The Contemporary Guidelines of Western Civilization, Essay Example

Introduction

Indisputably, people are living in fascinating times where fiction is tightly bound to reality and the majority of people prefer to live in illusion. Modern  Western civilization is obsessed with an idea of creation clones, supernatural monsters, superheroes and other iconized creatures, who are destined to eternal life. Basically, these tendencies may be explained by scientific and technological revolution that enabled a human being to feel euphoria from the process of creation. As a reasult, all the spheres of activity are facing drastic changes and enornous growth, reconsideration of previously esteblished ethic and moral values and adoption of new philosophical trends. It is not a secret, that a human being of the 21^st century may be associated with a Creator due to great achievements in the field of genetic engineeringand information technologies, etc. However, the evolution of humanity has contributed to the stagnation of ethics, morality and religious dogmas. In any way, as for this paper, the focus lies in arguing that although Western civilization undergoes dramatic reinterpretation of many core dimensions of its concept and originates a number of provocative innovations, it is still not likely to follow a path that will lead to destruction.

The Factor of Life Expectancy

Life expectancy has always been the burning issue in every epoch and every century. Since ancient times people were intended to search for the ways to make their lives longer. Since ancient times, the indicators of life expectancy have greatly changed. If during Paleolithic period average life expectancy was twenty-five years, in ancient Greece and Rome people were noticed to live nearly fifty years. In Medieval Ages the average life expectancy was sixty-four years, whereas nowadays it is almost seventy worldwide. The historical increase of population can be explained by the evolution of humanity, which always found new ways of farming and protection from natural hazards. Living in the modern world, we face a lot of environmental problems and deal with high levels of crime. However, the recent researches show that life expectancy has essentially increased worldwide.

In the United States, 1900s were basically marked by low life expectancy. Approximately a half of all American children were expected to reach fifty. Currently, life span is much improved (Santrock 130). Thus, the significant improvement can be noticed only in higher developed countries with better living conditions. Today people in American society are generally expected to live about seventy-seven years old. There exists the huge number of reasons for a life span increase, which can support our central argument. First of all, people are eating healthier. The consumption of organic food and the reduction in conventional food production has led to the improved health among American people. Secondly, people are provided with excellent sanitation, which is beneficial to them and does not do harm to environment. Americans can always access clean drinking water and all trash is partially processed and partially burned in holes through the ground. Due to the fact that people possess much greater understanding of how to take care of themselves, they are less engaged in dangerous situations. Consequently, the level of crimes decreases and the number of victims is reduced to minimum as well. The life expectancy has increased because of the powerful reformation of medicine in the nineteenth century. Since that time many drugs and remedies became available to people. And, although, treatment and pills are currently quite expensive, people can anyway successfully cure almost all diseases.

The huge number of reasons, most of which comprise constant improvement and advancement, has led to the increased life span among Americans. However, there is a huge concern about the future. Facing financial and economic instability induced by the recent economic decline, many people are out of work and face hardship when earning a living. This is the potential hazard, which can badly contribute to the indicators of life expectancy.

The Formation of Brand New Tendencies

The process of creating new values is vividly presented in the sources of mass media as the majority of today’s books and films are dedicated to the topic of vamrires, vampire killers, verwolves and many other bright supernatural heroes who are struggling for justice and are attempting to save the world. The main peculiarity of today’s art is related to the fact that these creatures are shown in positive manner. Meanwhile, human beings are presented as weak, imperfect and hopeless characters whose cherished dream is to turn into a supernatural creature, a monster. It is clear that the fact of making people inferior to invented heroes emerges to be one of negative social outcomes; such a tendency of putting limits to anthropocentric aspect within the area of societal awareness of human beings is likely to result in some serious rearrangements of Western Civilization. What is more, it is clear that many modern Western cultures and customs occur to have “a destabilizing effect in many areas” (Duiker & Spielvogel 761). All in all, in view of many scholars and historians, it will not lead to some destructive consequences, since it is possible to distinguish a number of turning points in the history of Western civilization, which have still not appeared to be non-renewable.

Digital Coil Platform of the Present Time

Obviously, information technologies appeared to be of great impact on the areas of Western civilization, since today’s society is totally engaged in IT advancement and utilisation procedures; the notion of cloud computing, which is “a style of computing where massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities are delivered “as a service to external customers using Internet technologies” (Cearley & Smith) appeared to be one of the latest breakthroughs within the area if information technologies. Consequently, the global storage mechanism  emerges to undergo serious changes of its major objectives and specific strategy; the cause of these transformations is that the business units are currently in the process of fundamental alterations. The thing is that, for instance, millions of books that are endlessly accumulating around the world will hardly remain undamaged with the lapse of time. Consequently, this will result in an inability to get a message of the previous generations. Apparently, the fact that the human writing and art legacy is likely to become damaged or even absolutely lost needs to push the society forward on the way to set up a new methodology of storing the world’sachievements.

Inevitably, present-day society likes various modern appliances that are aimed at making this world more convenient and afford monitoring the world in better colors. As a result, the bulk of people are willing to be become aware of digital literacy so as to match the standard of today’s society; it is evident that all of the contemporary appliances are impacted by numerous advertizing methods that are focused on attracting possible customers. (Honavar 2012).The current movements show that the issue of digital literacy has become a mandatory feature of the 21^st century. People became accustomed to digital humanities; the thing is that the technology of digitization keeps pace with the contemporary world.

All in all, apart from all the positive sides of digital literacy, some thinkers advance an argument that such an approach to facilitating this life is likely to lead to some catastrophic outcomes for the world; the point is that the opponents of digital literacy consider this cultural trend as the path following to eradication of a vast amount of fundamental orthodox principles of Western civilization that ancient philosophers managed to elaborate centuries ago. Furthermore, some scholars articulate the idea that today’s trends tend “to destroy our civilization or even exterminate our species through an ecological collapse” (Meisenberg 326). To be precise, in view of those objecting the benefits of up-to-date machines, popular movements within Western civilization of the 21^st century negatively impacts the state of things in the world. Notwithstanding this fact, despite the viewpoints of people criticizing the scientific progress and paying attention to population growth as well greenhouse warming and the general situation approaching the phase of “survival of the fittest” (Wilmoth 664), Western civilization can hardly be ruined in the nearest future (Meisenberg 326).

The Value of Rethinking

The majority of people enjoy living under present conditions and consider the latest innovations within different areas of human insight to be a part of their personalities not only during the years of childhood or adolescence but also during all the years of adult and conscious lives. It is not a secret that the current generation is living in time of drastic changes connected with the implementation of advanced information and communication technologies. Thus, the previously accepted approaches to learning process, work, entertainment, medicine, literature, art and other spheres of human activity are considered to be old-fashioned. The necessity to reconceptualise the approaches to storing the large sets of information is evident because it is not impossible to ignore the modern and fundamental ideas based on innovation. Correspondingly, it is worth accepting the requirements of the 21^st century and change not only technologies that people use but the way they think.

The main problem appearing during the process of renovation and use of the advanced technologies is related to the fact that the fundamentals of the data storage was established in the other epoch, thus, it is quite difficult now to adjust the previous system to modern realities. However, these are the natural phenomena connected with the implementation of the new ideas and innovative approaches. The first period of the adoption is primarily associated with the difficulties; all in all, it is important to overcome all the obstacles and adapt to the requirements of the century. One should understand that Western civilization cannot be destructed to neither innovative attitude towards life standards nor scientific pioneering projects as well as “growing concern over the impact of industrialization on the environment” (Duiker & Spielvogel 898); the thing is that the history proves Western thought to be capable of overcoming all the challenges. The process of evolution has the tendency to go further, and it is impossible to return to the old technologies after accepting the computer science, newly-made social principles and various systems that are already functioning practically in all the branches of professional and personal life.

Conclusion

Time flies and natural process of evolution contributes to a range of drastic changes that make our life different from the previous generations. The question why Western civilization developed “remains difficult to explain” (Duiker & Spielvogel 9). Yet, it is absolutely apparent that in today’s turbulent world the society should be flexible and ready to adapt quickly to the changing environment. The moral and ethical norms that are dictated by the society are also changing in order to correspond to the existent social stereotypes. Each individual is primarily a social being, and it is very difficult to be independent and separated from the surrounding environment and develop some original and unique worldview. On the whole, as for the question whether Western civilization follows the path leading to destruction, it is worth saying that, in accordance with the majority of widely-acknowledged scholars, this is not likely to happen due to a variety of absolutely adequate reasons even though the 21^st century may be characterized by numerous economic crises and military conflicts (Duiker & Spielvogel 763).

Works Cited

Cearley, David, and  David Smith. Key Attributes Distinguish Cloud Computing Services. Stamford: Gartner Esearch, G00166207, 2009. Print.

Duiker, William, and Jackson Spielvogel. World History. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 2012. Print.

Meisenberg, Gerhard. In God’s image. The natural history of intelligence and ethics. Brighton: Book Guild, 2007. Print.

Santrock, John. Life Expectancy. A Topical Approach to: Life-Span Development. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2007. Print.

Wilmoth, John. Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, ed. Richard Lynn. Population and Developmetn Review 23.1 (1997): 664-666. Print.