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Comment by unethical_ban | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I understand why you would reject religious practitioners or groups that impose outlandish and outdated interpretations of morality, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water!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

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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