On The Meaning of Ritual
alicemaz.substack.com
alicemaz.substack.com
We Chinese have lost the ritualistic practices that undergirded society 2500 years ago. Let us therefore just come up with a new set?
Who have been the most successful at inventing new rituals for our age? The Axis Powers starting with the 1936 Olympics. Hmm.
The author needs to read the first few pages of Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Virtue
This is one of the purposes of 中国式现代化.
Or that in the older days, people lived and worked mostly closely together. Now people live isolated, don't interact with their neighbor at all (I don't even know most of the names of them after 1 year) bring their kids to one place away, then go to work on even another place with again another set of people. So lost rituals maybe play a part as well - but mostly I see it just as a very uncommunal livestyle.
(but thanks for the book recommendations, they look interesting)
I’m concerned about theories that state that a larger society-wide effort has to be made to bring ethics back to life though. This is because I’m gay and historically societies haven’t always had a great outlook on me. Maybe I could live in a world that had a coherent telos for gay men that didn’t involve them being stoned to death.
That sounds sensible to me.
"Who have been the most successful at inventing new rituals for our age? The Axis Powers starting with the 1936 Olympics. Hmm."
I don't know where that train of thought is going but the 1936 Olympics is generally considered a fact but not a happy one. Jesse Owens was a shining light there ...
I think the author handles this by pointing out the constant in change: human nature which does not change plus change itself.
In that context ritual symbology has a half life in human nature. It needs to be periodically made anew.
Ritual becomes form without substance or becomes corrupted eg.Martin Luther's grievances to the church.
As another writer (I believe Joyce) once analogized, periodically there's nothing left but to pick up the broken shards of colored glass from the cathedral and reassemble it making anew partly connected to past but mostly reconfigured to now.
Whence the 64 million dollar question here: why broken?
About 20 years ago I bought an expensive bottle of cognac on a whim. But then I wasn't sure when to drink it, or under what circumstances. After some thought I decided to drink from it only on notable occasions. Note that I'm not talking about "special occasions" (birthdays, New Year's Eve, etc), although there is some overlap between notable and special occasions.
I have defined a notable occasion as being a life-altering event: the birth of a child, the purchase of a house, retiring, etc. But a notable occasion can also be sad: the death of a parent or a friend, a bad medical diagnosis, and so on. I don't drink from it every year, and the bottle is still about 2/3 full. Although I've mostly drank from it due to the notable occasions being happy, some were sad. It turns out that (for me) the mere sight of the bottle gives me a feeling of peace. It helps me accept the past, but it also helps me dream of the future.
In the article, "ritual" is almost ridiculously capacious: it seems to be any social action or societal assumption that conditions our unreflective behavior in any way.
Cross the street against the light when no cars are coming (even though there aren't police around)? That's "ritual", by this definition - and, anyone who's traveled can tell you that behavior varies widely, even amongst superficially-similar regions and cultures.
I think it's a useful concept, and it's a pity that discussion seems to be being led astray by a confusion with the (mutch narrower) conventional definition of the word. Is there a similarly pithy term that might apply instead?
These kinds of texts, therefore, must be taken with caution. Which parts are "actual wisdom that I can apply to my life", and which parts are my own mind playing a trick of "it's old, and it's eastern, it's humble and it's philosophical, therefore is wisdom I can apply to my life".
So, I'm not questioning whether there is wisdom there or not. I'm questioning whether I can apply that wisdom to my life, through western eyes.
This part is particularly troubling:
> The first four points are essential to any 21st century ruling ideology that aims to be both moral and effective
Again, not saying that there isn't wisdom here. But should I apply this kind of wisdom using western eyes? I, personally, think I shouldn't.
Western culture likes to foster leadership. Everyone in the west aspires to be that 0.01% ruling class, or to project it.
Again, how much this is actual wisdom you can apply to your life, and how much this is your mind saying "I want to be a leader, this is for leaders, so this is for me!!!"?
It doesn't need to be presented as wisdom per se. Like I said, by being old, and being eastern, and being philosophical, it suggests wisdom.
It's like Häagen-Dazs. It sounds scandinavian, but it's not. It's never presented as "true scandinavian ice cream", but people fell for it for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4agen-Dazs#Origin_of_bra...
Is this a problem you have? You couldn’t pay me enough to join the “ruling class.” The best seem to be misguided, idealistic fools; the worst are responsible for thousands or millions of deaths, depending on what one feels like counting.
Maybe I do to a certain level. It is an awareness of the environment in which I grew up.
> You couldn’t pay me enough to join the “ruling class.”
Yeah, you seek to replace these unfit rulers. Sounds familiar?
Clever rhetoric, but false.
Please focus on the context. We're discussing an ideological text for supposed aspiring leaders (the text self-describes as it, which I highlighted).
What compelled you to criticize the ruling class in this discussion?
More specifically, what compelled you to talk about leadership in contrast to the more analytical objection that I raised (skepticism towards the intended interpretation of the text)?
These writings, like those from kongzi (Confucius), mengzi (Mencius) and others of the period are tailored to the ruling class, because it was a time of turmoil, but were for the purpose of fostering a harmonious and peaceful society. As such, the philosophy covers everyone in scope, at least in parts.
We have unstated, uncodified rituals everywhere in our lives. When you go to work, you wear more formal clothing than in your daily life. You act respectfully towards your boss, and use less profane or vulgar language. This is less true among hip SWEs but is generally true in most cultures.
Unlike xunzi's original audience, we won't get much out of the writings on ruling, as we don't have the means or culture to enforce behavior. We can and do order our own lives, however. Some go to church once in awhile out of habit, and some revolve their entire lives around their faith such as the Amish. Others find more of a middle ground.
Why should I take citations from an old text in a blog post on how to apply it to the 21st century at face value?
The answer is: I shouldn't.
the period he came from was extremely intellectually fertile, and you can find advocates for everything from rational totalitarianism to postmodern anarchism, ethical egoism, hippie utilitarianism, and jeffersonian pastoralism. I think an "east vs west" lens doesn't really capture it well, because the codification of what we would consider "eastern" took place long after this period, over the course of many centuries
there are things xunzi gets wrong, and after I finish writing commentaries on the essays by him I think are most important, I'll probably write a critique on that. I think of him more as a starting point than an ending point
How do you know if you're being respectful to a culture you don't know?
> Constant studying is the key, don’t you think? “Walk softly and carry a big book”
If the Buddha thought books were the key, he would have left scripture.
Also, if you meet the Buddha, kill him.
I'm not buddhist by the way. I'm repeating old sayings that I believe are less prone to being charlatanized.
I have a limited life. There's only so many books I can read. Why should I guide my attention using a random substack post?
Perhaps you have good intentions, but some people don't. Overselling material is typical of charlatans ("you should read more, and go through me to interpret it").
I'm just providing a general skeptical counterpoint to the idea that reading a lot is always good. Many have done that before me (Buddha, Schopenhauer, etc).
It is kind of ironical that I'm name dropping old thinkers here, and providing my interpretation on how to read it. There's no way out of this paradox.
I stated my intentions from the very beginning, I'm not challenging the wisdom, I'm challenging potentially charlatan ways of applying it. If you're not doing that, there's no reason to get offended.
Also, there was no reason to erase your posts. Now people will never know if you were being playful and agreeable or not.
So am I. Mine is designed to discourage people from trusting charlatans. I said it from the very beginning, quite honestly.
I don't need to be right, and people don't need to follow my example. They just need to think "wait, why am I reading this thing? why does it feel compelling? am I being tricked?".
Maybe you're not used to skepticism in your life, and you usually get the things you want by putting up a show. That's actually not bad, but I'm not going to apologize for attempting to increase awareness of how charlatans work.
- One of the most important jobs of a leader is to find the talented people and give them work worthy of their talents
- Large projects start by laying a foundation which will facilitate later work
- Resource and disaster management are central problems of government
- If someone makes a bad decision, it is probably because they didn't see the value of the better decision. Instead of criticizing the path they chose, show them the superior value of the one they overlooked.
I can related to that wisdom much more than I can relate to some old chinese (or old anything) text. I lived it, many times.
Maybe there are some important leadership advice in the text. But should you really apply it in the 21st century?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/too_many_chiefs_and_not_enoug...
We have that in English too, but considering that the first to misidentify native people as Indians spoke Portuguese and Spanish primarily(?), the original version of this phrase may indeed be something like the one you’re familiar with. I’m not sure myself, but the history of America is much older than the history of the United States, and that is probably still something that I need to brush up on myself.
Confucianism itself was attacked during the Cultural Revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticize_Lin,_Criticize_Con...
Now, it appears Confucianism is being pushed by the Chinese government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute
I am not, however, approaching this from a political perspective.
What I said applies to Indian, Japanese, Native American, even Abrahamic and possibly many others. All of these have been used in the past by charlatans of various kinds.
The kinds of charlatans I'm referring to are not strictly political. Honestly, I was thinking of cheap cults and schemes (like I previously illustrated by my Häagen-Dazs comparison in another comment).
Today you have more interest in the literature of the East. I'm somewhat surprised at how little important Chinese literature is available in translation.
In a time when many people are cut off from the ancient history of the West for various reasons (look at the 'bro veneration of Rome and the knee-jerk anti-Romanism it engenders) I think we need as large a cultural database to work from as we can get.
Educated-but-ignorant progressives find most of the people who ever lived are dead to them because they don't accept 100% of the ideas that were fashionable in the last 30 seconds. Go to India and the sinosphere and they might find something that bypasses their defenses.
Cultural conservatives need to realize they'll hit a ceiling so long as they remain stuck on a book that claims God made the world 6000 years ago (God is not great!) and cares about a few people on a postage stamp in the Middle East more than the rest of us -- Confucius could put them on a rational basis that people will listen to.
Time Cops, arrest this man!
Sounds like you're actually trying to help the snake oil salesman to make his case.
Sure, bro.
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It seems that you're interpreting the oil analogy as a reference to belief, or culture more generally.
But I said right there at the top, it's not about the contents, it's about how a western audience could potentially react to the way a selection of commented quotes of an ancient chinese thinker is presented.
The cultural facts you mentioned are relevant culturally but irrelevant both to the blogpost and my critique of it. They are related, and share similar words and concepts, and it is even nuanced, but talks about another subject.
While your subject is related to cultural identity, mine is about charlatanism. I don't think the blogpost is trying to appropriate chinese culture, in the same way Häagen-Dazs is not trying to undermine the scandinavians. However, in both cases, we have a case of deception. The deception is not against a culture, but against a possible victim that does not know the target culture.
I'm not talking about migration, I'm not talking about culture appropriation, I'm not judging nations or cultures by value. I understand this is difficult for most audiences to grasp, and I'm not saying you don't understand it.
Think of a cloud of different subjects related to culture. Matters of identity, belief, appropriation, all share a similar group (talk about culture, mainly).
My critique is more closely related to another group of ideas (critical thinking, avoiding cult-behavior, manipulation of perception, cold reading).
It is true that these both clouds of subjects intersect, but briefly. Some people say religion or certain cultures are manipulative, and they also describes themselves as skeptics.
Through that intersection, you could have derived a reply that confuses a lot of audiences, and it would appease to these kinds of religious skeptics (militant atheism), moving the discussion towards a more easy to navigate terrain (it's easy to point out the mistakes of militant atheists, and hard to spot the difference between a secular-type and an atheist-type). Again, not that you don't know (on the contrary, you demonstrate quite an ablity to select subjects).
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Your reply (possibly accidentaly?) hits a combination of notes around the subject that is curious. It doesn't pass scrutiny.
For example, if it was part of a larger corpus of text on culture, both of our comments should have been left out (mine for not being about culture, yours for being a continuation of mine. you broke the chain, man).
In another example, my comment would be perhaps be in a larger corpus about secular though, but your reply woundn't (from there, you started talking about culture as the main subject. breaking the chain again, man).
Makes sense?
As for Charlatanism I'm just going to invoke Nietzsche insofar as "the will to appearance, illusion, deception, becoming and change (to objective deception) is here taken to be more profound, more primordial, more metaphysical than the will to truth, reality and being"
Today I'm inclined to ask "how many neurotypicals can dance on the head of a pin?" and I'm seriously concerend with the "ahistorical turn" insofar as a lot of people don't want to think about the 1990s or the 1970s never mind the 1910s.
If we're going to deceive ourselves we might as well draw from the largest cultural library and have some diversity in our misconceptions. A year ago I read all the Poul Anderson books that I skipped (read Heinlein, Pohl, Smith, Niven, Asmiov, ...) and really appreciated that all of his aliens were religious, the kind of "people" who wouldn't let you use circular wheels (holy!) and even if you used
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuleaux_triangle
you'd get spoken to very harshly by your superiors in the Polesotechnic League. Here on Earth though faith healing and exorcism have been first and second line treatments for many conditions as described in
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-97489-000
and if a person who had an intractable problem found Milton Erickson and had a strange conversation and then forgot they had a problem or if a person speaking in the name of a fox [1] pronounces in front of a crowd (containing the thief) that a stolen object will be found in a certain place and gives the thief an easy out... what's wrong with that? Is it any worse than people believing false statements such as "Paroxetine corrects a chemical imbalance?"
[1] who perhaps became something more than vulpine by practicing Daoist cultivation
Mine stands without the extras though.
Unless you are European literary critic or something, then the interesting bit is why you are on HN
Confucius is utterly devoid of "woo" (巫) and is much closer to Aristotle and company than he is to Mary Baker Eddy. Likewise, there's a big Chinese literature in psychology where you'll find things that I believe are true on any level (sadness suppresses anger: try reading names at the war memorial when you are angry but can't be) that are hard to find or absent in Western literature.
The Chinese v. of that really requires a link! It's nearly a chengyu but I don't know if Douyin is surfacing truly new ones these days
Problem with most things-- help us GPT-- you have to dig through a alot of chaff to get to the wheat
Another aspect of the curiosity vs agency tradeoff..?
To be fair, I think you have a point about people latching on to eastern "woo" but that (your stance) comes across as victim-blaming (=not as heroic OR as fresh as you might imagine it to be)..
Not sure you intended such a interpretation, but I suspect you might also blame us for that :)
I haven't seen any interesting solutions to the uh "skepticism vs openness" dilemma, you haven't pointed to any either, but maybe trying to understand what the relative value of different approaches are may help
By different "approaches" I mean, in the current context, fresh ways of distilling the non-wooness in non-western uh data
I'll keep my longstanding tradition of explaining exactly how I work: I have no interest in competing for an audience of hot takes on things. _Skepticism is old_, I dusted it from an old shelf. Of course it's not fresh.
So, I can attribute all the harshness that came across from me to your provokations. That's very generous. I didn't needed it though, and I don't accept gifts from strangers.
Somewhat of a tangent, but an interesting thought if one is inclined toward the old and Eastern: Christianity is old and Eastern.
And yet you can find a Christian community practicing very ancient rituals right here in the United States. You can celebrate those rituals in English, or various ancient languages, or a combination of both. Rituals are available every day, but the most elaborate and meaningful ones are saved for the most convenient day of the week: Sunday.
What I said has nothing to do with old rituals, culture cross-polination or nothing of that.
> Somewhat of a tangent
I was just using your comment as a launching point for a thought I've had rattling around in my mind for a while. You mentioned some people having an inclination toward what is old and Eastern. That's the "somewhat" and the "tangent" is that I then connected that to people who apply the same heuristic to religion.
This, I think, is the core assumption of authoritarianism, and, I think, is false.
Yes there are people who behave like this. But it's not the majority, and communities are capable of dealing with them internally without imposing an authority on them.
The one caveat is, obviously, that this only really works in a world without violence. If the bad folks are able to use violence to get what they want, then any community can be threatened by a large enough group of bad folks who are prepared to use violence. This leads, ultimately, to the authoritarian rule of the most competently violent. The state has a monopoly on the use of violence and enforces its rules on its citizens with the threat of violence. The "elevation of the worthy to positions of controlling authority" is a violent act.
But the underlying assumption that people cannot work together unless forced to by an authority, I think is false. I think that people will naturally work together and create harmonious communities if left to their own devices.
I could be an idealistic fool, though.
It is very effective at scaring people into believing the state has their interests at heart more than their neighbor does, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary.
for xunzi the main tool to run the state is that nebulous word "ritual." roughly this means the government should behave virtuously to inspire civic duty and pride, encourage people to cultivate themselves and behave properly in the context of their personal relationships, and use the tools of civic religion (in his time sacrifical rites, sumptuary laws, military ceremonies) to impress people with majesty rather than instill fear. on the mundane end it should make punishments light, lower taxes, handle natural disasters, and maintain a military that mostly fights defensive or just wars. through this he believes people will mostly act virtuously through a felt sense of obligation to and appreciation for each other, ie social trust and social responsibility
there are legitimate points of criticism though, I think the main ones from a western individualist democratic perspective would be that he considers a hierarchical (albeit strictly meritocratic) social structure to be absolutely essential, and that the confucian social network style behavior regulation may depend inherently on social shame, which tends to be smothering
xunzi's dim view of human nature is superficially similar to hobbes (and both came from similar times of brutal civil war) but while hobbes says "and the people have to agree to give absolute power to a dictator" xunzi says "and the people need a model for how to be better"
any confucian system is necessarily grounded in virtue, so you still have the classic problem of "what if the ruler isn't virtuous." I do think this is fundamentally unsolvable though. at the end of the day no clever government structure can work around the fact that whoever holds the final say is ultimately sovereign. checks and balances evaporate in times of crisis and we've just been lucky most of the presidents so far who got that supreme authority (lincoln and fdr being the most notable) were relatively virtuous
The senseless destruction of one's own resources is a demonstration that one will be willing to make the sacrifices expected of the initiated. Destroying resources senselessly is a signal of dedication, especially during a ritual process usually consisting of articulating and rehearsing a set of values, values expressed as deserving of sacrifice.
Expensive rituals discourage multiple commitments.
Also, sunk cost fallacy is a real motivator. Initiation rituals involve spending big before you see any benefit from a thing. They make it more likely that you will last until you see benefits, which is important for groups that also have to invest in initiates. Checkpoint and daily rituals are maintenance of that sunk cost.
edit: these are extremely useful things, even if I'm being a little cold about them. If somebody spent three months preparing for their initiation into the Anaheim Roller Coaster Fanatics, I'm not going to think twice about having them hold the club's $400 treasury. If somebody chants a poem about being loyal to our religion every time they drink a glass of water, I'm not going to be overly paranoid leaving my kids with them. It's the basis of affinity frauds, the assuming of ritual adherence.
As general idea of rituals go, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that (any) ritual gives cravings of certainty of that rigid states of mind and that delicious centrality to our passing being here on earth (as opposed to cold indifferent randomness of life),
It’s more fulfilling ritual wise and to fill your ancient wisdom shaped hole, if you make a habit to read Shakespeare or Montaigne or someone you know and understand (as you can retroactively read, question and speak to the author in your head)
I’m having a bit of bad trip for sometime now, having realized ancient Indian mythologies are just (different versions of) Ancient Greek Homeric myths. That made me question assumptions of grandeur we make about “ancient” texts without giving it much thought.
P.S : To my fellow western geeks, Marcus Aurelius and Greek and western canon is the way if you’re searching for ancient wisdom, largely speaking eastern philosophy is not that thought provoking as “content writers” or Steve Jobs make it to be (evidently), it’s just that esoteric or exotic to you!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
Possibly important to Western philosophy for inspiring cynicism and skepticism.
Why on earth is this here? Are we going to dive in on the Bible, Torah and Quran too?
No, of course not. This is wankery of the first order.