Yet we rarely hear good arguments for the value of tradition in general, or particular traditions and values. Sometimes this is because the spruikers of tradition are actually selling nostalgia: an ideal that's close enough generationally to be intimate, but far enough away to be longed for, as one longs for the safety and security of a lost childhood playroom. If it cannot be remembered, it can be imagined: a fantasy world, perhaps painted in one's psyche from stories told by grandparents or children's stories.

In this way, traditions can be repositories for all one's compensatory illusions of yesterday, as against today's painful reality. But even when politicians or pundits are speaking of some bona fide tradition, its value is rarely revealed. That it is ''traditional'' is enough to give it priority over what's modern: the avant-garde, the progressive, the radical. Many stick with what's safe, in rhetoric if not reality.

Importantly, this does not mean that traditions are worthless. On the contrary, traditions are fundamental: they are lived stories, necessary to make sense of our own characters and life trajectories. As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre argues, traditions provide us with the background of our daily habits, concepts and emotions.

To wholly reject traditions is not only myopic, but also impossible: we can no more leap out of history than we can jump over our own shadows.

The point is neither to accept or reject traditions wholesale, but to analyse and assess them carefully, and decide what is valuable, and to whom. The ''to whom'' is particularly important, as some traditions, and customs within a tradition, benefit some but not all.

Take the ''traditional marriage'' of the 20th century, which usually meant heterosexual marriage for the purposes of procreation, sanctified by the church. This required a very particular sexual division of labour. As is now recognised, this not only excluded homosexual couples from state and religious recognition, but also often required women to give up on the financial independence and psychological rewards of employment. For some women, marriage was (and still is) something to be rescued from, not by.

In recent years, this had not meant a complete rejection of sacred vows or domestic partnership. Rather, the institution has been rightly criticised and revised, partly in response to changing economic and social structures, and partly because of a greater awareness of equality.

Assessing our traditions might seem simple, particularly with the help of hindsight. But as MacIntyre makes clear, our ideas about justice, for example, as well as our standards for what makes a good argument at all, are themselves part of our traditions. So we cannot appeal to some eternal and universal standard to help us resolve our disputes. And we cannot simply defer to experts for easy answers, since they too are bound by their own scholarly and social traditions.

As philosopher and scientist Thomas Kuhn argued, many of the arguments between physicists, for example, have not simply been about evidence, but about what good evidence is. For all their intelligence and education, they might see the same numbers, but come to very different conclusions.

Put simply, traditions are neither straightforwardly good or bad, nor easy to evaluate. We are part of them, and they us: in our gestures, clothing, food, art, craft, language and ideas.

This familiarity can make them seem more valuable than they are, but it can also blind us to their power: we think we have overcome them with our radicalism or progressiveness, but we are still under their spell. The philosopher and journalist Karl Marx wrote: ''The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.'' And no more so than when we can no longer feel this weight.

If there is any straightforward lesson to be learned from the study of our traditions, it is that they are larger, longer and more complex than they seem; that they require study, reflection and respect for their subtleties and intricacies. And, for this reason, anyone trying to sell you conveniently-packaged ''traditional values'' is best left at the counter.

Dr Damon Young is a philosopher and author. His next book, Philosophy in the Garden, will be published in December.