Olympics

[sunson]

I guess humans just can't live without rituals. Probably its part of their social structure. Olympics is full of rituals. I find it funny that they bring this huge flag into the stadium and everybody seems to be rejoicing at the abstract thing called the flag.

Colossal waste of energy in performing these rituals is another way of describing

Comments

[code_martial]

Formula 1 is sport too. I don't care if it's a ritual or it's a wastage of energy or whatever. Just give me my 18 weeks of race weekends a year. Oh yeah, all other forms of sport, to me, seem pointless but then there'd be a lot of people like me who have similar views about other individual sports.

I don't know where you got your mating hypothesis from but F1, in most cases, is a rather sure-shot way of turning a potential mate away if you discuss it with her :p

[sunson]

I'm not calling sport as a ritual. I'm referring to the rituals of the Olympics opening ceremony. The flag carrying, the torch lighting, the whole set of meaningless symbols that are associated with god believing fools.

[rfc9000]

sounds like you've attained nirvana already :)

[thaths]

While you and I might be post-national rationalists, these symbolic chest thumping seems to have a value for many (most?) people.

Speaking of rituals, I was surprised by how ritualistic the Catholic service really is. There were so many parallels to the mindless utterances of set phrases at prescribed times doing textbook gestures.

[deponti]

Rituals are meaningless if they are so to YOU; if they have meaning to you, they can be beautiful. They are not objectively meaningful or meaningless, therefore. And there must be a reason why rituals have survived so long.

I did not want to put my daughter through what I thought were the meaningless rituals of a Tambram marriage. But to her, they had meaning, they were profound, and so she opted to have them, and enjoyed them very much. So I also changed my viewpoint; instead of looking at them as arcane and meaningless rites, I thought of them as social customs which brought more fun and colour to the wedding...so I enjoyed them too. I certainly didn't enjoy them at my wedding, when my viewpoint was different (similar to yours).

To me, too, sometimes I do poojas with some of the rituals because it satisfies the spouse, sometimes I don't because THAT satisfies me!

So..what I am saying is, I can only say, such-and-such rituals are meaningless...to ME.

It's ALL a big waste

[anonymous]

I mean, everything, life, the universe - everything is just a big waste. There is no purpose to life.

But by participating in rituals you can regulate the production of certain hormones that can make you feel as if this were not true, as if there were really things to live for.

Get in touch with your inner human!

Re: It's ALL a big waste

[sunson]

Heh, I see a budding Douglas Adams in you :)