Mmmm … yes, but only by a stretch of our understanding of what a ritual is. A ritual is usually perceived as almost exactly the same every time, and as such it provides little that is new or stimulating to its participants. All of the examples that you mentioned offers a great deal of variation in content and novelty every time round.
ETA: Unless we can split it up and view the ritualistic part of attending lectures - packing in our books, starting the car, and climbing the stairs at the college - separately from the lecture itself. Then you would have a set of rituals that serves the purpose of attending a non-ritualistic event.
While it’s true that we tend to think of rituals as fixed sequences with static content, you will also find among the definitions of Ritual “any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.” This doesn’t specify anything about content. An analogy would be that the format and proceedings of Catholic weddings are fixed, but the location, language and participants can vary.
LOL, as an aside, have you noticed that, while other forums often end up with the Hitler or Nazi analogy a-la Godwin, we in turn often end up with a link to a dictionary! ;D
I concede that some intellectual pursuits may well border on ritualistic. I mean, we are HERE again, aren’t we?
It also ignores some subtle points. For example, the noun Lecture is sometimes accurately defined as “A means of transferring a professor’s notes to his students’ notebooks without passing through the mind of either.” In this case, a lecture is pure ritual. >:D
So I’ve been racking my brains on rational rituals.
I have personal rituals like listing to skeptic guide to the universe podcast every Monday.
But I was think more in the lines of society in a hole. The only ones I can think of are the
types to do with cleanliness like regular hand washing that is rooted in some rational reason.
Yep, there are lots of rituals that have a rational reason behind them. But your question was if there are any rituals that strengthens rationality. While hand washing certainly has a rational underpinning, I don’t immediately see why it should make the handwasher more rational. The closest we could get so far are the rituals involving some sort of novelty … attending lectures, doing crosswords and, as you mentioned, habitually listening to podcasts.
The closest we could get so far are the rituals involving some sort of novelty ...
attending lectures, doing crosswords and, as you mentioned, habitually listening to podcasts
I can imagine rituals starting as something like this.
Last time we played drums all night and danced, we had a good hunt.
Lets to that again.
And so rituals build up got connected to religion, and here we are.
So that is the reason for them mostly being linked to what we now see as irrational behavior.
It’s our old correlation vs causation.
The other rituals are there to formalize things.
Like marriage, Coming to age like bar mitzvah or having your fore skin removed in the mountains.
And the funeral rights is probably the most important ritual as away off saying good buy to your loved ones.
Not sure if this was really done in some lab or the other, but for those who have not heard of it, The Five Monkeys Experiment makes an interesting point nevertheless. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6gpoCaq6n8
