Conservative on the Roof
Stumbled across this quote on Tumblr:
Social traditions, Burke pointed out, are forms of knowledge. They contain the residues of many trials and errors, and the inherited solutions to problems that we all encounter… Social traditions exist because they enable a society to reproduce itself. Destroy them heedlessly and you remove the guarantee offered by one generation to the next. In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing *answers* that have been discovered to enduring *questions*. These answers are tacit, shared, embodied in social practices and inarticulate expectations. Those who adopt them are not necessarily able to explain them
Roger Scruton (1949-2020) English Conservative philosopher
Scruton was right that Institutions and practices can encode accumulated social wisdom that no single mind fully grasps - and not all inherited practice is mere superstition or oppression. Sometimes, tradition is an old thing that works.
The core argument Scruton makes here, though, is that social traditions are “inherited solutions to problems that we all encounter” and that they exist because they “enable a society to reproduce itself”.
This is nostalgic nonsense.
Scruton’s argument is built on structural functionalism - the idea that because a practice exists and society has survived, the practice must be the reason for that survival. Fans of logic will recognize this as a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy:
The sun rose after the rooster crowed - therefore the rooster is a god-tier sun-summoner!
Most traditions didn’t arise through iterative problem-solving. They arose through conquest, religious decree, historical accident, or the consolidation of elite power. If we applied Scruton’s logic to medicine, we’d still be balancing humors with leeches because “the ancestors found it worked”. Sometimes the answer wasn’t “this works”; it was just “the guy with the biggest sword says we’re doing this now”.
If longevity equals justification, Scruton has to defend some absolute monsters:
- Foot-binding endured for 1,000 years.
- Slavery persisted for millennia and remains a global shadow industry.
- Caste systems are remarkably durable, keeping millions in their unchanging lower-caste place for centuries.
- Female Genital Mutilation has been practiced for over two millennia and persists in dozens of countries today.
These weren’t solutions to problems; they were the problems for nearly everyone subject to them.
The survival of such traditions is explained by power and coercion, not wisdom.
The Myth of Universal Interests
This brings us to Scruton’s biggest absurdity, the false idea that everyone in a society has the same interests.
When Scruton says a tradition “enables a society to reproduce itself,” he’s asking us to ignore who is being reproduced and at whose expense. A tradition can be incredibly functional for the top 1% while being a grueling punishment for the bottom 99%.
- The Divine Right of Kings was a fantastic inherited solution for the guy wearing the crown. It was significantly less awesome for the peasant dying of dysentery in a trench during a war of succession.
- Child labor was a functional economic practice for factory owners during the Industrial Revolution…which destroyed children.
By the time Scruton was wrote this, mainstream sociology had already largely abandoned structural functionalism because it fails to account for inertia, interest-driven power, and the sheer difficulty of change.
Structural Functionalism mistakenly posits a social contract where everyone agreed to the terms.
In reality, most of humanity has been born into a society where the rules were already written on the wall in someone else’s handwriting.
It’s like being born into a 100-year-old Terms of Service agreement that you can’t decline to click “accept” on.
Defending a tradition just because it’s old isn’t a serious philosophical argument, it’s intellectual nostalgia.
It’s like refusing to update your phone’s OS because you’ve grown fond of the glitches.
Transmetropolitan #24 had the best summary of this topic I’ve ever seen, and it acknowledges the parts of Scruton’s view that are valid:
Sometimes “tradition” is a word we use to describe old things that work. Other times, it’s used as a shortcut to thinking or a way to preserve power.
We don’t owe the past our obedience - we owe the future our willingness to try new things as we attempt to improve upon the past.
