As was pointed out in the comments to my karate post, the observation that most traditions are invented is getting somewhat traditional itself, going back as it does to the exposure of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery.
So maybe it’s time to turn all this around, and make the point that we are now living in a society that’s far more tradition-bound than that of the 19th Century, and in some respects more so than at any time since at least the Middle Ages.
It’s striking, if you’re not aware of it already, to observe that Christmas, as we now know it, was invented in the 20 years or so between 1840 and 1860, However, what is even more striking that it’s barely altered in the succeeding 150 years. Even the complaints haven’t changed in decades.
And what’s true of Christmas is true of most of the favourite examples of invented tradition. Clan tartans were invented out of whole cloth (as it were), as soon as the actual clans had been destroyed by the Clearances, but this process was pretty much complete by 1850, and the system is now as inflexible as if the Scots wha’ wi’ Wallace bled had done so in defence of a dress code. Moreover, at 150, these traditions really can claim to be ancient (at least in the eyes of a non-indigenous Australian).
A variety of cultural niches, once subject to the cycles of fashion, seem now to have been filled once and for all. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean have all been dead for decades, but all are more instantly recognisable than any putative successor.
More significant institutions show the same kind of stability. Political systems and national boundaries are becoming more stable over time, not less. The collapse of the Soviet Empire led to the breakup of some federal states, but nothing like the wholesale resurgence of irredentist claims predicted by many.
One obvious factor assisting all this is technology. Just as printing has fixed languages once and for all, radio, TV and recorded music and video have a powerful effect in fixing cultural traditions of all kinds. Of course, this is the opposite of the usual story in which technology drives us to a postmodern condition of constant change. But that’s enough for me. It’s time to see what’s on at the (75-year-old) Commonwealth Games.
John Quiggin 
Don’t forget that at least some aboriginal ancient traditions are of recent origin – like the one Quadrant (I think) cited about how certain constellations were celestial clan elders enjoying pipes of tobacco around a fire.
An alternative take on one particular (and major) aspect which puts the time as 1804-1881.
It is well enough known that G. K. Chesterton opined that “[Tradition] is the democracy of the dead.”
Less well known is Chesterton’s punchline: “The ancient Greeks voted by stones; [our dead ancestors] shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.”
Chesterton’s homily thus insists that progress is good, up to a point. More precisely, Chesterton believes that his earliest Christian ancestors were right to progress beyond the dolmens and runestones of their ancestors. But Chesterton insists that progress ends with the Cross.
How does this relate to JQ’s now traditional swipe at post-modernism? (Not that there’s anything wrong that that: JQ has every right to his opinion about post-modernism, and he’s not even dead.)
JQ, a very decent, fair-minded modernist, identifies “change” as an essential component of the post-modern world.
On the contrary, I would argue that “change” is more of a fixation for modernists.
In fact, proponents and theorists of modernism adhere to a more proscriptive and more exacting concept than mere “change”. That concept is “progress”.
It may well be argued that a belief in “progress”, the idea that things improve and that things can be perceived as improving is the sine qua non of being a modernist. (Chesterton paid tribute to the power of contemporary moderist thought by trying to hijack the powerful notion of “progress’ in the cause of Christianity.)
Less subtle cultural conservatives than Chesterton, on the other hand, dispute modernists along two broad lines. Either:
1. What seems to be “progress” isn’t progress at all, but retrogression toward a new form of barbarism. (This was Chesterton’s fear, as quoted above), or:
2. There is nothing new under the sun. What looks like change is simply old wine in new bottles. (Chesteron was more subtle than this.)
Post-modernists dispute the claims of modernism in somewhat similar ways:
1. “Progress” connotes some movement towards a destination. These destinations are seen by post-modernists to be trivial and/or factitious. (Witness the triviality of Chesterton’s terminus of “progress”.)
2. There is such a thing as new wine. But new wine is still wine.
“Progressives”, who cannot avoid being modernists, have a difficult task in explaining how the changes they espouse are genuine changes, and that these changes qualify as progress. And as the world keeps bumping into limits, not the least of which are environmental limits, this task of identifying genuine material progress becomes more and more difficult.
Regardless of these difficult challenges, here’s hoping that modernists continue to make progress in examining the sources and consequences of their modernism.
History Without End.
Amen.
As another example of fixity, Australia’s main strike fighter is forty years old and counting, which in previous years would have had the Bleriot biplane used in the Korean War and the Sopwith Camel coming along just in time to be phased out for the F-111….
And this is the longest period of stability in clothes since the dark ages; a man from 1800 could pass for normal today, but couldn’t have walked into 1600.
The biggest difference is probably fluoride in the water.
If a tradition has been around as long as you can remember, and as long as the oldest people you know can remember then psychologically the tradition might as well have been founded by Eve when she and Adam were kicked out the garden of Eden.
I’d imagine that this sense of the past would be even greater in a society which relied on oral tradition.
I like Chris’ point about Australia’s F111s. They first went in service in in 1967 (USAF) – having them still in service is like using a hotted up HR Holden or XR Falcon as daily transport. It’s extraordinary.
But if military aircraft and mens’ suits can have had long operational lives think about computers or audio equipment. There are people alive today who’ve seen vinyl records, reel to reel tape decks, cartridge players, audio cassettes, mini discs, compact discs, and MP3 players. Chances are most of us will live to see the most recent of these become obselete.
Well, strictly speaking “modern” doesn’t have to mean anything more than “fashionable”, and reading any more into it says something about the further purposes and understanding of the person speaking – there can easily be miscommunication.
What is more, there are a great many things that describable as “perfection of its sort”. In many cases they cannot be improved on but we do other things now, e.g. metal working instead of flint knapping. In vases like RAAF defence equipment, they genuinely are substandard unless you understand that they fill the role of colonial troops with Snyders – converted muzzle loading rifles – while the European regiments have Martini-Henry rifles.
But in some real cases perfection in certain areas really was attained as nearly as humanly possible, and “progress” reflects partly the doing of different things and partly the idea that if you don’t make a change, you aren’t doing the job.
This is seen in the comparison of bolt action rifles and today’s Australian variant Steyr assault rifles. The latter are less accurate, have less stopping power, and are more prone to failure in combat conditions, but they are bullpup rifles which weigh less and can be more easily carried by troops in vehicles. (Other countries have bullpup rifles which make far less of a performance sacrifice.)
But taken more generally, “progress” is something of a myth. Certainly history has often shown examples of retrogression, and there is nothing inherently impossible that the search strategy of “progress” might lead to moving away from an optimum if continued after reaching it. And it is a commonplace that the USA could not now put a man on the moon inside a ten year horizon starting from today, unlike the early 1960s.
For “vases”, read “cases” – finger trouble.
PML – Yes, the”v” and the “c” are adjacent on the keyboard. I once read a story in the Times about how some monks in a rural Spanish monastery had been expelled for “violating their cows”. I hope it was a typo.
How does one ciolate a cow, as a matter of interest?
Have you all read David Brin’s weblogging about modernity and the rarity of the scientific approach — how most cultures went for millenia without developing science, and the risk of losing the scientific approach completely if our current trend goes entirely anti-science.
http://www.davidbrin.com/
The stability of any cultural norm is dependent upon the survival of the dominant mores. The Romans had an equal number of invented events that marked their cultural and political lives, the myth of Romulus and Remus, the Republic, Stoicism. Any number of fads came and went, all with a degree of religiosity, aka Monroe and Dean today.
Have to disagree with the notion of the F111 being an indicator of cultural or social stability. The machine represents the boundaries of phyics and the limits of aerodynamic theory, so for the past 40 years the design and machine are but a representation of what science now knows, fixed by the laws of motion and thermodynamics. Therefore expect no breakthroughs in either shape or speed, the aeroplane now is about as good as it gets.
PrQ your post and many of the responses are a tad disturbing.
PrQ: “we are now living in a society that’s far more tradition-bound than that of the 19th Century, and in some respects more so than at any time since at least the Middle Ages.”
I think you are confusing “society” with the restrictions on power to act by the autocrats and oligarchs almost invariably in “government” up to (in my view) the 1920s in “western” countries. Such governments used “tradition” to repress society and justify their own position.
So in this context, how are we “more tradition bound”? (I’ll come back to the technology question in a later response).
Some not-so-heavy observations….
PrQ: “Elvis, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean have all been dead for decades, but all are more instantly recognisable than any putative successor.”
Recognisable by whom?
Us baby-boomers who both created and fed off the Elvis, Jimmy D and MM myths, and are now reaching tjilpi (old fella) status, thats who.
Not the generations X,Y,Z,Z- who have followed. I bet they recognise, say, Elvis in much the same way as I recognise, say, Bing Crosby (yawn, benign disdain, don’t upset Mum). I think your generation gap (remember that term?) is showing.
PrQ: “the (75-year-old) Commonwealth Games”.
1931 is 75 years ago. I don’t think the games are held on odd numbered years. Irrespective of when the first one was, it was the British Empire Games. I forget when it became the Commonwealth games, but certainly way less than 75 years ago!
To pick up my point on your previous post on this subject, we continue to evolve, contextualise, re-explain things we recognise as “tradition”. I don’t see this as a “boundary” on society.
It’s not correct that baby boomers created these myths. They were still in school when MM died. And Madonna, who’s done more than anyone else to perpetuate MM’s iconic status, appealed mainly to Xers (she’s a late boomer/Generation Joneser herself).
Elvis was desperately unfashionable among baby-boomers in the sixties and has been on the rise ever since.
The Empire Games began in 1930.
Pr Q: “Just as printing has fixed languages once and for all, radio, TV and recorded music and video have a powerful effect in fixing cultural traditions of all kinds. Of course, this is the opposite of the usual story in which technology drives us to a postmodern condition of constant change.”
This and some of the responses to your post miss the technology evolutionary cycle which goes something like invention> early adoption> standardisation (and commercialisation)> general usage > obsolescence > museum. Plotted on a graph of time vs. technological advance, most technologies show a steep curve from invention to standardisation, a long plateau of general usage and a slow decay down an obsolencence period to museum artifact.
Mike Hart puts the point very well: “Have to disagree with the notion of the F111 being an indicator of cultural or social stability. The machine represents the boundaries of phyics and the limits of aerodynamic theory, so for the past 40 years the design and machine are but a representation of what science now knows, fixed by the laws of motion and thermodynamics. Therefore expect no breakthroughs in either shape or speed, the aeroplane now is about as good as it gets. ”
Or as one air force planner put it (I’m quoting from yesterday’s SMH) “the F111 still delivers an adequate f–k off factor”, which is all that is being asked of it. It may be well down the obsolescence curve, but its still useful.
Printing “fixed” the language. Nonsense. Language was standardised to exploit the communication opportunities opened up by printing. Language has continued to develop, very often in response communications media development, as well as being required by those developments. Language has continued to evolve to suit society’s needs. It is society’s evolution, which is often inextricably mixed with technical evolution, which drives language.
Standardisation is very often the necessary precursor for exploiting technology, and this standardisation should not be seen as a tradition fettering society. Of course we always come to discussion about turning points and when to move to a new standard. DOS to Windows for e.g.
but nothing like the wholesale resurgence of irredentist claims predicted by many.
Running to the OED now. Irredentist claims? You mean, theories completely without teeth?
You mean… completely without teeth?”
No, that would be edentate, like these guys. 😉
The F-111 issue is a case of “perfection of its sort”. The point is that you don’t try to achieve more of the same sort of results by refining it, any more than you can get any better observation techniques by improving the 1950s U2; it can’t be done.
But you can use satellites instead of U2s, just as you can use aircraft carriers in battle groups instead of bigger and better battleships. In fact, 1941 showed that the latest battleships were only better compared with the earlier ones, while the earlier ones could have stood up to aircraft carriers far better (if only they could have got where they were needed in time). That was shown by what happened when the USA tested some A bombs on obsolete warships – most stayed afloat and apparently battleworthy.
PrQ: “we are now living in a society that’s far more tradition-bound than that of the 19th Century, and in some respects more so than at any time since at least the Middle Ages.�
Now I’m just sure women really agree with you there.