Kristoph Minchau

Tradition and Why it is Important

Dictionary Definition

tra·di·tion (tr-d shn)

[Middle English tradicion, from Old French, from Latin trditi , trditin-, from tr ditus, past participle of trdere, to hand over, deliver, entrust : tr -, trns-, trans- + dare, to give; see d- in Indo-European roots.]

(From: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=tradition)

Tradition for the masses

Straight from the dictionary definition, tradition is not just limited to dictionary definition term #3, it is most accurately defined from its "Latin word traditio which means "to hand down" or "to hand over."" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradition). From the Latin definition, the term is then refined as the passing down of things, and further refined as the passing down of practices.

You know tradition was made because people are generally not very smart. They can't be trusted to make the 'correct' decisions, so traditions were created by people who were wiser than them in the hopes that it would help prevent them from making bad decisions.

(I'll start off that, yes, I know you have had a rough time with your parents) I have a question, do you ever listen to advice from your parents? *I* personally do, because it makes perfect logical sense to listen to the advice from someone who is older and has had more experience than you. Now, before you retort, yes, there could be some advice that is bad or incorrect, but you do have to make a basic choice to either accept it or reject it based on whether or not it makes sense to you. Additionally, looking at my previous experience, I can say that in general my parents give very good advice, and it is very rare for them to give me bad advice. Also, you have to look at it from their position, are they wanting to deliberately give me bad advice? As their role as a parent they are only wanting the best for me, and so I know that they try to only give advice that is good and beneficial to me. Don't you think that listening to someone who has 30 years more experience on this earth than you, and truly only wanting to give you good advice, is a wise thing to do, even if it seems illogical to your inexperienced immature mind at that time? Usually the reasoning behind it becomes clear later on.

Tradition helps prevents people from becoming Darwin Award contenders

You said, "Tradition doesn't mean anything to me"... well if you truly believe that, you most likely wouldn't be here today. For example, it is tradition for you to look both ways before you cross the street. Your parents told you to look both ways, and you do. At the time they told you that, it is unlikely that at that age you understood the fundamental reason for why you did it, but now, after much more experience and getting a lot older, you understand that looking both ways does make sense because those big polluting hunks of metal can turn you into a read smear mark down the middle of the road if you step out and get in their way.

Advice

Tradition also, by its definition, can also be generally interpreted as the passing down of advice.

If you completely ignore any advice that you get, and prefer to figure out everything on your own, and try to reason out everything that you do, you are doing two things:

1. It will take you a long time to figure out a reason for everything that you do.
• This sets you up to be at a disadvantage while you take the time reasoning everything you do
• This does have the advantage of you being absolutely positively sure about yourself and everything that you do.
2. There is a distinct possibility that in order to figure things out, you will have to physically experience it ( i.e. you get hit by the car).
   

Now, at the same time, if you listen and obey every bit of advice that you receive, you are also setting yourself up at a disadvantage because:

1. There is lots of advice out there (everyone has their own opinion and bit of advice).
2. Half the people out there have no clue what they are talking about when they give advice.
3. A lot of advice is contradictory (for ex. Butter or Margarine?)
   

Advice and where to get it

Now, we come to a fork in the road. We know that not listening to any advice at all is bad (i.e. getting hit by a car because you didn't look both ways), and listening to all advice that you receive may not be helpful either. What should you do? Obviously the logical thing to do is to listen to the good advice, and ignore the bad. So then the problem becomes not where to get advice, but how to filter out advice, and form an algorithm for accepting the good and rejecting the bad. There are several ways to deal with advice, here are two examples.

The first way is to logically analyze all of the advice that you receive and determine whether or not it is valid and good or not. The problem with this method is that there may be advice that cannot be logically determined because you may not have the necessary information to make a logical decision (and hence probably why you are getting the advice). This most commonly is because you might not have the necessary experience, and someone else does. Additionally, figuring everything out is inefficient (do you really need to know everything about the mechanics of how a plane flies in order to believe that when you sit in it it will take off?).

The second way is to use a trustworthiness factor. The more you trust the person to give you good advice, the more advice you will accept from them, and the less you trust the person, the less advice you accept from them. The downside is that people can mislead you and give false advice, which if you blindly follow may be bad.

The best method is to combine a portion of both ways. You accept advice from people you trust, and attempt to logically verify it if you are able. There will be times that you may not be able to logically verify all the advice you get (based on lack of information and experience), and in those cases you should trust the people who do have the experience to offer good relevant advice.

Age Apartheid

This leads me into a portion of what I think is wrong with society today, it is what is called "Age Apartheid" (a term that my friend Jim McGinn has coined). Kids nowadays have stopped listening to the advice of their elders anymore, and instead (incorrectly) feel that they know more, and are smarter than their elders. The argument goes like so: "My grandpa has trouble sending an e-mail, but I can take a picture with a digital camera, photoshop it, and attach and e-mail it to my 10 closest friends. Therefore, I am smarter than my grandpa, and since most other elders are also similarly incapable of using the computer like I can, are therefore just as stupid. Hence, if they are stupid, why should I listen to them?". Logically this argument makes sense only in the limited realm of certain subjects (the 'silo' mentality). What kids fail to realize is that there is a lot more out in the world than just their computers. There are a lot of life lessons that their elders have learnt that are applicable to the kids, but because they don't listen to their elders, they are loosing valuable advice that will help them out. More people should start listening to their elders and not discredit them with being totally and completely out to lunch with everything that they say.

Conclusion

Tradition is an important part of society, and without it, there would be many more people who would become Darwin Award contenders because they insisted on ignoring tradition and decided to learn things out the hard way. Advice, like tradition, can be thought of the same way, you either accept it, ignore it, or you find out on your own whether it is valid to you. Additionally there are easier and harder methods to finding out if that advice is valid or applicable. In the end, usually trusting the source of the advice or tradition should be enough for you to have faith that they know what they are talking about, and that their advice should be heeded.