Tradition shouldn’t be the enemy of progress

HUMAN beings are a weird lot. Really, think about it. The strangest of all other species on the planet probably have more in common with each other than they do with us.

As a result, we’re sort of fascinated by our own strangeness. We are a mystery unto ourselves. We’re not always aware of it, this fascination with humanity and the self, but we do it all the time.

It’s why we like to chat and gossip, we open up the newspaper or turn on the radio every morning: to find out what other people in the world around us are up to.

We have a ferocious curiosity about ourselves that seems to grow as we get older. But it is exactly that curiosity and thirst for knowledge (thanks to our nicely developed brains of course), that sets us apart. This desire we have to learn about ourselves and the world around us is what drives us towards resourcefulness, improvement and progress. Without that drive there would be no humanity because without our capacity to learn and adapt, we’re pathetically vulnerable creatures. Which is why it always puzzles and troubles me when I hear some members of our species seemingly espouse an obstinate philosophy of stagnation.

They don’t call it that, of course, but whatever name they use, be it tradition, custom or that vulgar expression, ‘the natural order of things’, it all amounts to the same thing: the halt of progress. These are the people who’d happily live in a world comfortable and secure in its customs and traditions, where there would be no interrogation of the status quo. But what these people seem to forget or ignore is that those traditions and customs that they cling to, are the result of progress of some form or another. They did not emerge fully formed from the forehead of a Greek deity. They were adapted and changed and tweaked along the way to make them relevant to the social and cultural environment of the time. This is what human beings have always done and it’s what we will continue to do for as long as we’re around.

Yes, we are creatures of habit and of tradition, and they play a vital role in our continued existence as social and cultural creatures, but we’re also masters of adaptation, progress and improvement. It’s one of the wonders of being human that these things are not mutually exclusive.