On Thu, Dec 04, 2003 at 02:46:22PM -0800, Gomi no Sensei <gomi at speakeasy.net> wrote: > "Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. > It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and > arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All > democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition > objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells > us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition > asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." > > Lord Falkland was perhaps more blunt, but no less to the point: > > "When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." Those quotes embrace contradicting opinions on the value of tradition, you realize. One uses sarcasm to suggest that adherence to tradition is silly; the other is a quite straightforward statement of principle. The most valuable benefit we derive from tradition is the knowledge, admittedly imperfect, of the precepts that formed a society capable of surviving and passing along its precepts to a second generation. For that alone tradition deserves respect; change is an inherently risky endeavor. If you make the wrong change in your society, things will get worse -- make too many of those and you aren't successfully passing down your changes, which will hopefully stabilize things. In other words, tradition cumulative result of the prior generations saying "This is what we did, and it worked." -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org) Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp Politics: http://www.triggerfinger.org/index.jsp