English Test 92
Directions for Questions from 1 to 4:
Recently I spent several hours sitting under a tree in my garden with the social anthropologist William Ury, a Harvard University professor who
specializes in the art of negotiation and wrote the bestselling book, Getting to Yes. He captivated me with his theory that tribalism protects people
from their fear of rapid change. He explained that the pillars of tribalism that humans rely on for security would always counter any significant
cultural or social change. In this way, he said, change is never allowed to happen too fast. Technology, for example, is a pillar of society. Ury
believes that every time technology moves in a new or radical direction, another pillar such as religion or nationalism will grow stronger -in effect,
the traditional and familiar will assume greater importance to compensate for the new and untested. In this manner, human tribes avoid rapid
change that leaves people insecure and frightened.
But we have all heard that nothing is as permanent as change. Nothing is guaranteed. Pithy expressions, to be sure, but no more than cliches. As
Ury says, people don't live that way from day-to-day. On the contrary, they actively seek certainty and stability. They want to know they will be
safe.
Even so, we scare ourselves constantly with the idea of change. An IBM CEO once said: 'We only re-structure for a good reason, and if we haven't
re-structured in a while, that's a good reason.' We are scared that competitors, technology and the consumer will put us out of business -so we
have to change all the time just to stay alive. But if we asked our fathers and grandfathers, would they have said that they lived in a period of little
change? Structure may not have changed much. It may just be the speed with which we do things.
Change is over-rated, anyway. Consider the automobile. It's an especially valuable example, because the auto industry has spent tens of billions of
dollars on research and product development in the last 100 years