|
  TFP:
Tradition
By Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
When we speak of tradition, many people
think of England, the Queen the House of Lords, Rolls Royces,
top hats and British distinction and poise…
All of these impressions, considered
as a whole, cause divergent reactions in people's minds.
Very many see tradition under different
hues as time goes by, depending on the varying impressions
current lifestyles successively cause upon them. At times,
the hustle and bustle of huge modern cities fascinate them.
They feel enthused about today's colossal organizations, mammoth
planning and technology all of which are turning science fiction
into reality. At those moments, tradition looks like a sad
backwardness to many of our contemporaries.
In the midst of the whirlwind that
is overthrowing all hierarchies and blowing away all clothing,
tradition feels like stifling yoke. But when the triumphant
vulgarity of an increasingly egalitarian world, the noisy,
frantic, and hurly-burly rhythm of daily life, and the instability
threatening all institutions, all rights and all situations
cause neurosis, anguish and stress in millions of our contemporaries,
then tradition appears to them as an elevated rest for the
soul, good sense, good breeding, good order and, in a word,
the art of living wisely.
The question then is what to make of
tradition? What should we think of those moments of excessive
longing and the long days of inordinate distaste so similar
to the bouts of hunger and loss of appetite of some patients?
There are many who don't know how to
resolve the fleeting and subtle spiritual dilemma that at
times tears their souls in regard to this question. And because
of this, they flee from the topic. Undoubtedly, this flight
produces a wall of silence about this matter. In general,
however, this silence does not mean indifference. On the contrary,
it is a result of both perplexity and hypersensitivity. The
subject is too painful. Isn't it better, then, to duck it
and have a drink?
*****
The crimson standards with the golden
rampant lion that the TFPs raise in so many cities all over
the world, invite us not to be disheartened and weakly shirk
the issue, but to resolve it and thus acquire an internal
peace that only the truth gives entirely and that all the
drinks in the world cannot provide.
Why does our standard cause reactions
far more lively than the emblem of any party or association?
Why does it stir up sympathies and antipathies of all kinds,
ranging from people kissing it filled with admiration, gazing
at it as if singing a hymn of praise, to hateful attempts
to rip it and hurl it to the ground? To a great extent, I
believe it is precisely because it raises that problem.
What then, does this standard mean?
That the past should have stood still? That everything of
the present should be accepted?
The TFP standard does not flee from
the problem. It denies it. It denies that tradition is only
the past and therefore does not fit into the present. True
tradition, in principle, is neither for the past as such nor
for the present as such. It presupposes two principles: (a)
that every authentic and living order of things has in itself
a continuous impulse toward improvement and perfection; (b)
that, therefore, true progress is not to break but to go on
to the heights.
In short, tradition is the sum of the
past plus a present that is akin to it. Today should not be
the denial of yesterday, but rather its harmonious continuation.
In more concrete terms, our Christian
tradition is an incomparable value that must rule the present.
It acts, for example, so that equality may not be understood
as the sweeping away of the elites and as an apotheosis of
vulgarity; so that liberty may not serve as a pretext for
chaos and depravity; so that dynamism does not become frenzy;
so that technology does not enslave man. In a word, it aims
to prevent progress from becoming inhuman, unbearable, and
hateful.
Therefore, tradition does not mean
to stifle progress, but to protect it from going absurdly
far astray as to become organized barbarity. That barbarity
against which another barbarity arises, disheveled and furious:
that of Marcusianism.1
First published in the Folha
de São Paulo
__________________
|
|
