Dhruvik Parikh

Tradition

A lot of people blindly follow tradition, and they often explicitly forego logic in order to do this. This is pretty common among older individuals and hyper-religious families in India and many other countries. Such people are often ostracized by the progressive crowd who state that they are going against the principles of logic and not truly understanding the substance of their devotion.

On the other hand, there are people who, for whatever reason, are so averse to the idea of tradition, that they will refuse to accept even the positive developments just because they happened to be associated with tradition. The "rebellious youth" stereotype exemplifies this category. I've encountered many people from this camp in the Silicon Valley crowds, which mostly makes sense in the context of technology but it's dubious whether it extends to other areas as much.

There's a really nice quote from Brahma Sutra - Radhakrishnan:

The truth which claims to be universal requires to be continually re-created. It cannot be something already possessed that only needs to be re-transmitted. In every generation, it has to be renewed. Otherwise it tends to become dogma which soothes us and induces complacency but does not encourage the supreme personal adventure. Tradition should be a principle not of conservatism but of growth and regeneration. We cannot keep the rays of the sun while we put out the sun itself. Petrified tradition is a disease from which societies seldom recover. By the free use of reason and experience we appropriate truth and keep tradition in a continuous process of evolution. If it is to have a hold on people's minds, it must reckon with the vast reorientation of thought that has taken place. By reintrepreting the past afresh, each generation stamps it with something of its own problems and preoccupations.

I think this kind of summarizes my interest towards tradition. I think tradition is extremely important because it defines what got us here, but it can't just be taken at face value. The entire purpose of the "Supreme Personal Adventure" is to ask these questions and seek your own personal development, whatever that may look like for you.