Ritual Is as Ritual Does
This is a response to this post (which was brilliant):
http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/01/24/rules-of-same-sex-engagement/
Let's start here, near the end:And it is in contemplation of those un-easily answered questions, that the fear of same-sex marriage, same-sex couples even, starts to take shape. What would I have done if I hadn’t had ‘tradition’ to guide my engagement? For others, I suspect, that question takes on a darker tone. How do we define engagement, how do we define marriage, if the most basic assumption about gender don’t hold true? What is left of these traditions that-myself included-so many of us hold so dear? In essence, the ever-present fantasy of the 1950s nuclear family is, in fact, on trial.
(emphasis added)
So, I'm going to lead by tooting my own horn and pointing out that this is exactly the love/fear dynamic I've discussed in the past. That it is ignorance and rejection that defines fear, and that its reverse is, quite literally, love.
Ritual. Ritual is an event infused with meaning. It's Thanksgiving dinner with the family and Christmas shopping for the entire month of December and it's buying a ring for your engagement and having sparkly tuxedos and over-the-top wedding dresses for that main event. The meaning doesn't have to be explicit, but ritual is the paintbrush coloring the tapestry of our lives.
I'm going to put on my academic (rather than my usual polemic) hat for a bit and throw down a brief taxonomy.
Low Ritual is meaningful habituation. It's something that anyone not-in-the-know would dismiss as a quirk, but carries meaning for you personally (or you and some social circle). Things like saying grace before a meal or taking a particular route for your daily walk: for some people, it may not be meaningful, but for you, it is.
One thing that I like to do is be very circumspect and delicate about eating a bento box. I dip my tempura carefully; I take exacting portions of the rice; I drink the soup and water deliberately. It's one of the few types of meals that I turn into an actual experience. This is low ritual. I intentionally infuse it with meaning because that enhances my enjoyment of the meal. I've slowly been bringing this infusion into other types of meals, but I haven't really done that for anything else.
High Ritual, on the other hand, is the opposite of everyday. It is defined by the idea of a holy day: a holiday, for which people are pulled off productive for the sake of a collaborative exercise in meaning. Anything meaningful that breaks up your usual patterns, and is charged with anticipated meaning, is high ritual. (Theoretically) Once-in-a-lifetime events, like graduation or marriage, are high ritual. Thus the bells and whistles.
For instance, this year I plan to watch a production of Cirque du Soleil for which I bought the tickets myself. I'm going to be anticipating it for the next half-year, and it will naturally fail to meet such hyped expectations in some ways and likely will yet surpass them in unexpected ways. There will be month after month of "Oh yeah, this is coming up. I'm looking forward to that." There will be the week before of making sure there's a car available and we know how to get there. There's the crossing of fingers that no one is too sick to go. There's the inevitable indecision paralysis of figuring out dinner on the way. But all of that carries meaning, the emotional weight of which etches the event in my memory even before it happens.
And there's the in-between thing: things like church or a weekly gaming session that would be high ritual if they weren't so frequent, but not frequent enough to be mere habit. But that's not what I'm talking about.
Marriage, as I pointed out earlier, is a high ritual event. But here's the thing about high ritual: it can't be wholly informed by tradition. It's too big. No two Maypole dances--er, you probably don't know about that; prom dances?--are the same; you get as much out of each one as you want to put in. There's a degree of wonder and awe that accompanies anything of high ritual that cannot be captured by rote and doctrine; the very thing that is diminished by frequency. That wonder and awe is informed by novelty intertwined with meaning; the novelty opens up your brain to the full sensory spectrum and the meaning etches it into your memory.
Tradition is a guide, but it's only a guide.
Meaning comes from yourself. It's meaningful only if you yourself give it meaning. (I know this from personal experience; I've burned out so much meaning out of my life in pursuit of absolute objectivity that I know where meaning comes from.) Tradition is useful only when you accept its ability to shore up your creative lacks. And that's fine.
That's what tradition--those liberally feared Social Constructs (of Doom)--is.
As I pointed out in my philosophical stream of consciousness a few weeks back, though, anything that does not encourage growth is wrong. Tradition must not be venerated; it is respected and honored and held to, but also broken with when something better can be imagined. That's creativity! That's innovation! That's beauty.
http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/01/24/rules-of-same-sex-engagement/
Let's start here, near the end:And it is in contemplation of those un-easily answered questions, that the fear of same-sex marriage, same-sex couples even, starts to take shape. What would I have done if I hadn’t had ‘tradition’ to guide my engagement? For others, I suspect, that question takes on a darker tone. How do we define engagement, how do we define marriage, if the most basic assumption about gender don’t hold true? What is left of these traditions that-myself included-so many of us hold so dear? In essence, the ever-present fantasy of the 1950s nuclear family is, in fact, on trial.
(emphasis added)
So, I'm going to lead by tooting my own horn and pointing out that this is exactly the love/fear dynamic I've discussed in the past. That it is ignorance and rejection that defines fear, and that its reverse is, quite literally, love.
Ritual. Ritual is an event infused with meaning. It's Thanksgiving dinner with the family and Christmas shopping for the entire month of December and it's buying a ring for your engagement and having sparkly tuxedos and over-the-top wedding dresses for that main event. The meaning doesn't have to be explicit, but ritual is the paintbrush coloring the tapestry of our lives.
I'm going to put on my academic (rather than my usual polemic) hat for a bit and throw down a brief taxonomy.
Low Ritual is meaningful habituation. It's something that anyone not-in-the-know would dismiss as a quirk, but carries meaning for you personally (or you and some social circle). Things like saying grace before a meal or taking a particular route for your daily walk: for some people, it may not be meaningful, but for you, it is.
One thing that I like to do is be very circumspect and delicate about eating a bento box. I dip my tempura carefully; I take exacting portions of the rice; I drink the soup and water deliberately. It's one of the few types of meals that I turn into an actual experience. This is low ritual. I intentionally infuse it with meaning because that enhances my enjoyment of the meal. I've slowly been bringing this infusion into other types of meals, but I haven't really done that for anything else.
High Ritual, on the other hand, is the opposite of everyday. It is defined by the idea of a holy day: a holiday, for which people are pulled off productive for the sake of a collaborative exercise in meaning. Anything meaningful that breaks up your usual patterns, and is charged with anticipated meaning, is high ritual. (Theoretically) Once-in-a-lifetime events, like graduation or marriage, are high ritual. Thus the bells and whistles.
For instance, this year I plan to watch a production of Cirque du Soleil for which I bought the tickets myself. I'm going to be anticipating it for the next half-year, and it will naturally fail to meet such hyped expectations in some ways and likely will yet surpass them in unexpected ways. There will be month after month of "Oh yeah, this is coming up. I'm looking forward to that." There will be the week before of making sure there's a car available and we know how to get there. There's the crossing of fingers that no one is too sick to go. There's the inevitable indecision paralysis of figuring out dinner on the way. But all of that carries meaning, the emotional weight of which etches the event in my memory even before it happens.
And there's the in-between thing: things like church or a weekly gaming session that would be high ritual if they weren't so frequent, but not frequent enough to be mere habit. But that's not what I'm talking about.
Marriage, as I pointed out earlier, is a high ritual event. But here's the thing about high ritual: it can't be wholly informed by tradition. It's too big. No two Maypole dances--er, you probably don't know about that; prom dances?--are the same; you get as much out of each one as you want to put in. There's a degree of wonder and awe that accompanies anything of high ritual that cannot be captured by rote and doctrine; the very thing that is diminished by frequency. That wonder and awe is informed by novelty intertwined with meaning; the novelty opens up your brain to the full sensory spectrum and the meaning etches it into your memory.
Tradition is a guide, but it's only a guide.
Meaning comes from yourself. It's meaningful only if you yourself give it meaning. (I know this from personal experience; I've burned out so much meaning out of my life in pursuit of absolute objectivity that I know where meaning comes from.) Tradition is useful only when you accept its ability to shore up your creative lacks. And that's fine.
That's what tradition--those liberally feared Social Constructs (of Doom)--is.
As I pointed out in my philosophical stream of consciousness a few weeks back, though, anything that does not encourage growth is wrong. Tradition must not be venerated; it is respected and honored and held to, but also broken with when something better can be imagined. That's creativity! That's innovation! That's beauty.