ritual
the power of rituals
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
Patterns of Transformation: Designing Sex, Death, and Survival in the 21st Century
patternsoftransformation.com
The magic circle, a term I have borrowed directly from game studies, is the invisible perimeter between everyday life and an experience where different rules of engagement are at play. (Anthropologists call it the “ritual frame” and contemporary mystical practices call it the “container”.) The magic circle describes the limits of both the formal rules of an experience, and the informal norms that an experience allows for. It can literally feel like magic to be inside one thanks to the seemingly inexplicable shift in logic for how things happen and what is meaningful.
The largest companies today are obsessed with generating content in a completely de-ritualized context. But content always exists in tension with form. Ritual is the form we have abandoned in our relentless quest for content.
Ted Gioia • 13 Observations on Ritual
addictive scrolling and swiping can never achieve the sense of closure and boundedness we all crave.
sometimes the most destabilizing chaos isn’t on the world stage. Nor is it a public outrage or even a shared experience.
It’s found instead in the quiet chaos of our everyday lives: making a home, raising a family, putting a meal on the table. These mundane corners of the human experience are also where we find the loosest pockets of culture today:
... See moreJasmine Bina • A Time to Build Tight Brands in the Chaos of Loose Cultures
In a survey of 1,000 adults, it was found that 30% of people were eating dinner on the couch, and 17% of people were eating it in their bedrooms—two places where there is likely a screen and likely no conversation or interpersonal gathering. Remember that rooms have rules, and when we change the room, we create a vacuum of norms.
Jasmine Bina • A Time to Build Tight Brands in the Chaos of Loose Cultures
Rituals have been crucial for humans throughout history – and we still need them
theconversation.comI’ve noticed that the people who lament that we “have no rituals left” in our society are often the same people who are anti-marriage, or just go to the courthouse. Who don’t walk at their graduation ceremonies. Who don’t wear black lace to funerals. Who don’t own a suit. Who don’t send Christmas cards or take off shoes at the door or take into acc
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