The Significance of Transitions: Traditional to Modern in the Eyes of Religion

As the earth keeps evolving, the world keeps changing. There is never a time when societies decide that their lives are perfect and that change is no longer needed.  The tile of this blog entry, “The Significance of Transitions” fits best to describe my reading from this week, especially the article titled “the Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics (1971) and Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) by Samuel Huntington.

To start, I would like to include a quote from Max Weber from the article “the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905). He said, “Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the Glory of God, according to the definite manifesto of His will. Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins” (p.36). Weber wrote about how working hard is the real objection or aim in life. He evaluated the ethnic and spirit of capitalism. To receive any sorts of leisure or happiness, one has to work hard, sacrificing other things that touch laziness and relaxation. This shows why Weber mentioned that “unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace. Weber argues that, no matter how high one achieve wealth, one should not stop working hard because working is every men’s obligation that should not be underestimated. Looking at Weber’s discussion of the ethic of working, I realized why the world keeps changing towards modernization each day. Because society view working as an obligation, they will not stop doing their activities. Although our daily activities vary, it always ends up that we are working towards making more and more achievement, and thus more and more competition. There is no break to this human nature, and there will never be one.

Another interesting argument made by W.W. Rostow in the article “The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) is that, “”the forces making for economic progress, which yielded limited bursts and enclaves of modern activity, expand and dominate the society” (Rostow, p. 49). This is another reason why there is a transition between tradition lifestyles to modernization. The need for human to fulfill their needs, which is listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can see how the economy can make both positive and negative impacts to our lives. Growth becomes part of us, and will never be separated from humanity. We are taught that modern technology enhance our quality of life, and therefore we are addicted in following our ambition to get more and more of these.  This is what cause mass-consumption, as modernization creates subjects that possess humans. We can no longer live or work properly without our advanced gadgets such as our phones, and laptops.

Samuel Huntington, sums up the explanation of the reason behind change in our society. Even though many would argue that, religion slows down technology advancement, some would also argue that it is because of religion we have the knowledge that the modern society needs to make change happen. However, the most interesting question out of this theme of how transition is in the eyes of religion is the question whether modernization is encouraged in Religion. I have will conclude with contrasting these two statements. Huntington suggests that modernization creates inequality between societies, thus modernization is against gods order as inequality is hated, but how about, weber’s argument about how religion encourages activity and thus modernization. Who’s argument would you agree more, Huntington’s or Weber’s?

Rossa D