Often though, ritual-and-ceremony theaters emerge from once-useful protocols after they’ve a) outlived their utility for most b) been captured by a powerful few c) deliberately perpetuated/grown through force for the few instead of allowed to shrink to asymptotic value level
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In opt-in modern pseudo-rituals, perhaps. In trad ones, maybe a core 20% are enjoying the collective ritual trance. 80% are in varying degrees of misery depending on coercion levels.
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Replying to @vgr
There is something very powerful about synchronized group behavior like this. For the participant, there's some potent magic in it. Group hypnosis or something.
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Unless you can demonstrate that control/relevance are equally distributed, this is actually a definition of power. And I suspect it can’t be equal because that would require actually creating meaning and stability, not just a “sense” (aka illusion) of it that’s stronger for some.
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Replying to @vgr
This is…a subset of rituals, but by no means all of them. Many are about control, yes, but more in terms of asserting human control and relevance in an uncertain universe and creating a sense of meaning and stability.
Like funerals. Or (non-coercive) prayer.
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Eg. The emperor’s new clothes fable gets at the fact the emperor gets to sustain his illusion that he’s wearing clothes (or knows he’s not wearing any and enjoys watching others lie out of fear). Others have to pretend he’s wearing clothes or suffer the consequences.
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I like Zizek’s idea of cynicism as a form of ideology. In this sense, conforming to ritual cultures is about pragmatically navigating power landscapes from a position of weakness. autodidactproject.org/other/cynzizek
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I’d guess in a trad ritual culture — the dominant prototypical kind, distribution is:
5% powerful, enjoying either illusions or validation of power
20% clueless enjoying a trance of belonging
50% cynical-pragmatic insincere performance
25% fearful/terrorized performance
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Yeah, monastic life is generally opt-in. But notably in most trad cultures is adjacent to, and sustained by, a 10x larger priestly culture of coercive ritual. In Hinduism for eg, I’d guess working ritual-performing temple and household priests outnumber sanyasi sects 10x
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Replying to @vgr
i propose monastic life as the one general exception to the coercive trend, although in that case it's more like individuals signed up to a pattern of coercion
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I’m in an ornery mood, but it does feel like most of the pushback is “real ritual and ceremony have never been tried” variety. I *get* what (metamodern?) new-ritual subcultures try to do. There’s just very few examples if it actually working, especially at scale. Eg. Burning Man.
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Burning Man is kinda like the Wikipedia of ritual design. The only good example supporting far too many strong claims.
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Replying to
Are you saying that Burning Man works as ritual? I would like to know why, if you do. These days it strikes me as something people cross off their bucket list.
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Nobody’s forced to go, those who do seem to enjoy it, it’s big and established, and apparently creates meaning etc for the regular
I’ve never been so I could be wrong
The rituals around the Temple at Burning Man are really interesting, as well -- including the semi-obligatory silence @ its burning (and the instances where that was interrupted for one reason or another, and the community response to it).
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