Rituals are ingrained in our daily lives, from wearing lucky socks to following family traditions.
Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living was written by Dimitris Xygalatas.
He explores our relationships with rituals, big and small, and the social, physical, and economic impacts they have on us in his book.
Most of our social institutions are dependent ontuals. He thinks of a judge waving a gavel or a new president taking an oath. They are held by governments and corporations. They are used by athletes who always wear the same socks in important games and by gamblers who cling to lucky charms when the stakes are high.
According to Xygalatas, the need for ritual may have been a key part of human civilization. He explained some of his findings.
The interview has been edited to make it clearer.
The impact of rituals on the real world.
Even if people engage in rituals without an explicit purpose or even if they do have a purpose, there is no connection between the actions they take and that purpose. There is no connection between my movements and the water falling from the sky.
It doesn't mean that ritual doesn't have an effect in the world at all. Rituals are very important in human societies. They help people through their fears, they help groups of people communicate, and they help people find meaning in their lives.
Personal impact of rituals is measured.
The Trobriand islands were the location of anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski's work. The local fishermen performed a lot of rituals before they went out to fish in the open sea, which was very risky. They were not doing the rituals before they went out to fish.
He said that ritual may be a way to soothe anxiety. For about 100 years, anthropologists continued to propose this proposal. Nobody was able to test it. When we first drove people into the lab, we stressed them out. Motion sensor were used to measure their behavior. They became ritualized when they became stressed. It began to become repetitive.
We went into real life temples to see if this helped them reduce anxiety. This helps them reduce their galvanic skin response when they perform these familiar prayers. It helps them increase heart rate variability, it helps them reduce cortisol levels, and it also helps them reduce their feelings of anxiety. These rituals look like they work.
Fire walking is an example of a more extreme ritual.
Rituals that seem to be dangerous or painful seem to have utility for the people who perform them.
In the case of a fire walking ritual in Spain, we found that people's hearts rate synchronized. This was more than just an effect of people moving at the same time, it was also an effect of their heart rates being synchronized no matter what they were doing.
The effect was better for people who were close to each other. These rituals help bring the members of that community together. Social alignment can be achieved by aligning our experiences or emotions.
Our approach to rituals was impacted by Covid.
One of the best lines of evidence was the COVID PAIN. This is a unique dilemma. Rituals help people find social connection and soothe their anxiety. This was the time that we needed the most. One of the most common cultural technologies that we have for approaching those things are no longer available to us because people can't get out of their house and perform those collective ceremonies that are so meaningful to them.
People started adapting traditional ceremonies or started creating new ones. When people in big cities came out on their balconies and banged pots and pans together, it was a show of solidarity.
The story was adapted for the internet by the author.
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