Conservatism

The political term for tending to stick to the current contents of tradition. As such, an economically excellent fallback heuristics for all kinds of choices where too few information is available. So excellent that we use it constantly without even noticing. However, it is far from perfect, and it does not always apply, as the world changes constantly too. Worse even, it often does not apply unambiguously: different traditions might result in conflicting advice, or facts may invalidate a combination of traditional rules, and there remains to decide which rules to alter and which to keep unchanged, etc.

In a derived meaning, the degenerate tendency to believe that these contents should be conserved because they be holy, despite the obvious inconsistency of such a statement.


This page is linked from: Grain   Tradition