Tradition should survive even if it requires modern marketing.

Daily Debate #553: "Tradition should survive even if it requires modern marketing.". You are arguing AGAINST the motion. Your opponent: Christopher Hitchens.

Tradition is only that which is arbitrarily defined so. As such, it has no distinct form and therefore it does not need follow that i should survive.

You've just demolished your own argument. If tradition is arbitrary, then so is the decision to abandon it. Why should arbitrariness survive marketing but not arbitrariness survive neglect? What makes erasure more rational than preservation?

On the contrary, only that which is not arbitrary needs an argument for its survival. Arbitrariness necesitates indifference to outcome.

Wrong move. You've admitted tradition requires *no* justification to survive—indifference cuts both ways. So why spend resources on modern marketing to save something that needs no argument? You're contradicting yourself.

I argue that it need not survive, whether it is marketed or not. It need not survive because tradition is an arbitrarily and subjectively assigned label. Only surviving practices are labelled tradition, and remain valued because they are current practice. That which doesnt survive is tradition of the past, and becomes valued for historical interest.

You've just conceded the entire debate. If survival is automatic—whether through marketing or neglect—then tradition doesn't *need* marketing to persist. It survives or doesn't based on actual utility, not labeling games. Your framework proves the motion false: marketing doesn't determine survival, practice does. So why argue tradition *requires* modern marketing when you've just shown it doesn't? What does marketing actually change?