Forgotten origins make internalized conventions seem natural rather than historical

Evidence

This internalization means the origins of most conventions often get lost to the ages. We learn these rules as “the way things are done.” In eighteenth-century France, carriages drove on the left, but the leaders of the French Revolution switched traffic to the right as a “democratic” rejection of the ancien régime. Today the French drive on the right out of habit, not out of antimonarchical sentiment. The more the backstory is forgotten, the more conventions seem to be the “natural” order of the world. Violations consequentially are “unnatural” and require sanctions. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 131

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of institutionalized arbitrary norms becoming naturalized; echoes the complacency about status-legitimated social order the reader has studied across Bourdieu-adjacent sources. — connects to: Conventions are arbitrary practices that coordinate choices where several options are equally viable — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 119; Forgotten origins make arbitrary conventions feel like nature’s order — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 131; Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally (+6 more)
• CANDY: The French Revolution switching traffic from left to right as an antimonarchical gesture is a compact, tweetable history tidbit.

Broader Connections

• Forgotten origins make arbitrary conventions feel like nature’s order #expands (0.98) — W. David Marx, Status and Culture, 131
• Contemporary concepts get meanings by convention, not by ideal form #expands (0.88) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 342
• Colonial rule operated through habit-taking into existing conventions and commonsense #exemplifies (0.85)
• Histories and causal narratives persist buried inside the language used to tell them #corroborates (0.83)
• Origin myths function as political arguments about power, not historical records #corroborates (0.82) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 132
• Micro-histories of marginal colonial categories expose epistemic habits that major histories miss. #exemplifies (0.80) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 63
• Nationalist antiquity arises necessarily from novelty #exemplifies (0.79) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 26
• Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally #complicates (0.78)