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Traditions

If something is a tradition, should laws must reflect it?

  • Total voters
    34
Gathomas88 said:
I'm not missing anything. Change is inevitable, and can be quite positive.

I'm not going to deny it.

I'm simply suggesting that it should be approached cautiously, because haphazard change, for change's sake alone, often tends to lead to outcomes worse than the supposed "injustices" they were meant to correct.

No, that usually is not because of "traditional values" getting in the way either. Most of the time, it is simply because the "progress" in question was misguided or overzealous to begin with.

Most of Red Communism's body count, for instance, was due to the "egalitarian" enforcement of collectivized of agriculture. It resulted in famines, more often than not, and required brutal repression in order to keep workers from abandoning the farms in question.
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Communism was hardly "haphazard change, for change's sake alone." Millions of people were completely convinced that it would be a positive influence.

The fact that they were mistaken is a very weak case against favoring tradition over change.
 
Gathomas88 said:
I'm simply suggesting that it should be approached cautiously, because haphazard change, for change's sake alone, often tends to lead to outcomes worse than the supposed "injustices" they were meant to correct.
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No one ever changes things "for change's sake alone". No one thinks to themselves, "I just support the idea of change, without regard to what we're changing or why". That's a nonsense mantra that privileged people like to toss out in order to further demonize the people they're oppressing by attacking their motives. It's absurd. Again, do you know any actual history, or have you met anyone who wasn't just like you?

No, that usually is not because of "traditional values" getting in the way either. Most of the time, it is simply because the "progress" in question was misguided or overzealous to begin with.
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Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day it will be true.

Most of Red Communism's body count, for instance, was due to the "egalitarian" enforcement of collectivized of agriculture. It resulted in famines, more often than not, and required brutal repression in order to keep workers from abandoning the farms in question.
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Le sigh... Because of course the act of trying to feed everyone is a terrible and horrific idea and anything less than absolute success means that the correct course of action is just to let poor people starve. You have no grasp of the complexities involved in any of this. All you seem to understand is "Commie things bad, America things good".
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Communism was hardly "haphazard change, for change's sake alone." Millions of people were completely convinced that it would be a positive influence.
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And millions of people were completely and utterly wrong. There is a lesson to be learned there.

The fact that they were mistaken is a very weak case against favoring tradition over change.
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A century of abject horror and hundreds of millions dead is a "weak case" for favoring caution over blind leap style "progress?"

You sure about that?

Paschendale said:
No one ever changes things "for change's sake alone". No one thinks to themselves, "I just support the idea of change, without regard to what we're changing or why". That's a nonsense mantra that privileged people like to toss out in order to further demonize the people they're oppressing by attacking their motives. It's absurd. Again, do you know any actual history, or have you met anyone who wasn't just like you?
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Sure they do.

Granted, they'll usually try to dress it up in some form of emotionally resonant garbage or another.

i.e. "This is for justice!" "This is for equality!" "This for human progress and a better tomorrow!" Etca.

Regardless however, the gist of things usually boils down to the fact that a certain idea is "flashy" and "new," which causes hordes of overly idealistic and impressionable people to flock to it against their good sense.

Again, a lot of the time, that turns out poorly.

Keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day it will be true.
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Keep your head in the sand. :shrug:

I've already provided several examples where it was true.

Le sigh... Because of course the act of trying to feed everyone is a terrible and horrific idea and anything less than absolute success means that the correct course of action is just to let poor people starve. You have no grasp of the complexities involved in any of this. All you seem to understand is "Commie things bad, America things good".
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And here you simply prove my point! :lol:

For the sake of "progress" and overly idealistic "good intentions," they needlessly monkeyed around with something that worked just fine to begin with. In the process of doing so, they created a system which didn't work, at all, and wound up killing tens of millions of people instead.

Rather than cop to that mistake, the "true believers" doubled down and relied upon force to make the general population bow to their will, killing yet more people.
 
Gathomas88 said:
Granted, they'll usually try to dress it up in some form of emotionally resonant garbage or another.

i.e. "This is for justice!" "This is for equality!" "This for human progress and a better tomorrow!" Etca.

Regardless however, the gist of things usually boils down to the fact that a certain idea is "flashy" and "new," which causes hordes of overly idealistic and impressionable people to flock to it against their good sense.
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If this is what you think then you really have no idea what's going on. I hope someday you have the opportunity to get to know people who don't live their lives in the lap of comfortable privilege and maybe you'll realize that your fellow Americans aren't horrendously stupid and really are fighting injustice.
 
Paschendale said:
If this is what you think then you really have no idea what's going on. I hope someday you have the opportunity to get to know people who don't live their lives in the lap of comfortable privilege and maybe you'll realize that your fellow Americans aren't horrendously stupid and really are fighting injustice.
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I'm not seeing a counter argument here.

In any case, yes, I think most Americans, and most human beings in general, for that matter, could probably be aptly described as being "horrendously stupid." They also have a bad tendency to fall for whatever "new thing" happens to come along, so long as it is being peddled by a charismatic charlatan with a talent for pulling public heart-strings.
 
Gathomas88 said:
And millions of people were completely and utterly wrong. There is a lesson to be learned there.



A century of abject horror and hundreds of millions dead is a "weak case" for favoring caution over blind leap style "progress?"

You sure about that?



Sure they do.

Granted, they'll usually try to dress it up in some form of emotionally resonant garbage or another.

i.e. "This is for justice!" "This is for equality!" "This for human progress and a better tomorrow!" Etca.

Regardless however, the gist of things usually boils down to the fact that a certain idea is "flashy" and "new," which causes hordes of overly idealistic and impressionable people to flock to it against their good sense.

Again, a lot of the time, that turns out poorly.



Keep your head in the sand. :shrug:

I've already provided several examples where it was true.



And here you simply prove my point! :lol:

For the sake of "progress" and overly idealistic "good intentions," they needlessly monkeyed around with something that worked just fine to begin with. In the process of doing so, they created a system which didn't work, at all, and wound up killing tens of millions of people instead.

Rather than cop to that mistake, the "true believers" doubled down and relied upon force to make the general population bow to their will, killing yet more people.
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Greeting, Gathomas88. :2wave:

I think your last sentence says it all. Millions of people in the ME are fleeing for their lives from the "true believers," but are they really that? Or is it that there is a chance that they will triumph and create the change they want, which is not what the people want?

Communism followed the overthrow of the Czars. Was that change good? Hundreds of millions of people suffered and died, so I think they would say not. A few, only a few, benefited because they were now the "Czar" who made the rules. There are only three choices -Freedom, Tyranny, or Chaos. We're seeing chaos now, and I don't think that's what most people want, because it will move to tyranny - not freedom. And when they got a chance to vote in Egypt, as an example, they rejected tyranny and threw the bums out!

As you point out, force will be used on the people to get it accomplished, so this won't end well. I hope that the U.S. isn't a partner in this, because this is not how we have presented ourselves to the world - we believe in freedom, not dictators!
 
obvious Child said:
Jews have been hated so long it's become a tradition. My great grandfather hated Jews, my grandfather hated Jews, my father hates Jews....should I hate Jews because it's tradition?

If something is a tradition, should laws reflect it?

*note: my family actually doesn't hate Jews, this is just for argument's sake

EDIT: Haha, brain fart in the poll question.
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Uhm ... traditions are no end in itself, IMO. Some are good, some are bad. We should be able to reflect traditions, for that we can discard the bad and maintain the good. And keep on doing that continously, questioning traditions I mean.

I think building everything, an entire society on mere rationalism and good intentions for making something new, is an illusion. It will fail. That's why we need traditions. But it's also very bad to cling to old mistakes and errors just for the sake of doing so, obviously. There should be a sane middle way.

And yeah, if it isn't obvious already, hating Jews is obviously an example for an extremely bad, stupid tradition.
 
This to me is like saying "my grandfather, father and uncles are all Irish drunks, should I be one for traditions sake?"
 
Gathomas88 said:
A century of abject horror and hundreds of millions dead is a "weak case" for favoring caution over blind leap style "progress?"

You sure about that?
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Except that it wasn't a "blind leap." Plenty of seemingly reasonable arguments had been written in favor of it by the first revolution.

For the sake of "progress" and overly idealistic "good intentions," they needlessly monkeyed around with something that worked just fine to begin with. In the process of doing so, they created a system which didn't work, at all, and wound up killing tens of millions of people instead.
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Gath, if you honestly believe that czarist Russia and the pre-1949 Republic of China "worked just fine," you desperately need to crack a couple of history books.
 
German guy said:
Uhm ... traditions are no end in itself, IMO. Some are good, some are bad. We should be able to reflect traditions, for that we can discard the bad and maintain the good. And keep on doing that continously, questioning traditions I mean.

I think building everything, an entire society on mere rationalism and good intentions for making something new, is an illusion. It will fail. That's why we need traditions. But it's also very bad to cling to old mistakes and errors just for the sake of doing so, obviously. There should be a sane middle way.

And yeah, if it isn't obvious already, hating Jews is obviously an example for an extremely bad, stupid tradition.
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With that first line you sound eerily like Dolores Umbridge

Let us preserve what must be preserved, perfect what can be perfected and prune practices that ought to be... prohibited!"
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Traditions are a good thing but only if they still are applicable to this day and age, good traditions should be held in high regard and should be nurtured but we should not dwell on bad traditions that have disappeared in the annals of history. But we should not disregard or forget the bad traditions because he who forgets the bad things from his past is doomed to repeat them. The same goes for countries IMHO.

Anti-semitism or hatred of Jews should not be nurtured because it is an evil tradition, but we should never forget or ignore it because we can not accept or rationalize hatred of Jews, it must be fought with all possible means.
 
Peter King said:
With that first line you sound eerily like Dolores Umbridge



Traditions are a good thing but only if they still are applicable to this day and age, good traditions should be held in high regard and should be nurtured but we should not dwell on bad traditions that have disappeared in the annals of history. But we should not disregard or forget the bad traditions because he who forgets the bad things from his past is doomed to repeat them. The same goes for countries IMHO.

Anti-semitism or hatred of Jews should not be nurtured because it is an evil tradition, but we should never forget or ignore it because we can not accept or rationalize hatred of Jews, it must be fought with all possible means.
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Is there a difference between what you said and I said? Why invoke some villain from a child book?
 
German guy said:
Is there a difference between what you said and I said? Why invoke some villain from a child book?
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The first comparison was a bit of a joke, not meant to mean anything but for some reason, an image sprang up in mind mind from the words you spoke. I have read and heard that book and line so many times that it just sounded a bit like it.
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Except that it wasn't a "blind leap." Plenty of seemingly reasonable arguments had been written in favor of it by the first revolution.
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All of which were, again, completely wrong, and relied more upon wildly unrealistic appeals to idealistic ideology than anything factual.

That's precisely the problem with the "progressivist" mindset in general. It leaps to conclusions first, and worries about trying to justify them later.

Gath, if you honestly believe that czarist Russia and the pre-1949 Republic of China "worked just fine," you desperately need to crack a couple of history books.
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Are you honestly going to argue that the Soviet Union or Mao were better?
 
Gathomas88 said:
All of which were, again, completely wrong, and relied more upon wildly unrealistic appeals to idealistic ideology than anything factual.

That's precisely the problem with the "progressivist" mindset in general. It leaps to conclusions first, and worries about trying to justify them later.
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Are you honestly going to argue that Karl Marx was nothing more than an idealist? His theories had plenty of flaws but were hardly simplistic.

Are you honestly going to argue that the Soviet Union or Mao were better?
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Marginally so - which of course is not saying much.
 
DifferentDrummr said:
Are you honestly going to argue that Karl Marx was nothing more than an idealist? His theories had plenty of flaws but were hardly simplistic.
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Pretty much, yes. Basically none of the man's ideas were grounded in reality, but rather abstract ideology built upon Enlightenment era philosophical fluff.

They have failed just about everywhere they have been tried, for exactly that reason.

Marginally so - which of course is not saying much.
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Neither Republican China nor Tsarist Russia were responsible for butchering their own populations by the tens of millions.

The simple fact of the matter is that "Revolution" was never necessary to bring those societies forward in the first place. More moderate, and incremental means could have achieved similar or better results, without the needless bloodshed and barbarity Mao or the USSR inflicted.
 
Paschendale said:
No, because there's no benefit in it. Which side of the road is arbitrary. If there were a benefit, then that we drive on the right now would be no reason to continue. A better example is the metric system. We SHOULD use the metric system, but we don't because we're used to the English system. Tradition is holding us back.



You don't know any actual history, do you? (Quote edited to the most hilariously faulty statements) Most notably that you think any society in the 20th century was more horrific than any society in the 14th century. Or the 8th. Or pretty much every single one before the 20th. Higher bodycount from higher population amounts to squat. Vlad the Impaler or Genghis Khan, some very traditional guys, were far worse than Stalin, Hitler, and Mao combined. Not to mention centuries of Roman brutality. And for any progressive rhetoric those three espoused, their methods were rooted in tradition. Especially Hitler. The whole "Third Reich" thing was specifically to invoke traditions of the past.



Sounds to me like good ideas are good and past adoption of an idea has nothing to do with the merits of an idea. Evaluating all ideas is necessary. That we've done something in the past seems to make no difference at all. Those nuggets of truth will shine through of their own accord. They don't need any deference due to history.



A call for caution from a disadvantaged group carries no weight. That's kind of the whole point of disadvantage. I'm not really sure what you're getting at.
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But why shouldn't we switch to driving on the left side of the road, in your opinion?
 
Gathomas88 said:
I'm not seeing a counter argument here.

In any case, yes, I think most Americans, and most human beings in general, for that matter, could probably be aptly described as being "horrendously stupid." They also have a bad tendency to fall for whatever "new thing" happens to come along, so long as it is being peddled by a charismatic charlatan with a talent for pulling public heart-strings.
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I think I'm starting to understand why people like you and Palecon believe with all your hearts that we'd be better off tyrannically (but supposedly beneficently) ruled by a theocracy (as much as Palecon claims his ideas arent that). That we MUST be ruled by a higher power because we are certainly incapable of doing so ourselves.

Interesting. It's a very Catholic point of view.
 
Tradition is okay until society has no further use for them Should laws reflect tradition just because it is a tradition, absolutely not.
 
Lursa said:
I think I'm starting to understand why people like you and Palecon believe with all your hearts that we'd be better off tyrannically (but supposedly beneficently) ruled by a theocracy (as much as Palecon claims his ideas arent that). That we MUST be ruled by a higher power because we are certainly incapable of doing so ourselves.

Interesting. It's a very Catholic point of view.
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If a theocracy could actually work as theoretically intended (i.e. rule by God), it would be, pretty much by default, the most perfect and beneficial form of government in existence. It would be nothing less than direct rule by creator of the Universe; an incorruptible and all-powerful being who knows and understands quite literally everything there is to know and understand about the problems humanity might potentially face in this world.

Unfortunately, however (on this Earth, anyway), that is not an option. The best we have available are human beings who seek to interpret the will of God.

In that vein, no, I don't necessarily believe that theocracy is the "best" form of government, simply because men are corruptible, and power is the thing most likely to do so. It is ultimately best to leave religious authorities to govern religious affairs, so that they may avoid that temptation.

However, this is not to say that I favor an amoral and anarchic "free for all" either. Some degree of centralized social, moral, and governmental organization is necessary simply to keep society in good working order.

Where that is concerned, cautious change, which is mindful of the lessons tradition teaches, tends to be preferable to reckless change which seeks to ignore or supplant the pre-existing order entirely.
 
Paleocon said:
But why shouldn't we switch to driving on the left side of the road, in your opinion?
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Because there's no benefit to it and significant cost to switching. The point of this thread is to address whether the mere fact that switching is happening is an inherent negative. It isn't. Only the benefits and costs are... because any idea, traditional or not, should simply be weighed on its merits.
 
Lursa said:
That we MUST be ruled by a higher power because we are certainly incapable of doing so ourselves.
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To an extent, we aren't. I don't believe in the inherent supremacy of governing by way of presuming humanity to be able to govern itself with reason. The Enlightenment was perhaps 2/3's correct, and 1/3 infatuated with senseless idealism.
 
roguenuke said:
This is all just basically an excuse for keeping traditions in place. Not all traditions, even useless ones, should go away. But when traditions can be shown to do any sort of harm or treat people differently, then we need to really look at why we currently need or even might need those traditions, not why they came about in the first place. Why they came about is not as important at all as why we might currently need them.
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Why they came about is critical to understanding why we might still need them. You are incorrect about it being used "as an excuse to keep traditions in place". It is an argument that A) tradition has a purpose and B) you should understand what its' purpose was if you want to make the argument that we would be better off without it.
 
cpwill said:
Why they came about is critical to understanding why we might still need them. You are incorrect about it being used "as an excuse to keep traditions in place". It is an argument that A) tradition has a purpose and B) you should understand what its' purpose was if you want to make the argument that we would be better off without it.
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If the tradition has a purpose the reasoning would be just as important today as it would have been back then. Many traditions are just benign. They are neutral. Such as there is nothing really bad about decorating a house in traditional colors of a season. Some have become benign so they aren't really needed but also do no harm. Such as a father giving away a daughter or the family giving away the daughter when she marries or a guy asking permission from a girl's father to marry her. These are traditions that were necessary for the social structure that existed in the past but have since become unnecessary given our new culture where the family has little to no say in who anyone marries. This makes the tradition not needed, so it should not be mandatory, and if it fades away completely, there is nothing wrong with that. But there are some traditions that people want to be mandatory that are harmful or simply should not be made mandatory because others want to be able to not participate in them and there is no need for them to do so.
 
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