Meanwhile, 'Progressiveness' is just peer pressure from little children who refuse to grow up no matter how old they get. Who would you rather follow the wisdom of- your deceased great-grandparents, who lived long, full lives and died happily married to one another 'til death do us part'? Or some random kid throwing a tantrum at the teachers and playground supervisors for "not letting me dress up however I want and fuck with who/whatever I wanna whenever I wanna, that's soo UNFAIR, you're sooo MEAN and EVIL, I HATE YOU, WAAAAH!"? I know which one I'd count as being a greater source of wisdom...
Isn't it just a subset of childhood genital mutilation? And with the progressives' unrelenting, successful drives to legalize and legitimize conducting sex change operations on pre-pubescent children, and infants all the way from birth, is this any less dumb, or more so?
And by the way, yes, I do certainly agree that some traditions WERE just dumb; that's why they AREN'T being followed, and have faded away to the fringes with the passage of time. But exactly the same thing could be said about laws- does that mean that "all laws are just peer pressure from dead people, we should rebel against them by abandoning and overturning every single one and living in a society without any rules or laws except the ones we invent for ourselves, and the entirely different ones we invent to criminalize everyone else who we don't like!"? That's the argument these people are making. And it's literally been the mindset of feral children since time immemorial. It's not societal progression, it's societal retardation.
Tradition is what keeps a society hall without tradition you don’t have a society. This is why it’s so dangerous to tear down the American tradition is because if you want to tear down the American tradition then you don’t want America to exist so if you want to try it on the traditions of America we really don’t have a reason for being a Country now do we?
Sometimes traditions are done for stupid reasons, yes. Tradition as a whole is using practices that have worked for centuries or millennia. Some are mere superstition, but a lot of them are actually good ideas that we simply don't know the value of yet.
Voted "Disagree" and strongly so. The argument that tradition is "peer pressure from dead people," and "the dead hand of the past" being made by those who believe that man has never been more perfect than he is now and has nothing to learn from the past. As Disraeli put it in another context, that the human being is "a self-made man who worships his creator."
Suffice to say, the idea that tradition is "just peer pressure from dead people" is hubris on a colossal scale and it usually leads to very unhappy consequences. When man divorces himself from the wisdom of his ancestors, he both assumes that he has more wisdom than he does and that he has more scope for action and greater control of events that he does or is wise and prudent.
Tradition being the accumulated wisdom of generations that has become habitual because experience has taught man of its utility. It being even more important to note that tradition is elemental to what gives man his sense of place and identity. Absent it each individual would be disconnected from his fellows, having no point of commonality and therefore no sense of community or himself.
What follows from that has been, historically, extremely unpleasant. Not for nothing did the Marxists see tradition as the aforementioned "dead hand of the past." Not for nothing did the National Socialists and the Fascists burn books.
They realized that man divorced from the traditions of his past is mere clay to be remolded in the image of the leader. To be made into whatever the leader wishes him to be.
To be sure, tradition is no assurance of infallibility. Tradition is the product of imperfect and imperfectible beings. It is not apt to assure perfect results. However, to so portray it is mistaken.
Tradition has its own dynamic. Slowly developing over the centuries as circumstance requires. Its advantage being rather that it, again over time, captures the wisdom of experience and habituates man to adapting to those circumstances. It thereby saves man having to rethink the world and begin anew - a blank slate - with each flip of the calendar.
Finally, absent tradition, man is prone not to greater virtue, but more odious crimes. As the 18th century British statesman and political philosopher Edmund Burke put it, "It is thus with all those who, attending only to the shell and husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride and cruelty, whilst, under the color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are authorizing and feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and perhaps in worse."
Tradition then, though by no means perfect, is a surer guide to man's sense of identity and the limits of his powers than those who would seek to pull apart the world and reassemble it according to their will. As is amply testified by France, 1789. Russia, 1917. Italy, 1922. Germany, 1933. Spain, 1939. China, 1949.
"We have it in our power to make the world anew," said Patrick Henry in one of the most wrong headed things an American founder ever said. Oh no we don't. As indeed, the piles of corpses bears witness/
What I meant to say was, it’s very dangerous to just refuse to re-evaluate or modify things solely in the name of “tradition.” We act like people in the past weren’t just a bunch of assholes like people are today. They displayed it differently, but humans have probably just always been a bunch of jabronis. It’s entirely possible someone had it completely fucked up back in the day and the tradition we’re carrying on is ridiculous. Not saying that applies everywhere, but no tradition should ever be above modern review, that’s simply foolish.
Well... he seems to be coming from a place of strong bias, first of all. I don’t say that to necessarily discredit his opinion, but it should be noted that he clearly is anti-progressivism and pro-traditionalism, and that’s strongly influencing his answer, as he’s kind of working backwards from a desired result. I’m fairly neutral on it, myself, other than I’m just saying that, despite some wisdoms we may be able to gain from the past, we should take them with the appropriate grain of salt in that the world today is wildly different than it was, say, 200-300 years ago. Like what’s someone in 1776’s wisdom about electric vehicles to help remedy environmental concerns? We suck Ben Franklin’s dick all the time to this day, in some ways for good reason, but that dude figured out the very basic concept of electric conductivity with key on a kite string in a thunderstorm. He died not even knowing what a car is, or how to generate your own electricity and distribute it to a community. So I’d probably trust Elon Musk a little more on this particular topic. This strict traditionalism also suggests the modern human is incapable of figuring out our own shit for ourselves, and that’s simply untrue, we come up with amazing shit (I have questions about the natural “correctness” of a lot of it, but it’s inarguably impressive, right or wrong) all the time. So I’m not saying we need to burn all the sacred scrolls, but to suggest only people back in the day, without the benefit of the majority of knowledge —scientific, political, societal, all kinds of arenas— that just seems like a flawed argument to me.
At the end if the day its up to the individual, but people who act like everyone MUST continue a tradition need a reality check. If you don't want to do it, dont and the rest can either get over it, or... well get over it/find someone new to use in their thing.
1. The majority of people under age 40 believe everything they read in a meme on the 'net. (I know that is true because I read it in a meme on the 'net. :) :) :) )
2. I don't feel pressure from dead people. They're dead!
Sort of. They're not your peers, so no, it's more of a cultural pressure and it's still enacted by living people. So it's more like just the pressure of older ideas carried forth. Either way, that doesn't make it a problem.
It's entirely likely they have some decent advice and you should be feeling that pressure not to be a dunce. It really just depends on the tradition itself.
In my family line, when a girl gets married, she spends the wedding night with her in laws while they listen in to make sure she’s still a virgin... answers your question?
I wouldn't say all traditions are dumb but following stuff just for the sake of following them without applying any critical thinking is dumb.
1
0 Reply
Anonymous
(36-45)
+1 y
Things become a tradition because society has deemed them to be good and beneficial to the people and the country.
Peer pressure can relate to making your best friend drink cow pee pee. They aren't usually equivalent and the people who try to equate them should be tortured before being skinned alive and finally killed by penis eating ants
