Is there a point to tradition?

[Calebark]

As the subject says, is there a point to tradition? Is it just a way to stall progress, or is there value in it?

[Joseph41]

What type of tradition are you speaking of?

[Calebark]

Anything that pops to mind. I'm being pretty vague, so I'll give some examples to give an idea. This can be pretty harmless things, like celebrating birthdays or the fact that we have breakfasts foods, lunch foods, and dinner foods. Then we might move onto issues with sexes, like traditional gender roles (say, males work and females look after the house) or gendered clothing (skirts and dresses aren't acceptable for men). Then we've got things like royalty, holidays, venerating the dead, stigmatising tattoos, yadda yadda.

assuming this is tradition -- perhaps I am using the wrong word?

[Quantum44]

Tradition definitely does stall progress, however I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Traditional social values can be harmful in many ways, however many people find tradition to be essential to keeping in touch with their culture and/or religion. I also think with the rapid advancement in technology, we need spend time thinking about the ramifications of certain kinds of advancement, so a slow down in progression could save us from going down the wrong path. Obviously I’m talking pretty vaguely here, and tradition and technological progress are not necessarily related, but I think it’s an important issue. In terms of social progress I absolutely believe individual autonomy is more important than traditional values endorsed by the status quo.

[turinturambar]

In principle, traditions embody the wisdom of society, and are to be ignored at your peril (family traditions, maybe not so much).
In practice, I suspect many traditions evolve in response to specific situations, and may remain long after the original situation is gone.  Often I suspect that the original decision was arbitrary anyway.

It would be nice to know why traditions came about before deciding to get rid of them (for one great example I've seen, Americans travelling into the west say 200 years ago brought guns with them to keep them safe while travelling, while Americans today don't carry guns when flying to keep them safe while travelling.  Same goal, completely different way of achieving it).

Historically, society did not undergo huge changes from generation to generation, so wisdom was stored by the elders and in traditions.  This is still relevant to human nature, but on the technology and culture side we may make completely different decisions from our parents and grandparents because we have very different options available.

PS: Tradition makes a great song.

[EEEEEEP]

As the subject says, is there a point to tradition? Is it just a way to stall progress, or is there value in it?

If you are talking about values and many things, I'll talk about them in the same umbrella.

Traditional values , it's not black or white (good or bad). It depends =) It's so broad, you really cannot judge it all based on brush.  I think there are 3 categories:

- No value, but does not stall progress
---  Having a BBQ
--- Bunnings snags
--- (Insert most religious traditions)
--- Cultural things like not doing certain things on a new year (Big with  in Asian culture)

- No value and Stalls progress
--- Old traditional ideals about Chastity
--- Old traditional values about Child Raising
--- Old values about gender
--- Old Traditional values about offence and jokes
--- Literally anything regarding, sexism, racism, etc...

- Has value
--- Listening to your parents
--- Getting together for the New Year
--- Treating people how you want to be treated
--- Thanks Giving day (American thing)
--- Being kind to others and generous
--- Punctuality (Big in Asia and Europe)
....
Most people think of the things I listed in the "No value and Stalls progress" list as traditional ideals and values, but I think that there are definitely good traditional things too (other list) .

In short, Yes and no!

[peterpiper]

My family doesn't have any traditions and sometimes, honestly, I wish we had something to look forward to when 'that' time of the year comes around. Traditions can be a harmless source of identity and culture, particularly among a community of people, but it can also be something relatively simple like visiting your grandma's in the summer holidays where you know aunt x and uncle y and DJ pudding etc are going to be there, and there's gonna be a lot of chicken to eat and fun to be had, eating chicken n shit.

Ideological traditions are however, problematic, because it resists change on the grounds that 'since people before us have believed it we should believe it too'. And this is just stupid, because I don't think anyone should believe or be coerced into believing in something because others before them believed in it too. Like ain't nobody got time for dogma. This isn't to say that ideologies of the past are stupid because they had a root in the past. No, I just have a problem with the concept of having a belief be passed on from generation to generation on the basis of 'it's just always been this way', which is what I think ideological traditions are in essence.