In Defense of Tradition

An entire generation of teenagers was raised in the sixties with the common theme of “nonconformity.”  The Hippies rebelled against cultural norms such as clothing and propriety, declaring them to be antiquated chains that society still wears.  Hippies didn’t want courtship when they dated, they didn’t want steps to dance by, and they despised restraint.

Tradition is not authentic, they said.  Social standards are hypocritical and arbitrary, they pointed out.  Restraint is unnecessary: if you feel it, you don’t have to abide by any rules of courtship, you can make it up as you ago.  That way your life and your relationships won’t be false, they’ll be genuine.

Well “nonconformity” is cliché, and the real individuals are reconsidering the wisdom of rebelling against whichever societal standard may stand in their way.  This isn’t the Victorian Age anymore – it’s more like the direct opposite.  Our society has developed, instead of an insane obsession with prudery, a knee-jerk distaste for standards themselves.

This makes it difficult for introverts.  To name one specific instance that really bugs me: How is one to learn to dance in one’s junior Govie year?  There are no steps, and everything one tries is stupid and empty.  We’ve been taught that only spontaneity is truthful and yet only a select few can make the un-choreographed wiggling and wobbling on the dance floor seem like it belongs.  It’s worse than the Victorian Age where only the trained few commanded the floor; now, not even training can save you, because if you can’t dance it’s because you don’t feel the music well enough.  And so the wallflowers resign to their seats.

Well, I’ve picked up my own style of dance and learned to enjoy and look forward to our weekly bounce affairs.  Still, I wish Mrs. Martin had done more than a half-somethinged (I can’t curse now, right admin?) effort in teaching us to waltz, and I wish that someone would actually play one at a dance after we’d all learned it.  There’s something to those straps and those chains that makes it more human.  We are not all spontaneous creatures!

In the 50s and 60s, there were rituals of courtship that a guy went through to get to know a girl.  Sure, it was annoying to go through the parents and all, but it gave the pair an idea of what they were supposed to do.  There were social conventions and an art to conversation.  The first date was scripted in a fashion.  This is frowned upon by most teenagers who wish to go do their own thing, but I wish that the script was still there.  It would make getting to know someone a lot better.  Perhaps the script is dehumanizing and unauthentic, but is it really better that we are forced to make it up as we go?

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time doing that.  Dancing, dating, conversation, there’s nothing to go by anymore.  It’s forcing more people into hermitages of three or four close friends.  I’m sick of it.  Darn it, (I can’t curse sez admin) I want to be strapped down by conformity to a social standard, any standard, just give me one!  Of course the standard is arbitrary, but we still need it!  Give me the waltz, the tango, or even the Texas two-step and line dancing… but give me a script.  This is a brave new world, and it has such Hippies in it.

--corey garriott