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In your example, the activities are not religious. However, to me, the tiny pyramids and other trinkets are a kind of modern day ritual - if something that has
by rhn_mk1 9y ago
In your example, the activities are not religious.
However, to me, the tiny pyramids and other trinkets are a kind of modern day ritual - if something that has no clear explanation or practical purpose can be called a ritual.
Let's take a moment and think: why do we carry those items home after journeys? I've observed most of the time we toss them in a drawer and smile aftre discovering them 5 years later. We place them on the shelves. Do we use them to signal social status? Not really, they can usually be readily bought locally. When we gift them, do we expect the other person to remember what they meant 2 years later?
Or do we do it because "this is what people do"?
Of course, maybe there is a different answer, but to me, it looks like we produce these things to fulfill some irrational, ritualistic? need. If we do that now so often, then people in the past most likely did that too.
- ianai 9y agoIt’s to have a present symbol to remind us of our past. It’s reflective of emotional attachment to who we are through where we were.
- ars 9y agoThe problem is not the label "ritual", it's the way the word shuts down all further discussion. Why? "Ritual." Done. But that doesn't actually answer "why" it just gives it another word. Another example in the same light: "How was the world created?" "God" vs "How was the world created?" "Big Bang". In both cases you have answered nothing. You just used another word. "How was God created?" "Don't know", "How was the Big Bang created?" "Don't know". Using a scientific sounding word does not actually answer the question, anymore than using the word "ritual" answers the question. Instead the lack of knowledge should be made explicit, and not hidden behind a "comfort" word. (I.e. a word used to make you feel better about not knowing.)
- egypturnash 9y agoTotems of memories. Put them in a drawer. Forget them. Discover them years later and savor the rush of memories it triggers of that one trip you took.
- creep 9y agoIrrational is not the way I'd frame rituals. There is always a reason for theSe things and the reason can be explained, which does not lie in the object of the ritual itself but the purpose. We give gifts from our travels because it tells our loved ones we were thinking about them even while we were so far away from them. It retrospectively bridges a time-space gap. We bring these objects home for ourselves for various reasons but one might be that the object somehow represents the place we were, maybe it has the look of the place, maybe it literally just acts as a physical reminder, or maybe we have a collection of those things already-- and a collection being an explorative fixation on the multitude ways that a particular type of object can express itself.