posted
I am, to some extent, a bit of an iconoclast. I'm not a joiner. And "tradition" has always made me uneasy when applied to anything more relevant than, say, the color of one's wedding dress or a list of anniversary gifts.
Another thread just prompted me to try to figure out why. And here's why.
Roboticists have been studying motion for some time now, in hopes of building a perfectly mobile robot. In the old days, they concentrated on building a robot that was consistently stable in all states, across the entire "circuit" of its motion; it usually had at least four legs, and often moved like an inchworm: keeping two legs down and jutting the other two forward. In this way, the robot very slowly progressed without any risk of destabilization.
And yet, oddly enough, such robots tended to fall down at the slightest provocation, took corners badly, and couldn't navigate complex terrain -- despite all the precautions. Adding more stable legs improved things to a point, but also further reduced the terrain over which the 'bot could move.
In the last few years, roboticists have realized what kineticists already knew: that animal motion moves in a wave, a series of "controlled falls" that cycles back and forth between each leg independently. By adding gyroscopes to two and four-legged robot legs and enabling each leg to compensate for its own lean, they've been able to build robots that are not only faster but, despite being in a situation of continual imbalance, considerably more stable over unstable terrain.
I think we live in a time of unstable terrain. And I think a lot of people would LIKE to spend more time planting our feet securely before reaching forward again. But society isn't a caterpillar robot; it's one of those inherently unstable, wobbly robots. It moves forward, careeing back and forth like that sprite in the "walk the drunk" game -- but still manages to move forward. The problems pop up, like in the "walk the drunk" game, when we lean too far or, paradoxically, try to stop the leaning altogether; we not only lose our balance but lose our SENSE of balance, and forget that we CAN figure out which way we should be leaning. It's as if we HAVE legs equipped with gyroscopes, but insist on planting them every so often anyway.
Sociology, like kinetics, is a study of forward motion -- motion that consists mostly of circles, or cycles, when viewed at the correct angle. This, to me, is almost self-evident.
Which is why I think traditionalists are dangerous. Not only would a traditionalist read this and say something like, "But isn't it more practical to make sure your feet are firmly planted before you go anyway," but they might also insist that there's no need to move at all -- that society is NOT, like that walking drunk, inexorably wobbling forward. So they stick out an arm to stop the poor guy, smack him in the face, and send him tumbling snoring into the gutter, sucking his thumb. And those people who try to STEER society, to point it to a better and brighter future that we'd all love, if only we listened to them, are like people playing the "walk the drunk" game but only moving the mouse to the right -- the left doesn't even EXIST as an option -- which doesn't do much for their final score.
I think that wobble is an inherent function of society, and that denying this fact is counterproductive to its continuation, in the same way that gripping the probe too tightly when playing one of those electric buzzer maze games makes your aim all wonky. So I'm very deeply suspicious of people who think they have the answers, particularly if they think they know the questions.
posted
Huh, interesting. Can someone have strong feelings about what they think the answers are without being sure they have all the answers? I like to think I try to walk that road. Don't know if I succeed or not.
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posted
Heh, Scott, reminds me of a book I read called "What is Real?" The author claimed that reality is subjective, there is not absolute reality. And thus, that is absolute reality.
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posted
Very well put Tom, I've had a simular view on things and always stated that tradition, though providing a stable ground is not progress, and instead is stagnation, while chaos and instability is what moves things, though oddly enough, usually moving things towards stability. However, in order to prevent more stagnation, continual chaos has to keep things moving, in essence, a societal ubermench.
Dag: I don't think tradition can me thought of that way, for example, up until recently tradition has dictated women having a lower position in society, it is the breaking of that tradition that moved the woman's movement. Satyagraha
posted
"What if tradition is the wave along which society advances?"
The problem with this thought is that society continues to advance, even as traditions change; clearly, then, the advancement is not contingent upon the preservation of tradition.
I recognize that some traditionalists may disagree with this, particularly those who believe (for example) that it's their duty to return society and/or their church to a copy of what it used to be back in the antediluvian era -- and note that I'm not specifically pointing to the Mormons in the room as I say this.
However, I feel reasonably comfortable saying that the Edenic pre-existence that they imagine never existed, and that I would not trade a single element of modern society for any lifestyle choice of Neolithic man.
I believe, quite strongly, that we live at a time which is the best time; things have never been any better than they are right now, and things will only get better if we don't try too hard and therefore screw 'em up. Some people are laissez-faire about the economy; I'm laissez-faire about the human race in general.
posted
No, I understand what Tom is getting at. Tradition, by definition, doesn't change. It is passed down from generation to generation. The whole point is that it stays the same. If it changes, it is not tradition.
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posted
If you're going to define a tradition as "a continually evolving, self-improving process," I would say that you disagree with me only on semantics.
Now, Dag does raise an interesting point, and actually one that I've heard from a Catholic friend of mine: what if traditions are necessary to get one's foot in the door with the majority of people, and therefore -- through THEIR evolution -- are instrumental in changing people? In this sense, traditions can act like a prybar. Consider when the Catholic church decided to require celibacy of its priests, or started doing Masses in English; these are major changes to a tradition, but since the CORE tradition did not change -- the priests remained, as did the Mass -- the change got forced through and accepted by people who might not have otherwise done so, simply because they were comforted by the other familiar trappings.
An overarching tradition, then, might well act as grease, a way to smooth small changes into things provided that you don't toss out the whole framework.
posted
Even if it walks best by continually falling, the robot has to know where it's been and where it's going if it's going to get anywhere.
I think the wobble is between tradition and resisting tradition. Each needs to be there. Both traditionalists and non-traditionalists are working hard to make sure the wobble goes back to their side regularly. Lose the traditionalists, and the whole thing would fall over. Lose the non-traditionalists, same thing.
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posted
But traditions greatly resist change. Look at the Jewish people. Tradition has held them together despite all the scatterings and scourgings of hateful people. Their traditions have changed little over the passage of time.
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posted
No, I'm tradition does not mean nothing changes. It means certain aspects of life are seen as important enough to hold on to.
Jews have been observing Passover for what, 3500 years now? Catholics have been celebrating Eucharist for 2000. Since we have quick-rising yeast, which wouldn't take too much time to raise bread, should Jews get rid of unleavened bread at Passover? No. It's absurd.
Traditions are about identifying that which we wish to preserve. Even though the specifics of mass have changed, it's still substantively the same service. Even though I doubt the meals served at Passover taste much like the ones they ate the night they left Egypt (for one thing, the plants have probably evolved very different tastes), it's still the same tradition.
The near-fall robot movement paradigm works precisely because the movement is roughly the same, and because it settles back to its mean. As you said, each leg has a gyroscope which helps maintain the correct orientation. Even though a robot's legs might never be in the same position twice, each leg is still doing roughly the same thing.
Doesn't sound like a system that would work without tradition.
posted
Think of the move "Whale Rider". The girl kept the traditions as best as she could. The only way she could do that was by breaking them. She broke one of the traditions (women cannot lead) in order to keep the rest of them alive.
The breaking of individual traditions can be a fine thing, but I think something is really lost when you try to abandon all tradition.
I don't think of traditions as being the multiple legs on your robot -- I think of them as the gyroscopes in the newer robots. They keep us oriented and stable, even while things are changing.
quote:But traditions greatly resist change. Look at the Jewish people. Tradition has held them together despite all the scatterings and scourgings of hateful people. Their traditions have changed little over the passage of time.
But the Jewish people are hardly stagnant. Their lives are enriched by tradition, which keeps important things constant. To change the analogy again, these traditions provide the ground over which the robot of Jewish culture advances.
posted
That's an excellent extension of the analogy. But what, then, represents the influence of actual traditionalism, as opposed to the practice of ritual?
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posted
*Applauds MPH's gyroscope point especially.*
To look at it still another way, which is really going to show my Catholic education, traditions have substance and form. The substance is what must be maintained. The form can adapt to the times.
Dagonee Edit: Tom, ritual is more form; tradition is more substance. But I'm leery of saying this because I don't want to minimize the importance of form/ritual, just to acknowledge that it can and does change sometimes.
posted
I think this could get into an interesting discussion of tradition vs. values. How do they intersect, when are we responding to one rather than the other. I suspect that a lot of the things that Tom looks at as traditions without underlying positive purpose others view as chock full of significance and meaning. It all depends on your perspective.
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posted
Dag, I wonder if you and the Catholic friend to whom I was referring went to the same school. The same argument was made.
And yet I don't know if what you're saying is true. From where I stand, it appears that most of the value of any tradition is in the execution of the form, NOT the substance of the tradition itself, as the concrete benefits of the tradition generally revolve around its communal observance more than what it happens to mean. And since the form itself can change, I can't help feeling like what lends consistency to the motion is the observance itself -- more even than the thing being observed or the way in which it IS observed.
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quote: Very well put Tom, I've had a simular view on things and always stated that tradition, though providing a stable ground is not progress, and instead is stagnation, while chaos and instability is what moves things, though oddly enough, usually moving things towards stability. However, in order to prevent more stagnation, continual chaos has to keep things moving, in essence, a societal ubermench.
So the choice is progress or stagnation? I think not. If my family gathers around the christmas tree every year and sings hymns are we liable to grow a thick layer of slime? If it is traditional for children in my family to get good grades and go on to college, is there a danger that flies and mosquitoes will begin to breed at a greater rate?
Stagnation is a silly term to apply to things like human behavior.
The obvious fact is that without things like "traditional values" and "traditional families" society would not be able to tolerate the experiments of those who want to try something different. None of those things would work without a stable platform from which to launch their sorties.
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posted
I remember in my youth reading something about how people percieve tradition. There is both form and meaning (or, as Dag said, substance), and people can hold to one, both, or neither.
posted
Ritual: the slaughtering of the lamb, the eating of the Passover meal, painting the doorway
Tradition: The angel of death passed over houses of the faithful, the Israelites were granted freedom to leave.
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The gyroscopes in the legs of the robot do more than keep the robot from falling to the left or the right.
They keep if from falling backwards or on its front as well.
I believe tradition is the backwards view of the Robot. It sees everywhere that its been, and everthing that it has learned. Yet as it continues to move forward, the perspective of that view changes, just as our perspective of Passover or Mass has changed from that of our 9th century forebears, or our 2nd century forbears, etc. The more central and important the tradition, perhaps the less that perspective changes, yet even in our own lives the perspectives we personally hold for the most sacred traditions change.
If we do nothing but stare at the traditions that are behind us, we do not move forward. This is not only limiting us from going forward, it does not offer us the growing perspective on the traditions we admire.
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posted
hmm see I think I'd actually put Tom in quadrant 2 on that diagram. I wonder where he'd put himself.
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posted
It's almost the opposite. I think the eating of the Passover lamb is more important than believing in the Passover massacre -- in the sense of tradition being valuable as a way to bring communities together.
Clearly and logically, the substance is really ALL that matters in the long run -- assuming the substance is real. But since I DON'T assume the substance is real, the value lies in the observance of the form.
posted
Perhaps some of the traditions Tom is referring to are views of sexual morality and the like. Many of this and the last generation have felt that society would be much better if we cast off the shackles of religion on these issues. The idea is that society is stagnant because of old-fashioned morals. Views about extra-marital sex, abortion, homosexuality, gender roles, etc. Isn't this one of the big areas where today's society differs from centuries past?
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posted
No wonder we completely disagree about the meaning/value of tradition. I'm opposite of you, Tom -- I believe that changes can be made with the rituals/rites without losing much, as long as you stay true to the meaning behind it. But if you forget the meaning behind it, then it becomes empt and shallow, and can be discarded without losing much.
posted
Oh, I believe that changes can be made to the form, too, as long as the OBSERVANCE continues. I don't think the form or the substance matter as much as the gathering.
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Every year your family gathers around the Christmas Tree, yet which tree, and the number of people in your family, and the presents passed around, all change.
It is tradition for you children to go to college, but do you have a traditional college they go to? And what happens when they have already gone to college? The tradition dies.
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quote:I don't think tradition can me thought of that way, for example, up until recently tradition has dictated women having a lower position in society, it is the breaking of that tradition that moved the woman's movement.
I missed this before. Not all traditions should be maintained, nor are all traditions that should not be maintained necessarily bad in the time they were created in. But that's a very different thing than saying traditionalism (of which I'm still not exactly sure of the definition) is bad.
Of course, Tom has state an assumption which I do not agree, that now is the best time ever. In one sense, that's true, since this time has me. But in a larger sense, we're just trying on different ways of hurting each other than we used to in the past.
quote:From where I stand, it appears that most of the value of any tradition is in the execution of the form, NOT the substance of the tradition itself, as the concrete benefits of the tradition generally revolve around its communal observance more than what it happens to mean.
I doubt I can explain this, since almost all my reasons for why this isn't true depend on beliefs I know you don't hold. I'll need to think about it.
posted
Tom, that only applies to traditions that center around community events. There are many traditions that do not. Gender roles, sexuale mores, etc..
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quote: And are we agreed, however, that we do not want to permanently remain on that platform?
No- I want to stay on the platform unless someone else finds a better place to be. If their platform is rickety and trembling I don't want to go jump on it.
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posted
"It's almost the opposite. I think the eating of the Passover lamb is more important than believing in the Passover massacre -- in the sense of tradition being valuable as a way to bring communities together."
I disagree. While the eating of the Passover is important, I would place things like the escape from destruction/march to freedom as much more central to the Jewish identity. The ritual serves to bring remembrance of those important events.
Edit: I hope I'm not way off base here.
[ June 25, 2004, 03:27 PM: Message edited by: advice for robots ]
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Every year your family gathers around the Christmas Tree, yet which tree, and the number of people in your family, and the presents passed around, all change.
It is tradition for you children to go to college, but do you have a traditional college they go to? And what happens when they have already gone to college? The tradition dies.
Now we are arguing what tradition means, I think. To me the tradition is gathering around the christmas tree singing hymns. If my dad did it in his family and I do it in mine then it is a tradition. It doesn't make a whit of difference to that specific tradition if there are ten people or five.
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posted
Yeah, take away the meaning and it's nothing more than "something we do when we get together because it is comfortable and familiar". Granted, that can bind people together, but not nearly so much.
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posted
"The ritual serves to bring remembrance of those important events."
But I would argue that it is the OBSERVANCE of this event, rather than the event itself, that creates the sense of community. The specifics of the event itself, as long as it still contained memes of persecution and identity, could be completely rewritten. (Try, say, the holidays of Easter and Christmas.)
posted
Let me examine the tradition of gender roles. For a long time, the tradition was that man worked out of the home, and the woman worked in the home. That's the form for the tradition. The substance, meaning, or purpose of the tradition was that you had to have sub-division of labor in order to survive.
I have read the autobiography of Sanford Porter (whose namesake I am), who served in the war of 1812. He had to get married before he could become a farmer. It just wasn't physically possible for one person to do everything that had to be done. He went out and worked the fields, and his wife (my great-great-great-great-great grandmother) stayed at home and took care of the homestead and the children.
As the industrial revolution came, people's standard of living rose. It got to the point where women didn't *need* to work full time at home for the family to have a decent home.
So now the purpose, substance, or meaning of the tradition is dead. But the rite/ritual/form of the tradition kept on for a while longer. People in quadrant 3 resisted change just because it was change. But it eventually did die.
Many people have looked at the dying of traditions like this, and (rightly) saw that its death was a good thing. Unfortunately, many people seen to have learned the wrong lesson from this. Many have come to think that all traditions are merely shackels that we should free ourselves from.
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posted
Huh, I guess that is what Christmas and Easter have become to many. Plenty of people observe these holidays and are not religious at all. Halloween has long since lost its original meaning for most. Interesting.
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quote: "It's almost the opposite. I think the eating of the Passover lamb is more important than believing in the Passover massacre -- in the sense of tradition being valuable as a way to bring communities together."
I disagree. While the eating of the Passover is important, I would place things like the escape from destruction/march to freedom as much more central to the Jewish identity. The ritual serves to bring remembrance of those important events.
Edit: I hope I'm not way off base here.
I would agree, strongly.
Although I would add that the central theme of Passover is not escape for its own sake, but release from the yoke of slavery, and choosing the yoke of God and Torah.
quote: "The ritual serves to bring remembrance of those important events."
But I would argue that it is the OBSERVANCE of this event, rather than the event itself, that creates the sense of community. The specifics of the event itself, as long as it still contained memes of persecution and identity, could be completely rewritten.
To a slight degree, this is true. However, in my experience, each of the holidays (including all the ones with the general theme, "They tried to kill us, God saved us, let's eat!") has its own purpose and flavor. And I'm not talking recipes for brisket.
Community is an important aspect of the holidays, but far from the main point.
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