What I took from the lecture series, which covered conservatism in both the UK and America was a detectable pattern in the ways that we propose, respond and react to change. Conservatism as defined by the lecture series was essentially resistance to change and the preservation of the past or of the status quo. However since change is inevitable, conservatism is put in the position of having to adapt and choose the option which accommodates the required change while best preserving the original intent of the law or statute. This is ordinarily the pattern, a problem is perceived, a progressive or unorthodox solution is proposed and a battle ensues with the conservatives digging in their heels trying to preserve what they see as the traditional and historically honored way of doing things. The outcome is usually not completely to either sides liking and the process continues. Occasionally, however conservatives buck that trend, realize that they cannot maintain their current position and choose to innovate, instead proposing the changes themselves.
Now the point of all this that we see these same trend I described above in religion as well. Every generation has its hot button issues, whether it be abortion, gay marriage, evolution or the veracity of the Bible, all these are well contested today. The issues of yesterday may be less familiar, women working outside the home, giving women the vote, giving the vote to people of various skin colors, rabid anti-Catholicism and I could go on. These issues are quite passé, we don't give them a second thought as religious people even though they were each huge religious issues in their day. These problems were resolved only in the past century and yet we today don't question whether everyone should vote or whether women can work outside the home. These questions were argued, hotly debated and eventually a solution with a consensus of opinion was reached, then we moved on. We take so much for granted today in regards to what our culture looks like and we don't always remember that what we take for granted was once considered radical and we forget the generations of Conservatives who believed civilization would collapse if everyone could vote and women could work.
I don't mean to say that we should give up since change is inevitable, but I do say that the historical context should give us pause and push us towards exploring new solutions to the issues that we face. We look back in embarrassment at our conservative predecessors who promoted racism and sexism in the belief that they were preserving the best of our nations traditions. I also don't mean to convey that todays issue are all comparable to the racism that was built into our cultural institutions, but today we consider the equality of the races to be a no-brainer and it certainly wasn't thought to be so at the time. Equality of any sort was considered to be dangerous in the 19th century and only radicals and socialists proposed those sorts of ideas. Once again the lessons of history should teach us that just because an idea is radical, new and unorthodox we shouldn't reject it out of hand, because it may be tomorrow's conservatism.
A generation from now our hard fought issues that we lived and died over will have acquired a solution and social consensus, quite possibly very different from what we can see from our current vantage point. If you could take anything from this blog I hope it would be that as Solomom says there is nothing new under the sun and it's all been done before. It is part of nature to conserve that which is most familiar to us, but we don't have the luxury of only having our own generation to think about. Yes that's right, we need to think of the next generation and how they will treat our attempts of conservation. Believe it or not the future is theirs not ours and we owe it to them to treat the future with care not dogma
