Why We Need Traditions — Even in Modern Societies

Modern societies are built upon the idea of change. Technology develops rapidly, working life is constantly reorganized, language evolves, and people are expected to be flexible and adaptable. Many of the structures that once gave life direction have become weaker. Families live differently than before. Authority is more easily questioned. Traditional roles are less fixed. In many ways this has opened important possibilities for freedom and independence.

Yet there is also something restless in the modern relationship to freedom.

For while society becomes increasingly open and fluid, many people seem to long for something more enduring. Amid constant change arises a need for continuity, belonging, and coherence. Perhaps this is why questions concerning tradition continually return, even in modern societies that otherwise prefer to describe themselves as future-oriented.

Human beings do not need freedom alone.

We also need something that lasts.

Perhaps this is difficult to acknowledge because tradition is often portrayed as the opposite of modernity. Traditions are associated with the old, the rigid, and the authoritarian, while modernity is associated with freedom, progress, and independent thought. Yet human life is probably more complex than such oppositions suggest.

For no human being lives without traditions.

Even modern societies are deeply shaped by them, although we do not always notice it. The way we greet one another, organize family life, celebrate holidays, or understand work, education, and love has been formed through long historical processes. Even the modern ideal of individual freedom is itself the result of particular cultural and historical traditions.

Tradition is therefore not merely something behind us.

It is something continuing to live through us.

Perhaps this is precisely what modern people sometimes forget. We like to think of ourselves as self-creating individuals shaping life through personal choice. Yet before we begin choosing, we have already learned a language, inherited particular values, and grown into ways of understanding the world that we did not create ourselves.

Traditions carry life forward long before we begin reflecting upon them.

This does not mean that traditions are always good. History also contains traditions marked by oppression, shame, and abuse of power. Many people have had to struggle in order to free themselves from norms that restricted their lives. Modern struggles for freedom have therefore often been necessary and important.

Yet even when people break with old traditions, new ones quickly emerge.

Perhaps this is because human beings cannot live within a complete cultural vacuum. We need patterns, rituals, and stories that give life direction and coherence. A society without any form of tradition would not necessarily become freer. It might just as easily become more fragmented, more rootless, and more lonely.

I believe this becomes visible in everyday life.

Even people who describe themselves as modern and only loosely connected to tradition often create rituals and recurring patterns of their own. Families gather around certain meals. People return to the same places every summer. Some light candles during dark winter evenings without really thinking about why it feels meaningful. Such actions may seem small, yet they create rhythm and continuity within life.

Perhaps this is precisely what traditions do at their best.

They help people feel that life holds together.

This also applies to language and stories. Human beings need narratives that place them within a larger context than the isolated moment alone. Traditions often carry such stories forward across generations. Not necessarily as fixed truths, but as experiences, symbols, and ways of understanding life.

When such connections disappear, people may experience a kind of historical homelessness.

Perhaps this is why many modern individuals feel uneasy despite possessing great personal freedom. When everything must constantly be new, flexible, and changing, it becomes more difficult to experience continuity. Life may gradually begin to resemble a series of disconnected moments lacking clear connection to either past or future.

Traditions work differently.

They remind people that life does not begin entirely with themselves.

This perhaps becomes especially clear with age. Many older people return to memories, places, and rituals that once seemed ordinary. Not merely out of nostalgia, but because traditions carry an experience of continuity. Through them people sense the connection between generations, between past and present.

Perhaps this is why holidays mean more than modern societies often realize. They are not merely vacations or opportunities for consumption. They create rhythms connecting people to something larger than the individual everyday routine. Even secular societies often continue holding onto such rituals, perhaps because human beings need forms of repetition that give life structure.

This also applies to professions.

For many years I worked within social work and later as a teacher. Gradually it became clear to me how important professional traditions are. Professions are not merely collections of technical skills. They also carry experiences, ethical reflections, and human insights developed over long periods of time.

A profession without tradition would quickly lose direction.

At the same time, traditions must continually be interpreted and renewed. Traditions that can no longer be questioned easily harden into dogma. Then they cease to be living traditions. Modern societies therefore do not need less tradition, but perhaps more conscious traditions — traditions capable both of carrying continuity and of enduring critical reflection.

Perhaps this is one of the great challenges of modernity.

How do we preserve human coherence without falling back into authoritarian forms?

For human beings need both freedom and belonging. Without freedom, traditions may become oppressive. Yet without belonging, freedom itself may become empty and rootless.

I believe this also applies to identity. Modern culture constantly encourages people to “find themselves” or “create themselves.” Yet identity never develops entirely alone. We become who we are through language, relationships, and cultural contexts already existing before us. Even the desire to be unique is shaped by specifically modern ideals.

Perhaps this is why human beings do not merely need the possibility of choice.

We also need something to belong to.

This does not mean that people should submit uncritically to the past. Traditions sometimes must be challenged, broken, or transformed. Yet perhaps there is a difference between criticizing traditions and losing all connection to them.

For when that connection disappears completely, human beings may be left without historical depth.

I believe something similar occurs in modern public life. Social debates move rapidly, and attention constantly shifts toward new themes. Historical memory becomes weaker. People live more within the flow of the present than within slow cultural continuities. Perhaps this is why many experience a kind of exhaustion in the midst of endless information.

Human life needs rhythm, not only speed.

Traditions create such rhythms.

Not because everything should remain unchanged, but because people need something that returns. A meal shared around the same table. A story told again. A song sung every Christmas. A path walked year after year. Such actions may appear small, yet they create connections between people and generations.

Perhaps this is why traditions become most visible precisely when they are threatened.

Only when something begins disappearing do people fully realize its importance.

At the same time, one must be careful not to romanticize the past. No tradition is perfect. Every historical culture contains both wisdom and blind spots. Yet perhaps this is precisely why traditions must be understood hermeneutically — not as dead rules to be copied uncritically, but as living conversations between past and present.

At their best, traditions do exactly this.

They help human beings carry human experience forward through history while allowing each generation to interpret it anew.

Perhaps this is why modern societies still need traditions. Not because people should return to the past, but because human life requires continuity in order not to dissolve into the restlessness of the immediate moment.

For perhaps tradition and modernity are not truly opposites.

Perhaps the real question is which traditions may help modern human beings live more humanly.

Traditions that do not suffocate freedom, but give it direction.

Traditions that do not imprison people, but help them experience belonging.

Traditions that remind us that life is not only about creating ourselves from nothing, but also about receiving something already carried forward by those who came before us.

Perhaps wisdom begins precisely there.

In the realization that human beings do not need change alone.

We also need connections that endure.