I guess you could call it culture. And not just culture as artistic expression (which is the way we usually think of it), but as history, character, idiosyncrasies, norms, morality, religion, family, communal bonds, and markets.
In other words, our sentimental attachments, implicit knowledge, and social bonds matter more than what the atomistic individual can entail or the impersonal, utilitarian state can deliver.
Why is this important? First, we know no man is an island. We are always in relationship. And these relationships, although not always made explicit, do provide some cohesion for a civilization to flourish. And also, while a state can provide services, it can never care. It is a cold impersonal entity that adheres to its own ends to the point of diminishing the private powers it serves. Moreover, a top-down state can never cultivate civilization in quite the same way traditional practices, which evolved and survived through generations of trial and error from the bottom-up, can.
William Gairdner says, “we are predominantly creatures of self-interest, passion, instinct, and emotion, and the restraints on these features of our being must come not only from ourselves, but from socialization via long experience, good habits and manners, customs, and prudence (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time).”
“In this sense, each and every human being is always “in the middle”— benefiting from past generations in the present, while observing obligations to future generations, who will in turn benefit from us, and so on, as long as civilization endures. The persistent emergence of unintended consequences following radical change should serve as a brake on all hasty social reform.”
Much of this requires the virtue of gratitude, in that we need to appreciate what works in society, rather than coming from the outrage at what doesn’t work. For those on the left who yearn for social progress, this does not come easily.
They have a saying in Brazil, “Deus é Brasileiro,” meaning God is Brazilian. This saying has two meanings: the more literal one in that it has the natural resources of a tropical paradise, and the other in that its society is on the verge of chaos and yet does not seem to ever fall apart. And so there must be a higher Being nudging things along to be grateful for.
And while America has a lot more to be grateful for than Brazil, there is always a sense that more can be done. But to what ends? And do we any longer have a tacit agreement as to a common ends? (Bruce Charlton has an interesting take on this.)
Part of that common ends may be conserving our traditional practices as we proceed with our reforms.
Human warmth in a society diminishes by the same measure that its legislation is perfected. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila