Tim Stanley, Whatever Happened To Tradition?

 

I reckon Tim Stanley's Whatever Happened to Tradition? History, belonging and the future of the West (Bloomsbury, 2021) could be a good read. He says, "Tradition is not just a pretty thing, much less dead or to be curated - it is the past brought to life, guiding us through the present, offering us a roadmap to the future" (1). He says that - a former Marxist - for a long time he was lost. "My embrace of religion, plugging me into a ready-made community and giving me something to live for other than myself, lifted me out of the doldrums.... tradition can be useful to those looking for ballast, which I think a lot of us are." (8) Tradition has a "fidelity to history" that "rather than tear things up" aims to refine and improve (9). "As Gustav Mahler is supposed to have said, tradition 'is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.'" (9) https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/whatever-happened-to-tradition-9781472974129/





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Whatever Happened to Tradition?
The West feels lost. Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus: we hurtle from one crisis to another, lacking definition, terrified that our best days are behind us. The c…