I seemed to have missed the part in the article where the author explains why long rituals matter.
If you want an answer, I think it's because they help us cope with death. By participating a ritual that predates us and outlive us, we feel like our actions help maintain something that will still be there when we are gone. We commune with the ritual to be part of something bigger and longer-lived than ourselves.
I think part of what makes humanity transcend much of the rest of the animal kingdom is the ability to build on the past through the generations. We do it through oral/written tradition/history, etc. I think these “silly” mythological rituals help bind generations. Generational angst has always been a thing, but I worry that it’s grown worse of late than in the past. But I have no way of quantifiably proving that.
I view this idea (generational evolution being the hook that powers our progress) as a basic abstraction of the final verse found at the end of the Old Testament
“He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
You can take the rest of the OT myth|doctrine and throw it out or love it; I think this idea stands on its own.
The HN community often discusses the future, and we bemoan the lack of forethought for future generations. I think this is important. But I also think sometimes we don’t connect with the past in ways we should. We should learn from our history. We should honor the good those in the past have accomplished. We should cut them some slack, avoid over projecting, and do our best to make the next generational version better.
To me, these silly traditions play a part in strengthening those ties in both directions. They may seem irrational in many ways, but the universe has more irrational numbers than rational ones, so I’m ok catering to a little bit of balanced irrationality.
Prosecuting the past is one of the most useless expenditures of energy possible. Instead of pursuing some beneficial or productive avenue we have people today who are organizing and protesting over the actions of people who are literally dead. I think this has to be a unique point in the history of humans where as instead of trying to make some change geared towards bettering things for future generations we have energy being expensed towards just being mad about the past.
When people are just following the rituals then it’s not a protest over actions that happened in the past by people since dead. It’s a protest of the continuing harm being felt by those groups. It’s also a recognition that those problematic self sustaining rituals are sometimes hard to see from the inside.
Add to that the fact that societies evolve way faster than before. In the past you'd inherit your ancestors knowledge and carry it forward because it would still matter. It binds parents with infants through transmission of memories, skills. Now very few of my life means anything in the age of Meta. And my kids will be too busy creating ebusiness on discord with his followers.
“Rituals are often coupled with pro-social beliefs, such as the importance of community, generosity and being good. And through repetition and long-lived observance, they are a human behaviour on which these ideas can travel across decades and centuries.”
This recalls a particularly beautiful paper from this year: "Relative to other species, humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate—we are willing to incur personal costs to benefit others, including strangers, and people who we will never meet again [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] (see Glossary). These abilities are thought to arise from complex systems of shared moral intuitions about what is “right” or “good” that are culturally transmitted across space and time [8, 9]."
From a paper on the human prefrontal cortex in Nature Neuropsychoparmacology: The prefrontal cortex and (uniquely) human cooperation: a comparative perspective, Zoh, Chang, & Crockett; August 19, 2021 – https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01092-5
It's a technical review paper on the brain structure from which the ability to cooperate arrives. I'm unable to judge its soundness and validity but it's an unusually beautiful paper; The abstract itself is beautiful enough that I'll add it here:
Abstract: Humans have an exceptional ability to cooperate relative to many other species. We review the neural mechanisms supporting human cooperation, focusing on the prefrontal cortex. One key feature of human social life is the prevalence of cooperative norms that guide social behavior and prescribe punishment for noncompliance. Taking a comparative approach, we consider shared and unique aspects of cooperative behaviors in humans relative to nonhuman primates, as well as divergences in brain structure that might support uniquely human aspects of cooperation. We highlight a medial prefrontal network common to nonhuman primates and humans supporting a foundational process in cooperative decision-making: valuing outcomes for oneself and others. This medial prefrontal network interacts with lateral prefrontal areas that are thought to represent cooperative norms and modulate value representations to guide behavior appropriate to the local social context. Finally, we propose that more recently evolved anterior regions of prefrontal cortex play a role in arbitrating between cooperative norms across social contexts, and suggest how future research might fruitfully examine the neural basis of norm arbitration.
What you cite about cooperation rings a bell from Joshua Greene's book Moral Tribes[1]. Greene is an experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and a philosopher. He did extensive research, including fMRI brain studies of the famous trolley problem[2], prisoner's dilemma situations and such other cooperation/desertion scenarios.
And sure enough, some of Greene's papers are cited in the paper you mentioned.
His book[1] is worth reading. I picked it up after hearing about it in Robert Sapolsky's, Behave. And for balance, here's an interesting paper[3] critiquing some of Greene's ideas from Moral Tribes.
I was looking for that as well. Your simple and correct answer is also why people tend to spend much of their lives raising families, and—in my opinion—why a world with fewer children and fewer parents is a dark omen for the future of humanity.
From the evolutionary point of view, people who are choosing to be childfree to better enjoy their life without child raising responsibilities are doing a humanity a favour: they are removing their defective genes from the genetic pool.
I'm not sure it's about death. Organised religion dulls that fear, but I think that ritual existed long before any promise of a savior from death existed. I think it's main purpose is to syncronise large groups of animals that are naturally only social in smaller groups.
EDIT: Though re-reading I do take your point about legacy.
My take on it, which I think is in agreement with yours, is that rituals help humans to get beyond just their natural instinct for self-preservation, by participating in specific things that bond them with many other people and often last longer than a human lifetime. So death is part of it, at least implicitly, but I would frame it more around humility or a sense of perspective.
Yes, I think that ritual is something like collaborative art. People feel good when they play a part in something beautiful. And as I think you alluded to, seeing something greater than yourself can be a very inspirational thing.
Most things we do seem to be in the strive for immortality - if we can't make our bodies last longer, we can do things that'll hopefully make our names and legacies last longer, thus we stay 'alive', influencing the world, for as long as someone remembers.
One of my favourite quotes is that 'Everyone dies twice, the first time when their heart stops beating and the second time when they are thought about for the last time'
I think about this often. I’m in my 50’s and probably one of the youngest people alive that remembers my grandfather well. When I’m gone, will he ever be spoken about again?
Events to encourage social cohesion seem like an obviously good thing to me, and having them annually seems to be very helpful for people in consciously experiencing the passage of time. Grieving, spending a moment looking forward, stuff like that.
I'm not fond of religion, wasn't raised in it but you know religion wars, scandals, etc. But one day I realized that a lot of 'modern life' was being laid on a couch alone watching low level distraction and ads. Suddenly, the idea of sitting with you neighbors listening to latin spells from a wiser (allegedly) person felt like quality time.
few ideas: i guess we won't go to religion but maybe groupism (just being together)
also i often think climate change will force that on us, less means and more challenges => deeper social link (unless violent political structures win first)
> If you believe that the long view matters, ask yourself: what will carry forward these ideas after you and I have left the stage? Multi-generational thinking is, after all, a multi-generational endeavour.
So the argument is that to preserve a tradition of long term thinking, rituals would enable the propagation of a community that shares similar goals.
Traditions and rituals emerge naturally in any community that lasts long enough. At least if you let them emerge instead of trying to create them deliberately.
Traditional universities are full of rituals, because they are among the oldest secular institutions still in existence. For example, I got my doctoral sword and hat in an elaborate multi-day ceremony in 2014, and I will be invited to participate again in 2064 if I live long enough.
The strongest theory about the origin of the big horse is that it was an advert for a horse shop. Maybe we can form more rituals around great advertisements from ancient times. Let's start greeting each other on the phone with "wazzaaaap".
There are anthropologists and sociologists out there. In case someone is interested in a more nuanced perspective than this “warm fuzzies” from a random MIT grad technologist.
I was also skeptical until I stood next to a statue of the Colonel, dressed in a Santa suit, outside a KFC in Akihabara (photo proof available on request). I agree it's probably mostly clever marketing, but they definitely do lean into it over there too.
W.r.t. rituals, well, yes, they're signs, sensible signs. Human beings communicate through sensible signs. All cultures have ritual. The more important the think communicated, the more we need special and extraordinary words and gestures to match it. The exterior sign signifies an interior meaning or interior act.
I don't understand the categorical revulsion some have to ritual (who themselves participate in rituals, probably without realizing it). You could dislike or detest particular rituals (the odious or absurd kinds most certainly), but not ritual in general.
Having killed the churches, we gotta figure out what actual services they provided to society and re-implement them somehow...
We might could have thought about that before killing the churches, right? but that would have meant a crack in the "all religion is evil" facade of New Atheism and that religion tolerated no deviance so here we are.
Related: asking "where are the cults?" today is like asking "where's the rain" at the bottom of the Mediterranean after Gibraltar broke: we have manifested Babylon and are giving it teeth and jackboots.
On the other hand, churches could have figured that out before killing the churches too. The New Atheists didn't force my church to go "all in" on the culture war.
I asked a born again Christian what a cult was when I was a teenager. He said a cult is where people worship a man as though he was God.
I silently filled in the next sentence in my head: "...but Christianity isn't a cult, because Jesus really was God..."
Which is not to claim that Christianity is exactly the same as all the cults it won out over...but the differences can't be nearly as obvious as they seem in hindsight.
In every cult I know of, the worshipped man is physically present to benefit from the worship and control the followers.
Christianity didn't really have that, ever, even if you take the Gospels as sober, rigorous history. They claim that Jesus ascended to heaven a few weeks after his resurrection.
So, I think that's actually a significant differentiator.
During the time of a polytheistic roman empire, Christianity was literally a cult, and an underground one at that. Judaism and the Roman pantheon had more adherents. Outside of the Roman controlled spaces, Zoroastrianism certainly did, as would Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Probably more Celtic believers.
The transition from cult to state church must have been tremendously affirming for some, but probably accepted with resignation by as many, for some time.
There are still plenty of Christians who rue the transition to state church, although they tend to be in the minority. You'll usually find them in the fringes in things like the Catholic Workers or the New Monasticism (which is sort of a protestant Catholic Worker movement). I'd assume that many Quakers also fit the mold.
Quakers break the mould in more ways: they include the small subset of athiest quakers. Well, let's be polite. Nontheist.
A charming church of scotland minister in fife told my athiest brother it was no barrier to a successful career in the church, one should not allow a trivial obsession with the 39 articles to stand in the way. He specialised in computer aided stylometry of amongst other writing, the Pauline epistles.
There was a bit of a public debate a few years ago (maybe more than a few years ago) whether belief in God was necessary for Unitarianism. IIRC, there was a smallish schism as a result of the debate between the deists and atheists.
From the little that I know of Quakerism, I would think that at least some level of deism would be necessary, but who knows.
Graham Greene had a short story, “The Last Word,” (the title story of his final story collection) which posited a world in which atheism had become nearly universal and the military dictator summoned the last believer, the Pope who had become senile with age to assassinate him. After shooting him, he began to have doubts about his atheism and faith continued.
The rise of Islam was even more tremendous, beginning in Muhammad's 40th year when the archangel Gabriel first began communicating the Quran to him, and becoming the largest religion in Arabia by the time of Muhammad's death 22 years later.
Every cult is also gnostic, e.g. they attract people who want to learn their secrets so they can be a part of the insiders.
Christianity was unique when the founder said that it was for the gentiles (everyone) and that meant it should spread everywhere (that’s actually where the word ’catholic’ or ‘universal’ comes from).
I'd agree on paper. I'd say it's clear the reigns of English are firmly in control by what happens in the USA. And Spanish is likely at the point, due partly to its rise in importance as it increases usage in the US, leading to Mexico being the world's canonical source for Spanish. You couldn't tell an Englishman or Spaniard this, but I'd bet most international students aren't looking to emulate how they speak in England or Spain, but rather the US, Mexico or Columbia. As a second language speak of Spanish myself, I know I would greatly prefer to blend in more in Latin America than in Spain. It's just a larger part of the world.
Ultimately the US was founded by English speaking people, just as Mexico was by Spanish speaking people. These languages are as much ours as they are Europe's. But we both definitely dictate the ultimate future of both languages now out of sheer numbers and economic influence.
> We might could have thought about that before killing the churches, right?
Religious trama is a thing. So my vote is no. Better to stop the harm and magical thinking right away. Perhaps after a new generation has grown up without all the baggage they can more objectively evaluate such things.
Historically, the village church wasn't just about worshipping the sky father and shunning non-believers. It was the original social safety net and the congregation would support people who were experiencing hardship. The tribe would come together for births / marriages / deaths.
By rejecting all religion and vacating churches we've sort of thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We've damaged everyone's need for belonging and increased loneliness. Secular movements to restore a sense of community would be welcomed IMO (there are articles about how local mcdonald's have become gathering places in small american towns, surely this isn't ideal)
My parents were Unitarians, and their Sunday meetings were near-secular community events. I (an atheist) greatly enjoyed (and benefitted from) attending, both as a child and as an adult. Some folks were/are more religious than others, but all are welcome to partake in the Sharing of the Coffee, and other such important rituals, and I am not joking when I say that. Getting together regularly with folks over time is literal community-building.
It's not a "sense" of community that's lost, but actual community.
> Secular movements to restore a sense of community would be welcomed IMO (there are articles about how local mcdonald's have become gathering places in small american towns, surely this isn't ideal)
Because there are no communities, there is nothing to organize or coordinate that can possibly hope to raise the very substantial funds that would be necessary to operate a public building.
Really, this kind of thing should be tax-funded, like libraries often are. Organizing that way would be easier and more sustainable, yet still seems hopelessly far out of reach.
Churches manage to live from "tithing" donations which requires deploying a very complicated mental infrastructure to keep people so willing to invest so much. The idea of manipulating enough people in some way to cause them to forward so much of their income to a secular community center seems also hopeless.
Outside libraries, America doesn't have indoor public spaces, "third spaces." Except for whatever businesses might set up as their little hooks to get sales -- probably short-lived since a faux community built on a semicovert sales strategy isn't easy to develop either.
> Historically, the village church wasn't just about worshipping the sky father and shunning non-believers. It was the original social safety net and the congregation would support people who were experiencing hardship.
So because charity in the past had these massive strings attached in the past today we should do what exactly?
Modern social safety nets are more widely available and free from guilt trips, controlling busybodies, and harmful superstitions.
> By rejecting all religion and vacating churches we've sort of thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We've damaged everyone's need for belonging and increased loneliness.
IME far more emotional and physical harm was done by centuries of religion than this brief interm period between when they've been thrown off and the establishment of saner institutions and memes.
McDonalds may not be the picture of healthy food options, yet as an established at least they don't encourage shaming or ostracizing people for being different. A relatively clean, dry, and welcoming place to meet isn't a bad thing.
People are evil. Institutions cannot be evil, but since all institutions are perpetuated by humans they can seem that way. The real question is whether a particular institution brings out more evil or more good from the hearts of those who participate it in. I can understand how an individual might come to believe a broad class of such institutions are rotten to the core, based on personal experiences, but in the case of religion the weight of history seems to provide a compelling argument that we are better off for it.
I had a laugh when I read an article about therapists concerned about mental health epidemic saying "we should have a secretary or someone who can give a daily address"
I guess most of the graduates of todays clinical programs are trained well in doublespeak and dont understand the seperation of church and state.
But sure give me the "government appointed mindstate of the day" since its more "free" than the "opression" of religion...
Long termism doesn't have to be just increased lifespans. The concept of "double death" might be helpful here. Death of a human might be when a human's heart stops. But their double death might be the last time someone says their name or the last time some important idea of theirs gets reproduced (or stops being reproducible, like if the last copy of an important artwork they made gets destroyed). The death of thousands of beetles can happen, but when the ecosystem they rely on to reproduce gets damaged to the point where it can't recuperate, that might be called their double death
This is amazing. Less sophisticated atheists would share memes about how the Dark Ages was a literal time of scientific backwardsness in the Middle Ages caused by Christianity (look at this graph!). But some robotmen[1] eventually suspended their (dis)belief for long enough to get the idea that there might be some reason why people have followed traditions (i.e. not just label it as irrationality). And some even take the brave step into whatever pagan (relatively speaking: backwards) ritual might be going on next door. And they still manage to keep their robot qualities: the ritual’s benefits are “pro-social” and promote “the belief in community”. (One can forgive this robot for not just going full neuroscientist and just saying “oxycotin”.) And they even start their own little clubs and hangouts which are labeled <common adjective>ist, like “people who are rational and think long term”. Of course these little clubs are firmly rooted in some blogosphere and have no connection to any real traditions out there.
Maybe they will indeed end up being embedded in some tradition somewhere, where they will ritualistically get to practice pro-socialness, belief-in-community, etc. (Emphasis on ritual.)
All these efforts are commendable in that they are very sincere in their efforts to find some actual human meaning out there. (I guess that’s called meta-modernist, or meta-something or other…) Which is a step beyond the postmodernist posers.
[1] The robotmen and atheists simply overlap somewhat. This is about the “rationalist” types, not about secular people.
If you want an answer, I think it's because they help us cope with death. By participating a ritual that predates us and outlive us, we feel like our actions help maintain something that will still be there when we are gone. We commune with the ritual to be part of something bigger and longer-lived than ourselves.