Blindly Following Tradition

In the beginning of the movie, Fiddler on the Roof, they break out into a song about Tradition where the main character admits that some of the things they do, they don't understand. They do them for "Tradition"! That's the great chorus they sing out. And in many ways, that story is about the collision of Tradition with new and emerging, "progressive" ideas of the modern world. But from that opening chorus, it's easy to conclude that tradition is something we blindly adhere to without employing our reason or critical thinking. It's the lazy reliance on a way of life without ever challenging yourself to think for yourself or progress to something better than your ancestry would allow. It's a mark of fear and ignorance rather than courage and enlightenment. And there may be some truth to that. There are some traditions that we inherit that you could say we blindly follow simply because they are traditions. But does that make the alternative more prudent or discerning? Well, let's take some time to consider why traditions exist at all. Tradition is what happens when ideas, practices, beliefs, and culture are passed down from one generation to the other. And why exactly do we invest all the effort it takes to transfer these goods from one generation to the next? It's so that our descendants won't have to unnecessarily solve every problem that has already been solved. If we made discoveries and acquired knowledge and customs that have a clear benefit to us, if we truly love our fellow man, which includes our descendants, then any good society would want to save them the trouble of having to go through all the sacrifices, danger, and difficulties that we had to in order to overcome our adversities. If we've already mapped out certain landmarks of the human experience, it would be cruel and evil to withhold the knowledge contained in discoveries from future generations. As I spoke about in a previous video, this is the whole reason we have education, to transmit knowledge and culture which means the work of education is inherently a process of a living tradition. And a lot of people seemed to misunderstand what I was saying in the past about that. This isn't to say that there is no room for innovation or authentic progress – there is, but the only way you get progress is by starting where your ancestors left off. You first have to inherit what they have to offer, become intimately familiar with it, and then build on from that point.