Why ‘traditions’ don’t change with time?
In my last blog, I wrote about why the US continues to use wood as a building material, though concrete/ brick can be better options. But this isn’t the only ‘tradition’ that has continues. There are many ‘traditions’ across the world which have continued, even though they might not serve the purpose they served when they were invented. And on the contrary to the beneficial, they can in fact be detrimental to the people who follow them. Some of these traditions are particularly glaring as they have continued in some countries, while others have moved on.
Admission process for universities/ colleges is one of such thing which hasn’t changed in most of the countries. While there have been changes in the tools used (online instead of paper based), the basis of the admissions have remained the same. In India, the admission process continues to remain high pressure single day entrance exam, which can test different skills of the students. One of my pet peeves around admission process in the West remains focus on Reference Letters and Essays. Reference Letters are artifact of the bygone era, where there was no way to attest the credentials of a student. Also, a century ago the pool of the students was small enough that each student had access to some well known person in the field. In the current era, there are multiple ways to get attestation of a person’s work online. With a wide pool of students, getting Reference Letter becomes a test of how many ‘connections’ you have rather than the ability.
Another ‘tradition’ from the academic world is the peer reviewed papers. Again it is relic of the time when the pool of people working on certain topics was very small and peer reviewers would have enough bandwidth to give feedback. Also, papers was one of the few ways to disseminate knowledge and get feedback as mechanisms such as blogs, social media were not available. In the current world, papers serve the purpose of massaging each others’ ego and indicating status than actually propogating knowledge. Moreover, papers have started following Goodhart’s law that publishing more and more papers becomes target rather than the content and quality. Also, papers start following the similar themes rather than on unconventional or unfashionable themes. Academic papers, in short, should not become the sole arbitrer of knowledge.
Moving to a tradition not related to academic, food is something which is deeply entrenched in tradition. Indian food is heavily carb based, which was correct when people were involved in physical labor. But now with sedantary lifestyle shouldn’t food move accordingly. Similarly, in the West food such as sausages or salamis were necessary in the cold winters. But with the modern technology, is this food really required or are there better options. Perhaps one can write an entire blog on the food traditions which are no longer relevant.
But since the topic moved to food, it made me wonder how long does it take to create a ‘tradition’? After Colombian Exchange, many food items from Americas became ‘tradition’ in the old world. Tomatoes in pastas in Italy or chillies in spices in India became traditions in several centuries. Traditions related to relatively modern developments such as professional sports or movies, have been developed in just 2–3 generations. How are the traditions generated? How do they evolve? Have traditions become stagnated or will they continue to evolve? Is there anything intrinsic in humans which is manifested through traditions? Maybe a topic for another blog.
