I enjoy history not only for the stories but for its lessons. The main lesson of history is people are the same throughout time and keep doing the same things. One of our repeating follies is the tendency to react to new situations using old approaches only to have them fail spectacularly. In new and unfamiliar situations traditions trump ingenuity and plasticity. WWI went longer than anyone thought it would as the first battles were conducted on horseback with drawn swords against newly invented guns leading to an entrenched stalemate until generals connected the dots to change tactics. I was recently reminded of The Battle of Crecy in which the minority English defeated The French on their own kabd as the French noblemen wanted to fight only with the other nobles while the English employed ballades of arrows from trained minions the French nobility on horseback (easy targets) dismissed as below them to fight. The Spanish conquisitors (who were only a few against an entire population) defeated the Inca and Aztec rulers who couldn’t fathom anyone daring to touch their god-king monarch persons.*

These are battle examples of losses whose leaders wanted ‘to do it by tradition’ rather than change to what was needed. When I lived in Chicago I joined the local denomination of my hometown church. The church was in its last gasps of life. What few remained were elderly members who always sat in the back and didn’t want to change or do anything new or different in order to get new members. Some of this I was racism that they were white while the neighborhood folks were people of color. The main reason was the traditional music, service, and social events were all old folk oriented. “You know they would rather see the place close than change to save it” the pastor once confided in me. And he was right. I didn’t stay and the paces folded. My mother’s long time neighborhood club went the same way as the elders objected to young ones coming in as they wouldn’t know how to play or might bring in their ways.

Medicine is unfortunately no different. Doctors still have to be dragged kicking and screaming to give up ‘time honored treatments” even when all evidence is against them.** Last year I attended a lecture on ‘the exciting brave new world things a-coming’ in psychiatry; you could feel the stiffening of the crowd as they reacted negatively to the concept of brain scans and IV-based treatments, along with the sensation most in audience were thinking they retire before doing having to change or learn these new-fangled things.

There is a sense today’s oldsters are not elders viz. sages to whom the younger ones should to turn to for guidance. Boomers seem self-absorbed and uninterested in helping the younger generations. However I must not be too harsh on today’s oldsters as refusing to change is seen throughout history as stated.

“It is custom” is something Someone and I say to each other whenever we don’t want to do something differently or when running up against a wall in getting someone to approach a problem from a different angle. “It is custom’ is a phrase I got from a book about a young traveler to an island in the South Pacific that whenever he wanted something done different (even a little thing like please don’t salt in my food) he was told ‘it was custom’. No one budged or thought ‘hey let’s give this a try”.

I hope I remain plastic as I age to go with the flow and change ways and beliefs when necessary. Tradition they say is peer pressure from the dead and I get tired of the dead telling the live ones how things ought to be done. Then again this is probably what all young people vow: they won’t become their parents and then they do. It would be nice to discard dead old ideas in us to go towards a future free of custom and traditions that serve no more.

Can you share a belief or custom you have been able to give up or one you struggle to give up?

*In both cases The Spaniards did so and it ended badly for the so-call god-kings.

**Usually they do so passively viz. insurance companies and/or laws are passed forcing them to change thing they wouldn’t do on their own.