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Rituals and Traditions!
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Amethyst
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Because people need breaks from working all the time, and need more excuses to drink. 
For the holidays, mostly, they are rituals in a sense.
I think they're there to keep structure and to keep culture in some places.
For the holidays, mostly, they are rituals in a sense.
I think they're there to keep structure and to keep culture in some places.
Redbone
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I think they are needed to process complex, emotional, and life-changing events. To transmute the unknown into something that can be processed by a group of people. Social and psychic glue. A way for a large group to discharge positive or negative energy in an acceptable manner.
KDude
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I don't know if rituals really have to be large groups.. or even significant. There was one night where some friends and I were high on LSD, I was driving around, and I came upon an overpass, and just started gunning it. It was thrilling.. and scared the shit out of everyone - but they all liked it too. Better than six flags. After that point, anytime we did acid, I'd take them on that overpass. It was almost like a ritual, if not that.
Of course, that's one ritual that isn't very good for your health. I wouldn't recommend it.
Of course, that's one ritual that isn't very good for your health. I wouldn't recommend it.
Oaky
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This.
Mole
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The Ritual of MBTI
Perhaps rituals mark a point of transition. Baptism marks our transition to christianity. Marriage marks our transition to a new household. And the Last Rites marks our transition to the next life.
Transition is difficult. We are clinging to the past but haven't yet reached the future. We are in No Man's Land. We are without a map to guide us. We are bereft but not satisfied. We are desperately in need of support. But we are meaning creating animals so we created rituals and traditions to help us transit from womb to life, from single to the married state, and finally we pay the Ferryman to convey us across the River Styx.
Unfortunately modernity has done away with many rituals and traditions and leaves us in a state of anomie. And so we have no alternative but to accept we live in a time of anomie, a time of hiatus, a time when things are not clear, where we don't know where we have come from and don't know where we are going.
And being homeless we grasp onto anything that presents itself like the New Age and MBTI.
Yes, we look around and see we are in the midst of a huge social ritual called MBTI. It was commissioned by the military/industrial complex seventy years ago and used by them ever since. Four million Americans alone do the MBTI test every year. Yet it has the ambience of a private, secret cult that is unknown to the uninitiated. It feels like a secret society, when it is a vast, open ritual.
Yes, the ritual of MBTI helps us transition into the military, or into a job, or in and out of a relationship.
Perhaps rituals mark a point of transition. Baptism marks our transition to christianity. Marriage marks our transition to a new household. And the Last Rites marks our transition to the next life.
Transition is difficult. We are clinging to the past but haven't yet reached the future. We are in No Man's Land. We are without a map to guide us. We are bereft but not satisfied. We are desperately in need of support. But we are meaning creating animals so we created rituals and traditions to help us transit from womb to life, from single to the married state, and finally we pay the Ferryman to convey us across the River Styx.
Unfortunately modernity has done away with many rituals and traditions and leaves us in a state of anomie. And so we have no alternative but to accept we live in a time of anomie, a time of hiatus, a time when things are not clear, where we don't know where we have come from and don't know where we are going.
And being homeless we grasp onto anything that presents itself like the New Age and MBTI.
Yes, we look around and see we are in the midst of a huge social ritual called MBTI. It was commissioned by the military/industrial complex seventy years ago and used by them ever since. Four million Americans alone do the MBTI test every year. Yet it has the ambience of a private, secret cult that is unknown to the uninitiated. It feels like a secret society, when it is a vast, open ritual.
Yes, the ritual of MBTI helps us transition into the military, or into a job, or in and out of a relationship.
Mole
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Antepirrhema
Ritual is also a repetition. And repetition is the only thing necessary for a trance. So ritual puts us in a trance where we accept uncritically whatever is suggested. This may be religious dogma; it may be our membership of a social group; or even our identity.
MBTI is a ritual which we repeat over and over again and so we enter the MBTI trance where we uncritically accept a phoney personality test commissioned by the military/industrial complex.
We uncritically accept the propaganda that it will help us understand ourselves and one another. We believe it will help us get a job, even a job in the military. And we believe it will help us get a relationship. And we even believe it will help us get out of a relationship. MBTI can do anything because it is magical.
The four letters are a magical incantation, a ritual which we love to repeat over and over to one another.
MBTI is like the Ancient Greek Antepirrhema, an answering chant, that we chant to one another across the internet.
So Ancient Greece and the internet are finally one in the ritual of the noosphere.
Ritual is also a repetition. And repetition is the only thing necessary for a trance. So ritual puts us in a trance where we accept uncritically whatever is suggested. This may be religious dogma; it may be our membership of a social group; or even our identity.
MBTI is a ritual which we repeat over and over again and so we enter the MBTI trance where we uncritically accept a phoney personality test commissioned by the military/industrial complex.
We uncritically accept the propaganda that it will help us understand ourselves and one another. We believe it will help us get a job, even a job in the military. And we believe it will help us get a relationship. And we even believe it will help us get out of a relationship. MBTI can do anything because it is magical.
The four letters are a magical incantation, a ritual which we love to repeat over and over to one another.
MBTI is like the Ancient Greek Antepirrhema, an answering chant, that we chant to one another across the internet.
So Ancient Greece and the internet are finally one in the ritual of the noosphere.
Thalassa
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I agree with what Redbone said.
Also, rituals are comforting. They can provide us with a sense of normality so that the curve of change isn't so overwhelming. One of the ways to come out of an anxiety attack is to perform a familiar ritual like brushing one's teeth.
We also need to remember our history. Tradition and ritual give us a link of continuity to remind us from where we came. People who forget history are doomed to repeat it, et al.
Also, rituals are comforting. They can provide us with a sense of normality so that the curve of change isn't so overwhelming. One of the ways to come out of an anxiety attack is to perform a familiar ritual like brushing one's teeth.
We also need to remember our history. Tradition and ritual give us a link of continuity to remind us from where we came. People who forget history are doomed to repeat it, et al.
KDude
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I'm going to try to take some of what I said into the abstract and say that I don't think rituals really have anything to do with a larger sense of tradition. They can and they can't. A bunch of gangsters pouring out 40s for their dead homies are also commited to ritual. Or maybe it's some private act.. I was listening to an interview with a local novelist recently, and while she wasn't a poet, she said she'd read poems every morning before she got to working. Partly as a way to get her own creative juices flowing, but she started going into how it was sort of a sacred act for her.
Mole
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Creative Ritual
I rather like rituals. And I like to create my own rituals.
As a boy I rather enjoyed the answering chants in church, and so I have created an answering chant on Central.
First we bring up, "Wind in the Willows", onto our screen. Then on Skype we read it to one another. And we read it to one another in the form of an answering chant.
So first you chant a paragraph, then I chant the next paragraph in reply.
It's best to think of this answering chant as taking us deeper into the meditative state.
We start to relax. We let the story occupy our cognitive mind, and allow our meditative mind to come awake.
Of course in the meditative state we are suggestible. But I can't think of anymore delightful suggestions than those found in, "Wind in the Willows".
I rather like rituals. And I like to create my own rituals.
As a boy I rather enjoyed the answering chants in church, and so I have created an answering chant on Central.
First we bring up, "Wind in the Willows", onto our screen. Then on Skype we read it to one another. And we read it to one another in the form of an answering chant.
So first you chant a paragraph, then I chant the next paragraph in reply.
It's best to think of this answering chant as taking us deeper into the meditative state.
We start to relax. We let the story occupy our cognitive mind, and allow our meditative mind to come awake.
Of course in the meditative state we are suggestible. But I can't think of anymore delightful suggestions than those found in, "Wind in the Willows".
Thalassa
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The Wind of the Willows and Spring Cleaning Rituals
"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said `Bother!' and `O blow!' and also `Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, `Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."
"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said `Bother!' and `O blow!' and also `Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, `Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."
Mole
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Meditation is simple. All we do is repeat something over and over again to occupy the cognitive mind, and then the meditative mind comes awake.
It's a bit like repeating a word over and over again, and after a while it loses its meaning. In the same way, if we repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning in our cognitive mind, leaving plenty of room for the meditative mind to come out to play.
And in the meditative state we are suggestible, so it is important to decide with our cognitive mind, before we enter the meditative state, what suggestions we will make to ourselves.
And it seems to me that the suggestions contained in, "Wind in the Willows", are ideal.
It's a bit like repeating a word over and over again, and after a while it loses its meaning. In the same way, if we repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning in our cognitive mind, leaving plenty of room for the meditative mind to come out to play.
And in the meditative state we are suggestible, so it is important to decide with our cognitive mind, before we enter the meditative state, what suggestions we will make to ourselves.
And it seems to me that the suggestions contained in, "Wind in the Willows", are ideal.
Synapse
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Intense. Thanks for the interesting discussion.
But why are rituals and traditions seen as an ideal way of transmitting learning?
I mean if there was a sudden change and a person lost a steady job or lost faith in their faith or something wouldn't having rituals and traditions become like a crisis because their whole identity revolved around those rituals and traditions. So much so that the self was forgotten and when something happened there was a lack of coping to deal with what was going on. Well hypothetically wouldn't it be grounding to be able to have possibilities than be limited by the rituals and traditions that are there.
I mean yeah it is helpful to have rituals for a depressed and anxious people to get out of a loop too, to have a sense of normal in their life, structure but then there are opposites to that angle too I suppose.
There is certainly a difference to doing something in a ritual manner and traditional manner. I see ritual as a repetition or trance and tradition as something established and that feels safe and comforting on the surface. You learn through ritual of repetition as a habit and then there are traditions like holidays that are cultural.
But why are rituals and traditions seen as an ideal way of transmitting learning?
I mean if there was a sudden change and a person lost a steady job or lost faith in their faith or something wouldn't having rituals and traditions become like a crisis because their whole identity revolved around those rituals and traditions. So much so that the self was forgotten and when something happened there was a lack of coping to deal with what was going on. Well hypothetically wouldn't it be grounding to be able to have possibilities than be limited by the rituals and traditions that are there.
I mean yeah it is helpful to have rituals for a depressed and anxious people to get out of a loop too, to have a sense of normal in their life, structure but then there are opposites to that angle too I suppose.
There is certainly a difference to doing something in a ritual manner and traditional manner. I see ritual as a repetition or trance and tradition as something established and that feels safe and comforting on the surface. You learn through ritual of repetition as a habit and then there are traditions like holidays that are cultural.
Mole
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Because they bypass the critical mind.
Children, for instance, have yet to develop a critical mind so they are very suitable for learning by rituals and traditions.
In fact of the more than six billion souls alive today, almost all of them learnt their language, culture and religion as children, before their critical mind had time to develop.
Mole
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Enchantment
Life has lost its savour. Anomie stalks the land. Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by enchantment.
Our voices are being heard as we chant to one another across the internet.
Some follow the topic; others follow logic; while some follow their feelings as we re-enchant the world.
Our task is simply the re-enchantment of everyday life which has been drained of meaning, drained of love and turned into the drain of the economy.
But as we chant to one another, answering one another like the dawn chorus, we laugh along like drains in the rain, together with the laughing kookaburras.
The drought of anomie has broken. And even the introverts have come out to play, to dance and chant in the rain, re-enchanting the land.
Life has lost its savour. Anomie stalks the land. Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by enchantment.
Our voices are being heard as we chant to one another across the internet.
Some follow the topic; others follow logic; while some follow their feelings as we re-enchant the world.
Our task is simply the re-enchantment of everyday life which has been drained of meaning, drained of love and turned into the drain of the economy.
But as we chant to one another, answering one another like the dawn chorus, we laugh along like drains in the rain, together with the laughing kookaburras.
The drought of anomie has broken. And even the introverts have come out to play, to dance and chant in the rain, re-enchanting the land.
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