In addition, marching exercises are a staple of military training, even if marching no longer plays a role in actual combat, because they create powerful feelings of synchrony in participants, which eventually translates to solidarity in battle. Other group exercises function much like team sports, training everyone in a unit to work together to

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Because all of these phenomena — sacrifice, synchrony, and coordination — serve the same purpose (tipping the scale against selfishness and toward group solidarity), we should expect to find them working in concert with each other, rather than isolated into completely separate rituals. And that's exactly what we find. Most rituals of solidarity

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One of the most awe-inducing rituals on the planet, the hajj, stirs millions if not billions of people into a psychological whorl of synchrony, coordination, and sacrifice, creating a strong sense of unity and shared purpose. The Muslim community has, for its size, an incredible level of solidarity, in part because Islam has mastered the use of

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