To adapt to the new or stick to the old

In his blog article defending change (or the status quo) Seth Godin argues that its easy to take the stance of either sticking vehemently with the old and not giving the new a chance or entirely getting sucked up into the new (like technophiles) and denigrating the old. He says

What’s truly difficult is being a fair arbiter. I fall into this trap all the time. We begin to develop a point of view, usually around defending the status quo, but sometimes around overturning it, and then the arguments become more and more concrete. While we might pretend to be evenhanded, it’s very hard to do. Sometimes, we end up simply arguing for or against a given status quo, instead of the issue that’s actually at hand. And the danger is pretending you’re being fair, when you’re not. - Seth Godin

its necessary to take the good parts of both arguments and align them and see more holistically and objectively to the new options in life be it opportunities or technologies. To add to what Seth says, I feel we don’t think very clearly at times because of our conditioning and our passions. Our conditioning exaggerates the benefits of the old and our passions exaggerate the benefits of the new. Somewhere we need to step away from both of these and focus on the change in question more clearly. It helps to question where are beliefs about the advantages / disadvantages of a change are rooted, in conditioning, in our passions or in logic.