In my last two years of college I rebelled against the system. I stopped doing homework and instead studied physics by playing with equations (and acing exams). In this I was a “school fundamentalist.” I wanted to cut out what I saw as irrelevant and insincere ritual, so that school could better serve what I saw as its fundamental purpose, which was to help curious people learn. I contrasted myself with “traditionalists” who just unthinkingly continued with previous habits and customs.
The Venkat piece (referenced by Kenny, above) depicts a trade-off between beauty (ritual) and experimentation (innovation). It (implicitly) prescribes a golden mean.
If Venkat's correct (his position reminds me of a semi-popular recent book relating left/right brain to culture--left would correspond to experimentation and right to beauty) then those who overvalue ritual are stuck in a "loser" culture, those who overvalue innovation in a sociopathic culture.
But I suspect that the same folks who bemoan the loss of comforting rituals also hope for more rapid innovation. Well, folks, you can't eat your cake and have it too.
[Added.] The book I mentioned is "The Master and his Emissary."
Venkat at Ribbonfarm just posted a sequence of tweet-sized summaries of his previous writing that seems weirdly related. ['Weirdly' because I suspect there was no direct coordination.]
The theoretical justification for conservatism is that existing systems are too complicated to be fully-understood theoretically.
The hair I'd split here is that the conservative need not believe that systems are hard to understand; only that they're hard to coordinate. (Which absolves them of the particular contradiction you accuse.) Coordination is hard is the conservative motto. (What RH terms "fundamentalists" include both radicals and reactionaries--far-mode thinkers in either temporal direction.)
The kernel of wisdom in conservatism is the recognition that it's much easier to make things worse than better, but the conservative's apology for tradition is tied to a discredited functionalist dogma (functionalist in the sense used by theoretical anthropologists and sociologists). RH assumes that traditions have important functions for society whereas they at best are local equilibria for a (small) group of individuals.
If the explicit justifications for traditions are wanting, RH will have recourse to their hidden benefits. Implicit is that the benefits are greater than the (sometimes obvious) harms (e.g., attending time-consuming lectures when you can assimilate the material 4 X as fast studying it from text.) A sublime functionalist faith.
There seems to be a disconnect between "extending rights and liberties" and the behavior of conservative/traditional/fundamentalist Christians who universally oppose such change and use the "change tax" to justify their position. The fact that modern civil rights are still new enough in their conscience that they don't view them as "traditional", making the article's thesis irrelevant.
Robin, I think that what you describe is a symptom of being so preoccupied with reaching goals that it's easy to remember why we set goals in the first place. Goals aren't universally good, they only make sense as long as we have a certain "joie de vivre", people who lose that find that they no longer understand why goals have to be set, we call that depression and compare it to a physical disease but it's really no less rational than "normal" behavior. We create the meaning of life. Rituals and other social acitivities that seem irrelevant in (extreme) far mode actually help us maintain that joie de vivre and thus help us to feel like our lives and the things we do have some kind of purpose. People often forget about that part of human nature, partly because forgetting about it makes abstract thinking easier and partly it goes against the way some people like to think off themselves (especially "rationalists").
Other abstract fields have similar phenomena: a string theorist might forget about basic probability theory when chasing ever more complicated ideas, an economist chasing after ways to grow the economy might forget about the fact that growth is only a tool to improve people's lives (so stellar growth that only benefits 0.01% of the population doesn't fit the bill).
To quote Samuel Johnson (himself quoting the sixteenth century theologian, Richard Hooker), "Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."
Well, to be honest, most Americans are now being raised without any normal social traditions. Knowing only ignorance they are unable to judge how much poorer off they really are. I wonder how many times your wife witnessed some who had rejected traditional bereavement rituals versus how many times she witnessed someone who simply had no idea how one is expected to go through such rituals.
Indeed, Protestant fundamentalists were once radicals. The theoretical justification for conservatism is that existing systems are too complicated to be fully-understood theoretically. (My LessWrong post "Reason as memetic immune disorder" is relevant.) It should not be surprising that conservatives don't usually articulate this, since it is a theoretical justification that deprecates theoretical justifications. We should thus expect to find that liberals try to use science and theoretical justifications correctly, while conservatives use them only as convenient. Anyone who trusts conclusions arrived at via theory is by definition not conservative.
(I'm using the term "conservative" here to mean "ideologically conservative", disliking change, as opposed to whatever beliefs those in power, who inevitably exploit conservatism, hold. Karl Rove is not an ideological conservative.)
We know changes to complex systems always have unintended consequences, so we know conservatives have a point. I think, Robin, you're familiar with the various arguments that US society suffered various breakdowns around 1970. We could read this as a resounding validation of conservatism: Making necessary changes to our society, extending rights and liberties to women and minorities, education to the poor, protection to the environment, and introducing ethics into our global politics, inevitably disrupted the system for decades to follow, as reflected in, e.g., GDP, inflation, & crime. We could call this the "change tax". It would be nice if liberals and conservatives could recognize that they are really fighting about how large the change tax is. Perhaps they could even cooperate to look for ways to make it smaller.
Indeed, thanks for catching that.
I'm intrigued by the enthusiasm for ritual among the Aspiscenti.
The vast majority of the world's rituals have odious consequences.
In your first sentence I think you meant "...easy to *forget*..."
The Venkat piece (referenced by Kenny, above) depicts a trade-off between beauty (ritual) and experimentation (innovation). It (implicitly) prescribes a golden mean.
If Venkat's correct (his position reminds me of a semi-popular recent book relating left/right brain to culture--left would correspond to experimentation and right to beauty) then those who overvalue ritual are stuck in a "loser" culture, those who overvalue innovation in a sociopathic culture.
But I suspect that the same folks who bemoan the loss of comforting rituals also hope for more rapid innovation. Well, folks, you can't eat your cake and have it too.
[Added.] The book I mentioned is "The Master and his Emissary."
Venkat at Ribbonfarm just posted a sequence of tweet-sized summaries of his previous writing that seems weirdly related. ['Weirdly' because I suspect there was no direct coordination.]
The theoretical justification for conservatism is that existing systems are too complicated to be fully-understood theoretically.
The hair I'd split here is that the conservative need not believe that systems are hard to understand; only that they're hard to coordinate. (Which absolves them of the particular contradiction you accuse.) Coordination is hard is the conservative motto. (What RH terms "fundamentalists" include both radicals and reactionaries--far-mode thinkers in either temporal direction.)
The kernel of wisdom in conservatism is the recognition that it's much easier to make things worse than better, but the conservative's apology for tradition is tied to a discredited functionalist dogma (functionalist in the sense used by theoretical anthropologists and sociologists). RH assumes that traditions have important functions for society whereas they at best are local equilibria for a (small) group of individuals.
If the explicit justifications for traditions are wanting, RH will have recourse to their hidden benefits. Implicit is that the benefits are greater than the (sometimes obvious) harms (e.g., attending time-consuming lectures when you can assimilate the material 4 X as fast studying it from text.) A sublime functionalist faith.
There seems to be a disconnect between "extending rights and liberties" and the behavior of conservative/traditional/fundamentalist Christians who universally oppose such change and use the "change tax" to justify their position. The fact that modern civil rights are still new enough in their conscience that they don't view them as "traditional", making the article's thesis irrelevant.
Robin, I think that what you describe is a symptom of being so preoccupied with reaching goals that it's easy to remember why we set goals in the first place. Goals aren't universally good, they only make sense as long as we have a certain "joie de vivre", people who lose that find that they no longer understand why goals have to be set, we call that depression and compare it to a physical disease but it's really no less rational than "normal" behavior. We create the meaning of life. Rituals and other social acitivities that seem irrelevant in (extreme) far mode actually help us maintain that joie de vivre and thus help us to feel like our lives and the things we do have some kind of purpose. People often forget about that part of human nature, partly because forgetting about it makes abstract thinking easier and partly it goes against the way some people like to think off themselves (especially "rationalists").
Other abstract fields have similar phenomena: a string theorist might forget about basic probability theory when chasing ever more complicated ideas, an economist chasing after ways to grow the economy might forget about the fact that growth is only a tool to improve people's lives (so stellar growth that only benefits 0.01% of the population doesn't fit the bill).
To quote Samuel Johnson (himself quoting the sixteenth century theologian, Richard Hooker), "Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."
Well, to be honest, most Americans are now being raised without any normal social traditions. Knowing only ignorance they are unable to judge how much poorer off they really are. I wonder how many times your wife witnessed some who had rejected traditional bereavement rituals versus how many times she witnessed someone who simply had no idea how one is expected to go through such rituals.
Don't leave us hanging, RH: what dire consequences ensued from your refusal to follow tradition and indulge in ritual?
Indeed, Protestant fundamentalists were once radicals. The theoretical justification for conservatism is that existing systems are too complicated to be fully-understood theoretically. (My LessWrong post "Reason as memetic immune disorder" is relevant.) It should not be surprising that conservatives don't usually articulate this, since it is a theoretical justification that deprecates theoretical justifications. We should thus expect to find that liberals try to use science and theoretical justifications correctly, while conservatives use them only as convenient. Anyone who trusts conclusions arrived at via theory is by definition not conservative.
(I'm using the term "conservative" here to mean "ideologically conservative", disliking change, as opposed to whatever beliefs those in power, who inevitably exploit conservatism, hold. Karl Rove is not an ideological conservative.)
We know changes to complex systems always have unintended consequences, so we know conservatives have a point. I think, Robin, you're familiar with the various arguments that US society suffered various breakdowns around 1970. We could read this as a resounding validation of conservatism: Making necessary changes to our society, extending rights and liberties to women and minorities, education to the poor, protection to the environment, and introducing ethics into our global politics, inevitably disrupted the system for decades to follow, as reflected in, e.g., GDP, inflation, & crime. We could call this the "change tax". It would be nice if liberals and conservatives could recognize that they are really fighting about how large the change tax is. Perhaps they could even cooperate to look for ways to make it smaller.