalist thoughts that conform to "harmony", but rejected bourgeois democratic political and legal system thoughts advocated by Anglo-American law, and suppressed the opposite liberal civil rights movement. This laid the ideological foundation for Japan to breed nationalism and fascist militarism in the future and pushed Japan into the abyss of the war of aggression. After the war, Japan carried out democratic reforms and abolished wartime feudalism under the strong intervention of the United States. Understanding and introducing technology and culture from Europe and America has changed from introducing German nationalism and legal system to introducing bourgeois democracy and legal system from Europe and America. However, the Japanese emperor's consciousness still exists, and militaristic forces have repeatedly risen. It can be said that modern Japan generally followed the diplomatic attitude of "harmony with foreign talents". After the 1980s, with the implementation of the strategy of "building the country through science and technology" and the transformation of technological invention mode from imitation to independent innovation, Japan also shifted from the original technology introduction to technology export. However, there are many cultural frictions in the process of technology export, which requires Japan to completely change its concept of "harmony with foreign talents" in order to meet the needs of technology transfer in the new era. However, Japan has not achieved obvious results in this regard. After several generations' efforts, the Indians created their own unique technology and culture before the white Europeans entered the American continent. Since Columbus discovered this continent in 1492, white Europeans have come here. Facing the technology and culture of white people, Indians generally hold such an attitude: they recognize the utility of white people's technical utensils, selectively introduce technical utensils (such as guns and knives) to help them hunt and fight, and refuse to accept white people's social systems and values. As a result, there was a cultural friction with white people. However, in the whole Indian nation, each tribe has a different attitude towards whites. For example, the Iroquois and the five civilized tribes absorbed the white people's technical utensils and cultural system and changed their traditional customs, but they tried to maintain their own cultural traditions. On the contrary, the Indians of the tribes in the Great Plains stubbornly retained their traditional technology and culture, totally rejected and resisted by force. Finally,
After the whites came to America, facing the traditional backward technical culture of Indians, they naturally produced the external technical culture view of white technical culture centralism. They forced the Indians to accept their own rule and made it a part of the white national culture. To this end, they slaughtered the rebellious Indians by force, destroyed their religious idols, and forced them to give up their national religious culture and believe in white Christian culture. In order to finally assimilate Indian culture completely, the attitude and behavior of white people were resisted by Indian people, which led to frequent cultural frictions in the process of white people transferring technology to Indians. Cultural frictions like this still exist in the United States today, which fully shows that the racist foreign technology and cultural views held by whites are completely wrong. In ancient India, the world-famous Buddhist culture and its architecture and sculpture techniques were created. Since then, the Indian cultural circle has become one of the three major cultural circles in the world. In addition to introducing China's four great inventions, sericulture and silk weaving technology, ancient India mainly exported its Buddhist culture and its architectural art to China, and spread it from China to Korea and Japan. It can be seen that ancient India adopted the concept of "Indian cultural centralism" in its foreign relations. Under its guidance, technology transfer is mainly manifested as one-way export. In modern times, India was forced to establish a country under the pressure of western powers and became a British colony. Britain first conquered India by force and destroyed its traditional industries. Then the capitalist political system and economic system were forcibly extended to India, which destroyed the traditional social structure of India and destroyed the feudal manor system characterized by feudalism. In addition, Britain also tried to use English as the official language of India, forcing Indians to abandon Buddhism and convert to Christianity, so as to achieve the goal of fully assimilating Indian culture. In this regard, although Indians were forced to accept British technical artifacts and capitalist cultural system, they rejected British Christian culture, persisted in maintaining their own cultural traditions, and launched an indomitable struggle with British colonialists. Today, Indians are still trying to maintain and carry forward their traditional culture. Therefore, it can be said that India has formed a foreign technical and cultural concept similar to "harmony with foreign talents" in modern times, that is, "Buddha's soul and foreign talents". The technology transfer affected by it is limited to the scope of the object layer and the system layer, while India's cultural traditions and technological characteristics remain at the conceptual level.
In the historical process of technology transfer, whether voluntary or involuntary, active or passive, most of the above-mentioned countries admit and absorb foreign technological artifacts, or admit or reject foreign social and cultural systems, while completely rejecting foreign cultural values and safeguarding their own cultural traditions. This is why these countries or nations can know and introduce foreign technical cultural relics in advance, but they lag behind in introducing their social and cultural systems and values.
Cultural change and nationalization of technology—
Understand and treat tradition
Countermeasures for the relationship with modern times
How to correctly understand and handle the relationship between tradition and modernity, eliminate cultural friction and promote technology transfer and social development?
If China's traditional social and cultural system and the technological system under its influence objectively lag behind foreign social and cultural systems, then we should decisively implement cultural changes; If China's social and cultural system is objectively superior to that of foreign countries, then we should adhere to this system and reform the various management systems to which it belongs. In addition, if China's scientific and technological cultural values objectively lag behind those of foreign countries, it should be updated by absorbing foreign cultural ideas. Many cultural changes implemented in modern China ended in failure. It also failed to completely change the backward state. This shows that it is urgent and arduous to implement technological and cultural changes in China. For China at present and in the future, it is still an unfinished historical task to implement technological and cultural changes.
Traditional ones are not all backward, there are still excellent ingredients to inherit and carry forward, and modern ones are not all healthy, and there are still dross ingredients to be discarded and eliminated. It is very important to understand and deal with the relationship between tradition and modernity with a sublation attitude.
In dealing with the relationship between traditional technology culture and modern technology culture, we can't completely abandon it and pursue "high-tech" or high-tech, which will breed the so-called "modern culture" of liberalization and selfishness. On the contrary, it is necessary to strengthen the transformation of traditional technologies or industries with modern high-tech or high-tech, and actively absorb foreign excellent cultures on the basis of promoting excellent traditional cultures. Carrying forward the excellent elements in China's traditional technical culture, localizing and nationalizing foreign technical culture through technical culture innovation, and making it a part of China's traditional technical culture can not only promote the development of China's traditional technical culture, but also maintain its relative independence. At present, China's reform and opening up is a huge and profound cultural change. China relies on cultural changes to integrate its technology and culture into the tide of the world. In order to make China's science and technology culture go to the world, at the same time, China should revitalize and develop its national science and technology culture through its nationalization, and make China's science and technology culture nationalized. China will make greater contributions in the development of 2 1 century!