Liberty and Tolerance

From time to time, I hear a conspecific waxing about the importance of preserving “traditional values”. I’m frequently not at all sure what is meant by “traditional”, but I am usually willing to concede that tried and true, time tested, and widely distributed “values”, whatever those are, should not be discarded lightly. My conspecifics usually mean mores, goals, priorities and all kinds of normative assumptions when they talk about “values”, but they also occasionally throw in sets of factual assertions about reality as “values”.

These would be conservators of tradition seem to have forgotten that almost every tradition was once an innovation and that it became tried and true only after it was first tried and found to be true in some particular cases. Others copied the innovation with varying degrees of satisfaction, and the innovation became widespread because it worked. If it did not satisfy, the innovation would not have been widely adopted and maintained and would be added to the pile of failed and abandoned experiments or to the pile of eccentricities maintained by eccentrics.

The satisfying innovation eventually replaces a former tradition, and this will almost always be accompanied by much hand wringing about how the old ways really ought to be preserved. “My father was a pastoralist and his father before him and so on into dim antiquity, so what sense is it for me to settle down and grow crops? This sedentism and agriculture seem like risky business to me, and our children will forget the ancient arts of tent making and ungulate driving.” Some folks will cling to the old ways, may they prosper and be content. Others will adopt the new ways albeit unhappily and still others will embrace them.

If a tradition fails to satisfy, it will, barring compulsion, be replaced with other ways that are more satisfactory. This will occur without any central planning as individuals pursue their own happiness and invent and mimic strategies and practices that seem to them to work for them. If a tradition satisfies under current conditions, it will be widely maintained without any help from would be conservators, thank you very much.

Of course, traditions sometimes persist well beyond their usefulness because of their attachment to religion, appeals to the very idea of tradition, and because the social order is often structured to privilege some choices over others by the ruling elites. And while a practice or strategy is very widespread, bucking the trend may be difficult until a certain tipping point is reached and innovation becomes less likely to come with social sanctions.

If I regard a tradition highly, either for its own sake or because it suits my circumstances, then I ought to honor it and, to the extent that love for my fellow man dictates it, broadcast to the world the beauty and delight that the tradition bestows. If my neighbor has less regard for it and judges that his welfare is better promoted by something else, then I ought to hope that his choices bring him happiness.

This is a stance that takes discipline and practice, however, unless you are blessed with a natural disposition for tolerance or have been conditioned by the indwelling Holy Ghost to love your neighbor enough to let him alone. For most folks, I fear, it is not enough to feel that one’s choices are suited to one’s own circumstances; rather, they tend to couch their choices in the language of universal virtue and tend to believe that they would be justified in imposing their choices on others, for their own good, of course. A stay at home mother may not be content to embrace her choices but finds satisfaction in condemning mothers who work outside the home. Parents of public school children may find that their choices are insufficiently satisfactory unless they can also condemn homeschoolers. Suburbanites may be unhappy with their suburban lifestyles unless they can criticize city dwellers, and vice versa.

A culture of liberty wants, I think, the cultivation of an abiding tolerance for diversity of opinion and life choices. We do not have to believe that every value or choice is equally valid or correct. By adopting particular values and making particular choices, we belie such a notion. But we ought, deliberately as a core libertarian value, to take the position that each of us is the best judge of his own wants and that each of us should be given the widest latitude possible consistent with the liberty of others to fulfill them. Think of all we might learn from our neighbors’ trials, successes, and even their failures.