Tradition dictates duty, so is the sanity of society.
A Society Has A Life Cycle
The evidence of history suggests that a society is a life form as it shares the same life cycle of any other living creature; it is born, matures into a prime then declines into senility. The difficulty is understanding how a thing generated by the minds of people behaves in this fashion.
The Sanity of Society is its Traditions
A society arises insensibly from the accidents of existence. People living similar lives close to each other will develop a shared way of life, that is, a shared set of traditions that embody their shared beliefs, which is their shared sanity: this is the way the society is organised, its laws, manners and customs.
The Birth Of The Society—The Start Of Language
The formation of tradition must also include a common way of expressing ideas, a language, which itself is the shared understanding of these citizens. Hence the appearance of a language is the start, or birth, of the shared understanding, which is the society.
Traditions Taught By Family
The traditions adopted by the society become the lessons the parents must teach the children to continue the society. The traditional relationship between citizen and government must be the traditional way the child learnt to treat the parent, because how a child relates to its parents is how it understands authority.
Improvement In Understanding Wins Improvement In Tradition
As with every understanding the accumulation of experience will improve understanding, and this improvement must first appear in the sentiments of the citizens, before these improvements can be given reality by changes to institutions, manners, customs, and laws: the traditions of the society
Improved Traditions Allow Further Improvements Until It Reaches A Prime:'A Golden Age'
The society will embark upon an ever-improving cycle of gaining wisdom and strength by refining and extending its traditions. This improvement will be revealed in its improving customs, manners, laws and institutions but especially in its use of language, which will become more precise and clear. When this clarity of expression reaches its zenith, then the communal understanding is at its peak, which is the Golden Age of the Society.
Age Corrupts Tradition
The society propogates itself via the way it rears its children, who are taught to be unselfish and adopt the religion of their parents. This mechanism is not perfect so over time it also creates an increasing number of citizens who are not believers. When the number of disbelievers becomes a majority, the society has lost its shared understanding; then instead of being ruled by tradition the society becomes ruled by popular superstition; whereupon citizens start discarding the restraints of tradition to reflect popular notions, which is the corruption of tradition.
What Is The Corruption Of Tradition
Tradition becomes corrupt when the manners, customs, institutions or laws, which make up the tradition are either discarded or reversed. A tradition is reversed when it stops being an agent for duty, which improves the society, but becomes an agent for indulgence, which erodes the society.
An Example of Reversal Of Tradition: Parenting
Once the role of parents stops being the duty of rearing dutiful citizens, where parents are masters of their charges whom they raise to be unselfish and so respect their society; but becomes the indulgence of parental desire to pamper their children, then parents become servants of their children's whims, and teach their charges only selfishness, which is contempt for others.
The Awful Impact Of The Reversal Of The Tradition Of Parenting
The impact of the tradition of parenting is thus reversed so that instead of creating unselfish citizens happy to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the society, it creates selfish citizens, happy to sacrifice the society for the benefit of themselves.
Families Start Teaching Selfishness Not Duty
And once selfish behaviour is first adopted it becomes a self-replicating habit that will eventually corrupt all tradition and so destroy the society. The rule of the home will slowly degenerate from clear and strict, to confused and indulgent. (An influence that in western civilisation has replaced the rule of a stern autocratic father and his obedient lifetime wife, with that of an indulgent mother, who shares her bed with a series of male favourites, none of who can safely assert their authority over progeny or temporary wife.) And this misrule must be repeated by the government of the society, who will indulge, instead of command, its citizens.
A Reversal In The Nature Of Authority
When enough spoilt children become citizens, their joint influence changes the mode of the society from vital — concerned with achievements— to venal, concerned with indulgence;
a reversal that obtains a reversal in the nature of authority throughout the society. In the family the sensible rule demanded by parents becomes the silly rule demanded by spoilt children. In the society the sensible rule demanded by a monarch becomes the silly rule demanded by selfish citizens: democracy.
A Class War Signals The Corruption Of Tradition Has Begun
An undeniable symptom of the start of the corruption of tradition is when the populace demand a change from traditional to popular rule, for this must obtain a class war that wrests power from the traditional ruler and hands it to agents of the popular will.
Corruption Of Tradition Is The Slide Into Communal Senility
As tradition supplies both the understanding and the strength of the society, the corruption of tradition is the destruction of the mind and strength of the society and must render the society senile.
Only The Appearance Of A Society Will Remain
The rational and disciplined society will become like any senile creature, merely a fragile shell as only the appearance remains. And this facade will collapse under the challenges to its existence.