4 ms·

Then it's mostly useless to mention at all. We're all practicing traditions and changing them. The reason people have such a visceral response to a phrase like

by dqv 2y ago

Then it's mostly useless to mention at all. We're all practicing traditions and changing them. The reason people have such a visceral response to a phrase like "uphold tradition" is because so many people don't mean "I'm just doing what my family and community have taught me", they are saying "You must follow my traditions". I get my hair cut every month because my family instilled the tradition of grooming. But for the kind of people I've encountered who want to "uphold tradition", I'm "corrupting" tradition because I don't get a "traditional" man's haircut (aka a typical cut from their window of reference). Humans uphold tradition by default, we don't really need a reminder to do it and we certainly don't need a reminder to uphold someone else's idea of tradition.

pdonis 2y ago
> The reason people have such a visceral response to a phrase like "uphold tradition" is because so many people don't mean "I'm just doing what my family and community have taught me", they are saying "You must follow my traditions". I don't see pg saying that in the article under discussion. so this criticism, however justified it might be in some cases, doesn't seem to me to be relevant here. > Humans uphold tradition by default True, but defaults can be overridden. And culture often tries to do that. See below. > we don't really need a reminder to do it In our current culture, where our so-called "elites" do indeed believe that they can reinvent society from scratch, and have been busily destroying traditions for decades in the process, I think we can indeed benefit from such a reminder.