Those societies which retain, in changing circumstances, a lively sense of their own identity and continuity (which are without that hatred of their own experience which makes them desire to efface it) are to be counted fortunate, not because they possess what others lack, but because they have already mobilized what none is without and all, in fact, rely upon.
In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.
A depressing doctrine, it will be said – even by those who do not make the mistake of adding in an element of crude determinism which, in fact, it has no place for. A tradition of behaviour is not a groove within which we are destined to grind out our helpless and unsatisfying lives: Spartam nactus es; bane exorna.*
But in the main the depression springs from the exclusion of hopes that were false and the discovery that guides, reputed to be of superhuman wisdom and skill, are, in fact, of a somewhat different character. If the doc trine deprives us of a model laid up in heaven to which we should approximate our behaviour, at least is does not lead us into a morass where every choice is equally good or equally to be deplored. And if it suggests that politics are nur for die Sckwindelfreie, that should depress only those who have lost their nerve.
Michael Oakeshott – Political Education (Essay, 1953)
*”Sparta is yours; adorn her!” – from Euripedes as paraphrased by Erasmus. Claude suggests: “You’ve been assigned this particular city or lot in life – now make the most of it.”
See also:
Stability: Burke and incremental change
Marcus Borg on unending conversation
Hannah Arendt on action, story, history and invisible hands
Hannah Arendt on labour and consumption, automation and Utopia
Hannah Arendt on speech and action, equality and distinction