A competing paradigm

Liberalism does generate a morality of sorts. If you have accepted the framework of liberalism then you'll think that you're a good person if you are non-discriminatory, non-judgemental, non-racist, non-sexist, tolerant and independent.

What I've attempted to do at this site is to criticise this moral framework by going back to first principles and showing where such ideas came from and what they must ultimately lead to.

But there are other ways we can take aim at liberalism. One option is to look at liberal moral claims (being non-discriminatory, non-judgemental etc.) and criticise them directly.

For instance, we could argue that although there are occasions in which it's correct not to discriminate or to judge, that at other times it's the right and proper thing to do. For instance, can we really not discriminate in favour of our own families? If I earn a weekly wage do I really have to share it randomly with anyone I meet, rather than using it to benefit my own children? Can I really not judge if my 16-year-old daughter were to start going out with a 45-year-old bikie?

We can also criticise liberal moral claims in a more general sense. What these claims are pressing us to be is an impartial, leave others alone, individual. But that's a deficient view - it leaves out the more active, positive, "upholding" qualities that are necessary to keep a civilisation healthy. It also leaves the "good" liberal citizen as a kind of cellophane man - the kind of person who is left with no positive qualities of his own to assert in the world - his "goodness" is merely one of not judging or discriminating in regards to the "other".

But there is a limitation to all of these criticisms: they don't go beyond liberalism to assert an alternative. The hope, perhaps, is that by criticising liberalism effectively, the natural inclination of people toward traditionalism will be allowed to be freely expressed once more.

The problem is that most people do need to have an immediate moral framework to live by - something that tells them that they are a good person living a meaningful life. And even if we criticise the liberal framework effectively, people are less likely to abandon it if there is no alternative for them to jump to.

So we need to be not only critics of liberalism but also promoters of an alternative traditionalist paradigm.

It's true that traditionalism is not an ideology which starts from a single principle from which other values then logically flow. So our paradigm won't be a simple, reductionist one.

But it's still possible to assert something of what a good traditionalist life would look like. For instance, whereas liberals might emphasise being non-discriminatory or non-judgemental, traditionalists would emphasise the value of connectedness to particular expressions of culture, nature, art and tradition.

So, whereas a liberal culture surrounds people with the message of "enjoying diversity," a traditionalist one might do likewise with the message of "feeling connected to my heritage".

The point is that we don't have to wait for liberalism to crash before asserting a competing paradigm in our own communities. We can begin the process of having parallel paradigms operating side by side.