An Old Fashioned Credo

I was called “old fashioned” the other day.

No, that is not entirely accurate. It was not said to my face, and it was not in any way directed toward me. It was said in a nearby conversation with which I was not involved, but it was said about a belief that I very much continue to hold. Had these individuals known that their accusations were applicable to someone who happened to be inadvertently (or advertently, as it may very well have been) eavesdropping, would they have still used the phrase? I wouldn’t think so, as our world has become far too (woefully) peaceable for that. They would have politely waited until I was out of earshot.

Old Fashioned.

I didn’t laugh when I heard it, as it took a few moments for me to absorb the term, by which time I was in control of my responses. But as soon as I understood it, I knew that it really was hilarious, though not entirely unexpected. It might have been intended as an insult, and as a result it really was funny, because I realize now that the insult is really on the accuser.

I am not, for the record, speaking about being called old fashioned in terms of clothing or tastes in movies or music or any other sort of passing fad, in which case the term might, indeed, be accurate (and does, in many ways, describe me). What I’m referring to is the much more foolish notion that one somehow may be accused of believing in something that has the audacity to also have been believed at some time in the past. “Oh, you believe in X? Well, don’t you know that people believed in X during the 19th century? Don’t you know that X was believed back when men practically still lived in caves and beat their women over the heads?”

In the same vein (but in somewhat different words), a response to one of my previous articles, on the Christian faith, made (with what I assume was a straight face, though I have no direct knowledge) the accusation, which he deemed a grave insult, that I was guilty of believing in “Bronze-age fables,” as if somehow being believed by men in the bronze age immediately renders something untrue today.

The accusation is really the epitome of audacity. What sort of fool would accuse another of believing something simply because it had the longevity to survive the generations? Is this really something to be pitied? Or is it more pitiful to immediately believe in something that has only just occurred to men? Is it more foolish to believe in something that has been discussed and debated among philosophers and theologians for thousands of years, or to throw the entire weight of belief behind something devised by some social scientist in the 1960’s? Would I rather have the weight of history behind my beliefs, or the opinions of progressive politicians and modern psychology?

Of course, it should be noted that the term itself is really inaccurate in the first place, for, in order for something to be “old fashioned”, it really has to have gone out of style at some point, but this is really hardly ever true about beliefs that are called old-fashioned.  I am, for example, quite “old fashioned” in my idea of marriage, but only because I believe in the same things that have been believed and continue to be believed and have not been persuaded by the strange new ideas of a very vocal minority. I am “old fashioned” in my idea of human life, but only because I agree with the consensus of history that there is something truly valuable about it, and I have not obtained the sort of faith required to believe in the modern notion that humanity is a bad thing, and that we really ought to be able to end life just as it is beginning.  

The truth is that many things deemed old fashioned are not really old fashioned at all. It may be true that some have ceased believing in it (and they are often very loud about it), though the belief itself has survived, for as often as not it has the benefit of being true. When someone says that something is old fashioned (when they really ought to say “traditional”), it only means that they have somehow come to live in a world that refuses to recognize that certain things have never died. They only wish that they had. Just because one wishes that some new and novel belief would overrun the world does not make the current beliefs old fashioned. In fact, it means (and it really must mean) that what is new faces an uphill battle to overtake the traditional. But this is a good thing. It should be difficult for the world to come around to something new. We often chastise ancients for not coming around quickly enough to some belief or another that turned out to be true, but why? Isn’t there something admirable about being steadfast, about holding to things and not letting them go without certainty?

One should never be quick to abandon the traditional in favor of the novel. If some new belief comes along and happens to bring along with it the virtue of truth, that is, if it really is better than the traditional belief, then it very well may be inevitable, and it is certainly worth fighting for, but it should not be accepted without a fight. That being said, these things are rare. We might use the abolition of slavery as an example of this, but this is only partially true, for in effect, slavery itself was a bit of a novelty, at least among the Christian world. The abolition of slavery was really in itself a return to something “old fashioned”, for the tradition of Christianity has always differed from the world in its idea of freedom and human dignity. The evil of slavery was a novelty that tragically wormed its way into the world in the same way infanticide continues to gain popularity today; and it is only the “old fashioned” among us who endeavor to protect the world from being swept away by every novelty.   

“Old fashioned” is, in short, a badge of honor, and ought to be worn with pride. The accusation ought to be accepted gladly. Those who accuse others of being old fashioned are really the ones who ought to be pitied for their absolute willingness to believe in the absurdest things.