Traditions are an enriching restraint. In order to build on traditions, to correct them, we have to know them, and that takes time. Our current mood of discarding the past, usually on some self-righteous ground, has to do with our engineered inability to concentrate and tolerate. We are trained by our social media nemesis to join the herd and cull the herd. If we refuse to read, though, we are not trading the past for the future. Without the past, there can be no future. We are trading the past for quibbly static.
