A Design Lab Is Making Rituals for Secular People | Hacker News Reader

A Design Lab Is Making Rituals for Secular People

theatlantic.com

55 pointsraleighm63 comments

Contrary to quite flippant and rudely opinionated comments elsewhere in the thread, I was talking to a friend the other day about the benefit of ritual, habit, and community. I think that there is something lost in society when we are all shut away from our neighbors, with no bearing on expectations and support from the community. I don't think God is needed for it, but I think rituals are useful to society.

Right, but there are other places to get this.

Casual sports for adults.

You local maker space.

Having friends over - for a while we used to host a Sunday dinner and have guests over weekly (pasta and sauce is cheep and easy).

For myself kids, and their demands in modern America pretty much killed all of these things off for me... Now my rituals are their activities.

Remember that they're watching you. You're the model.

My parents dedicated their entire lives to me. It was all about me, and nothing for them. While I'll be forever grateful for what they've done for me, I find myself struggling building a meaningful life as an adult. I seriously think my life now would be dramatically better if my dad did something as simple as go play soccer himself once a week when I was growing up (and occasionally have me watch him play).

Most of the things you mention are relatively small scale and not necessarily consistent or regular.

Church is every week, at the same time, with enough people involved to have a consistent community – even if individual members don't show up consistently.

> Church is every week

Every day, in many cases, though perhaps considered obligatory only slightly more than once a week.

IMO, the most important thing is that religion places your life in a grand narrative.

Internet friendships can be very rewarding because you can easily find people with compatible interests, hobbies, etc. If only they weren't as superficial, otherwise loneliness would be a solved problem by now.

I agree with you so much. I was never raised in organized religion really, but I was raised around folks who valued spirituality and participating in community rituals like singing together, sharing food, dancing, etc. I'm only now realizing how important and beneficial those kinds of rituals are for well being.

I understand why you would reject religious practitioners or groups that impose outlandish and outdated interpretations of morality, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water!

www.yoism.org is an effort to keep the baby and throw out the bath water.

I was speaking about just this with a friend a few days ago, and I think that getting together with people at a bar on Saturday evening functionally serves a very similar purpose to getting together with people at a place of worship on Sunday morning.

The important thing is that the rituals evolve organically to match the needs of each community. Several forces are driving towards a more globalized culture, which is the cause of a lot of dissonance.

Several philosophers (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, most notably) have suggested that we learn the world through our bodies (rather than thinking through it with our minds), and that liturgy and ritual are critical because they engage our bodies rather than simply our minds.

One big source of secular ritual is the military. And there's nothing more pragmatic and practical-minded than a military, so the fact they have so much ritual there really says something.

In this light, I've come to see "patriotism" in the US sense as a secular religion.

Consider:

* The Pledge of Allegiance as a prayer

* The Constitution and Delcaration of Indepence as scripture

* The Federalist Papers and other writings as apocrypha

* The flag's design as a religious symbol

* The physical flag as an idol

* The courts as clergy

This view is further reinforced by how Islam mixes the political and religious spheres. In many cases, the clergy act as courts. The flag of Saudi Arabia and many other Islamic countries include religious symbols.

Take their word with a grain of salt. Some philosophers have said reality doesn't exist, or that you can't arrive anywhere because there is an infinite number of distances to traverse.

Even Zeno knew the arrow would arrive at the other end of the room. The real question was what was creating the (apparent) paradox.

A little philosophy will get you in trouble. Just like martial arts or programming.

I'd argue that too much philosophy will also get you in trouble for abstracting reality too much.

I think the important part is community, not habit or ritual. Rituals are clearly one way to build community, but they often come attached to other baggage and I don't think they are necessarily the best way to build community.

I don't disagree. Not at all. Rituals are very important for society, even the small ones we don't even notice we're performing. Every Friday a number of my coworkers and I go out to a particular burger place for lunch. We catch up on the week past, talk about the weekend ahead. It's a milestone indicating that we're one step closer, almost to the very edge, of the weekend. That's a ritual and it's an important one.

But, I think some of the examples cited by this article - and presumably by this design team - are rather silly. Do we need a ritual for how to cope with getting a parking ticket? The death of a laptop? And... frankly, I'm not even sure what they're trying to say with "How can I keep a smart car from exacerbating my loneliness and narcissism?"

I'm not one of these people who likes to blame the mythical incarnate persona of "them millenials / Gen X / Gen Y / hipsters..." etc. But, if I may beg your indulgence here for a moment, this is some real millennial (or whatever straw man you chose) shit, right there!

Rituals, and the social exchanges that come with them are important. I completely agree. But what this design lab is touting sounds like answers to questions no one asked.

Edit: Forgot to mention, while I'm none of the religions cited further below in the article, I do think the idea of their pop up worship centres is interesting. Far more interesting than the dead-laptop-ritual idea. I'd have started the article there, if it was me writing it.

Hmmm, this seems a bit problematic to me. I agree, a majority of the big religions and churches no longer fit with the times. People will always crave spirituality, but these days they are rejecting religions. I think that's ok.

That being said, I don't think rituals can be trivialized in this way. Some of the most powerful rituals are definitely packed with the wisdom of thousands of years of practice, some of which is only now starting to be understood by modern science (fasting, and how it boosts immune health comes to mind).

We are losing touch with that ancient lineage, and I think that's a mistake.

I think any definition of "modern science" that excludes existing human knowledge is not sufficiently broad. Though, as an inexact and informal term, I question where you've drawn the boundary and whether your own prejudices are involved.

Sure, I suppose I mean modern science as "accepted and peer reviewed."

There are lots of ancient rituals that on the surface, probably appear totally pointless, and maybe even ridiculous. Just like fasting though, it might turn out to play a significant role in our health and well-being.

It's all bullshit and without wisdom. Just because you want to believe something is true or holds truths doesn't make it so.

If you put all religion and ideologies ever invented in one hand and the concept of washing your hands in the other, washing your hands wins without contest.

Spoken like a true dogmatist!

Because you totally have to choose between those things, and may only ever avail yourself of one of them.

I'm just pointing out woo has little value other than a source of fiction.

No, you're being casually dismissive.

"It's all bullshit and without wisdom", emphasis added; you don't make a distinction between woo and otherwise — and not all spirituality, or even religion, is woo, I promise you.

If you're going to hand-wave like that, you're not doing whatever point you might have had any service, except perhaps in gathering "Yeah, what he said!" votes from people who already share your beliefs, and antagonizing people who might think differently — people from whom you might learn something, if you were to try listening over dismissing.

I could enumerate I don't even know how many cases of "ancient wisdom" where people were forbade doing dangerous things — like, say, the Kashrut tradition against eating shellfish and pork before we had a meaningful notion of germs — absent the specific understanding we have now, that tells us why doing that was a bad idea.

But I don't need to; you're the one making the positive, and unsupported, assertion that other people's world-views are "bullshit".

Any sane person would chose washing your hands and more useful knowledge than the collected wisdom mentioned. People can rarely be woken up from wishful thinking and in the cases they were they did the work themselves.

And now your position is that people who disagree with you are insane.

Yeah, this dialogue is going places...

I think you would benefit by spending a bit more time studying history and how the various religions and ideologies shaped cultures and civilizations.

>all religion and ideologies

The rule of law is an ideology that is probably a bit more important that the singular concept of washing your hands.

Well I did my masters in history of ideas, but I guess I didn't understand the smart.

masters in history of ideas

That’s not a thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ideas

wash your hands.

How you could spend a year or two studying the history of ideas and come out with such a flippant attitude is beyond me. We wouldn't have germ theory in the first place if it weren't for the ideologies that made scientific advancement possible.

I stand by my original advice that more study would be beneficial.

This kind of appeal to authority is not only strictly useless, in this case it's also kind of hilarious in how much you appear to have missed the point. You spent all that time studying, but you never took the time to take a step back and have a more measured response to something you don't agree with?

The worst ideologues are the ones who claim to be immune from ideology. It's absolutely impossible.

It's not like those are mutually exclusive, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism

Google Chesterton's fence.

The ubiquity of religion means that it is probably an evolved trait in some way. Evolved traits are not typically useless...

I don't think many of the supposed benefits of fasting have been conclusively proven (as much as once can conclusively prove something in science, I mean) but there are some indications that it has a good effect on health.

However, even if that's the case, you still have to prove that the reason fasting was part of the rituals was because of the health benefits.

Love this. I'm as harsh of a critic of organized religion as you'll find but I think secular culture has a lot to learn in terms of how religious rituals and habits can foster human excellence, joy. And finding a way of reformulating these to be consistent with scientific thinking (i.e. throw out the mythology)

Specifically, I've been really curious to understand the relationship between faith and anxiety/depression. You see a surge of mindfulness and meditative practices in the Bay Area that appear like secular replacements for how "faith" in the Judeo-Christian tradition helps people face the unknown and the fundamental uncertainty of the universe.

I agree. Mindfulness really is just another word for spirituality. Being mindful of where your food comes from, and being thankful for the nourishment it provides your mind and body, is just a different way of praying and "thanking the lord" for your food.

Religions are a way of trying to package this mindfulness and disseminate it. As you know, most organized religions have been coopted by power-hungry men and twisted into the ridiculous displays we now know today. We should reject those religions and what they've become, but we shouldn't reject the root they sprung from.

I think there's a pretty significant difference between mindfulness and spirituality.

Spiritual traditions may well ritualize mindfulness, but there are many other components of spirituality apart from it, and there are secular mindfulness practices that don't intersect with the feelings and experiences many associate with spirituality.

That's true, you're right. There is a fine line between the two in my mind. For me, spirituality is recognizing the complexity of the universe and my part in it. Mindfulness helps me tap into that complexity and derive meaning for myself.

"mindfulness" is precisely the parts of spirituality that could nicely be packaged and sold to people that feel there's something missing from their lives. Now there is this commercial alternative that everyone appears to be in to, and the word is used so much it's basically lost all meaning (to be fair this happens to everything that is over marketed).

I made a snarky top-level comment earlier but in all seriousness, small simple rituals can be really effective. I'm just skeptical that something as deep as a ritual can be designed and commodified like furniture.

Sometimes when I discover a new song I'll listen to it on repeat. One day, I discovered 2 new songs and fell in love with them. Later that same day my father died, and the next day was spent traveling home to his funeral. I listened to those songs on repeat while traveling home.

Now they are so intertwined with the memory of my fathers death that they are sacred to me. I do not, under any circumstances, listen to them. I only listen to them once a year, on the anniversary of his death. It's become my personal ritual.

It's possible that this company can create something that has meaning, but I doubt it will satisfy what people are looking for.

    It is by Philz alone I set my mind in motion. 
    It is by the juice of Arabica that thoughts acquire speed, 
    the lips acquire stains, 
    the stains become a warning. 
    It is by Philz alone I set my mind in motion.

Many rituals are really useful as I recently learned. E.g. when someone dies, what do you do? If you do the prescribed process X nobody can tell you you skimped and you don't have to worry about going overboard. Want to have a wedding? Hey, there's a handy kit (vows, receiving line, cake, whatever) so you don't have to invent it as you go along.

The big downside of course is, like so many things, they can be hacked as a way of controlling people, including adding pointless ones. But if you see them as opt-in toolkits you can take advantage of the pieces you want.

And they are hardly stuck in stone: a white wedding dress (or a specific wedding dress at all) is a pretty recent invention (thanks, Victoria) that spread into all sorts of odd corners of the world because people like it. Why not?

> from How do I celebrate the birth of my baby boy? to How can I transfer my own sins onto a live chicken?

The Atlantic seems to have a strong grasp on organized religion.

"Millennials Are Killing Secularism"

This should be a big hit among people who choose their tattoos from a clip-art catalog.

“Rituals are comforting: Rituals combat loneliness.”

(A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving)

https://books.google.de/books?id=cW8Z_UfqnH4C&pg=PA296&lpg=P...

Why??????? Mercifully, being free of religious encumbrances means being free of ritual and other pointless prescriptions.

If someone really needs the 'comfort' of a ritual so badly, they can make their own, though, to me, allowing oneself to be bossed around by something as mechanistic as prescribed rituals screams of contradiction.

It is sad that so few can stand emptiness, or boredom, or silence, and that they feel the need to fill up otherwise perfectly good space and time with fruitless endeavors just to be comfortable.

I don't know how I feel about the approach presented in the article, but there's a big difference between a personal ritual and one shared and practiced by a community writ-large. This firm seems to be focusing on the latter.

Both are pointless, and religion overwhelming sells the latter

They are pointless to you.

Their universality points to their importance to humans, in general. I mean, one of the key markers of our species is that we ritually dispose of our dead. That feature of humanity goes back hundreds of thousands of years and it evolved.

It is ritual attached to function. We also non-ritualistically bury our dead.

Ritual, alone, is fine. But human beings inevitably have to impose their BS on other people, who don't always agree or want what is being imposed. If the ritual-followers could keep to themselves that would be one thing. But no, its 'ooooh you must share in this!'

"human beings inevitably have to impose their BS on other people"

Welcome to planet Earth! ;-) Humans do this with everything, regardless of whether they are sincere believers, religious zealots, strident atheists, or Silicon Valley humanists. :-)

They should take a look at the Positivists: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/world/americas/nearly-in-...

The "Science Church" was once very important in Brazil, to the point that the words in Brazilian flags were from their movement motto.

I know the head of a newly-launched community who consulted with Stanford D-School folks as part of his pre-launch process.

They urged him to look to religion and cults in order to come up with practices/rituals that can build community and create enduring connections.

Based on what I know of this community's onboarding process, I'd say he took them up on their advice.

Secular people have been making rituals since the beginning of time...for many it's as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee before starting a pile of work.

The d school and the work that comes out of it is mostly BS. Out of curiosity, has anyone attributed their success for the d school and have any of it's projects been impactful?

I remember this[1] talk by Alain de Botton on "Atheism 2.0" talked a lot about the benefits of ritual.

[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0

> "Now, if you’re really going to speak Millennial, ritual has to be fundamentally subjective in the sense that it has to be intensely personally meaningful and relevant. As soon as it speaks to my truth, that’s authenticity—that’s how we define authenticity now"

... This is how venture capitalists spend their money.

Please, please tell me no one gets paid to do this. Please.

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