It’s the Always the Best of Times, It’s Always the Worst of Times

A few weeks ago, my colleague, Mr. Isaac Woodward, wrote a powerful and informative article addressing the difference between tradition and traditionalism. After some reflection, I’d like to affirm, expand, and perhaps even challenge his argument.

Now, I’ll be the first one to argue that the Middles Ages often hit the mark where our age misses completely. As a self-identified conservative, there’s a part of me that’s always “nostalgic.” The other day, however, I was reading Ecclesiastes (because that’s what fun-loving people like me do) and stumbled on the following: “Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you ask about this” (7:10). It would seem Qoheleth was profoundly un-conservative.

Let’s take a moment to examine the text itself. The speaker forbids the reader from asking this question precisely because it is unwise. That is, he forbids asking it for the wrong reasons. Conservatives think of themselves as loving wisdom, yet here they are existing in a state of unreflective folly. That reading is a bit extreme, but I do think this wise tidbit from the Wisdom Literature has something to teach those who look favorably upon the past: the integral universality of human experience.

They say the two facts of life are death and taxes. The jury is out on taxes, but that’s certainly true of death, and no one knew that better than the author of Ecclesiastes. Death, hunger, thirst, and pain are things we can cover up and run from, but that have existed and always will. While I wish for the religious passion of the medieval period, I must remember the subpar hygiene habits, the outbreaks of plague, and the medicinal leeches. I must confront the fact that while some things (perhaps the more important ones) have fallen by the way side, other things have improved. This may seem an obvious truth, but it seems to me that it’s an often overlooked one. Whether it’s libertarian passion for the American Revolution or my rather obscure desire to sit in on the Decameron, so much of our time is spent enraptured by nostalgia, not recognizing that our desires for the bygone warp our pasts, our futures, and ourselves into grotesque caricatures. We may look to the past, but we may not deify it.

At the same time, Qoheleth’s advice goes double for progressives; it shuns the prospect of eternal improvement as much as it does that of pining for the past. If nostalgia unwisely blinds the conservative, vain obsession with worldly improvement handicaps his opposite. Such a similarity in dichotomy is telling; it showcases the humanity that lies at the heart of all of our differences. Human experience is universal. There will always be death, taxes. And, yes, there will always be the need to restate basic truths like the ones found in Hebrew Wisdom Literature.