The Social Psychology Of Tradition Zach Cunich

AUTHOR // ZACH CUNICH

It’s impossible to know the future. So, how should we prepare for it?

You’ve likely confronted this problem before when you’ve asked questions like, “is climate change more urgent than artificial intelligence research?”, “is it worth learning to code?”, or “what on earth should I do after I graduate with an arts degree?”.

You’re not alone. Humans have always faced this problem in one form or another, and so long as our environment keeps changing, we always will.

Luckily for us, our big-brained ancestors improvised a solution to future uncertainty. Simple on the face of it, it turned out to be so revolutionary that it helped humans to conquer the planet. It’s called tradition. It’s how we transmit tips and tricks to members of our society who don’t yet exist. It’s the mechanism of cultural evolution.

In the beginning, tradition would have been little more than ‘LifeSkills1001’: how to make tools, how to hunt, how to cook. Adaptive behaviours could be discovered and passed on to offspring in a single generation, making biological evolution look as efficient as monkeys at a keyboard.

The accumulation of cultural skills over time allowed humankind to proliferate. But tribes with burgeoning populations struggled to stay cohesive. Then suddenly, about 70,000 years ago, culture itself evolved. Humans discovered that they could think in abstractions and communicate with symbols. People could make, share, and subscribe to mythologies about who they were, why they were, and how they should be. Culture exploded. This was the birth of tradition as we know it.

Fast forward a few dozen millennia, and we have the First Agricultural Revolution (the original one, not the one we learnt about in Year 8 History). Humans settling down and living out their lives in close contact with each other meant that social cohesion was tested once again. Civilisation needs people to be civil, to, you know, not kill and pillage each other all the time.

When culture became the sacred lifeblood of the masses, people became wary of both the real and anticipated consequences of their transgressions. Where before we shaped our culture, more and more our culture began to shape us. Tradition became a moral domain.

The moral aura of tradition stays with us today, and it makes discussions messy. Everyone respects some traditions; they form part of our moral identity. But traditions contradict each other and have to compete for the finite space in our collective consciousness. And we’re quick to get defensive when we sense that our identity is under fire.

Understanding social psychology can add nuance to the discussions we have about tradition. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt has found, humans use at least five ‘Moral Foundations’ for moral reasoning: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. These moral foundations guide our behaviours, shape our worldviews, and inform our discourse.

Importantly, receptivity to each moral foundation varies from person to person. Generally speaking, progressives are especially captivated by care and fairness, while conservatives are approximately equally sensitive to each foundation.

Most ANU students care about the traditions of minorities because they reject the unfairness of arbitrary discrimination. They see righting injustice as comparatively more important than expressing loyalty to an in-group and respecting its traditions. This stance comes so naturally to those with a care and fairness-based morality that it can be affronting when someone disagrees with it. Right then, it’s natural to want to accuse that someone of callousness or a lack of comprehension.

But that someone is likely neither callous nor idiotic. They probably disagree because they see the world through a different moral matrix. They see the same issues, but evolution has given them different solutions. Society is, after all, a fragile thing. In times of uncertainty, it’s fair enough to want to prioritise the well-being and symbolic unity of the in-group.

This might help explain why you and your Uncle Bob don’t see eye to eye on whether it should be ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’.

When we flounder in moral discussions, it’s often because we’ve forgotten to calibrate our messages with the listener’s moral preferences. If you really want to get your point across to Uncle Bob, you should try speaking his moral language – perhaps tell him that ‘Happy Holidays’ reflects the traditional Christmas spirit of charity and the right of people to celebrate as they see fit.

Just as we encourage empathetic communication with people of different backgrounds and lived experiences, so should we strive for a deeper understanding of people whose moral foundations differ from ours. By articulating what’s important to us and striving to understand other moral points of view, we can have more productive discussions about tradition.

“So, do you know what you want to do in your career?”

It’s the inevitable question that comes right after the awkward “How is Year 12?” or “How is uni?” Usually, it precedes the high-pitched, “ahh, interesting,” which attempts to conceal an overt scepticism. Or, “So what are you going to do with that?”

This question is probably one of my least favourites in the awkward ice breaker repertoire, which seems to be continually directed at every teenager or twenty-something. For me, it has always been a question after which I have had to sell myself, and to which I have numerous rebuttals.

Because, what have I answered? For as long as I can remember, I have said that I want to be a fashion journalist. Like every aspirational fashion journalist I know, I have wanted to be the editor-in-chief of Vogue. So, you can imagine the logistical nightmare for the ‘Gen X’ conversationalists with whom I have had the pleasure of interacting, as I have watched them squirm and relay, “Is that realistic?”

And for me, turning 20 this year, those three soul-crushing words are starting to echo on my personal conscience.

Trust me, my rebuttal bank is seamless at this point: “How are you going to get there?” Well, I have read every ‘How to get into fashion journalism’ article you can find on Google. I have watched Alexa Chung’s The Future of Fashion series numerous times.

My writing this article is part of my game plan, to write for as many publications as possible before leaving uni. My friends are probably tired at this point of hearing me talk about these illustrious ‘internships’ that I intend to secure with notable magazines and newspapers.

But, beyond the glowing guarantees of success posted by every ‘How-To’ guide on Google, YouTube and Facebook, my career trajectory is still as ambiguous as ever. And, it seems, it comes with the territory.

As Woroni celebrates its 70th anniversary, it seems pertinent to reflect on journalism then and now.

Drawing on my fashion knowledge, it seems most obvious to me to start by referencing the Women of Vogue exhibition, which arrived at the National Portrait Gallery late last year. Last year Vogue Australia celebrated its 60th anniversary. Reflecting on their archives, I was enthralled by the covers of the 1960s, which seemed to have a form of naivety and nostalgia, and a sense of magic which leads you to smile and sigh. This sigh is significant. It represents the recognition of a clear gap between the covers of ‘old’ and the new, which we now see.

Journalism now seems beset by cynicism and a sense of competition that has accompanied the rapid acceleration of change. Looking at the models on the covers of Vogue in the 1960s, there is a sense of slowness, stillness even. A lack of awareness to the broader cultural zeitgeist existing around the aura of fashion.

However, looking at any newspaper or magazine today, this slowness has been transformed. There is a haste that accompanies feature spreads, as though journalists are aware that as their work is being written, it is inherently dated already.

For me, reviewing the media landscape, of which Woroni is a part, means investigating the changing relationship between writers and readers. Nowadays, the distinction between the writer and their audience is blurred. No longer is there a single page devoted to the ‘Letter to the Editor’ section. Rather, people take to social media to voice their support or condemnation, and it cannot be as easily filtered.

When Woroni was first published in 1950, women were still incarcerated in a ‘cult of domesticity’. Because of my gender, I still couldn’t attend university. We had just emerged from one of the most destructive global conflicts the world had ever seen. And that coverage was still censored, words were blacked out, stories of victims lost in the abyss. By the 1960s, the television war in Vietnam exposed people to a world outside their bubble of security on Australian shores. Journalists were given a new responsibility to seek the truth, to go to the source of chaos, not to work around it.

In contemporary times, there is no space for glamour. There is no voyeuristic approach to covering human suffering. We are bombarded by it every day. And with this honesty comes an obligation to the public, who are increasingly able to spot the black sheep and call it out. We are a smarter audience, more active listeners. With the growth of the media landscape comes a growth of information, and we are vigilant fact-checkers. There is no space for ‘fake news’, which most likely characterised the majority of news that existed in the 1950s.

With the growth of blogs and social media influencers, traditional office spaces once designed for large publications are being transformed. As of now, the office space for writers is more often their living room couch. Freelance writing has exploded, where the job of the writer is no longer simply to write, but to edit, photograph, and design. The ‘slashie’, or ‘triple-threat’ as applied to the entertainment industry, has expanded into journalism.

Amidst this cacophony of voices and competing obligations that characterise the industry of journalism, there is the pressing question: “Is journalism dead?”

And it is a genuine concern. But, like how the 1950s did not look the same as the 1960s, let alone the 2020s, change is not necessarily something to be feared. The journalistic landscape of today, whilst not offering as much job security in the traditional sense, is freer, louder, and responsible for the continual destruction of traditional conventions.

Throughout the feminist movements, we have reported. Throughout war crimes and ideological conflicts, we have reported. We have broken stories exposing the corruption of the banking industry. We have uncovered the censorship of news by media moguls intended to dissuade public sympathies on certain controversial issues. Whilst no longer desk-bound, there will always be a responsibility to write. To be honest. To have integrity.

So, whilst my rebuttals to the questions of the validity and usefulness of a career in journalism are prepped and ready, I am not naïve. I know that the media landscape is vastly changing. Whilst there is a depressing undercurrent to the discussion of the future of journalism, which speaks of bite-size news and ‘one-minute read’ feature articles, I believe there remains an optimism. There will always be platforms available to allow individuals to have a voice. There will always be news which needs to be reported.

Woroni has prevailed despite this cultural change to journalism. It is a case study in the continued merit and value of authentic voices. It fuels the passion of youths like myself, who are determined to write stories and perpetuate the legacy of thoughtful conversation.

My response to the question of “So what are you going to do?” elicits a degree of concern, but at the same time it excites me. Perhaps the position ‘The editor-in-chief of Vogue’ will have a new name by the time I am old enough to compete for it. But despite its transformation, my aspirations for a journalistic future will prevail. Having a voice is as old as democracy itself. And so, as long as the constitutional right prevails, journalism will always ensure my voice, and all our voices, are heard.