First, to define the terms: my idea of a conservative is someone who believes in maintaining institutions, traditions, practices, and beliefs which have proven their worth over time against impulses to make radical changes in them. I am thinking of people whose conservatism is based on reasoned principles, not the ordinary reaction against any kind of change at all that everyone, regardless of worldview or disposition, shares.
By snowball modernity I mean the fact that change in society is increasing more quickly now than it has ever been. A person carried from 1400 to 1500 would see a world basically familiar to him: a person displaced from 1800 to 1850 would be far more uncomfortable, and a person moved from 1975 to 2000 even more so. In the 20th century, urban forms and families in America completely changed: went from cities and farms and "nuclear" families or extended clans to sprawl, sprawl, more sprawl, factory farms, and families so strained by overwork and easy divorce that they don't entirely deserve the name. By snowball modernity, I'm thinking of how quickly telephones changed their nature, or better yet, how computers leapt seemingly instantaneously from being expensive mysterious things owned only by wealthy individuals or businesses to being so integrated with our everyday life that we cannot imagine living without them.
Although I do not think of myself as a conservative, I share many of their concerns, and frequent sites like Front Porch Republic, the Imaginative Conservative, and the American Conservative. (The 'deal-killer' is American conservatives' lamentably reliable bigotry against homosexuals, though their enthusiasm for propagating religious orthodoxy doesn't help.)
My question is this: given how rapidly society continues to change, how much its energy defies attempts to formulate rational responses to it, to adapt to reality while maintaining older values, institutions, etc....what do they/we do? How do you find stability in an earthquake, in other words? It's not as if cats can be stuffed back into the bags. How does one give integrity to a society, to a civilization, that won't stand still along enough to be examined, let alone have its undergirding shored up?
By snowball modernity I mean the fact that change in society is increasing more quickly now than it has ever been. A person carried from 1400 to 1500 would see a world basically familiar to him: a person displaced from 1800 to 1850 would be far more uncomfortable, and a person moved from 1975 to 2000 even more so. In the 20th century, urban forms and families in America completely changed: went from cities and farms and "nuclear" families or extended clans to sprawl, sprawl, more sprawl, factory farms, and families so strained by overwork and easy divorce that they don't entirely deserve the name. By snowball modernity, I'm thinking of how quickly telephones changed their nature, or better yet, how computers leapt seemingly instantaneously from being expensive mysterious things owned only by wealthy individuals or businesses to being so integrated with our everyday life that we cannot imagine living without them.
Although I do not think of myself as a conservative, I share many of their concerns, and frequent sites like Front Porch Republic, the Imaginative Conservative, and the American Conservative. (The 'deal-killer' is American conservatives' lamentably reliable bigotry against homosexuals, though their enthusiasm for propagating religious orthodoxy doesn't help.)
My question is this: given how rapidly society continues to change, how much its energy defies attempts to formulate rational responses to it, to adapt to reality while maintaining older values, institutions, etc....what do they/we do? How do you find stability in an earthquake, in other words? It's not as if cats can be stuffed back into the bags. How does one give integrity to a society, to a civilization, that won't stand still along enough to be examined, let alone have its undergirding shored up?