The Ritual Angle

muaddib wrote:Yes, my approach is sort-of roundabout, isn't it? I think part of it is that, like I was saying, all of these thoughts really started from trying to understand Confucianism better. I'm really not working from my own experiences but trying to take what I know of those ideas as premises instead.

If you're playing devil's advocate (I'm not surprised you are), then I guess what's missing to give it more context is the angel you're advocating against. It doesn't seem to be us here and our thoughts on the subject. I see dichotomies projected onto other dichotomies, but I don't know what the original ones are. In short, "the ritual angle, as opposed to the [what angle?]". Maybe defining here what a "ritual" isn't to you might be illuminating.

There are definitely still blurry spots that I haven't figured out, but I'm not sure it's in the definition. I don't really have a rigorous definition of ritual (which isn't very mathematical of me), but I honestly wasn't planning on having it come up. I figured we would just start from the common-sense meaning of it, then maybe tweak it from there if need-be.

What's confusing though is that you don't seem to be talking about any of the common-sense meanings of the word, or even a subset or superset of a common-sense meaning.

I do think it's important to not take too narrow a definition though, and this is where I am stretching the common-sense notion a bit. For example, I'd argue a lot of seemingly pragmatic behavior is actually ritual because it has a symbolic goal beyond what's really necessary. Just think of all the serious-minded people in business that will insist on doing things a suboptimal way because "that's how it's always been done." Or for a more positive example, think of all the little details in how a craftsperson might go about things, odd little habits, how they arrange their workspace, how they periodically stop and evaluate things, etc.

We run into murky semantic waters at this point. Because those kinds of habits have a specific purpose: allowing you to only think about doing your job instead of thinking about how to do it. That's as practical as it gets. It's what allows you to get things done.

You could always argue that that's the purpose of all rituals (to dispel your anxiety of having to make difficult choices and of adding your own mistakes to something that feels guaranteed enough as it is). But that would just be an exercise in semantics, and would take away all meaning from the word by making it too broad.

Out of those two examples that you mentioned, the first one does sound kind of ritualistic to me. It's the (maybe implicitly) prescribed way of doing things, being followed in order to dispel someone's anxieties about liability for any new mistakes they might introduce. But the second one doesn't sound ritualistic, because it's just a person repeating what has worked for them before. I think it would only become ritualistic if it were passed on to someone else and then the other person would follow it without knowing why exactly (which means that they wouldn't know how to change details as needed, and might think that they're not even supposed to try).

So I think that what defines "a ritual" as I understand it is "something of a repetitive or reproducible nature that has its origins in practical reality but has become somewhat independent from it". It has ostensible concrete motivations and purposes, but the relationship between the action and those motivations and purposes is not entirely clear. Or it's lost entirely, in which case it becomes either a purely pathological thing if it's individual, or a purely social (and possibly still pathological) thing if it's collective.

There may still be a practical merit to it, but that's not the actual motivation for the ritual as such, and that possible disconnection has more to do with how much or how often the ritual is going to be questioned rather than how much or how often it's going to be followed. So when it becomes a tool for resolution of cognitive dissonance rather than just "picking one out of many equivalent alternatives", then it becomes a source of conflict between adherents and opponents.

I think it's safe to say that we're all very familiar with that scenario I just described.

That's the thing though, I haven't figured out how to analyze or synthesize them yet. In the past, I had little practices for when I'd study books, going for walks, meditating, but I think I've outgrown any reliable rituals of my own.

Does this maybe boil down to self-confidence versus self-doubt, then?

I'm also very detached from everything right now so I was hoping that if anyone else could remember an extended period in their life when they felt really connected to life, we could look for patterns.

"Feeling really connected to life" sounds like an intrinsically temporary and extraordinary state of mind. A kind of "high", with or without drugs. I wouldn't take something like that as reference for anything that's supposed to be sustainable or supposed to be a baseline of any kind. An extended period like you describe is bound to become a dreamlike memory, disconnected from the rest of your life rather than the opposite. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but, like I said, I don't think it can be sensibly taken as a reference.

Why is logic a learned, often uncommon skill, (and arguably only a few millennia old)? Why does tradition and habit rather than reason usually decide human affairs? Even in psychology, why isn't just telling someone about their problems enough to help them change? At the same time, why do most institutions that try to control people (schools, employers, prisons, etc.) ultimately rely on regulating little behaviors more than propaganda?

Because the devil is in the details. Making small choices is harder than sticking to them, but making big ones is easier than sticking to them. Because, once a big choice is made, it's the small everyday ones that will effectively make it or break it. And if you dispel that anxiety in someone else, then you've made a friend, or possibly a follower.

That... is certainly a possibility. I think if it's slipping in anywhere though, it's really at that fuzzy line between what's necessary and what's symbolic. I don't really see where my definition would be circular so far, but I do appreciate corrections.

Well there you go then .

I know it's over a year, and all the other people that replied have probably moved on, but I remembered this chat and that I forgot to respond. The idea of connection just came up elsewhere so I'm going to resurrect it.

Let the thread necromancy commence!

Dalloway wrote:In this case, in my experience, language isn't able to compensate.

I know Dalloway moved on in life, but this is precisely one of the things I'm wondering. What if the fact that rituals are embodied gives them some extra "oomph" in human existence that language doesn't have?

zeno wrote:If you're playing devil's advocate (I'm not surprised you are), then I guess what's missing to give it more context is the angel you're advocating against. It doesn't seem to be us here and our thoughts on the subject. I see dichotomies projected onto other dichotomies, but I don't know what the original ones are.

I'm actually not playing devil's advocate so much as taking the perspective of a convert. It's still a halting, half-finished conversion, but I wonder if I've been mistaken to dislike ritual as much as I did in the past. I still stand by my experiences, but maybe I should have just seen them as examples of bad rituals instead of proof that all rituals are bad.

zeno wrote:In short, "the ritual angle, as opposed to the [what angle?]"

Ah, I didn't mean in reference to anything else philosophically; I meant as an explanation of the schizoid condition. Maybe bad or absent rituals can somehow explain a little where the usual schizoid problems come from. So it's not "the ritual angle [on life] as opposed to [pragmatism, skepticism, etc.]" but "the ritual angle [on SPD] as opposed to [childhood experiences, brain-chemistry, etc.]"

zeno wrote:Maybe defining here what a "ritual" isn't to you might be illuminating.

Sure, so like I said before, my working definition requires some meaning beyond immediate necessity. So for example, if someone suddenly feels the urge to smoke a cigarette, walks outside, and lights up, I don't think I'd call that a ritual. Someone OTOH who decides to take a smoke-break at work, puts their workspace in order, asks if anyone else wants to join them, and philosophizes until their cigarette finishes, that I would definitely call a ritual.

Another thing that a ritual (or at least an effective one) requires is some form of prescription. Maybe it's prescribed by society, or maybe by something else like an understanding of nature, or even a compulsion. So something done based on a coin-flip or the first thought to pop in your head isn't a ritual.

Honestly, coming back to this topic a year later, I think this detail about "prescription" might still be the most unclear to me. It also drifts into a different topic about how instinctive human notions of "authority" are.

zeno wrote:What's confusing though is that you don't seem to be talking about any of the common-sense meanings of the word, or even a subset or superset of a common-sense meaning.

I guess you're right, it's not a simple matter of wider or narrower categories. It's more like I'm hacking on the definition piece by piece. I don't see how I'm too far from the common-sense notion though. The first definition for "ritual" returned by Google is:

A religious or solemn ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order.

All I've really changed in that is replaced the "religious or solemn ceremony" bit with a much wider sense of "symbolically meaningful behavior."

Everything else is me accepting, tweaking, or rejecting some common assumption about what that actually looks like in the world. So for example, I'm sticking with the idea that rituals only work if you believe in them, which I think is how most see it. I've generalized the idea of "prescription" beyond just religious and social authority, but I recognize those too.

Like I said, if I'm abandoning common-sense anywhere, it's how I interpret that bit about "action." I'm paradoxically (but not inconsistently) taking it in both a narrower sense (ritual has to be physically embodied, so prayer without specific posture and gestures technically isn't a ritual) and a wider one (outwardly pragmatic actions can still be rituals too). Funny enough, I think I've left common-sense here precisely because this is where I'm being most rigorous.

zeno wrote:

muaddib wrote:For example, I'd argue a lot of seemingly pragmatic behavior is actually ritual because it has a symbolic goal beyond what's really necessary. Just think of all the serious-minded people in business that will insist on doing things a suboptimal way because "that's how it's always been done." Or for a more positive example, think of all the little details in how a craftsperson might go about things, odd little habits, how they arrange their workspace, how they periodically stop and evaluate things, etc.

We run into murky semantic waters at this point. Because those kinds of habits have a specific purpose: allowing you to only think about doing your job instead of thinking about how to do it. That's as practical as it gets. It's what allows you to get things done....

Out of those two examples that you mentioned, the first one does sound kind of ritualistic to me. It's the (maybe implicitly) prescribed way of doing things, being followed in order to dispel someone's anxieties about liability for any new mistakes they might introduce. But the second one doesn't sound ritualistic, because it's just a person repeating what has worked for them before.

This is good because it gets us closer to a resolution, but now I'm going to spring a little theoretical trap on you, purely in the name of science You could definitely be right, but we have to test things.

So the first example was something I figured most people would agree is bad, whereas the second is something that evokes positive feelings in most. But here's the thing: what if my first and second examples were actually describing the same person? What if you have an independent tradesman that learned most of his little habits in an apprenticeship? Like you said, they do allow him to work smoothly without ruminating, but then if you were to explain how new practices could make him even more productive with less strain, he might get defensive and say that's just not how things are done.

If that's a possibility though, then to say the first example is ritualistic while the second isn't is to imply that what is and isn't a ritual is a relative judgment. Pretty much, something is pragmatic so long as nobody claims to know better, but once someone does, it instantly becomes ritualistic to them. Effectively, ritual would just be the flip-side of pragmatism, both defined relative to a moving goalpost of current best practices.

It's not inconsistent, and I wholeheartedly agree that blind ritualism often holds real progress back, but this assumes that ritual is bad by definition and opposed to what's really effective. I guess one of the main points I'd like to make in this thread though is that maybe rituals can be genuinely pragmatic sometimes.

Another issue is that while the second situation I described might help a person become more productive and enter a state of flow, I'm not sure that's necessarily always the primary intent for those little craft habits. It's possible that people seek them out for utilitarian reasons, but that assumes people are rational to a degree I'm skeptical of. I think it's just as likely (personally, even more likely) that people overwhelmingly try new things, and stick with them, for obscure, irrational reasons. My impression is that people usually only recognize pragmatic benefits as a happy accident after they've already decided to give something a decent trial-run.

zeno wrote:You could always argue that that's the purpose of all rituals (to dispel your anxiety of having to make difficult choices and of adding your own mistakes to something that feels guaranteed enough as it is). But that would just be an exercise in semantics, and would take away all meaning from the word by making it too broad....

I agree that those motives are definitely part of it but not the only thing going on. That ability to "dispel anxiety" (and not just social or practical worries, but also existential ones) is definitely an interesting property though. That's one of the things I never really thought about until studying Confucianism in a bit more detail; it's apparently a big part of their views on human happiness.

zeno wrote:So I think that what defines "a ritual" as I understand it is "something of a repetitive or reproducible nature that has its origins in practical reality but has become somewhat independent from it".

Honestly, I can agree with all this, which I guess just shows how all the issues we're debating aren't in the definition.

zeno wrote:It has ostensible concrete motivations and purposes, but the relationship between the action and those motivations and purposes is not entirely clear. Or it's lost entirely, in which case it becomes either a purely pathological thing if it's individual, or a purely social (and possibly still pathological) thing if it's collective.

I'll second most of this too, and in a way, this is really the outstanding problem to me. I don't think rituals are entirely arbitrary, but how exactly do they reflect practical reality?

The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is if individual rituals are always pathological if one no longer remembers the original motivation. I could see a scenario where someone establishes a good habit in response to a vague intuition. The intuition might sink back into the unconscious mind (especially if the ritual works well and renders the intuition's trigger moot), but the habit and its benefits remain.

zeno wrote:There may still be a practical merit to it, but that's not the actual motivation for the ritual as such, and that possible disconnection has more to do with how much or how often the ritual is going to be questioned rather than how much or how often it's going to be followed. So when it becomes a tool for resolution of cognitive dissonance rather than just "picking one out of many equivalent alternatives", then it becomes a source of conflict between adherents and opponents.

I think it's safe to say that we're all very familiar with that scenario I just described.

Yet again, I'll agree with pretty much all of this. The politics of a ritual can be a big problem, especially if it becomes more of a defense mechanism. The only thing I'm unsure of is if you can see it as just one among many "equivalent alternatives." I think to be a ritual, it has to make some claim on someone's beliefs, which requires it being preferable in some way. Also like I mentioned above, if you just decide to do something arbitrarily, I'm not sure I would consider it a ritual.

zeno wrote:

muaddib wrote:That's the thing though, I haven't figured out how to analyze or synthesize them yet. In the past, I had little practices for when I'd study books, going for walks, meditating, but I think I've outgrown any reliable rituals of my own.

Does this maybe boil down to self-confidence versus self-doubt, then?

It's possible, but that would imply to me that the ritual was always entirely in my head. So we're back to that idea that if rituals work, it's really just a version of the placebo effect. Plus I don't see why I shouldn't be able to go back to my old rituals if it was just a temporary doubt. It's purely introspection, but I feel like what changed is how I understand the world, not really any loss of faith in myself.

I'm still sticking with the theory that effective rituals do reflect reality somehow, and if anything, some other realizations I've had this past year make me even more confident in that. Again, the main problem then is "how;" how does that link work exactly? It's weird, but this kind of ties into some of the things I was wondering on the thread about feeling magical

zeno wrote:"Feeling really connected to life" sounds like an intrinsically temporary and extraordinary state of mind. A kind of "high", with or without drugs. I wouldn't take something like that as reference for anything that's supposed to be sustainable or supposed to be a baseline of any kind.

This has come up in a couple other places recently. I can see how it might sound like I'm describing some sort of mystical ecstasy, but I honestly just mean something more like "not feeling schizoid." I just mean feeling emotionally and physically stimulated by your own thoughts and the world around you. Someone that feels happy for the moment qualifies, but so does someone crying at a funeral, or even a bored teenager that really feels their boredom. Pretty much anything with actual content, not the universal, dull, white-noise that is how I've felt for most of my adult life.

I'd really like to ask this question of the whole forum again though. If anyone remembers a period of being "less schizoid" clearly, can you also recall some ritual elements of your life at that time?

zeno wrote:

muaddib wrote:Why is logic a learned, often uncommon skill, (and arguably only a few millennia old)? Why does tradition and habit rather than reason usually decide human affairs? Even in psychology, why isn't just telling someone about their problems enough to help them change? At the same time, why do most institutions that try to control people (schools, employers, prisons, etc.) ultimately rely on regulating little behaviors more than propaganda?

Because the devil is in the details. Making small choices is harder than sticking to them, but making big ones is easier than sticking to them. Because, once a big choice is made, it's the small everyday ones that will effectively make it or break it. And if you dispel that anxiety in someone else, then you've made a friend, or possibly a follower.

I won't argue with that, but I think we might actually be talking past each other. Everything you've mentioned is true, but can't reason also dispel anxiety and assist choices, both small and big ones? I think we'd actually agree that where a well-done, rational analysis exists, it usually works better than rituals at all those things.

What I'm suggesting then is that you can't really explain the enduring power of ritual over reason on utilitarian grounds. If practical successes and the burden of choices decided things, then people should naturally side with reason over ritual whenever they conflict.

The opposite seems to be the case though. I think the simplest way to explain that is to consider that ritual is just deeply embedded in human nature somehow. If you're willing to accept that though, then couldn't human emotions also be tied to it?

muaddib wrote:So I've been hinting on the forum recently about some epiphanies I've had over the past few months. Without going into rambling details, one has led me to wonder if maybe we're under-estimating how much ritual (or a lack thereof) has an effect on us. I know discussions of individual, personal rituals we do have shown up on the forum before. I'm definitely not the first person on the forum to suggest this either:
What if somehow the ritual part of our lives is related at a very basic level to some of our problems?

Just searching through the forum for posts with "ritual" in them turn up a moderate amount of hits, but what's interesting is that a lot of them seem critical of the whole idea of rites. I totally get the perspective that they're silly, pointless things that normal people do to keep reality from intruding because that's how I've always seen it for much of my life. But what if that's somewhere where some of us (or I at the very least) have been mistaken?

I can get into much more detail about my ideas of how and why lacking a comprehensive ritual framework could make someone more "schizoid." For now though, I'd like to open up the floor to everyone else.

Do you have any clear examples in life of when a ritual did or didn't affect your schizoid traits (for better or worse)? Or if you have any more abstract thoughts about this, I'd be interested in hearing those too.

Well...if a ritual would be "at fault", I think the person would have to realize that any of his/her rituals were actually a problem. That's something that may or may not be easy for us.

Here's how real rituals are. It's part of what is called evolutionary topography.

THEORETICAL
EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS wrote:
FITNESS OPTIMIZATION. We now have the pleasing picture of the population changing
so as to continually increase w¯, until it comes to rest at a peak of the adaptive surface.
This would seem to provide a basis for the use of “fitness optimization” arguments in
ecology and animal behavior. In those arguments it is assumed that the population will
evolve to that collection of phenotypes which maximizes the mean fitness. The picture
we have developed above is only partly consistent with this notion. In the first place,
genetic constraints may prevent the population from achieving this optimum configuration.
In a case of overdominance, the highest mean population fitness would be achieved
if all individuals were to be heterozygotes. Mendelian segregation makes this impossible:
a population of heterozygotes will not be stable - it will immediately segregate out
some homozygous offspring. In the second place, the peak of mean fitness which is
achieved need not be the highest available peak. When we have a case of underdominance,
the final equilibrium achieved depends on the initial gene frequencies. Since the
mean fitness at the equilibrium will be either 1 − s or 1 − t, depending on initial position,
it is entirely possible that a population will fail to find the best solution to its adaptive
problems. Although its fitness cannot decrease, it may be climbing the smaller of the
two peaks of the adaptive surface. If it starts out at the smaller peak, it will never find its
way to the higher peak if natural selection is the only force changing gene frequencies.
Fitness optimization arguments implicitly assume that a global optimization is carried
out. The actual process of natural selection involves a very narrow view of the adaptive
surface. As we have seen, the local slope of the surface is all that the process of natural
selection can “see” - it cannot know that there is a higher peak in another direction. If
the A allele occurs mostly in Aa heterozygotes and these are not very fit, the frequency
of A will decline, even though the AA homozygote may be the best genotype. Setting
out from your present location and proceeding always uphill is perhaps a good recipe
for escaping a small flood, but it is not the best route to the top of Mt. Everest.
The analogy between the fitness curve and a landscape is due to Sewall Wright (1932,
1935a, b), who discussed forces other than selection, particularly genetic drift, as means
of moving a population across valleys in the surface.

If rituals are formalization of adaptive behavior of the organism to the environment, then it is not only natural, but quite fit, albeit not optimal necessarily. If you look at it psychologically and empirically, it also not only makes sense, but is the only thing possible reasonably, since you can only see the slope, and not the next peak which may or may not be higher. It would be counter-intuitive to go down in hope of going up higher eventually to a top that cannot be seen, but is merely assumed for whatever wishful thinking reason. So you go up the small slope you know, which proved itself over and over again to prevent small floods, instead as going after an utopia, no matter how logical it may be, there is no evidence it exists outside the utopian mind. Or replace "exist" by "reasonably feasible" when it comes to politics and big narratives. The fundamental problem is that we don't even understand the nature of the slope we are on, of even what kind of floods is out there, since it's been awhile, and the formalization of the habit has made sure nobody went and looked to see, aside from some genetic drifters that never came back. So either they met their maker or found the promised land.

But humans being as they are, we tend to take chances, and it has paid off in the past, but you can't really say it is rational to do so, unless forced by necessity. It's also never really clear whether the new hill is actually higher than the last one, when it comes to simple survival. It may have better fruit, but it does not mean much if it is subject to floods. Why people are afraid or some warming.

The divided Self wrote:To begin at the beginning:
Biological birth is a definitive act whereby the infant organism
is precipitated into the world. There it is, a new baby, a new
biological entity, already with its own ways, real and alive, from
our point of view. But what of the baby's point of view? Under
usual circumstances, the physical birth of a new living organism
into the world inaugurates rapidly ongoing processes whereby
within an amazingly short time the infant feels real and alive and
has a sense of being an entity, with continuity in time and
a location in space. In short, physical birth and biological aliveness
are followed by the baby becoming existentially born as real
and alive. Usually this development is taken for granted and
affords the certainty upon which all other certainties depend. This
is to say, not only do adults see children to be real biologically
viable entities but they experience themselves as whole persons
who are real and alive, and conjunctively experience other
human beings as real and alive. These are self-validating data of
experience.
The individual, then, may experience his own being as real,
alive, whole; as differentiated from the rest of the world in ordinary
circumstances so clearly that his identity and autonomy are never
in question; as a continuum in time; as having an inner consistency,
substantiality, genuineness, and worth; as spatially coextensive
with the body; and, usually, as having begun in or
42 The Divided Self
around birth and liable to extinction with death. He thus has a
firm core of ontological security.
This, however, may not be the case. The individual in the ordinary
circumstances of living may feel more unreal than real; in a
literal sense, more dead than alive; precariously differentiated from
the rest of the world, so that his identity and autonomy are always
in question. He may lack the experience of his own temporal
continuity. He may not possess an over-riding sense of personal
consistency or cohesiveness. He may feel more insubstantial than
substantial, and unable to assume that the stuff he is made of is
genuine, good, valuable. And he may feel his self as partially
divorced from his body.
It is, of course, inevitable that an individual whose experience
of himself is of this order can no more live in a 'secure' world than
he can be secure 'in himself. The whole 'physiognomy' of his
world will be correspondingly different from that of the individual
whose sense of self is securely established in its health and validity.
Relatedness to other persons will be seen to have a radically
different significance and function. To anticipate, we can say that
in the individual whose own being is secure in this primary experiential
sense, relatedness with others is potentially gratifying;
whereas the ontologically insecure person is preoccupied with
preserving rather than gratifying himself: the ordinary circumstances
of living threaten his low threshold of security

You could maybe see the schizoid as a genetic drifter that believes the current fruits on the hill are not good enough to compensate for its low height, and seek the mountain instead for security. That could be an interesting metaphor to the above topological hermeneutic. Or maybe an evolutionary underdominant gene, that seek salvation, for better or worse through vale and valleys in search of a new mountain top. Either that or stay there and be anxious.

In any case, more down to Earth, the thing is that any physical activity that is done regularly, or if needed ritualized, will make a person feel more alive and in touch with their own body, and that can easily be proven through experience. Acting with a goal in mind and succeeding always give direction and meaning, so it is not a big secret. It's harder when the environment is fundamentally and genetically unsuitable, but there may be ways. I would say the more ritualized and genuine the tribe around is, the more likely for it to succeed, without resorting to exile, as long as those rituals are bounded and explicit, which includes an in and out possibility. It is when the rituals are everywhere and pervasive and implicit, through pathological identity diffusion on a societal scale, that it becomes impossible to adapt to. So public rituals are good as long as they are bounded. They allow less conflicts, while solving some basic problems that affect all societies. Now, if you want to delve into the symbolic aspect of it, and its reality, then it is about figuring out what those problems are, or its first principle, and the dao/tao of the technical ritual.

I have talked about most of those things before, but it is pointless, as in the end, it is a matter of actually doing it, so it is my last word on it, as I am sure most people are not gonna bother. It's easier to stay in a state of nothingness and anxiety and flee into imagination. then rationalize the whole thing post hoc.

Thinking keeps you inside your head and gives you no cue (or clue) on when or how to go outside. Rituals let you accomplish (or, especially, maintain) certain things, while also giving you specific and readily recognizable cues for your brain to switch focus and rhythm and so on, and also giving you more flowery ways to picture mundane things (which is something human beings need, because we don't conceptualize things in terms of facts, we conceptualize them in terms of stories).

Or in other words, the way I understand it, rituals are one of the basic ways to reassure you that it's okay for you to stop thinking. And maybe what sets rituals apart from other similar psychosocial devices is that they aren't just meant to align you with others / with your environment, they're meant to synchronize you. It's all about timing.

Of course, there are many rituals that will reassure you at moments when you actually aren't safe. That's an inherent limitation.

muaddib wrote:The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is if individual rituals are always pathological if one no longer remembers the original motivation.

Not necessarily, I guess. But then it's up to chance, and there's no real way left to judge when it may have outlived its purpose.

So we're back to that idea that if rituals work, it's really just a version of the placebo effect.

That sounds about right. Sort of. I wouldn't say it's just a version of the placebo effect. But the effect is a big part of it anyway. Timing and reassurance.

I'm still sticking with the theory that effective rituals do reflect reality somehow

I would say that that "somehow" is timing.

Again, the main problem then is "how;" how does that link work exactly?

...Timing?

It's weird, but this kind of ties into some of the things I was wondering on the thread about feeling magical

I don't think it's weird. I think one thing naturally sounds very much connected to the other. The timing I'm talking about isn't just about the things you do, but also the ways how you're supposed to feel while at it. I think someone could easily argue that that's actually the main point.

I'd really like to ask this question of the whole forum again though. If anyone remembers a period of being "less schizoid" clearly, can you also recall some ritual elements of your life at that time?

I can't comment on that, because, as I've said many times, as far as I'm aware, "I was always like this". Same software, just a different dataset.

I won't argue with that, but I think we might actually be talking past each other. Everything you've mentioned is true, but can't reason also dispel anxiety and assist choices, both small and big ones?

Not really the small ones. If it's effective for those, it's probably by considering the much larger sum of their iterations over time. If not, then it's just a source of madness. For most small choices, giving it any real thought at the moment when the choice is supposed to be made wastes more resources than making a bad choice.

The opposite seems to be the case though. I think the simplest way to explain that is to consider that ritual is just deeply embedded in human nature somehow. If you're willing to accept that though, then couldn't human emotions also be tied to it?

Well... How could they not be deeply tied to it?

Wow, these are some really good replies. They actually whittle down a lot of the open questions I've had in this thread. Actually, what questions I do still have probably wouldn't belong on this thread anyways; we actually got closure! I'm always surprised how much just stepping away from a problem for a while sometimes makes everything fall into place when you come back to it.

1PolarBear wrote:Here's how real rituals are. It's part of what is called evolutionary topography....

If rituals are formalization of adaptive behavior of the organism to the environment, then it is not only natural, but quite fit, albeit not optimal necessarily. If you look at it psychologically and empirically, it also not only makes sense, but is the only thing possible reasonably, since you can only see the slope, and not the next peak which may or may not be higher....

Ooh, I like this. It shoots down several questions I had at once, and uses a mathematical concept to top it off

If rituals begin as adaptive behaviors, they're local optima but not necessarily global ones, with all the differences implied by that.

1PolarBear wrote:You could maybe see the schizoid as a genetic drifter that believes the current fruits on the hill are not good enough to compensate for its low height, and seek the mountain instead for security. That could be an interesting metaphor to the above topological hermeneutic....

Yes, that sort of makes sense, that a schizoid has become so focused on a distant possibility that they can't feel the hill under their feet anymore.

1PolarBear wrote:In any case, more down to Earth, the thing is that any physical activity that is done regularly, or if needed ritualized, will make a person feel more alive and in touch with their own body, and that can easily be proven through experience. Acting with a goal in mind and succeeding always give direction and meaning, so it is not a big secret. It's harder when the environment is fundamentally and genetically unsuitable, but there may be ways.

Yes, I'll agree with that, but based on my own experiences, including recent ones, I realize now that this might be a partial refutation of my original idea in this thread. I noticed that this sort of activity, like emillionth and others mentioned, does make me ruminate less and get me out of my head. But it still doesn't add positive, emotional content to my life.

So maybe rituals and activities are a necessary ingredient for a less-schizoid life, but not sufficient on their own. After thinking about it, this may actually be in line with the Confucians too though. While they thought ritual could dispel anxiety and lay down the ground-rules for complete, human experience, my understanding is they actually saw poetry and music as the key to developing the emotions. IIUC that's why Confucius picked the Book of Odes as one of the Five Classics and why the Zhou saw music as one of the six arts of a gentleman.

1PolarBear wrote:I would say the more ritualized and genuine the tribe around is, the more likely for it to succeed, without resorting to exile, as long as those rituals are bounded and explicit, which includes an in and out possibility. It is when the rituals are everywhere and pervasive and implicit, through pathological identity diffusion on a societal scale, that it becomes impossible to adapt to. So public rituals are good as long as they are bounded. They allow less conflicts, while solving some basic problems that affect all societies.

Hmm, I really hadn't been thinking about the political aspects of it that much, but this makes sense to me.

1PolarBear wrote:Now, if you want to delve into the symbolic aspect of it, and its reality, then it is about figuring out what those problems are, or its first principle, and the dao/tao of the technical ritual.

emillionth wrote:And maybe what sets rituals apart from other similar psychosocial devices is that they aren't just meant to align you with others / with your environment, they're meant to synchronize you. It's all about timing.

Yes, that was exactly what I was wondering, how the ritual symbolizes reality. I feel like I still need to think a tiny bit more about it to be sure, but I think you might really be onto something with this idea of "timing." So rituals don't really even symbolize a "how", just a "when."

I don't know if anyone remembers the thread, but it actually reminds me of when I was wondering if more schizotypal symptoms come from losing one's mental clock and thinking asynchronously:
post1763870.html#p1763870

So maybe part of being schizoid isn't so much the absence of rituals and timing, but that the clock isn't ticking loud enough for some reason?

For me, personally, the awareness of being perpetually out of sync is a constant. Out of sync with people around me, out of sync with the circumstances, out of sync with day and night, out of sync with my own bodily needs, and so on. I tend to attribute it to ADHD though (it's a pretty fundamental aspect of ADHD after all). Maybe it's a more biological thing for me than it is for SPD in general.

Rituals (or ritual-like habits) are definitely very important for the way how I function or don't function (and right now I'm actually trying to see if I can get by and improve my quality of life without medication by focusing on productive habits with effective built-in cues). But the problem is that regular prescribed rituals just don't work for me, because they completely fail to synchronize me. So if by any chance I insist on sticking to them (which I normally don't), then I'm stuck with the side effects and not much any benefit. And maybe a bigger problem than that in itself is that rituals don't take this possibility into account ("you must be doing it wrong then"), which only compounds and perpetuates the alienation.

I have often recoiled from rituals when people weren't able to put in words for me what benefits or meaning the ritual would carry.

Societal pressure can be brutal, like you're on the edge of a swimming pool and some savage push you in the swimming pool before you even decided whether you want to learn how to swim.

Some rituals are simply obsolete, but some rituals that I used to found frightening, I am changing my mind about. I am realizing that some rituals appear frightening because it has been drilled into my head that they should be associated with a certain meaning. When I am able to reassign proper meaning to it, a non intrusive one, I am able to discard the protective layer of cautious defiance.

I have to understand the significance of a ritual before I deem it safe to emotionally take a jump.

muaddib wrote:Ooh, I like this. It shoots down several questions I had at once, and uses a mathematical concept to top it off

All math and Mendel, which is probably as solid as you can get in any science.

muaddib wrote:So maybe rituals and activities are a necessary ingredient for a less-schizoid life, but not sufficient on their own. After thinking about it, this may actually be in line with the Confucians too though. While they thought ritual could dispel anxiety and lay down the ground-rules for complete, human experience, my understanding is they actually saw poetry and music as the key to developing the emotions. IIUC that's why Confucius picked the Book of Odes as one of the Five Classics and why the Zhou saw music as one of the six arts of a gentleman.

Yes, but any good ritual usually has music with it, or at least the traditional ones, but it is not just listening, it is singing, and sometimes dancing as well, depending on what is focused on. Emotions are like analog and wave-like, and like creates like. It's always been understood this way in known history. It's a lot more than about anxiety, it is about doing things right in a complete manner, spiritual, physical and emotional. By saying the words, with gesture and musically, you reach completeness of being, so to speak. Also, the social element is important as well, because people are not just individuals, they are part of a greater whole, and that adds to the completeness. It is supposed to bind you to who you really are, in all its aspect.

muaddib wrote:I don't know if anyone remembers the thread, but it actually reminds me of when I was wondering if more schizotypal symptoms come from losing one's mental clock and thinking asynchronously:
post1763870.html#p1763870

So maybe part of being schizoid isn't so much the absence of rituals and timing, but that the clock isn't ticking loud enough for some reason?

It's because the sense of time is linked to the story of the self, but that means you have a self, and uniquely spiritual selfs are timeless. A strong sense of self is grounded in the body and the social at very fundamental levels people don't realize and take for granted, until one is rejected and then they wonder what happened and can't find any reason for their issues. It's all about the local hill that you left in the hope of a better one. Once you are on another hill, you don't see the one you left for better pastures, the one you were adapted to already. Now you are stuck on another one who offers more of less the same thing, but hilltops are already rejected, so it is a never ending quest. But at the very least, your own body is always accessible, and that hill is not an option.