We Should All Be Yachtsmen
An Apology For Tradition and Criticism
After tiring myself to contemplate a ceramic plate and coming to a lightbulb moment, I realised that I had stumbled upon the same conclusion my father did; although he came to his conclusion without a needlessly long-winded philosophising. The conclusion, that “although you may not diminish your dignity by eating from a bad plate — because your dignity is secure in your creator, — you can reaffirm your existing dignity by eating from a ceramic plate.” Of which I retorted: “Somehow, my father knew all that without having to write an essay. Life is unfair.” A line I wrote with as much pain as amusement in my heart —pain because it seemed like a needless journey; and amusement because I loved the journey.
But now as I reflect upon my reflections on ceramic plates, I find myself in that hilarious position Mr. Chesterton did when he compared himself to the English Yachtsman “who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.” Like Mr. Chesterton like myself —like Ms. Adichie maybe?— we should all be Yachtsmen. We should all once in a while miscalculate, lose our bearings, and endure some needless journey to discover ‘England under the impression that it is a new island in the South Seas.’
By this, I mean that I think it is totally fine and human to rediscover already discovered truths if only for the sheer pleasure of doing so. It is okay —and should be required as a criterion for voting— for every rational human being to do as I did: perform a contemplative exercise with such braggadocious attitude as one set to discover some profound truth even if only you would land with a whimper and discover what your nursery rhyme has landed upon for decades. What Mr. Chesterton calls “elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.”
Someone may argue that I could have simply asked my dad why he was so obsessed with us eating from beautiful plates. But I doubt if he would have offered me that long-winded philosophizing that parasitized my time and brain; that filled my leisure for good. I doubt it. Yes, it is good to ask questions; to tap from the fund of all who have gone on before you; who have also laboured for answers. However, this does not remove the burden of setting your sails to go catch a new land. Which is the attitude one must have towards the truth.
For the truth must not be received as some banal staple that you swallow hastily as a bitter pill. One must meet truth fresh, regardless of how long it has been around. This is how truth comes to be personal —what we call conviction. Conviction is simply taking a common objective truth and making it personal and subjective. It is about finding an aspect to an unchanging object, and stamping it with one’s individuality; to borrow from Eli Siegel’s Aesthetic realism, “individuality implies the desire to see for oneself whatever is so, whatever is beautiful, whatever has meaning.” And it is this desire to see for oneself that sponsored those philosophers to insist that the zenith of human activity is contemplation in leisure.
However, what place contemplation ought to have occupied, “critical thinking” has unfortunately usurped. But this is not to say that critical thinking is stained and tainted; neither am I saying that it is second-rate. But that it is itself captured by the industry of radical doubt and repudiation; the incessant need to disprove, render naked, and be endlessly cynical. This is not the attitude of contemplation. For contemplation begins with wonder.
And this must be said with all wonder. That contemplation —or philosophy if you so wish— begins with wonder. For the industry of radical doubt pollutes our waters with its effluent that to arrive at truth we must begin from doubt and suspicion. I do not know many people who begin their inquiry from eagerness and yearning for a second look. The more common attitudes are the attitudes of credulous affirmation and militant doubt. Those just too ready to believe what they are given and those who do not believe anything at all; whose enterprise is shredding the things they are handed. In more specific terms using the ceramic plate instance, you get those who just know you have to eat with a beautiful plate and cannot tell you why; and those who will, as a protest to against their dads, literally eat from a dog’s bowl.
Clearly if given a choice, it is better to be the man who eats from a ceramic plate without knowing why than to be the gross and dirty fellow who laps directly from a dog’s dinnerware. But this range of options is itself a false dilemma; a false economy. For it shoehorns you into a situation where these are the only available options. But it doesn’t have to be so. Because while I will not eat from a dog’s bowl for the mere sake of protesting something I don’t understand, I will be doing myself a huge disfavour if I keep at a ritual without a glint of the said ritual’s necessity flashing at least one time on my imagination and intellect.
So, reader, the choice is not between a mindless acquiescence to “tradition” and hyperrational rebellion where you think what does not appear to you purely by reason does not exist. The third option of “preserving the fire” exists. As is in the maxim that tradition is the preservation of fire not the adoration of ashes — Traditio non est adoratio cinerum sed custodia ignis.
Receiving dogma does not imply the veneration of dead things; or even things for the sake of coming first. It is not as Laura Greenwood portrays, as “Tradition [being] just peer pressure from dead people.” Instead it is about rediscovering the forgotten problems whose solutions we still have with us: following Donald Kingsbury’s portrayal instead, “tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems.”
For I know on the flip side that those who say “this is how we have always done it;” who say with so much emptiness and hollowness of thought are annoying. And they harm their cause and tradition more than those who rail against the tradition itself. For if the foremost defenders of the tradition cannot mount a good apology where honest rational men are convened; if the defender cannot as much as state why his proverbial Chesterton fence exists, or can attempt nothing but “this is how we have always done it,” he is not serious and should be done away with alongside his fence. He not only capitulates to those whose only asset is the hot passion of teenage protesters. But he as well insults all serious men who could benefit from the wisdom a tradition offers. For it is only by knowing what a fence does that I may go to my own city and make such a fence for myself.
In this way, the need for traditions to employ practical reason in its defence is not only a tactic to ward off the dog-bowl slurper. But a way to fortify every other serious inquirer. And this is what criticism does: “it aims to awaken, to open another to an experience and the meaning contained in it,” as Roger Scruton explains.
But this is not to venerate reason; especially an egocentric, disembodied reason. A reason not connected to any real thing. A reason which stands as jury, judge, and executioner over all of human affairs, dictating, prior to any experience or participation, what we must do. That reason which bellows with totalitarian echoes, exercising the tyranny of the ideal over the real; the tyranny of an imagined utopia. No, we must not venerate that reason. Which has only led some to reject wholesale all that is human. Which beams when it dreams of “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” I venerate no such reason.
Once more, the option is not between mindless acquiescence and radical doubt. More people should learn to participate in traditions with their minds following, contemplating their every move. For there are answers we can only arrive at by participation: it is only by engaging your whole being in the activity that you gain access into its meaning; a meaning not available to those who stand outside and peer in.
And I do not wish to restrict these traditions to grand things like liturgy, matriculation ceremonies, convocations, oath-takings, weddings, and other carefully orchestrated rituals. But also think of mundane things like cooking, like driving. Like dancing with your wife. Or like dance in general. You can breathe life on a routine by simply asking “why”; why is it this way and not some other way? If you get it into your senses as a basic programming that those who handed you instructions were not fools but thinking humans who made conscious choices, you commission yourself for a fulfilling journey of discovering both questions and answers.
The more viable, and the most fulfilling option then, it seems to me, and I am sure it is, is criticism which begins from eagerness rather than suspicion. My teenage brain that was wrecked by my father’s insistence to eat from a beautiful plate had nothing to suspect. But it had everything to be curious about. “Why eat from a ceramic plate?” The journey to finding an answer led me to books and talks and lectures and essays, trying to find which theory gives me the best lay of land and map and compass to travel with. I made friends along the way, started learning a new language, committed a few lines of poetry to memory, and discovered brilliant writers. It gave me something to live for other than the regular machinery of commerce and crude consumption. “Why eat from a ceramic plate?” built my organ of devotion; my element of study. It changed my life. Perhaps, it could change yours too.
Finally, I leave you with this: who then is a critic? Because for a while now, so many people assume a critic is a snob; like the one who sneers at the man in Theodore Roosevelt’s arena. Sometimes this is true. But he is only one side to the critic. For in truth, the critic can also be the man in the arena who wonders why he is being beaten to the dust. The critic is like Sherlock Holmes who revises his own moves to check the verity of them. The critic looks with excitement upon what is and submits to it to make its truth his. A critic is first a considerer and an evaluator. And for all its bad reputation, criticism, per Scruton, “is the work of vigilance, whereby the tradition is safeguarded, and the interpretation of the world made available those who are yet to be.” Thank you for reading.