While I don't think I'm living a lifestyle that qualifies as any kind of "trad," is very interesting to compare it to what I said here:
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Speaking as a historical researcher who tries to enter the mindset of the time as closely as possible, yes, this is about how it works. And 19c American norms were in many ways similar to those you'd encounter in devout Catholics, etc.
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I suspect once you anchor on a historical era as a standard, it acts to slowly freeze all other attitudes in complementary, consistent ways. Like a dust particle in subzero water seeding the freezing/crystallization process. twitter.com/vgr/status/137…
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It definitely can only be understood in terms of a religious sensibility, even when it came to those who were not religious. But it was in many ways a natural law sensibility, which is why I mention Catholicism rather than (today's) Protestantism.
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The last two lines are pretty accurate, but I would not call it an aesthetic filter. It results from internalizing, temporarily or otherwise, certain standards, and filtering out things that are contrary to the underlying logic. Like with religion.
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It’s not necessarily a pathway to either straightforward reactionary positions, or full-blown purist retreat a la Amish, though those become highly likely. It’s more like a sort of unconscious pre-filtering of all novelty by aesthetic fit. A self-conscious mind-closing.
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It is simply a choice to adopt certain priorities, which necessarily de-prioritize other things. The thing is, though, *everybody does this.* Everybody has a filter--sanity depends on it. Only the priorities differ.
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A friend literally said to me something like "it's like you have a big picture of all this in your mind and that you are so focused on it that you don't think denouncing [breaking political news drama] is important." Yes, exactly.
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But my friend simply filters out things that would conflict with the latest media narrative. So we see each other as oddly fixated on the "wrong" thing, and filtering out the "important stuff." And I'm much more of an outlier than my friend.
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This is exactly what my friend was was trying to say: that I wasn't "upset" about the right things, that I was non-reactive, because I seemed to be classifying this new information as insignificant. Which was indeed was what happening.
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What I notice about people who go trad is a genuinely deadened responsiveness to anything that doesn’t meet filter criteria. At some level it becomes invisible. It’s not “acting dead” in Bruce Sterling sense though, since they seem to come really alive within their sandbox.
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And that's just what happens if you really like to figure out how the engine worked. Because parts of it are not obsolete.
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But it’s hard to stay interested even if I am interested in the particular historical era they anchor on. I’m not interested in history in the same way as trads seem to be. Like being interested in how an obsolete old engine worked rather than the colors/styles of old cars.
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There is a conscious closure, but I don't think that's a rejection of the possibility of surprise/novelty. Sometimes it is a recognition that the issue isn't actually surprising or novel. Studying the Civil War has made it hard to be shocked by politics.
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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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Do you identify as trad or just a historian who has a professional trad mindset 9-5?
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I don't identify as trad, and I turn off most of it when not working, but some elements of it have become part of my worldview.
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