Tradition Must Die!

It's a given that our nationalities have a hand in shaping our personalities. Someone born in the Bronx will have a very different skill set then someone raised in Boston. Even in fields like psychology, medicine, and physiology, the places we're born can mean the difference between life and death. And nowhere on Earth are we exempt from this rule. Every nation, every state has their own set of traditions, beliefs, and views that tend to overwrite the individual's.

So, my question is this. How did they get there? The down-south accents had to have their origins, but nobody knows where the first slur was cast. Perhaps it was a natural process born from hearing foreigners chat in their own exotic tongues. It could have been entirely accidental: An unlucky Mine worker was blasted by debris from an explosion, and the resulting jaw and throat injuries forced him to speak like a redneck. Or, just maybe, it was a "Crackpot's" way of standing out from the crowd. From the three, I'd say the third is the most likely. Everything had to start somewhere, even something as old and musty as these.
And, for the most part, the effects they have on the developing mind are not at all desirable. It's different from forced adaptation, where you have to adapt to survive, but similar in that the mind is technically being wiped, overridden without consent. Most of these communal ideas aren't positive, most leading to an early onset of Tribalism. Some promote violence or inane rituals. And the few that are actually positive do not outweigh the many, many evil ones. Wouldn't it be easier just to stop? To quit relying on the past to choose who we are? Most Likely. But, in practice, this is thoroughly impossible.

Why, you ask? Perhaps now is the time to do Science! An experiment: The largest in the world. It's known by almost everyone, and is still boiling away in its dish. AMERICA. Yes, the land of Apple Pie, Shotguns, and unbridled stupidity is the perfect test subject for this case. Now, as we all know from our grade school years, America was founded by the Pilgrims, who were sick of religious persecution. So they packed their stuff, sailed across a whole damn ocean, and hit a rock. Cutting now to the heart of the matter, the customs of the Pilgrims, those determined, devoted Puritans, evolved into Baconator and Son. How? Because America's first group of invaders presented a very interesting case indeed. Puritan youth, repressed by their authority figures, would often strike back at the order and civility of everyday life by doing completely random shit. This ranged from jumping off of cliffs with vines attached to you feet to eating food competitively to climbing things for the heck of it to...
OH GOD. AMERICA WAS BORN OUT OF THE WORLD'S FIRST RAISE AGAINST GROUPIES. ;O;

Yes, IT WAS. The stupid, Stupid, STUPID things they did evolved into AMERICA. Those kids said the darndest things, and now YOLO (Which was a term for Atheism in the 16th Century >_>) is flung about like the spittle of overly talkative lepers. Skateboarding was created in the 1700s by a couple of kids with spare wagon wheels and a plank of wood. The supposedly modern things we now have are ALL tradition in disguise. Even in a place where there isn't any to begin with, we will create them for the sheer heck of it. So, while a place's traditions, beliefs, and views may be a heckuva hassle to fight, know that you're not the only one who's at the frontline of that battle. You may be, however, one of the few to realize that the fight even exists!