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The necessity of historical continuity is almost entirely in our heads. That’s a neutral operating assumption for me. Perpetuation of tradition is a choice. One that might have some Lindy merits going for it, but is never actually necessary.
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But my sense is that trads see it as necessary in a way, almost like flirtation with discontinuous futures is an unrealistic childish affectation/fantasy that they set aside when they turn trad. I suspect it feels like “growing up” into a tragic adult posture.
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I’m pretty much pure philistine in the Vonnegut sense. “History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.”
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Carse: “To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished.”
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The Carse version is a bit self-congratulatory, and I think his position is a bit more confused than Vonnegut’s, due to wanting to square theology with future-positivity. Vonnegut was a shitposter. His philosophy was mostly juvenile but with some insights scattered throughout.
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Unabashedly reactionary turns are in a way easier to deal with. My response is generally a straightforward opposition, since foundational axioms are so different. But trad turns make me slightly sad. I have the same reaction I do to friends retreating to deal with depression.
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I can also sense that they, in their turn, view me as being irredeemably lost to moral weakness and corruption 🤣 Deep kind of divergence
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I am only talking about soul-searching trads for whom it’s an end-point of a kind of spiritual quest/karma-trauma trekking. Not what I think of as “political trad” which feels like a calculated act aimed at elevation to blue-checkery. Like straight actors playing gay roles.
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I guess I’m thinking about this stuff because so many young people in their prime, like 20-35 seem to be turning trad, like 3x the % when I was that age. Feels like a bit of a tragic waste, since 20-35 is when you’re most cognitively capable, of being “prepared for surprise”
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