Tradition in and of itself is nothing to hold in high esteem, carry on with or preserve, as the perpetuation of ideas, mentalities, practices and habits should only be regulated by how they hold up to scrutiny by the best current instruments of rational inquiry we have available. This is why we gave up on making human sacrifices in hope for plentiful crops, drown or burn at the stake people labelled as “witches” by self-proclaimed authorities, treat illnesses by the panacea of “bleeding” and the like, practices which could all be perfectly well defended with the arguments used by those supporting tradition for tradition’s sake.

In other words, if the evolution of our understanding on what are the determining and operating conditions of a process show us that an idea, mentality or practice is founded on flawed, incomplete or downright wrong knowledge or assumptions, we sometimes seem to have the common sense to abandon or at least accordingly adjust our practices. But why is that not always the case?

Among my constant sources of bewilderment are the, not as infrequent as one might hope, occurrences when we don’t follow this otherwise commonsensical path. And it happens anywhere in between the macro-scale of whole societies and the micro-level of the individual. For the latter, one of the prime examples of this mainly irrational behaviour is the stubborn usage of an antiquated, regional, confusing and utterly ineffective systems of measurement, a.k.a. “imperial”. How is it normal, or even acceptable for that matter, that someone living in one of the most opulent, democratic, culturally and technologically relevant country*, still asses their bodyweight in “stones”, when only the utterance of the word summons thoughts of oxen drawn ploughs, candle light, ruthless social segregation, mass poverty and widespread ignorance? And it happens every day, with highly educated people too! And it’s not event justified by being the official standard as, on paper at least, the UK has a metric system.

I can’t curb my bewildered amazement when I see in this place, at this point in time, people lifting their eyes from the exceptionally powerful miniature computers they hold in the palm of their hands and command with their voice**, and hear them say they weigh 8 stones and such ounces… What?!? What does that mean? Do you even hear yourself?

Why is this happening? Inertia, complacency, ignorance? Most probably a convergence of these factors but also not limited to them. A sense of “identity” — which could be described by the “this is how we do things around here” mindset — most probably operates here as one of the reasons why so many people stick to such unpractical (to say the least), imprecise and antiquated unit of mass. And it doesn’t stop at “stones” but goes on to “inches”, “feet”, “miles”, “leagues” and the like. Regarding the latter I find it terribly amusing how fuel consumption for motor-vehicles in the UK is measured in the unit of “miles/gallon” while not a single petrol station in the country dispenses any fuel measured in gallons. But maybe the Brits enjoy keeping themselves busy with elaborate and endless unit conversions, hypothesis which can be otherwise fairly supported by the fact that a country with such a long and admirable technological and engineering tradition has bid its farewells to the “shilling”, the “half-crowns” and the “sixpence” only in 1971(!), 2 long years after man set foot on the Moon(!) and what seems like an eternity from their own Isaac Newton!

And there’s another paradoxical discrepancy here — among the many endearing contradictions this green and pleasant land so generously offers to the rest of the world — between the reputation Brits have of being a practical people and how few of them are actually receptive to the lessons found in best practice cases. Strange how not many in this country are bothered to inquire why there are no easy to use and intuitive fractional values of these archaic units of measurement? Has anyone heard of a “centistone”, a “microinch” or a “kilomile”? No! For the simple reason they wouldn’t make any sense. And if anyone is going to defend the “imperial”*** system by intimating there are conversions there too: 1foot = 12inches, 1yard = 3feet and 1stone = 14pounds but also 224ounces, then I will just thank them as they would have made me laugh. And a good laugh is always a great way to deal with the time and again proven fact that as a species we have a really hard time keeping up with ourselves.

* I’m referring to the UK

** to primarily look at pictures of cats or someone else’s meals — but that’s for another discussion

*** even the name should give you a hint of how out of date it is

.