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December 10, 2003

The Democracy of the Dead

I'm rereading G. K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy. It's a good book and he's a great writer. I found this passage tonight.

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and the arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death."

On the page before that, he wrote, "It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time."

As a futurist, as well as just a guy living in 2003, I am continually amazed at how little respect there is given to the past, and by that same measure, how much credibility is given to the future - and how much credibility is given to people who imagine a future that is mostly an extension of their own imagination, disconnected from any continuity with all of those who made the past.

I read a lot more books about history than I read about the future. Although I don't believe that our ancestors were always right, they were also not idiots and virtually all of the good that we have around us is because very smart people long since passed made commitments to see that something good would endure. As well, I certainly don't think we are smart enough, let alone wise enough to be able to build a future only from contemporary ingredients. Those from the past paid too high a price to have us discard it without first trying to know it.

This is not to say that we must anchor ourselves to the past. I do believe in progress and the notion of progress requires us to understand that some things from the past must be discarded and sometimes even destroyed. Progress also requires us to study the past and to preserve, protect and defend that which has stood the test of time.

Progress is our ability to choose between change and tradition.

Posted by dmzach

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