196

Ideally, tradition and innovation are two parts of a healthy system: Tradition is what had worked so far, but as circumstances change, innovation seeks ways to improve and adapt. Critical reasoning needs to balance them, so that their oppositional forces can pull society towards their shared purpose: prosperity.

The issues arise when the tempering mechanism of critical reasoning breaks.
Without the lessons of the past informing the decisions of the presence, odds are that mistakes will be repeated eventually.
On the other hand, rigid tradition obviously risks failing to adapt to changing circumstances.

Where modernity exacerbates those issues is in the sheer destructive power of modern weaponry and the complex infrastructure and administration required to maintain modern population and living standards: errors of either kind can easily become more costly than ever before. At the same time, modern state capacity puts far more power into the hands of those entrusted with it, enabling far greater mistakes. And finally, as you noted, the fast pace and scope of modern developments and changes quickly invalidates many old premises and requires faster adaption.

Not all traditions are bad, but figuring out which ones are and how to fix them is hard to do quickly.

I would say that humans have grandparents due to the nature of human mating and offspring.