frenchpet
Posts: 587
Joined: 8/19/2005
Status: offline
|
I guess I had this in mind for the last couple days. The fact that so many traditions, at least in France (but I saw Hobsbawm's book's first page, it says the same thing about England) were invented in the nineteenth century is something that bothered me, but the explanation was simple : it's when nations were invented, and all european countries needed commoon heroes and traditions. (edit : I mean common inside a nation, over all regions, Lander, provinces...)
Anyway... I just saw a report about a chinese town, which is become rich thanks to major investments in clams productions (yes, very soon you'll eat clams made in China...). All the villagers could invest the equivalent of 1000€, which represents one year of income for most families. Most people then become shareholders. The journalists asks if shareholding is compatible with communism. The CEO of the clams production company (the local secretary of the communist party) naturally answers that shareholding has always been inherent in communism. I instantly thought about the speach against Eastasia which instantly becomes a speach against Eurasia (or the opposite ?) when someone brings a note saying that the ennemy has changed (In Nineteen eighty-four*, of course).
I'm not sure it's completely relevant, but well it made your point, to me. We are making up new traditions anytime we need them to adapt to changes, and that is indeed more and more often.
But then, does Hobsbawm talk about Japan ? This country was isolated for a very long time, and many officially highly respected traditions are much older than the four black vessels of commodore Perry : haiku is several centuries old and alive, the tea ceremony is older than time itself (if one believes what some Japanese people say :p ), nô and kabuki are also ancient (nô is much older than kabuki), ikebana is as old as one can claim France to be, sumô dates back from the times of the vikings, and the imperial dynasty is the oldest monarchical lineage in the world). Still, they manage to keep these traditions alive : they even write millions of haiku with their phones (or maybe another form of short poems), and sumô is still watched on TV by millions (although there's some crisis as the level has been low in Japan for a few years). And the people who master one of these traditions perfectly obtains the -restrictive- title of national living treasure.
So, what about Japan ? I agree they invent new traditions, as we all have to do, but they don't replace the tradition, so far...
edit : *I always insist on writing the title in full letters instead of numbers because the author did. It's an optismistic book. The numbers are a symbol of the de-humanization of the world (people become numbers, and the clock strikes thirteen...). Orwell was confident we would fight against what is threatening us. What is threatening us ? I dunno ? Roosevelt's military-industrial complex ?
quote:
ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster
Whether Galileo really said it or not (though it seems to fit more with Brecht's worldview than Galileo's), our world is certainly changing faster than Galileo's did. People in Galileo's time may have thought their world was changing faster than ever before--but it wasn't nearly as fast as our world is changing now.
Anyway, what I meant is something like what Eric Hobsbawm called the invention of tradition. It tends to happen a time of social upheaval. I think a lot of this bullshit about courtesy back in the good old days is an invention engendered by a sense of bewilderment in a rapidly changing world. Hobsbawm said it well:
quote:
We should expect [the invention of tradition] to occur more frequently when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which "old" traditions had been designed, producing new ones to which they were not applicable, or when such old traditions and their institutional carriers and promulgators no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible.
< Message edited by frenchpet -- 10/20/2005 2:54:14 PM >
|
RE: Where has Courtesy Gone - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread