I heard someone ask once why we needed politicians, surely we would be able to get along without them and stem the tide of arrogance and corruption that seems to flood from political seats of power. It is an interesting question to ask why we need to be lead? Why will a thousand men do something one man tells them too without questioning? Or at least are persuaded to all think in the same way.
We are great tradionalists and love the fact that we are doing what our ancestors did only with a certain degree more sophistication because we know more. We believe what they believe or try to manipulate what they believed to fit new criteria. Somehow if it is old, it comes from a time when we did not need to learn but we knew things by feeling them.
As if feelings are more ‘truthful’ in some way than knowledge gained through learning. It isn’t so much knowledge we seek, but depth of understanding. And depth of understanding seems to require we agree to tradition because it worked in the past it must be good for us? It is interesting that this is not intellectual as much as animal. It is learning by rote.
It has its place but that plaqce may well be in the past.