I love quotes. I’ve been collecting my favorites for years. There are some pretty smart people who came before us and you can’t stand on the shoulders of giants without putting in the work to climb up their backs.
I recently came across a quote by historian/ sociologist/ philosopher Lewis Mumford who said:
“Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.”
I can see where he is coming from. Traditions are always evolving and updating. To be afraid of that change is to be afraid of the future. And to actively pursue the old way of doing things is to view the results they produced with rose-tinted glasses.
Nonetheless, that quote doesn’t quite strike me as accurate.
The thing about traditions is that they are never perfect, but they always work. Most ideas don’t work, so when we come across one that does, even imperfectly, there is a strong argument to stick with it.
Tradition is like a firm foundation. Exploration, experimentation, and expansion are valuable, but they are impossible without a place to stand.
If I were to coin that quote, I would say something more like, “Traditionalists are so focused on the foundation that they are blind to what can be built on it.”
There is no conceivable limit to how much better things could be. We need exploration, experimentation, and expansion because that’s what it means to be human.
But there is no reward without risk. You can only chip away at your own foundation so much before you find yourself facedown in the mud.
Eating meals together as a family, for example, is tradition. But we know better, so now family meals are an exception rather than a rule. And some of us are realizing that what was lost with the simple act of eating food at a table with our family is more than we expected. And it’s hard to get something back once it has been so casually disregarded.
But even I’m bored by the way I’m talking about the topic. If you really want to think about the delicate balance of tradition and progress in an inconstant world, I’d recommend Fiddler on the Roof.
