Social Matter

You don’t pass your beliefs down to the next generation of youngsters by dressing those beliefs up as whatever cause du jour is currently netting the most retweets on Twitter. That was the takeaway of my stroll down memory lane in last week’s post. And it doesn’t matter whether the traditional beliefs in question are a religion or just a commitment to sober, conservative governance, either. The point still stands. The very substance of tradition, in fact, consists of the upcoming generation learning to adopt the precepts, attitudes, worldviews of the generations that preceded it—not in the tailoring and retailoring of those inherited positions to suit their current fashions.

There is a danger, however, in these sorts of exhortations, as necessary as they are. And it’s one that yours truly has fallen victim to on any number of occasions throughout his storied career as a titan of contemporary philosophical commentary. The truth is that a conservative or traditionalist approach can and should hand down any number of useful, vital, I would even say precious values. Yes. The instructions of our fathers, the laws of our mothers, are indeed ornaments of graces unto our heads. Pendants about our necks. They constitute an inheritance of great worth. But the proper stewardship of this inheritance and the transmission thereof to our children is a task that requires a much more nuanced and perspicacious approach than simply ginning up the next “revival” at your local church or stumping for a return to common sense and decency at every stop on your campaign trail.

The transmission of traditional values, in other words, takes more effort and intellectual expenditure than simply insisting that everyone realize the error of his or her ways and get back to traditional values. Traditional values do not live by rants about traditional values alone. And there are more considerations in play than the stand-alone question of whether or not people are sufficiently receptive to those traditional values. Allow me to elaborate.

The myth of Progress gets a lot of airtime in our neck of the woods. A lot of burnings in effigy. And personally I think that such a myth deserves every aspersion and insult and abuse that we heap on its head. I mean I’ve whiled away a pleasant hour or two myself mocking various true-believer progressives. Their self-aggrandizement. Their historical illiteracy. But just as surely as there is a myth of Progress and it bedevils the Left, there is a myth of Decline that bedevils the Right.

The myth of Progress insists that humankind is becoming evermore right-thinking and kind and enlightened. It insists that we’re “evolving” towards a higher, more perfect humanity. A world where the petty divisions and the blood feuds of our past will fade into nothing more than unpleasant memories. It posits a “right side of history.” All of this, of course, promotes sloppy triumphalist thinking: “Everything is working perfectly! Our values are ushering us into the kingdom of non-religion-specific heaven on earth. The only remaining obstacles to this eschaton are the portions of our society that are still recalcitrant to those blessed values! Onwards and upwards!”

The myth of Decline, on the other hand, insists that humankind is becoming evermore debased and corrupt. We year by year grow increasingly wormlike and vile. This myth insists that we’re in an ongoing degenerative state, an uninterrupted string of moral failures, each a greater catastrophe than the last. It posits golden ages in one remote past or another. And this myth of Decline promotes its own brand of intellectual fantasy. Where the progressive insists that all we have to do is press fearlessly forward, the declinist insists that all we have to do is go back. All we have to do is clean up our acts, start behaving ourselves again, and return to the sunny uplands of sanity from which we’ve recently descended.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that tracking change in human societies is a far messier and more demanding puzzle than either of these myths would lead you to believe. One that admits to no pat answers. The world is a complicated place, which is a cliche saying but a true one. And it’s is no less complicated for the massive technological leaps forward that the past couple centuries or so afforded us. On the one hand, we’re more cramped than ever before. Different cultures and nations contend, often violently, with one another in a freshly streamlined global network. And vast arrays of satellites and dishes beam images of those conflicts instantaneously across continents. On the other hand, we often live in a sort of exile, far removed from key social and political processes. Technological advances have allowed states to operate at scales hitherto unimaginable, scales that can bewilder and alienate the mass-administrated citizens of those states. We’re both claustrophobic and living in effective isolation.

But it’s this very complexity, I would argue, that makes a robust case for conservatism. We may, of course, be less moral than our ancestors. It’s doubtful that we’re any more so. But in any event their bequeathal to us was always more than a simple list of moral commandments. It was a strategy, an outlook, wisdom. Conservatism has always been a means to survive the vicissitudes and the vagaries of human existence. It’s never more necessary than times of uncertainty. Preserve the family. Love your own. Put down roots, and prioritize the welfare of the community around you, the only one you’re likely to have any power to affect. Be vigilant in its defense. Maintain mores that valorize all the foregoing. Adopt a habit of healthy skepticism towards “improvements” on those mores offered by eager revolutionaries and high-minded speculators. This is the essence of a lot of conservative wisdom, not rendered invalid by our contemporary milieu but all the more crucial because of it.