The Cult of Tradition

Post Reply New Topic

Thought that this video was pretty interesting. Talked about how statues are not history, but a glorification of an idea of history that work counter to having an accurate idea of what history was. How those say that they want to protect statues really want to protect their idea. The video also goes into a lot of details in how some of the founding fathers of America were really awful people, that largely acted in self interest as very rich people that wanted to keep more money to themselves and to blame the English for the problems of the commoners so they would not realize that the rich people that wanted the fight for independence were largely responsible for differences of wealth. Problems that did not disappear when independence was gained the sort of protest that would be criticised by the conservative crowd happened to bring fairness that is appreciated now in the mythology of what their intentions always were.

A lot of the facts in here seem kind of run counter to the type of mythology I hear Americans say their country was founded on, and run against the idea I have been hearing about defenders of this mythology saying that the statues need to be protected because of history.

Not far,maybe 4 miles from my apartment is the Susan B. Anthony house on East rd. and birthplace thereof and of coarse this year is the 200th birthday of Anthony.It was supposed to be a huge celebration but Covid ruined that.

For this small town in the Berkshire hills Susan B. Anthony is the biggest thing to ever happen there,it's cool to drive by and see the now museum and see it's the birthplace of Anthony.

I know the statue destructions are mostly more European white men not women,but once all the male statues are gone then what.Will historians find dirt on SBA and the museum torn down and the Hoosac Valley will loose it's greatest historical figure.

Or what about about Martin Luther King Jr. whose attitudes and statements about women are considered reprehensible by today's standard's.They were normal for his time and particularly black men who had been toughened and hardened by oppression and could be quite macho and sexist.Should we take down his statues down?

Where does it end,should we take down the statue of Boudicca and her daughters across from British parliament because her rebellion caused the deaths of 45K britons at Roman hands.

Once one statue is gone eventually all the statues will be gone!

I could not agree more.Right ... the wealthy and powerful taking credit for the efforts of the poor and hopeless -- "It was my idea all along!"The mythology that has been drummed into our heads since our first recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance on our first day of school.  Yeah, it sucks being an American sometimes.  The Cult of Patriotism is so pervasive that even trying to teach foreigners that America was not founded to be (a) a Whites-Only country, nor a (b) Christians-Only country was an almost impossible task until the MAGA-hat crowd started taking pride in in how hateful and violent they could be.

Okay, I won't go into the history of the founding fathers and the early Union, (although there was a fair bit in that video that I already knew.) I want to learn a bit more about the early history of the Union before I discuss that subject; I have a book called Puritan's Empire, which I plan to read sometime in the future before getting into debates on this stuff.

What I want to discuss is something a bit more basic and general, which is simply this: The video discusses traditionalism and the absolutes present in the United States' Constitution, I assume you are on the same position as the guy in the video in advocating the overthrow of traditionalist values and that the US Constitution should not have absolutes in it; but should be subject to the progressivists that are in positions of power and authority. My simple question to this is, what happens when your values become traditions, and someone advocates that the US, Australian, or Canadian Constitution should change in a way you don't want it to go? I'm not accusing of being a relativist or anything by the way, I'm not sure what your position is regarding morality, I'm just questioning the positions you appear to present here.

Why does it seem that non-Americans (a Canadian and an Australian, in this case) are always willing to "discuss" the U.S.A., U.S. traditions, and The U.S. Constitution?

Why don't they discuss the various merits and de-merits of Constitutional Monarchies (for example)?

Even though you're on my foes list, I'll reply:

Good question, I wish there was more discussion among my fellow-Canadians about these kinds of things. Unfortunately, the majority of Canadian Conservatives are either hard to find, or are secular conservatives which I have a great distrust and even a bit of a distaste for.

Probably because an American focused thread will attract more participation than a rest of the Anglosphere centred thread. If that topic is of interest to you, why don't you start the thread?

I will have to suck it up and accept the overturning of what has become a new tradition in favour of the new truth that I might be too blind to see, if I or other people were too focused because we got attached to that new tradition. Not every tradition needs to be destroyed as soon as possible, but there is little that makes any such tradition holy, and progress means overturning tradition that a few generations ago thought had to be the only truth, otherwise we would still be hunter gatherers.

As our societies become more enlightened, we should be able to decide what traditions to keep, rather than being so focused on any one tradition.

As a simple answer I want Australia to drop being beholden to the monarchy, and likely to the UK, to become a republic. It does seem rather difficult to get this started, too many people here are obsessed with absolute garbage like royal weddings and babies, and of course the tradition. At the very least I think that being part of the current set up is that we have a relationship with Britain and the other nations that are in the same boat, we should be guaranteed help with each other.

Largely, I think Australia currently has so much of a connection with Queen Elizabeth II that it is barrier to going to a republic, she is on all our coins, and largely she is just a status symbol without actually influencing anything meaningful. But once she passes away and or the role of king moves onto the next person, then I think there is a better chance that a republic movement will gain some traction. Charles I think is particularly unpopular, and I imagine a lot of people could be swayed into moving to a republic over our current constitutional monarchy that would have Charles being put on our money. Can't wait to move on from that tradition.

An interesting point for those not in the know, my state is literally called Queensland, named after Queen Victoria who in power at the time, just like another state being called Victoria.

So you believe that there is an absolute truth.

I believe that we can keep moving towards for what is truly the right thing at that time. That concept means what one might call "absolute truth" is on a continuum to infinity of increasing complexity and thus hard to say if there is a point that something is at the point where you can point to something as the absolute truth that there is nowhere else to budge.

That is an interesting answer for many reasons. I'll leave things here for tonight, but your answer just touched on two big things that I've been thinking about for a long time.

If there is a perfect truth, imperfect humans will never understand it.

Cults do seem to be based mostly on traditional beliefs, and not on Scriptural truths.  All it takes to start a cult is someone who claims to have "visions" or a "divine message", and for other people to believe their claims.

No Scriptural evidence; no material evidence, either; just some otherwise obscure and unknown person(s) claiming to have been personally contacted by a divine being, and a lot of gullible people to believe them.

Thus is born a Cult of Tradition.

Well, the attack on statues is happening here, too.
We have many similar issues with a colonial past in Australia - but with a population about a fifth that of the US and only a handful of Aussies on WP, it might not rate the same level of discourse.

For the record, although I'm a British immigrant to Aus, I can't see that the British monarchy has much relevance here, and I imagine we might become a republic within a generation or so.

The two things that I have been thinking about for long time are existentialism and Jansenism, both (albeit, in regards to the latter, it's not actually the heresy Jansenism but rather, a belief present in Jansenism that the heresy is most often associated with.) are present in your answer. I got interested in Jansenism after I learned that two of the greatest Marian Saints, (perhaps the greatest of the Marian Saints to date, the only one I can think of right now who could rival them, is St. Maximilian Kolbe.) Saint Louis de Montfort, and Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, fought against that heresy during their times. Jansenism was a heresy that arose from an erroneous and false interpretation of the works of Saint Augustine, it is often referred to as a "Catholic version of Calvinism," but it's actually a bit more complex than Calvinism.

While Calvinism teaches that God made humanity without free will, with souls that were either predestined or reprobate, Jansenism teaches that Adam and Eve originally had free will, but lost it after the fall; and thus fallen humanity has now taken on a sort of beastly nature, where they are lured by outside influences and can't act on there own; in Jansenist Soteriology, both God and Satan basically hold out cookies to humanity, and the souls that end up being attracted to the cookie that God holds out are predestined, while the souls that are attracted to the cookie that Satan holds out are reprobate. But the main way in which Jansenism and Calvinism is that they both teach total depravity, that humanity is totally sinful and wretched; and I think it is no coincidence that two of the greatest Marian Saints to date, also happened to be sworn enemies of this kind of heresy. You see it's a dogma of the Catholic Faith that Our Lady was Immaculately Conceived, that means, She was conceived in the womb of Saint Anne, without humanity's fallen nature. Our Lady is also referred to as the New Eve, and is also considered to be the greatest of all God's creatures, the absolute height of creation. I think it's reasonable to believe, that Our Lady is humanity the way God originally intended it to be, that She represents what it really means to be human. When I think of "mankind," I think of the Woman, Her.

So I believe that the reason St. Alphonsus de Liguori and St. Louis de Montfort ended up becoming sworn enemies of Jansenism, because they had such a close relationship with the New Eve. Bu the reason I'm going on about Jansenism is because, I noticed I kind of Jansenist view of humanity among certain people since my reversion to the Catholic Faith. Particularly, I noticed this kind of negative view of humanity among certain, what you would call "liberal" or "left-wing" officials in the Catholic Church, whenever these people are confronted with Traditional Catholic teachings, their said or implied response often goes something like this,"Oh, how can you be sure that [Theological or moral truth here] is true, we're all just puny humans, how can we ever know for certain what God's will is?" now this isn't literally Jansenism, it actually has another name, it's called Theological Agnosticism, the belief that it is impossible to really know God; I just noticed it from the Anthropological and Mariological point of view and thus, viewed as akin to Jansenism's negative view of humanity. However your answer does contain a bit of that same sort of view, that we human beings are only capable of gaining enough truth to get by, and may never understand moral truth fully. So that's one thing your answered touched on, the other is existentialism.

I learned about existentialism at secular college, it was presented mostly in its historical context, namely the aftermath of WWII, so the instructor gave us, sort of a militant form of the philosophy, namely, you're going take all the horrible pain and suffering of this life and use it to impose your own will on reality. To me as a Catholic, that struck me as sort of a blasphemous mockery of redemptive suffering, instead of offering up your own suffering as a form of sacrificial prayer, you instead use pain to force reality to be the way you want it to be. I'm not saying that's all that existentialism claims, or that all existentialists have this attitude or take things to these extremes. However it does seem that in practice, if not, in theory, an existentialist approaches reality, the same way an industrial modernist approaches nature or the environment. Now I've never looked closely for existentialism in the arguments and discourse of Left-wing politics, but I've always had a hunch about that left-wing politics was based off of existentialism. Your answer does seem to imply existentialism, you seem to describe truth as something that needs to be constantly extracted like a mining mineral, not something that can be approached receptively and can even be found in our own nature.

There is even more to you answer that I've noticed throughout last night and this morning, (like how, despite these two beliefs appearing to be the polar opposite of each other, you've actually managed to make them two sides of the same coin) but I'll leave it there for now, I've already given you a lot in this response. It'll be interesting to see your response and critique of what I've presented.