Friendship, says Oakeshott, can only exist in the absence of any desire to improve or change the friend. The tie between friends is that of familiarity, not usefulness. You are not going to drop a friend of 20 years and go chasing after a fresh, new one because the old friend is outdated. Or I hope you won’t. We all have a conservative disposition in friendship, says Oakeshott.
Another aspect of life in which we are all conservatively disposed are our tools. A surgeon doesn’t stop in the midst of surgery to design a new scalpel. His value (or mine, or yours) in the professional field is our permanence. Spending a long time doing the same thing makes you good at this thing. In parenting, it’s the same. Being there is what counts. It doesn’t matter what, how or if you play with a child. What matters is that you are around, available, interested, continuously present. In marriage, it’s not the special occasions or great birthday gifts but being present and interested every day that makes a marriage.
This is all obvious, of course, but here Oakeshott brings up an important point. One tool in common use, he reminds us, are general rules of conduct. Isn’t it easier to function in a collectivity, big or small, where everybody knows the rules and understands why they should be practiced?
Oakeshott believes that being conservative in politics isn’t about holding specific beliefs about the nature of existence or practicing any particular religion. He says that conservative politics is about one thing: maintaining our existing way of life by upholding the same general rules of conduct. We are, Oakeshott explains, a civilization of people that embraced as its guiding principle that everybody is an individual who holds all sorts of beliefs and pursues any kind of individually chosen goals. We tolerate monomaniacs, he says, and put in structures of government that
protect us against the nuisance of those who spend their energy and their wealth in service of some pet indignation.. by setting a limit to the amount of noise anyone might emit.
I believe this is beautifully put and can be applied to many of the things going on presently.
Pet indignation is such a great expression and can be used often.
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