In our recent discussion of the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling, our reader Peter, “The One Eyed Man”, made the following response to the suggestion that marriage was a tradition so ancient, and so universal, that some care might be warranted in tampering with it:
Tradition alone does not justify continuance in perpetuity.
Well, I don’t suppose many people would disagree with that: tradition alone does not justify continuance in perpetuity.
A far more interesting question, though, is what tradition does justify. Conservatives and liberals will give very different answers, I think, because they think about tradition in opposite ways.
To the conservative, traditions arise naturally from the workings of human nature, as part of the ontogeny and organic development of societies. They are not the result of scientific planning or sociological theorizing — and like biological species themselves, they only come into view in retrospect. They are, in a sense, part of the “extended phenotype” of our species and its various subgroups, as languages are; and just as languages do, they naturally adapt to, and come to represent, those things that actually matter to the various human groups from which they arise. (Many have been, at least up till now, more or less universal.) In this way they contain a great deal of deeply-buried knowledge about the optimal functioning of the human social organism, often for reasons, and in ways, that themselves need not be explicitly represented in the organism’s consciousness. Because of this, disrupting them will always have unknowable consequences — and so, at least, tradition justifies respect for its embodied wisdom, and caution as regards casual tampering.
To those on the Left, traditions are artifacts. Rather than being organic outgrowths and aspects of human nature itself, they are human creations; they are social technology, whose only purpose is to control and manipulate human behavior. In this view, human “nature” hardly exists at all, and traditions are wholly external things; indeed almost everything about human behavior and human life is external to the individual. This means that to mold human beings, or human societies, into any desirable configuration is simply a matter of discarding traditions, and inventing new ones, until we obtain the correct result. Because of this, tradition justifies very little indeed.
As we see all around us, these views of the world are not particularly compatible, and cannot easily coexist, at least within any given society.
As Peter reminded us, “the times they are a-changing.” Indeed they are: and the faster the rate of change, and the greater its amplitude, the more the strain increases.
42 Comments
Good post!
And a wise man viewing an ancient tradition which has, despite any minor imperfections, stood the test of time for centuries, would think very hard before tampering with it.
But then, thinking hard is not a tradition one expects to find in progressive circles!
You can hear the frustration from social engineers in Canada, now that the federal government has stopped the intrusive & mandatory long-form census.
The detailed answers were used by those ‘engineers’, progressives all, to formulate social CHANGE!, which was so important it had to be made MANDATORY!
I remember the agonizing over gender differences in ‘hours per week of housework’, as at least 1 example.
Have you read Razib Khans “Conservatism for Seculars”? A very similar argument to the one you make here, but I like your additional suggestion about traditional cultural norms being part of the “extended phenotype” of a population.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=khan_32_6
That’s fine as far as it goes, although the same sentiments could be expressed by a mullah praising the stoning of adulterers because it contains ” a great deal of deeply-buried knowledge about the optimal functioning of the human social organism.”
Not that I have anything against tradition. It is good for many things, as this ditty explains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xq27pYo8Fc
Indeed it could. Like any “fitness” landscape, there are various local maxima. Those mullahs may be around after our own rapidly vanishing culture and traditions are nothing but dust.
While you fret about “our own rapidly vanishing culture,” the rest of the world frets that their cultures are being subsumed into American cultural hegemony.
The French are furious that foreign films fail to fly in Florida, while Hollande’s homeland is a haven for Hollywood. Muslims from Mombasa and Malays from Malacca make money for manufacturers of Macs, Big Macs, and Mack Trucks. Go to the mall in a Latin American banana republic and you’re sure to find a Banana Republic.
The riotous and robust American culture, which runs the gamut from Duke Ellington to the Dukes of Hazzard, is in no danger of vanishing. It’s the other cultures which have legitimate reason to fear that they will be overtaken by bluegrass, blue jeans, and Buckwild.
To borrow your trope: where once were the glories of the West, now there’s Kanye West. Duke Ellington wouldn’t even be able to get a record deal nowadays. We no longer have a “culture” — just a disintegrating and acentric multicultural congeries whose only distinguishable feature is continuously to seek the lowest available level of materialistic sensualism, and to pass along the bill. The rest of the world is right to worry.
I was just in Guangzhou, China, a gigantic city that has aped all of the most superficial, consumeristic aspects of the modern West, while filtering out and discarding everything of any higher value. Meanwhile, what remains, in Guangzhou, of the beauty and immense depth of China’s ancient, traditional culture is confined now to isolated tourist attractions.
But “imma let you” have the last word here, if you want it; a proper response to your comment probably deserves a post of its own.
Thanks, Scarlach – I hadn’t read that, but I will take a look.
Sounds like an LGBT-rights slogan; not that there’s anything wrong with that, I hasten to add.
Pah. Culture is much more than Othello and the Goldberg Variations. Every age produces lots of dross. The fact that we still listen to Mozart’s Requiem does not mean that there were not many other Eighteenth Century composers churning out the equivalents of Hang On, Sloopy or Gary Puckett’s ultra-creepy Young Girl.
All music was once new, but the passage of time gives works from previous centuries a loftiness which we don’t give to contemporary art. We don’t view those who are currently composing with the same reverence as those who are decomposing.
Nor is our culture acentric. Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, Bruce Springsteen, the Simpsons, the Sopranos, and (I’ve heard) Homeland and Game of Thrones: great art and great artists, all informed with a strongly American identity. You can’t imagine this stuff being made anywhere else.
Time to stop yearning for some long gone halcyon era which never existed, and open your eyes to the wonders that be. Great art is often shocking, irreverent, and vilified. Just ask Igor Stravinsky or James Joyce how their works were received. Ars longa, vita brevis. Look beyond the loudest and the most vulgar to see what future generations will recognize as things of beauty which will be joys forever.
Oh dear, I find myself siding with ol’ One Eye particularly when he points out that it is western, ie, American, culture which is consuming (word chosen deliberately) other cultures. This, of course, is precisely why the “mad Mullahs” are, er, mad – that’s ‘mad’ in the American sense, natch!
However, it will not be ‘total victory’, to quote a phrase, for American culture. Already, even in my miniscule circle of friends and acquaintances, I am meeting people who can only be truly defined as ‘international’. I just met a family of Chinese ethnicity whose background is lodged somewhere between Hawaii, Hong Kong, mainland USA, Singapore and Britain where they are already seeking places for their children at Oxford. “Oh, brave New World!”
The riotous and robust American culture…
“Riotous”, perhaps. And certainly robust — like kudzu, or the northern snakehead.
David, I’m shocked that you can look around at England and not see a proud and ancient nation, people, and culture in precipitous decline.
But enough for now. All of this wants a post of its own.
Dear Gentlemen,
As a great respecter of gendered space I ordinarily would not traverse the boundaries of Man Chat, but today I step into the rough masculine world of the Locker Room (politely averting my eyes as I have seen the lady sportscasters do) to say how utterly charming I find the bromance between our gracious host, Malcolm, and his intrepid guy pal, The One Eyed Man.
Perhaps you two would write a book on the culture wars and the halcyon days that never were. Please allow me to suggest a title: Where are the Snowdens of Yesteryear?
With that, Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your port and cigars. Removing myself to the drawingroom, I shall take up my needle and thread and, once more, keeping my eyes modestly upon my embroidery, inhabit my proper sphere.
Good Grief, was that a ‘girlie-thingie’ I just saw? Surely not in these hallowed, masculine columns. I fear civilisation really is on the slide!
If so, David (and yes, it is indeed so), it’s certainly not the lovely Eugenia’s fault (although I shudder to see the process of truth-seeking through rational dialectic — itself among the noblest and most ancient features of our rapidly debasing culture — described with the grotesque neologism “bromance”).
Thanks for peeking in, Eugenia. Thank you especially for your thoroughly atavistic idea that respect for “gendered space” should also apply to spaces created and occupied by men. (Intelligent women are always welcome here at waka waka waka, of course.)
Thank you, Malcolm, for your kind words, warm welcome, and the gentlemanly protection due a lady who has been suddenly, scurrilously, and shockingly credited with a slip-sliding away of Western civilization, simply by her stepping across a sacred door-sill to offer a word of praise.
I fear my sensibilities may indeed be too girlie for the rough and tumble world of Waka Waka Waka.
While I am searching my reticule for my smelling salts, may I trouble you, Mr Duff, and ask you to kindly get up and fetch my fan? I am feeling a little faint and you are sitting on my skirt.
Sitting on your skirt? I tremble, Ma’am, I tremble!
But may I join our host in urging you to remain a regular visitor; any lady with a name like Eugenia is always welcome, it summons up such elegant images.
Even so, you must earn your passage by telling us if you agree with our host’s gloomy thoughts on the ‘decline and fall of the western empire’. As so often before he has forced me to think when actually I am much more comfortable with good, old, gut reaction – so much easier! I mean, how does one define a civilised society? Having the military ability to run most of the world, as we used to do until you lot rather rudely pushed us to one side, is hardly a sign of civilisation, it is merely a demonstration of power.
Malcolm describes England as “a proud and ancient nation, people, and culture in precipitous decline”. I’m not convinced of that, not because I am English and therefore unable to face criticism – I indulge the habit myself all too frequently – but also because I don’t think it is an *adequate* description, any more than are the attempts to write off America as a decadent, stumble-bum giant.
Oh damn, I’ll just have to think about it, now, where did I put my mind . . . ?
Sorry, David, but please, yes, do. The British nation is so enfeebled by its self-inflicted autoimmune disease (and the resulting influx of an opportunistic cultural pathogen) that it has even lost the ability to define its own cultural norms within its own borders.
And if you’re serious about taking the “red pill“, digest also the late Lawrence Auster’s concise summation of the progressive symptoms of this wasting disease.
A further question to ponder, then: if our recent foreign misadventures don’t qualify us as a “stumble-bum giant”, then what, in your mind, would? If our current “culture” of ignorance and sensualism and obesity and bastardy and cacophony and glitter and hedonistic improvidence isn’t decadent, what would be?
My dear Mr Duff, how kind.
Unfortunately, I must decline your invitation as I am already late for a previous engagement. My Ladies’ Sewing and Terrorist Circle meets regularly and we are quite busy knitting bandages for those wounded in the culture wars.
Being now sufficiently recovered from my shock to take a dish of tea before I take my leave, please allow me to note that the merit of Malcolm’s position needs no bolstering from me, neither can there be any doubt of its veracity; indeed, your informing a lady she must earn her passage to the party is itself compelling evidence of the decline of Western culture.
My dear Malcolm, when you and The One Eyed Man publish your work, I do hope you will allow me to host a proper party in your honor. Lemonade for the ladies and something stronger for you gentleman, of course.
Mr Duff, I hope you will be able to attend. You, and all the other august gentleman of Man Chat, all shall be made most welcome. JK, and The Big Henry too, naturally.
Now, sirs. I simply must smooth my stockings, adjust my seams, snap my garters, and toddle on my way.
Bonne Chance!
My Dear Lady Chat(terley),
Since I can not imagine someone as erudite as yourself resorting to redundant statements, I am forced to conclude that you do not consider either JK or myself to be part of those “august gentlem[e]n of Man Chat”.
I am quite comfortable with being deemed ungentlemanly; I have been told that by many others. But being excluded (or exuded) from augustness hurts me. Deeply.
Le Grand Henri, I beg your pardon. To cause hurt to another is never my intention and I am heartily chastened. Can you ever forgive me?
We haven’t been properly introduced, have we? And to get off on the wrong foot and without a proper introduction too, well, my goodness. Rudeness being a greater social ill even than arriving late to the Ladies’ Sewing and Terrorist Circle, I shall dally here yet a moment, hoping to clear up this unhappy contretemps.
I am Eugenia. How do you do? A pleasure, Henri, to make your acquaintance.
After following the discussion here in Man Chat with lively interest for some time now, I am familiar with your spirited contribution, which, now that you have brought it up, must be acknowledged as being, at times, distinctly lacking in dignity; your postings do not often inspire reverence.
Nonetheless, it was wrong of me to exclude you and JK from the body of the august. Even the erudite are occasionally plagued by the Department of Redundancy Department, but that is no excuse. Again, my sincerest apologies.
Henri, I would like to make it up to you.
How about this? From now on, as a personal favor to me, would you play nicely with the others? Then, when we have our little party, you may stand next to me and we shall receive our guests together. I would like that, would you?
Now, Gentleman, I really must be going, for it is time for me to once again take up my knitting.
Blowing kisses, I bid you all adieu.
I don’t know about you lot but I reckon that ‘Eugenia’ is really JK in drag! What do you all think?
I’d think it more plausible that Barack Obama is Michael Moore in blackface.
My Dearest Eugenia,
Thank you very much for your clarification. I am heartened to know you think me qualified to be counted among the august.
Moreover, I am glad to know that I succeeded to be “at times, distinctly lacking in dignity” and that my “postings do not often inspire reverence”. I have striven mightily (on occasion) to be as undignified as possible. As for inspiring reverence, which is Obama’s wont, it is my sincere opinion that that is overrated to the extreme, as is Obama himself.
Please consider participating in these discussions, which, IMHO, would add more than just a touch of ladylike decorum to our rough and tumble bull sessions.
Sincerely,
Oliver Mellors
I think you nailed it, Mal. But he needs more pizza.
[img]http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=sTm2Sh-RVX1MnM&tbnid=katbb9J0vMileM:&ved=0CAgQjRwwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.brokencountry.com%2Findex.php%2F2011%2F03%2F06%2Fmichael-moore-eats-wisconsin-protesters%2Fmichael-moore-pizza%2F&ei=01bXUZSoBqK5igKYioGQBw&psig=AFQjCNEPb_JU0diFFCBBHIJkAEQPz45CRQ&ust=1373153363166289[/img]
[Note to readers: A disturbing image originally embedded in this comment may be seen here. — MP]
[My God, Henry.]
Oh, Mr Mellors, please!
I feel my cheeks growing pink. For goodness sake, let us observe proper decorum.
How could I possibly argue against one so august as yourself? You have mastered me with your manly strength.
Oh, Mr Mellors, shall I live freely, shall I argue with you men philosophy, sociology, and art? Could it be I am just as good as you men, yourselves?
Or is it perhaps that I am better, since I am a woman?
Oh, Mr Mellors, a woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
Oh, Gentlemen, oh, Mr Mellors, I fear my knitting is beginning to unravel.
Oh, Mr Mellors, I dare no longer stay. I dare no longer stay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Z_hskvz1M
Before the “ancient and universal” tradition of marriage being between one man and one woman, there was an even more ancient and (nearly) universal tradition of marriage being between one man and lots of women. Doubtless many traditionalists were aghast at the newfangled limitations on an alpha male’s ability to procreate, which surely struck them to be a sub-optimal functioning of the human social organism.
The rationale behind discarding traditions and inventing new ones, of course, is the belief that doing so will improve the human condition. We have a word for this: progress. John Gray recently wrote a book questioning this notion. In the book review section of yesterday’s New York Times, Thomas Nagel gives a thoughtful and cogent defense of the efficacy of human inventions and institutions to (sometimes) add to the sum of human happiness.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/books/review/john-grays-silence-of-animals.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&ref=books
The transition from polygamy to til-death-do-us-part reflects today’s increasing acceptance of gay marriage. It could have been asked back then: what is the principled distinction between having lots of wives and only one? Those who wanted to strike down DOPA to replace polygamy with monogamy were tampering with the only social structure society had known, stretching back to Fred Flintstone sliding down the dinosaur after a day’s work at Slate Construction Company. Why do such a thing?
Polygamy had a rational basis in building a better society, as the seed of alpha males would lead to better progeny than the gamma guys from the shallow end of the gene pool. A dashing knight could impregnate enough women to create an effective warrior class for the entire society, as its enemies would be left to ask each other: why is this knight different from all other knights?
However, societies ultimately decided that as hunky dory as things were, they would be even better if they changed. One imagines this was especially hard for alpha males, who went from getting more ass than a toilet seat to looking at the same woman in a bathrobe every morning. The transition could not have been frictionless. Yet it happened, and the bad things that traditionalists presumably warned of never came to pass.
The reason, of course, is that polygamy was a wholly external thing, and was replaced by a different wholly external thing which extended the putative blessings of matrimony to many more people. Traditionalists ask why we should allow gay marriage but not polygamy. That’s the point, although they have it exactly backwards.
Doubtless many traditionalists were aghast at the limitations on the even more ancient tradition of rape.
Doubtless many traditionalists were aghast at the limitations on the even more ancient tradition of beastiality.
Doubtless many traditionalists were aghast at the limitations on the even more ancient tradition of a mother sticking her own infant up her ass.
The intuition pump “doubtless” is akin to the common expression, “Let me be perfectly clear …”, which everyone knows is a preface to a verbal mudslide.
You were doing fine there, Henry, and then… I’m afraid our Eugenia has a point.
Peter, the relative advantage of monogamy vs. polygamy in K-strategy species like ours is a complex topic, and too much for this comment thread. (Polygamy is costly.)
I’ll bet hbd* chick has covered it extensively in her archives. Perhaps we can discuss it here in a post of its own.
Monogamy is hardly a recent innovation, however; even the most ancient civilizations seemed generally to have endorsed it.
What is evident in your comment is exactly the liberal view of tradition that I describe in the original post, namely that you see the structure of the family as a “wholly external thing” (in my view, it is hard to imagine anything less “external” to a society than its customs regarding the structure of the family), and that altering this fundamental aspect of culture is merely a matter of “deciding” and “replacing”.
If so, it is also clear, as you noted above, that there is in fact no longer any principled basis for denying legal sanction to any imaginable polyamorous configuration. You can suggest that this is “backwards”, but that’s just your personal bias. I’m sure it seems Forward! to many of your fellow Progressives.
No doubt.
Is that your authoritative opinion, Malcolm?
Of course! Everything I say in here is strictly ex cathedra.
Beyond Papal infallibility, the penultimate refuge of pomposity is condescension. The ultimate is conceit.
Sorry, Henry. I don’t mean to be condescending, and I know you’re a smart guy. I was just disappointed when your promising response to Peter’s comment suddenly had to include gratuitous scatology; it kind of ruined the whole thing, I thought.
Malcolm,
Thank you for your honesty. Apology accepted.
My third point wasn’t “gratuitous scatology” (aka, bathroom humor, for you lesser mortals out there). Must everything be spelled out in expository prose, in a meta fashion, with arch scatterings ad infinitum?
It was a rhetorical, logical progression from a mildly contentious claim to an outrageously absurd claim, having to do with human sexual practices. If the third proposition had been even slightly less outrageous, it very well may have touched on a practice that had been, at some point in human history, practiced.
Would it have made more sense to you if I had used Latin terms for the rhetorical and logical devices, and maybe had thrown in a few quotes from Aristotle?
It is not my style to submit comments that exceed the length of the published post. I would suggest that a succinct comment may warrant more than a superficial and cursory glance, followed by dismissal out of hand.
It seems to me that a serious, albeit brief, comment may actually require more contemplation than an ad nauseum rant before a response to the comment is offered. Have you contemplated the possibility, however slight, that I could be making a subtle point?
Yes, yes, we understood the point.
Who’s “we”, white man?
Myself, and, I assume, the rest of our readers.