Home / D. Tradition, culture and religion / Part DIR
"We've always done it."
how old a practice is says nothing about whether it's just. The same phrase defended slavery and the exclusion of women from politics, and it lost every time. Traditions aren't fixed things: they change all the time, and courts and legislatures in many countries have already recognized that a cultural practice isn't immune from the ban on cruelty to animals.
Short answer
Doing something for a long time doesn't make it just. Slavery lasted for centuries, and women were kept from voting until the twentieth century in most countries. In each case, someone said "it's always been this way". Traditions also change all the time: the United Kingdom banned bull-baiting and cockfighting in 1835, every US state now bans cockfighting, and Brazil's Supreme Court struck down traditional practices like the farra do boi because they subjected animals to cruelty.
For children
Long ago, many things were considered normal that we now know were wrong. It was once normal to hit children to discipline them, and once normal that women couldn't vote. People had been doing these things for a long time, and they were still wrong. Doing something for a long time doesn't turn wrong into right. What matters is whether someone is being hurt.
"Is there any old tradition you're glad came to an end?"
Como pode aparecer
"We've always done it."
"My ancestors ate meat."
"It's been this way for thousands of years."
"It's not going to change now."
"Humans have eaten meat since the caves."
"Do you think thousands of generations were wrong?"
"They want to destroy our traditions."
"Established practices carry a wisdom that shouldn't be discarded without strong reasons."
"It's part of who we are." (which is D2 and D8)
The strongest version
"We've always eaten meat. My grandparents ate it, my parents ate it; it's not going to change now."
Strongest version (steelman):
- P1Practices that have survived for generations have passed a long test of social life.
- P2What has passed that test deserves a presumption of legitimacy, and whoever wants to change it bears the burden of proof.
- P3Eating animals is one of humanity's oldest and most widespread practices.
- CSo eating animals is legitimate unless proven otherwise.
The strong version has a respectable inspiration: the idea, associated with Edmund Burke's conservatism, that old institutions hold an accumulated wisdom no individual can rebuild alone.
The argument is valid. Its soundness fails at P2: surviving for generations shows a practice was useful to those who kept it, not that it was just to those who paid for it. And even accepting the burden of proof, it has already been met in the chapters of family A.
Full answer
- a
Reconstruction and diagnosis
The argument is the appeal to tradition: treating the age of a practice as proof that it is right. The mistake is confusing two questions.
Question What tradition answers Is this practice old and widespread? Yes, and that's a historical fact Is this practice just to those it affects? Nothing. Age says nothing about justice Tradition can explain why we do something. It can't justify it, because traditions were decided by those who benefited from them, without hearing from those who paid the price. Animals never took part in that "test of social life".
- b
Where the argument breaks
1. The phrase has defended almost every injustice.
Slavery was a centuries-old tradition when it was abolished; Brazil, the last country in the Americas to end it, did so in 1888. Excluding women from the vote was a tradition when it was overturned, in the twentieth century in most countries. In each case, the change was presented as an attack on the natural order of things, and today almost no one regrets it.
2. Traditions change all the time.
Today's diet isn't our grandparents': cheap chicken and eating meat every day are recent phenomena, created by industrial animal farming. Whoever invokes tradition usually defends a habit that is a few decades old, not millennia.
3. The law has already answered the question.
The United Kingdom banned bull-baiting and cockfighting in 1835, and cockfighting is now illegal in every US state. Brazil's Supreme Federal Court ruled in 1997 that the farra do boi, a bull-chasing tradition in Santa Catarina, violates the constitutional ban on cruelty to animals, did the same with cockfighting and, in 2016, with the vaquejada, a rodeo-like event. The reasoning was the same: a practice's cultural value doesn't make it immune from the other values protected by law.
4. The burden of proof has been met.
The strong version accepts change when there are good reasons. The chapters of family A show that no criterion separates animals from protected humans without falling back on the arbitrariness of species. Tradition only works as a presumption until someone examines the question.
5. Tradition is also made by those who changed.
Every moral tradition we value today began with someone who broke with the previous one. If no one could change what had always been done, the very tradition we're proud of wouldn't exist.
- c
Data and sources
Source What it says Note UK Cruelty to Animals Act 1835 Banned bull-baiting, bear-baiting and cockfighting, long-standing traditions Summary with sources Brazil's Supreme Federal Court on the *vaquejada* (2016), with the *farra do boi* and cockfighting precedents (in Portuguese) By 6 votes to 5, the court struck down a Ceará state law; cultural value "doesn't make the activity immune from other constitutional values" Legal commentary; cites RE 153.531 (farra do boi, 1997) and ADIs 2514 and 1856 (cockfighting) Brazil, Constitutional Amendment 96/2017 (in Portuguese) After the ruling, Congress amended the Constitution so that sporting practices with animals that are cultural expressions are not considered cruel Shows tradition is usually defended by politics, not by argument Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988 In experiments and real choices, presenting an option as the current state makes it more likely to be chosen Origin of the concept of status quo bias Piazza et al., 2015 "Normal" is one of the four justifications most used for eating meat Shows the psychological function of the argument - d
The strongest counter-reply: it isn't age, it's prudence
The most serious version doesn't say the old is right. It says that rapid, radical social change tends to have unforeseen consequences, and that tradition deserves caution: change slowly, test, keep what works. Asking a whole food culture to change is asking for an enormous transformation, and prudence advises distrusting anyone who promises everything will work out.
- e
Why the counter-reply doesn't reach the conclusion
Prudence speaks to pace, not direction.
It can justify a gradual transition. It doesn't justify continuing indefinitely with a practice acknowledged as unjust.
The caution is selective.
The most radical rapid changes in the human diet, like the explosion of industrial animal farming in the twentieth century, happened without any prudence and without asking tradition's permission.
No abolition waited for consensus.
If prudence required the majority to agree before change, no historical injustice would have ended.
Individual choice doesn't threaten society.
No one needs to redesign a whole culture to stop buying meat for their next lunch.
Reasoning errors
Logical
Is the form valid?
Appeal to tradition
Hume's law (from is to ought)
Epistemological
Does the evidence support it?
False permanence
Survivorship bias
Moral
Is the criterion coherent?
Excluding those who pay the price
Double standard
Biases
Status quo bias
The current state is preferred just because it's current
The 4Ns rationalization
"Normal" is one of the most used justifications and is linked to less guilt
System justification
The established order comes to seem fair because it's established
Identity-protective cognition
Questioning tradition feels like an attack on the group
Default effect
People stick with the ready-made option, the meal with meat
Rosy retrospection
The past with meat is remembered as better than it was
Extrapolations
The principle being tested is: "what has always been done should continue".
If it applied to…SlaveryTap to see
Abolition would have been a mistake
No one defends that conclusion
If it applied to…Women's rightsTap to see
Women's suffrage would have violated tradition
Shows tradition isn't a criterion of justice
If it applied to…Corporal punishment of childrenTap to see
It would still be acceptable, since it was the norm for centuries
Many countries have banned it, starting with Sweden in 1979
If it applied to…Bull-baiting and cockfightingTap to see
They should be allowed because they're old
Lawmakers and courts decided otherwise
Contradictions
Almost everyone considers abolition and women's suffrage progress, not attacks on culture.
The same person uses a phone, works differently and lives differently from their grandparents, and doesn't feel they betrayed anyone.
It's common to criticize foreign cultural practices with animals, like eating dogs, and defend one's own with the argument from tradition.
Few people publicly call for its return, though it's an old tradition.
Cheap industrially farmed chicken and meat every day aren't tradition; they're a product of recent decades.
What the argument gets right
What is true
There's a truth in tradition. Practices that last generations carry real meaning: identity, memory, family gatherings. Hasty changes can also have costs we don't foresee, and it's sensible to respect the value people place on their roots, without treating them with contempt.
But
But what is valuable in tradition rarely depends on the victim. The gathering, the shared food and the memory of grandparents can continue without the animal on the plate. Respecting tradition doesn't require preserving what in it causes harm; it requires separating one from the other.
Connections
Usually comes before
Usually comes after
Go deeper in Questão de Ética
Chapters from the open-access collection A Journey Through Animal Ethics that discuss this argument in more detail:
- Does the Fact That Speciesist Practices Are Traditions… Vol. I, ch. 9
References
Law
- United Kingdom. Cruelty to Animals Act 1835.
- Brazil, Supreme Federal Court, ADI 4983 (2016), *vaquejada*; with precedents RE 153.531 (*farra do boi*, 1997) and ADIs 2514 and 1856 (cockfighting) (in Portuguese).
- Brazil. Constitutional Amendment 96 of 2017 (in Portuguese).
Philosophy
- Reflections on the Revolution in France.