The irony of holding to "tradition" as some sort of unbreakable golden standard is that at their inception, those very traditions were new, groundbreaking and revolutionary (and sometimes controversial). Music is a great example of this axiom: classical forms, which are today considered by many to be "untouchable", were at their birth sounds or combinations of styles never before heard.
The point: lighten up, people - what is new is not inherently undesirable. In fact, the claim that "this is the way it's always been done" is mostly untenable, there was always a first time.
Learn to judge by innate quality (or lack thereof), not by comparison to a prior tradition, unless comparison is inescapable because of the nature of the form.
2 comments:
True. The sort of "tradition" you describe is a pretty bad definition of the term, too. While an intellectual tradition might contain centuries' worth of people thinking it wise to know what has been said and thought before, and to differ or agree wisely and with care, a "tradition" that really means "what daddy did" or "what I really feel strongly about" is an anti-tradition.
I'm not sure "innate quality" can be judged, though. If it's not shared with other things, not on a continuum, then there's no way to measure it; if it's measurable, then it's not self-contained. It's a relative measure.
Lol. I guess I judge innate quality by what I think is innately qualified according to my "traditional" presuppositions.
If innate quality cannot be judged, then does it really exist?
Post a Comment