Why do we perceive ourselves as more advanced than our ancestors?
We’ve placed our value metric in materialism: therefore, we perceive that we are more advanced than our ancestors. But if we place our value in something more eternal, like God, we realise that we are in fact not better off and in some cases we are even less advanced than prior eras. We are falling.
Tradition is not something meant to keep us stagnant, in fact, tradition is not at all about progress or regression, it is about aim. We need tradition to keep our value system on the correct path. Else we end up aiming and therefore ‘becoming’ in the wrong direction. As with our modern world, we think that progress means intellectual and technological advancement. That is simply not true. Our aim needs to be corrected by tradition - orthodox Christian tradition.
“Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle, it is primarily the principle of growth and regeneration. Tradition is not a principle striving to restore the past, using the past as a criterion for the present. Such a concept of tradition is rejected by history itself and by the consciousness of the Church. Tradition is authority to teach, authority to bear witness to the truth. The Church bears witness to the truth not by reminiscence or from the words of others, but from its own living, unceasing experience, from its catholic fullness…Tradition is a charismatic, not an historical principle." — Light from the east by Aidan Nichols
“The Church alone is the living witness of tradition, and only from inside, from within the Church, can tradition be felt and accepted as a certainty." — Florovsky