Why 'Long Rituals' Matter
longtermist.substack.com
longtermist.substack.com
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.
But some data would have been neat.
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)
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.
EDIT: Though re-reading I do take your point about legacy.
“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.”
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.
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.
[1] https://www.joshua-greene.net/moral-tribes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
[3] "Metamorality without Moral Truth" — https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-018-9378-3
We recognize that are are part of something greater than themselves.
And part of that might be helping to cope with death.
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.
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.
If the disciplines acquired some rigor without me noticing it, please, do link to the corresponding studies that are not "just-so" stories.
Is this true, or is it a submarine [1]? I asked a Japanese friend who has never heard of it.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161216-why-japan-cele...
Definitely not just PR. Also - both great reads.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Modern cults that I've heard of are different.
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.
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.
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 Canadian, Australian, and American (among many other) regional dialects of English disagree.
Also a lot of Latin American dialects of Spanish.
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.
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).
Well, I was with you on the first sentence, the rest not so much.
But ignoring that, I do believe there is some good that (some) churches do, and it's a shame to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
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.