Culture and Traditions in Modern Society

[Chou Toshio]

So here's an attempt to make a formerly shitty topic, a reasonably intelligent one. Vine Whip's sex thread clearly lacked any content that would provoke proper discussion, but I'd like to see if we can dig something worthwhile out of it by talking about culture/customs/tradition and modern society in a broader view.

Hide

Hide

Ok, so Myzozoa's post is an intelligent and progressive post, with sentiments that are pretty common here on Smogon. However, I think this post/outlook is still too simple, and doesn't fairly acknowledge the underlying issues of culture, and the ongoing struggle between tradition and progression.

culture |ˈkəl ch ər|
noun
1 the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group :

First let's talk a bit about culture-- culture is something that always exists between human beings, it's in our past present and future. It's in a forum. It's something that you can't get rid of, but is constantly changing. It's the "glue" between people that gives us power and let's us make societies-- let's face it, without society, people have no power. Like say, without Smogon, we wouldn't even be talking here about anything.

Culture evolves and responds to needs and situations. As time goes on, some aspects of culture persevere and are eventually acknowledged as tradition, and culture in turn develops with tradition at its foundation--customs, that is behaviors, activities, arts, mannerisms, beliefs--any number of aspects of human behavior that evolve to form "common knowledge", or essentially give us a context or general frame from which we interact.


Now, what Myzozoa's post fails to acknowledge is the value that is inherent in tradition. Sure, people are stupid and certainly make mistakes and have moments of short-sightedness, but generally speaking: humans are pretty smart in the long run. In fact, almost all economic theory is based on the assumption that humans are logical (intelligent) in the long run (though psychologists disagree). Whatever the quack-doctors say though, economic theory does work, and in the long run, there's usually rhyme and reason behind human craziness--we're not that dumb really.

Traditions that persevere in culture almost always have some important role or purpose at their core. Whether it was responding to dangers in the environment, adapting to utilize a superior technology/method, or instigating some means to enhance efficiency or defend the group-- traditions and culture almost always evolve from, and have at their core, some need or practical purpose.

Of course there are always exceptions, and whether it be witch-hunting, human sacrifices or fearing black cats, there's more than enough examples of traditions/beliefs without any rhyme or reason. Then there are others still that, while having a purpose at one point, appear simply barbaric or backwards to us in modern society; like slavery and and caste/class systems.
These though, like the vast majority of traditions were formed on some rhyme or reason.

Traditions are based in the very roots of a society, and removing them can be slow and painful. First of all, people are very unwilling by nature to get rid of traditions that they have until now, relied on--after all, we are evolved to follow the rules of the social structure around us and passed down to us from previous generations. People often feel strong emotional devotion/attachment to said traditions.

Getting people to agree on getting rid of a custom or tradition though, is not the only problem. Getting rid of tradition is much like getting rid of an organism in a biosystem (or removing any aspect of a complex system)-- it almost always comes with negative externalities, unforseen consequences. Afterall, these traditions were based on something, and it's always hard to know exactly what that something was as generations pass.


Let's take the crappy gender example of Vine Whip's thread. To Myzozoa, gender roles may seem pointless, and getting rid of them inconsequential. This makes sense on a simple, purely academic level. But, getting rid of strong gender roles might potentially come with very disturbing negative externalities-- like men who are too pansy-ass to know how to talk to women or treat women the way women want to be treated. Speak of more serious consequences, gender roles are part of a collective of cultural traits meant to create uniformity and well-defined life patterns in society.

While concepts like uniformity and well-defined life patterns might seem laughable to an intellectual in an individualistic "progressive" society like the US coasts, there are countless societies that rely even more heavily on these concepts to function. Try living in a place like Japan! Uniformity is important to a society, because only by uniformity do things get accomplished-- people only have power by coming together, and uniformity is a huge help when it comes to bringing people together and getting them to work together (or at least get them to live together harmoniously).

Inversely individuality--I can do whatever and live however I want--comes with the consequence of inevitably introducing disagreement. While many may believe disagreement as a non-problem, disagreement is the first step to conflict. Believe me, all cultures and societies are built with customs (some more some less) made for the purpose of avoiding conflict, and for good reason. These traditions are linked to the most basic principles of human interaction.


All that being said-- sometimes culture needs to change, tradition needs to be discarded, no matter how painful the transition!

Let's face it, times change, societies change, TECHNOLOGY changes. The situation of the world is never stagnant, and in order to survive, culture too, must change to adapt. Traditions play a very important role in culture, but sometimes, keeping a tradition is bad, or even catastrophic for a society. It is integral that a society have flexibility, and have the functionality to measure the pros and cons of traditions, and be able to decide and change itself when time and situation call for a change of culture or a removal of tradition. Finding the balance, and finding ways to effectively do this is a real challenge for every people of every time (unless you're lucky to live in one of the long stretches of human history where almost nothing changes but-- with technological advancement marching along, one of these is not about to happen any time soon I'd say).



tl;dr, where does this lead us? The world is always changing, culture needs to change with it-- WE need to change with it. That said, knowing when and how to change traditions is extremely difficult. It's hard to figure out what traditions should change, how they should change, and even more impossible to be truly prepared for the negative consequences that can and do appear with change. Moreover, getting people to change is a bitch!

How should culture be viewed in modern society? How should traditions be viewed? How and when should they be changed?

These are the questions of this thread.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

The things I embrace most about cultures that I encounter are the cuisines, I enjoy being able to get street food for low prices that tastes delicious; enter globalization, with the influx of McDonalds, KFCs etc. into China and the presence of street food actually being illegal in most cases (you need a license, but mostly police turn a blind eye) I am saddened when I have to wait until late at night to be able to go out and buy the good stuff off the street. Also, when I visit other countries I ALWAYS will try the food there, it pays to be adventurous.

Culture-bound activities seem to be taking a turn for the tourist in that they're trivialized, watered-down versions, be it performances, participants activities or whatever. I am one of those people who feel embarrassed when my dad walks around attempting to photograph everything in an attempt to embrace the 'culture' of the place.

There's the obvious fuzzy topic of 'backward' traditions, what can be considered backward or simply the Western world forcing on their beliefs onto other countries, but I don't really want to get involved in a debate about that.

I say embrace what there is to be embraced when you visit a new culture (food, activities, people); I lack the credibility to say that anything SHOULD be changed.

 

[Deck Knight]

My favorite part of the culture wars is the pretense that because there were evils in the past, today's theorists have the moral and intellectual high ground in any discussion. Very convenient when the target of ridicule is dead and has no means to defend themselves.

The moral weight of the past leaders is also given inconsistent treatment. When you need Thomas Jefferson's ideas to be immoral monstrosities, you say he was a slave owner. When one of his quotes bolsters your idea of an atheistic founding of America, suddenly he's America's greatest hero again.

The 20th century had some of the worst atrocities in history performed on the grandest scale, evil is always with us in one form or another. The German, Russian, and Chinese genocides were worlds apart from what happened to the Native Americans, who were not some unified kumbaya drum circle band. They did plenty of killing to each other (scalping was invented before the colonists arrived) long before the colonists came, and while the end result was a marginalization, to suggest an unprovoked genocide is to purposely ignore history. The native tribes were basically a North American version of what Afghanistan is today: decentralized, tribal, and ruled largely by whatever faction had the most brutal methods and organization.

So to loop it back around you will get people arguing that America was founded on bloodshed and genocide who also think Marxism is pretty damn swell, despite people alive today remember its atrocities all to well and are happy to share. The founders in contrast can't defend themselves personally, you just have their writings.

Point being, often times the people offering change are just as morally bankrupt as the worst actors of the tradition they are criticizing. They offer change not because their ideas are any better or have no consequences (despite their protestations) but because that change personally enriches them or makes them a figure solely because they led the charge on some new ideological boondoggle.

Discarding traditions should not be an easy task. Older traditions are usually tried and true, and the longer they have been around, the more likely they serve a useful purpose. My personal opinion is that society's leaders are trying to drift it towards a purposeful ambiguousness.

To use the gender example I think Vine Whip was alluding to: Born with a penis? Well that's OK, you're a girl if you feel like it today. And since we're such a compassionate society, we'll pass laws so that the 0.1% of you who don't identify with the gender indicated by your genitalia at birth can impose your confusion on the rest of us when you make your bathroom selection. Nevermind that there are probably more rapists and perverts than legitimately transgendered persons, and they'll happily pounce on a society that allows men into women's restrooms if they say they felt like a woman that day.

The grand proposal after that inevitably happens? Well, now lets make all bathrooms unisex, even though the vast majority of women don't want to share a restaurant, airport, or government building bathroom with men. You'll still have the rapist/pervert problem, but you remove the stigma of gendered bathrooms to the gender confused. Even though most people thought it wasn't an issue important enough to address in the first place, and now a worse problem has arisen.

It's all OK because these changes are hip and progressive and gender roles are outdated. Your new masters know better, don't you see?

 

[Chou Toshio]

Wow, fantastic Deck... that is a great post...

edit: Essentially, people need to be a lot more cautious when thinking of dismissing longstanding culture and tradition. Defying tradition almost always comes with dramatic, often unforeseen consequences. It's easy to overlook them, but traditions are almost always made for practical reasons, and often reasons that cannot be noticed or anticipated by logic alone. Humans are smart in the long run-- give them half a century, and they'll form a working system. But they're very stupid in the short run-- give a college student a semester to think and write about gender issues and he'll almost be guaranteed to be stupider than centuries of accumulated wisdom. Will he realize this? No, he's too dumb.

 

[abhicherath]

well we don't realize this but PEOPLE ARE CHANGING ALL THE TIME. its just when you say "oy duffers wake up and change" that they get stubborn. well one more thing hitler. Was he mad?but he had a good was plan(not THAT good, but Ok)so its trauma. during childhood people are a lot more sensitive and take nigh upon everything to heart.and as deck said older traditions have eons of wisdom behind them, some of it though is just being stubborn.people have to change according to Wtf is going on. take for example the indian constitution. its been changed 93 or 94 times from when it was created. 1950 i believe.
this is also one reason the U.S.A is so succesful. they dont HAVE a completely developed culture and some people have come there to escape from their cultures.its far easier for them to change..LIke a rolling stone(listen to that song please)
some cultures give some people Hell A.K.A the indian culture a few hundred years ago. with the horrid caste system(which is one of the reasons for the fall of hinduism)
essentially all cultures have some great points which went in FOR PRACTICAL reasons.a culture is greatest in its second or third phase IMO. for example the aryan's created the caste system as a system of division of labour and it was fluid and flexible that is a carpenter's son could become a preist if we wanted to. over time this enlightened system decayed and as the preists were highly revered they used it to their advantage and made the caste system Fixed.
when the british came to India. at first the indians were Ok and content but soon the britons were mistreating them and they responded didnt they? started with chennama and chittur.
people are proud of their cultures.giving up a culture gives u a sense of non-belonging. trust me.

 

[jumpluff]

How does the USA not have a culture?

 

[abhicherath]

GAH....i didnt frame properly i apologize. the fact is US is a VERY young country, it doesnt have a completely developed culture, since its always changing. this you may call "modern culture".Unless your counting the red indians but they were wiped out right?out of the equation
USA's culture is a mish-mash which is precisely what makes it successful.

 

[Chou Toshio]

"not completely developed" is a pretty erroneous statement. Where there are humans, there is culture, and America DEFINITELY has a well developed culture-- America's culture is so developed (and invasive), that it's practically affected everyone else's culture in some shape or form.

The age of a culture is pretty trivial, especially when all cultures face change in the face of technology.

 

[abhicherath]

chou what ARE u saying like culture vs. technology? or summat else. i need to start framing sentences better......america affects all culture's granted but it ITSELF is very young. youngest in the world

 

[Alan]

i need to start framing sentences better

among other things

also the OP was way too long to read and the tl;dr didn't really tell me what this thread is about... BUT if it's what I think its about based off the first sentence of DK's post then:

I think the only reason that the so-called culture war exists is because people's morals and ideas change over time and certain groups are resistant to change (particularly, but not exclusively, religious ones) especially if it goes against their beliefs and are generally willing to "fight" against the change for as long as they can, re: abortion. Change is generally for the better in my honest opinion, but more often than not its a long, arduous process with lots of bickering along the way.

 

[Glen]

The 20th century had some of the worst atrocities in history performed on the grandest scale, evil is always with us in one form or another. The German, Russian, and Chinese genocides were worlds apart from what happened to the Native Americans, who were not some unified kumbaya drum circle band. They did plenty of killing to each other (scalping was invented before the colonists arrived) long before the colonists came, and while the end result was a marginalization, to suggest an unprovoked genocide is to purposely ignore history. The native tribes were basically a North American version of what Afghanistan is today: decentralized, tribal, and ruled largely by whatever faction had the most brutal methods and organization.

i don't see how any sane individual could read this and consider the post 'fantastic'.

i agree that genocide is probably a strong word, but to say 'but they provoked us!' is beyond disingenuous considering the whole, you know, invasion thing. 'their culture was inchoate and fraught with wars and scalping and nudity' is not an excuse to invade and destroy. please dont turn this into a discussion on sociocultural evolutionism, you can discuss culture without being an ethnocentric shithead.

the line about afghanistan is the icing on the cake, and also completely illustrative of how you look at the world. that's really not what this thread is about though!

 

[Lanturn314]

Agreeing with Glen's post. Also, to address more of Deck Knight's post:

Discarding traditions should not be an easy task. Older traditions are usually tried and true, and the longer they have been around, the more likely they serve a useful purpose. My personal opinion is that society's leaders are trying to drift it towards a purposeful ambiguousness.

Okayyyyy so... there's this society in Papua New Guinea that has a long-standing tradition of eating the bodies of their deceased loved ones. This includes eating brains, which has led to an epidemic of Kuru, which is an incurable prion disease with a 100% mortality rate... would you argue that this tradition is likely to serve a useful purpose, since it has been around for a really long time? Or would you argue that it would probably be better for the people if they were to abandon this practice? (cannibalism has declined since the outbreak due to Australian colonial law enforcement, and the disease has thus also declined)

How about discriminating based on race, which has been a long-standing practice in the US and is still somewhat present in modern-day society? Should we be trying to preserve that just because these attitudes have been around for a long time? I think not.

To use the gender example I think Vine Whip was alluding to: Born with a penis? Well that's OK, you're a girl if you feel like it today. And since we're such a compassionate society, we'll pass laws so that the 0.1% of you who don't identify with the gender indicated by your genitalia at birth can impose your confusion on the rest of us when you make your bathroom selection. Nevermind that there are probably more rapists and perverts than legitimately transgendered persons, and they'll happily pounce on a society that allows men into women's restrooms if they say they felt like a woman that day.

So, what you're saying is is that the mild discomfort you might feel about the thought of a transgendered person is more important than allowing this person to be accepted into society or at least have basic human rights? With surgery and hormone treatments, you can make someone who was born with a penis but has felt like a woman their whole life be able to live as the person they actually identify as. And there are actual legitimate physiological conditions that can cause gender confusion, such as 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which can cause a genetically male individual to be born with any sort of external genetalia, male gonads, but generally exhibit female primary sex characteristics. And so, these individuals are often raised as females, which is all well and good until puberty hits and all the male hormones go raging through them and they develop a male gender identity. So, like, which characteristics do you use to assign sex to them? You can't go with just the chromosomal sex, because there are XY individuals who exhibit androgen insensitivity, so they get male gonads but exhibit no external male characteristics whatsoever. There is no easy way to determine what gender these sorts of people are, so why not let them choose? Even without these endocrine disorders, if a person legitimately feels that they are another gender, there is no real reason not to let them identify that way, since it doesn't really affect you all that much.
If you think perversion would be a problem in this situation, well... if anyone does anything that is actually illegal, arrest them for it. Rape is illegal now, and will remain illegal regardless of where people go to the bathroom. When it comes down to it, bathrooms are just places people go to take a shit, so stop making such a big deal if someone has just undergone gender reassignment surgery and now wants to switch bathrooms. To you, it's only mild discomfort if you even find out. To them, it's an essential part of their gender identity.

The grand proposal after that inevitably happens? Well, now lets make all bathrooms unisex, even though the vast majority of women don't want to share a restaurant, airport, or government building bathroom with men. You'll still have the rapist/pervert problem, but you remove the stigma of gendered bathrooms to the gender confused. Even though most people thought it wasn't an issue important enough to address in the first place, and now a worse problem has arisen.

Slippery slope arguments are and always have been a logical fallacy, and you should know better. No one wants unisex bathrooms; what advocates for transgendered people want is for people to be able to use the bathroom of whatever gender they have chosen for themselves. Is that so difficult?

It's all OK because these changes are hip and progressive and gender roles are outdated. Your new masters know better, don't you see?

It's all OK because now these changes are allowing GLBT people to be seen as human and be able to feel more comfortable in society, as opposed to being stuck in an era where they were too afraid to be themselves because of inevitable persecution.




tl;dr: to address the point of the thread, traditions should only be allowed to be preserved when they are not infringing on others' rights or infringing upon scientific progress. Otherwise, they are counterproductive and/or selfish: their only purpose is to make the people who like preserving the status quo somewhat more comfortable at the expense of others.

 

[Synre]

I feel like the odds are pretty good this isn't going to end much better than the other thread would have, but the OP is good this time so let's just hope I'm wrong...

To give my thoughts on the OP, I tend to be very utilitarian(as much good as possible for as many people as possible) when dealing with ethics. I sometimes find myself at odds with people using different ethical systems to evaluate situations because often the action that would seem to have the most positive consequence with the least negative consequence isn't the way things have always been, or in some cases relating to more specific ethics issues, does not create the most just solution(fellow staffers may have noticed I don't tend to care about justice much if it inhibits getting the best result for the most people). This is where I tend to run into issues with culture and tradition -- I find often people who the status quo is benefical for, or even irrelevant to, in a given situation tend to resist change awfully hard, regardless of actual potential benefits or drawbacks.

Change for the sake of change isn't worth anything either, and I do find the differences in cultures across the world fascinating, but I think much of the world's populace would be better off if we at least made an effort to evaluate our own cultures and traditions as objectively as our inevitably biased perspectives will allow us to, and try to figure out if the way we're doing things in a given situation is really for the best, or just a solution that is convenient and easy to accept. Tradition is often used as a substitute for thinking and I can't think of too many things that are a bigger waste of the potential of humanity than not using the intelligence we have to at least try to make things as good as possible for our race as a whole, even if we probably don't have the ability to make everyone happy.

It's sort of funny how that plays into some of the ideas of the individual vs. the group touched on in the OP because I'm kind of going both ways on it. Likely partially because of being brought up in the West I'm quite taken with the idea of freedom of expression and everyone being able to live how they please, but not at the expense of society as a whole, which is where maximizing good comes back in -- there's always some situations where not everyone can have a desirable outcome, and in those situations I think we have to err with the majority unless whatever consequence they face is relatively small compared to a larger one for the smaller group. I guess in a broad sense you could put stuff like the aforementioned interracial marriage thing here -- it was unpopular with the majority of the US at the time but caused no discernable harm to that majority, whereas those being denied marriage had obvious consequences, so it is a case worth veering off of the majority and of tradition.

I'm rambling a bit, but I guess my thesis here is that culture and tradition are fine and swell and likely not going anywhere, but the viewpoints of neither are a substitute for people at least making an honest effort to evaluate an issue and find a solution that helps as many people as we're capable of helping.

 

[Vineon]

tl;dr, where does this lead us? The world is always changing, culture needs to change with it-- WE need to change with it. That said, knowing when and how to change traditions is extremely difficult. It's hard to figure out what traditions should change, how they should change, and even more impossible to be truly prepared for the negative consequences that can and do appear with change. Moreover, getting people to change is a bitch!

How should culture be viewed in modern society? How should traditions be viewed? How and when should they be changed?

These are the questions of this thread.

You make it sound like there are many cases where a effort to forcefully change a people's culture and traditions is required. As is the world, it's constituant cultures are always evolving ; I feel they require little to no direct help to adapt, if adaptation is even necessary.

Traditions aren't ever lasting, no planning is really required for change, even less to figure out "how they should". Traditions will change, or be dropped on their own over the course of generations.

 

[assassinfred]

I agree with Synre on some things, although I am by no means a utilitarian. Where I agree with him, though, is that no matter what you do or how you change culture, you will NEVER be able to please everybody. There will always be conflict in the world, and there is literally nothing we can do to change that. This is where my particular ideology comes into play. I know that there will always be people in the world who disagree with me, either morally or culturally, and I have come to terms with that. This has led me to be a moral nihilist, quite simply, I do not believe in the existence of good and evil (although my nihilism applies to culture just as much as it applies to morality).

A lot of people won't agree with me on this. In fact, most people probably won't, but I accept that. Everyone is allowed to follow any religion they wish and be whoever they really want to be, in my opinion. There are 7 billion people on the planet, and 7 billion unique personalities and ideologies to go with it. Who am I to say that any one ideology is any worse than mine? This is where my nihilism flourishes. The very concept of good and evil as I see it is merely point of view, and no one culture or idea is any more Good/Evil than any other.

Now, back on to the actual topic at hand, I'm not worried at all about how our culture evolves. Culture has changed significantly not only over the course of humanity's existence itself, but even in the past 100 years. Look at 1911 and compare it to 2011. Things have changed very rapidly over the course of a century, let alone the entirety of humanity's existence. Culture will always be changing, ideals will always shift, and traditions will always change. Our culture is one of the main ways humanity itself evolves. If we mess with the natural process of cultural change, there's no telling what would happen, just like there's no telling what will happen if we don't mess with it. We will never be able to see whether a culture shift is for better or worse, but there is nothing we can do to avoid culture shift. It is constantly evolving, and there is nothing wrong with that.

 

[Synre]

I certainly agree with you on good and evil being perspective(I cringed every time I read "evil" in the DK post above), but where we veer there I think is that I would disagree that because there are many different opinions they are all equally valid, thus my following a system that tries to discern value(maximum good).

 

[Vineon]

Now, I'm not excusing the American colonists for their invasion and attitude, but the Native Americans didn't exactly sit back and say "here have some of our land!" Outside of some isolated cases, the Native Americans responded violently to the presence of the colonists.

"Have some of our land"

Is that what should have been their reaction? I'm not sure how anyone can call their resistance "provocation".

If I were to invade your home, after being kicked off your property I may not have the legitimacy to claim I've been provoked. You were the one that was and you defended what has always been yours against an invader.

 

[Staraptor Call]

Tradition is often used as a substitute for thinking and I can't think of too many things that are a bigger waste of the potential of humanity than not using the intelligence we have to at least try to make things as good as possible for our race as a whole, even if we probably don't have the ability to make everyone happy.

QFT. While tradition can provide stability and peace, cannot give people true knowledge or wisdom. To have knowledge, you have to have justified true belief - you have to have a reason to believe what you believe, or otherwise you just have dogma instead of real knowledge. Tradition is not a valid justification for believing something. When people believe something because it is a tradition, they believe it because it is popular, or because their parents told them to believe it, or something equally fallacious. Tradition, by making people think they have knowledge when they actually do not, gets in the way of the pursuit of truth. There is no substitute for figuring out the truth based on your own experience and reason.

 

[Synre]

I was originally going to write a much less diplomatic version of what Vineon did there, but thinking about it some more the thread of comments related to what I would agree is a highly ethnocentric post by DK made me think some --many of the posts here have focused on kind of the culture of individual countries, but it is interesting how people's own culture and tradition kind of blind them when dealing with that of others. The us vs. them angle makes it easy to justify a lot of things.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

Slippery slope arguments are and always have been a logical fallacy, and you should know better. No one wants unisex bathrooms; what advocates for transgendered people want is for people to be able to use the bathroom of whatever gender they have chosen for themselves. Is that so difficult?

actually, since public washrooms are divided by gender, they're inherently sexist, so yes, there are plenty of people who would push for unisex washrooms. i've always thought that "ew men are perverts keep them out of our washrooms" is a little like "ew black people have cooties back of the bus". i guess deck likes to present this image that since all perverts/rapists are heterosexual men, all women need protection from all men or something

besides, there are already tons of unisex bathrooms already in use

traditions have this habit of being founded upon fear, which is very often misguided. granted, i don't think many of us still throw salt over our shoulders, but i think chou would agree with me that those who do could stop without negative repercussions.

much of the time we don't understand our traditions because, even if our grandparents founded them for a good reason, they often told our parents to "just do it this way" and so our parents could only tell us "it's just how it's done". the result is that we do a lot of things today that made sense hundreds of years ago but are now totally obsolete. as an obvious example, the qwerty keyboard was created in the day of the typewriter. as we no longer use typewriters, qwerty has no reason to continue existing, but it does, and nobody knows why.

i enjoyed the way deck presented gender issues as "what i feel like today" and also his bit about marxists (very glenn beck) and the way he talks about "passing laws on things nobody cares about" when it's actually reverting laws that i guess people cared about? hell the whole post was delightful really

 

[Myzozoa]

while may post may not have acknowledged the value of traditions, it wasn't spitting on tradition either. Culture is inherently built on tradition, yet it is changing incessantly. The wisdom of the past has to be taken in its own context. it is foolish for example to kill someone for coveting their neighbors oxen.

Equally foolish is attempting to apply law and doctrine from the past in today's world, it would be out of context. Not to say that these ideas serve no purpose, but to say that if they are to be used, they must be interpreted in ways that take into account the original intent of the idea for the time period in which it was produced, and also be reconciled with the differences present in today's world.

some of the posts in this thread are flawed already.

Lanturn you are being disingenuous in order to bait decknite in the first part of your post, you know exactly what he means.

Decknite, you would bring marxism in to a discussion about cultures and in the most hypocritical way possible. The founders arent alive today you say, neither is Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. These men (the possible exception of Marx) did terrible things, as did some of the founders, but you must recognize that your argument here is hypocritical. None of these men can defend their ideas, and all of the living can tear into them as they wish and as they should if it is necessary.

And on the topic of transgender individuals, I dont see how you decknite, as a conservative activist can possibly be opposed to their assimilation into society, the major theme of much conservative thought is the individual vs society. Well Im sure you'll be able to explain how it works in your view but for now I dont understand, maybe Im too naive. You complain about the confusion of the bathroom situation in this regard, yet where is your solution? I dont know what the right answer is, but it certainly isnt that these people can't be allowed full access to public places.
The rest of your post is slippery slope crud.


Also waterbombs post is hilarious, I love how he equates revisionism with 'being less emotionally invested.'

 

[Lanturn314]

actually, since public washrooms are divided by gender, they're inherently sexist, so yes, there are plenty of people who would push for unisex washrooms. i've always thought that "ew men are perverts keep them out of our washrooms" is a little like "ew black people have cooties back of the bus". i guess deck likes to present this image that since all perverts/rapists are heterosexual men, all women need protection from all men or something

besides, there are already tons of unisex bathrooms already in use

Well, bathrooms are separated by sex, but it's not like it's a problem, because they're pretty much equal. The only thing men's bathrooms have that women's don't is urinals, but it's not like women really have the necessary...er...equipment to use those anyways. If anything, men have it better when it comes to restrooms because of the shorter lines, so if you're gonna be like OMG having separate bathrooms is so discriminatory against men, well, you haven't had to wait in line to use the restroom for 3 hours at a concert.

Lanturn you are being disingenuous in order to bait decknite in the first part of your post, you know exactly what he means.

I know I have a reputation and all, but I actually wasn't trolling there. Deck presented a model, and I provided counterexamples to it. The way I understand it, he was basically just saying "If things are around for a long time, then they are probably better," which is fallacious... or did I misinterpret?
I'm more inclined to agree with Synre: a utilitarian approach is best. Any action we perform ought to benefit the most people while causing the least harm possible. Thus, something that might mildly improve the lives of some people while causing profound harm to a smaller group of people should be avoided, because profound harm is weighted more than mild benefit. For example, while gay marriage might make the more traditional Christians mildly uncomfortable, it doesn't really harm them at all, while disallowing it would profoundly harm the gay people who want to get married.
Blindly following traditions just because they've been around a long time like Deck Knight said probably isn't the best approach to things when certain groups of people are being marginalized or otherwise harmed by said traditions.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

i didn't say it was discriminatory against men, i said that it was discriminatory.

 

[Brain]

Traditions that persevere in culture almost always have some important role or purpose at their core. Whether it was responding to dangers in the environment, adapting to utilize a superior technology/method, or instigating some means to enhance efficiency or defend the group-- traditions and culture almost always evolve from, and have at their core, some need or practical purpose.

The persistence of a tradition does not really correlate with its usefulness. Traditions will tend to persist and propagate "by default", as long as they are not an obvious impediment to society. For instance, whatever reasons there might have been to not eat pork are clearly not valid anymore. Worse yet, these reasons might essentially have been that raising pigs in Israel or the Middle East was not cost effective, so it makes no sense for the tradition to spread elsewhere. Still, people all over the world put up with it. Other traditions, such as kosher/halal slaughter, might have been better than alternatives at some point, but now they are outright barbaric.

Whatever reason a tradition had to exist, that reason is either still valid, or it isn't. I think we can all agree on that. However, your post suggests a belief that traditions have inherent worth. I dispute that. I believe that if we cannot conclusively show that a tradition has a positive effect on society, that no effort should be made to sustain it. If we can show that it has negative effects, we should try to get rid of it, and if we can show neither a positive nor a negative effect, we should just let society run its course.

Traditions are based in the very roots of a society, and removing them can be slow and painful. First of all, people are very unwilling by nature to get rid of traditions that they have until now, relied on--after all, we are evolved to follow the rules of the social structure around us and passed down to us from previous generations. People often feel strong emotional devotion/attachment to said traditions.

Some people do.

Some people don't.

Many people, right now, simply and genuinely do not care about traditions. These people are, or will become parents and teachers, and will fail to transmit them. By interacting with people who don't care, people who care might care less. If traditional ideas cannot spread fast enough and cannot retain a high enough percentage of people, then they will lose, fair and square. This kind of shift might be painful for the side that loses, but I'm not going to care about traditional family values just to please others. Nobody is controlling this process.

Let's take the crappy gender example of Vine Whip's thread. To Myzozoa, gender roles may seem pointless, and getting rid of them inconsequential. This makes sense on a simple, purely academic level. But, getting rid of strong gender roles might potentially come with very disturbing negative externalities-- like men who are too pansy-ass to know how to talk to women or treat women the way women want to be treated.

Oh no, pansy-ass men. What a tragedy :)

Look, this is a non sequitur. In the past, arranged marriage was commonplace, and one might have given, as a reason to keep arranging marriages, an extremely similar reason to what you just gave: that we'd end up with men who don't know how to talk to women (whereas at least they'd get someone under the old model, no effort required). Traditional gender roles essentially make the woman a slave - unless this is what you are advocating, your idea of "tradition" is actually extremely recent.

The thing is, vast majority of old traditions are already gone. You are making an argument that long standing traditions are valuable, but the truth is that the gender roles you wish to keep in the name of tradition are, at best, decades old. Few people would want to go back to what gender roles were a mere hundred years ago. Right now, I would say we are on the last leg of a transition, and I'd just let it run its course.

Speak of more serious consequences, gender roles are part of a collective of cultural traits meant to create uniformity and well-defined life patterns in society.

If uniformity is precious, we'll find ways to be uniform. If everybody thinks that unbridled sexual freedom is a sacred right, that is a form of groupthink (uniformity). The vast majority of liberals and progressives think the same way on most subjects, so even though such a society would allow for a much wider variety of behaviors, it would still be very uniform.

I think you underestimate the resilience of human society. Dictatorships, strong and powerful ideologues, incompetent governments, corruption can wreck societies, but headless and undirected societal movements are pretty much harmless. Things like atheism, feminism, gender roles shifting, materialism, ecologism, if they progressively gain hold without being backed by a propaganda machine of some sort, can only gain hold for one reason: they tend to a better social equilibrium. As you said yourself, humanity isn't dumb - in a time of peace, in the absence of revolutions and disturbances, it will drift towards the right thing.

It is integral that a society have flexibility, and have the functionality to measure the pros and cons of traditions, and be able to decide and change itself when time and situation call for a change of culture or a removal of tradition.

Finding the balance, and finding ways to effectively do this is a real challenge for every people of every time (unless you're lucky to live in one of the long stretches of human history where almost nothing changes but-- with technological advancement marching along, one of these is not about to happen any time soon I'd say).

I don't think it's a real challenge at all. These things are not decided in committees, they are an organic social process. I would argue that society updates its "tradition bank" automatically, at a slow rate, when it is stable enough to have the luxury of introspection. I believe modern occidental society is currently in that stage, so if gender roles are shifting, it's a natural adjustment for the better, because it simply wouldn't happen otherwise (in peaceful circumstances - I'm not talking about centralized, brutal engineered movements such as communism or fascism. There's a difference between, say, atheism as a meme spreading on its own merits in a free society, and state atheism).

I mean, if you look at all the traditions we have that are there for a reason, how do you think they arose in the first place? If society, in an age of relative peace, freedom and prosperity, is currently going in the wrong direction, I have to say that's a pretty damning counter-example to your claim that humanity isn't dumb.

In a nutshell, if society is stable, at peace, and responsive (i.e. democratic), its focus will naturally drift on its own internal structure. If that structure is sub-optimal, it will route around the problems and will slowly patch it and improve it. I would say that under certain circumstances society can do no wrong - without strong ideologues to jump on opportunities, make their luck, pull strings and control mobs, society will seldom change against its own interests (of course, many such ideologues exist, but well-built societies have a few tools to make them less influent and enhance the true signal).

 

[capefeather]

My take on this:

In short, culture pretty much blows. To elaborate, I see culture as a symbol of commonality or agreement that may or may not be real, but it does not have any practical use. Culture reflects our tendency as humans to associate with others in whatever way we can, even if it's an obviously arbitrary and normally meaningless association (there was an experiment on this, but any names to call it escape me atm). I particularly find it more and more absurd that the U.S. has only two major political parties, and Canada three (Bloc Québecois being kinda dead right now). (There are gung-ho war hawks in the Democratic Party and liberals in the Republican Party. And "Red Tories" in Canada's Liberal Party. What the hell.) At its core of cores, adherence to cultures and traditions simply isn't rational, and I see it as one indicator (out of many) that our physical evolution is struggling to keep up with our social evolution.

Obviously, I'm not saying that all culture is bad. In fact, a lot of the time, consistency (and culture by extension) is desirable. However, if a tradition goes against utilitarianism or the original position or whatever system of moral logic to which you subscribe, then we should have the strength of character to let go of it. To me, "tried and tested" just means "confirmation bias", and it's probably at the root of so many problems in societies (including Smogon). For example, it may be desirable to acknowledge and respect various religious traditions, but when those traditions try to force their views on others, that would be undesirable.

I could probably go on and on about this, but there isn't much of a point atm. Maybe now, people will have a better understanding of the motivations behind what I say sometimes about various things on these forums.