Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old April 26th, 2012 #1
Alex Linder
Administrator
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 45,756
Blog Entries: 34
Default Living Ways, Traditions, Worth Carrying On

I have no religious bone, I can only surmise in relation to others, as their christ-insanity seems to me not merely foolish and unhelpful but positively contemptible, and their demand that their views be respected precisely because they are religious predictable and also contemptible.

But that doesn't mean I don't think we all have a spiritual side. In line with that, I look at it as, what are the traditions of my people, in relation to how to live life? And should I carry them on, or should I adopt new ones.

One tradition I carry on, that is common to my grandmother in particular, but my parents too, is frugality. I even go further and try for hyperfrugality, when I'm feeling my bones. It should be noted that frugality in no way is opposite to generosity. My grandmother was quite generous and quite frugal. You could even say it was the frugality that helped make the generosity more possible, altho it would have been there in any case. My grandmother would always say, you never know when someone will need it - it being the money saved by some particular economy. We are very alike in that way.

I'm not going to try to tie these upheld living ways and spiritual traditions to specific ethnic groups, altho they possibly could be. I'm not going to stick, as I said, to a bad tradition wholly because that's what my people (German, Swiss, English, other European, and American) have always done. That's not good enough. If people are individually not to be trusted to think, as Burke believed, then relying on tradition seems a dubious way to go about things. It's remarkably similar to that joke about losing a little on each sale but making it up in volume.

My view is most people don't really thin, except instrumentally. This leaves them at the wind of the first person to come along with a plausible plan.

Perhaps Burke and other greats are right toLater deride reasoning generally and individual reasoning in particular, yet...there is nothing else. Revelation is mere opinion, and thinking beats mere opinion unbacked by anything but groupthink and demonization of scoffers.

So, frugality is a tradition I happily accept and do my best to carry on, and even improve.
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 08:54 AM.
Page generated in 0.20401 seconds.