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15 Dec 2013

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Ritual: What's it Good For?

Start with the story of how this talk came to be - Me? Ritual? That's Humorous!

I am clueless about rituals, I've been taught to be a humbug even about Christmas!

• Rituals ring hollow - doing the ritual not knowing why or getting much from it
• A perception of hypocrisy - wear a white dress in a wedding and not a virgin
• Avoiding strangeness - I don't want people to have a reason to cast me out... it's a big world after all

And yet....

Resisting "Doing things without meaning" we end up "Not doing meaningful things."

Some distinctions about rituals, contrasting with similar words, sometimes co-mingled.

Contrast with these words:

• rite, ceremony, observance, "service" (in the sense of "church service") - A collection of rituals centered around a particular purpose or recognition. Examples: birthday party, sunday worship, bar mitzvah, graduation, quinzanara
• habit - unlike ritual which is conscious and intended, habit is unconscious, perhaps by design; consider OCD rituals
• tradition, culture, religion - The lineage or source of various rites and rituals ceremonies. Judaism, Free Masonry, Orthodox Catholicism, American culture, the Wilshire family tradition, etc
• Mantra, prayer - a ritual of words or concepts but not actions, ie. a meme which is used ritualistically

Ritual is a performance, but is it witnessed or performed by the subject?

This matters a lot for how we perceive ritual.

There's the insider and the outsider. The insider sees "deep significance" while the outsider sees "irrational strangeness" and even "untrustability". One's rituals betray oneself as "fanatic" about something not fully understood by others.

What is the ritual's scope of engagement?

• personal - it's done by me for me and could be done as effectively in private