Youth Forum July 98 !

"Traditions. The modern generation is following these blindly ! "

" Traditions.... The modern generation is following it blindly? This is not true...Firstly our modern generation is not following traditions as much as they are expected to...they are forced to by elders and parents. They try to filter out the reasonable ones and practice them...we see so in many youths who try to reason out with parents as to how unreasonable they can be with expecting them to follow all of their traditions...esp those which are very ridiculous esp in this current generation.

However i would admit to the fact that traditions were meant to do good for the people for example even the simplistic tradition of woman applying "manjal " on their face, "siyakai" and coconut oil for their hair was for the good. siyakai and manjal are herbal products ... coconut oil...nourishes hair. These same products are used in nowadays conditioners and shampoos and face wash...but are given special ingredient names...

Therefore traditions like even going to the temple very often ...is just to increase people's belief in god. Belief in god in itself is to increase the confidence of people. Even if in real, god does not exist the fact that people are believing that he exists is giving them the strength and confidence that nothing else can give themselves.

Therefore traditions are important ... if the modern society is filtering the necessary ones to suit their atmosphere ....it is benefiting them to follow certain basic ones and they are doing so. "
Nisha


" Personally, I could not agree more! How many of us actually know why we apply thirunur ( holy ash ) on our foreheads? I feel that most of us just do what we do because our elders do them, or because we are being told to do so. We aren't exactly a questioning generation, are we ? "
Vasanth


" Every asian culture is gonna die out one day, possibly very soon. The force of the Western culture is inevitable and not only that, Asians are willingly adapting to the West. It's about time we started contributing our stuff to the museums and time capsules FOR WE ARE DOOMED for extinction!!!! "
Anon
" I don't think the modern generation is following traditions blindly -- they've given up on them completely ! It used to be the case that only married women wore red kumkum, who follows that today ? "

Revathi


" The mordern generation are following these blindly but so what?.Traditions are meant to be followed blindly!! The whole idea of traditions is to save people the trouble of thinking!! If we were all to think about everything we would go mad ! "
Kannappan


" There is nothing surprising about this...Historically, racial groups have discarded the traditions upon which their very existences were based on. This does not mean that there is something wrong with that specific racial group. It merely means that their environment, both natural and unnatural, man-made and metaphysical, has changed. In an attempt to adapt to the changes in their environments, racial and ethnic groups almost always, modify their moral codes in line with the current trends. There should be no surprise in this.

What is of especial interest, is the human penchant for tradition, the need to cling on to it, the fear of losing what has been familiar, in a sense, a fear of the unknown, a fear of death. I propose that this fear of death is the direct result or consequence of the morality imposed on us by religion and the belief in God. God and religion are props, supports for the weakness in humanity. Traditions, in many cases conform to a loose religious base, and the fear of losing traditions, the fear of there not being a god, these are two fears which mean the same thing.

Tradition, it follows then, becomes significant only if one believes in the 'truth' of god. Take away god from the equation and you have a society which is fluid, and dynamic. Of course, there are two sides to an issue and one could possibly argue quite convincingly that a godless society is as bad, or even worse.

The question is, though, how much of that last argument is the result of centuries and centuries of socialisation and cultural indoctrination.

Traditions don't matter. They merely act as reigns to hold back any kind of philosophical and psychological maturity in the people concerned. A society (bearing in mind that I speak of modern societies and not some still existing 'pre-modern societies') that places a high premium on traditions does not allow the members of that society to mature, and I think that is what we are seeing in singapore. "

Niven Kumar


" Niven has a no. of valid points. However, I feel he is a little too hasty in some of his comments.....
A fear of death is not always the reason behind people wishing to follow traditions. Sometimes, it is a belief that it will increase prosperity ...and so on.However, that is a minor point.
How many of us feel that in Singapore, we are bound by traditions that do not allow us to excel or improve ourselves? Singapore is a fast developing country, that preserves its culture and some traditions. To say that keeping up traditions is what is making us 'immature' is unfounded a statement.

Do we really want to live in a world which does not follow traditions?
These are things that bring purpose to some people's lives. There are times when traditions give us a grasp on what life means to us....this does not universally apply to everyone of course, but, human beings are social animals.. we need to live, and let live.
Condemning is easy, I feel we should just pause and consider how many traditions we follow, despite having misgivings about the reasons for them. "

Mythili



| Forum |