As modernisation sweeps across the globe, countless traditional cultures are being reshaped or extinguished, and observers disagree over how to interpret this. Some lay the blame squarely on modernisation, while others regard it as a natural and unavoidable process. This essay will examine both positions before advancing my own view.
The contention that modernisation corrodes traditional culture is far from baseless. Globalisation and digital technology have forged a homogenising world in which young people, wherever they live, increasingly consume the same films, music and cuisine, and in the process drift away from their native languages, customs and inherited beliefs. In innumerable communities, time-honoured festivals and handicrafts are quietly dying out as successive generations lose interest in them. On this reading, modernisation constitutes a real and accelerating threat to the diversity of human culture.
The opposing view, however, holds that such flux is intrinsic to culture itself. No society has ever remained frozen; cultures have perpetually evolved through contact with one another, absorbing fresh influences while shedding outmoded ones. From this vantage point, the present upheaval is simply the newest instalment of an age-old dynamic and warrants little anxiety.
My own conviction is that both arguments capture part of the truth. Modernisation genuinely imperils traditional cultures, yet change is undeniably a natural condition of human life. The most sensible course, therefore, is neither to resist progress nor to surrender heritage passively, but to welcome worthwhile innovation while deliberately safeguarding what is most precious, through education, documentation and cultural institutions. Culture will forever change; the task is to ensure that its finest traditions are not lost through mere indifference.