ritual
the power of rituals
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
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
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.
We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
Ritual technology operates on... See more
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
Ritual technology operates on... See more
Gordon Brander • Ritual Technology
The word “practice” is such a wonderful word because it has time built into it: you can only practice if you practice
Rituals are how we make meaning, personally and together.
In games studies, these worlds-within-a-world are called magic circles. A magic circle is the space where the game takes place.
We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use.
Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop.
Where social media is compulsive, tools for thought are reflective. Where social media is here and now, tools for thought dwell in the long now. Tools for thought slowly build compounding momentum through low, slow feedback loops that point us in the directions we want to develop.
We still instinctively long for this kind of belonging, as our sacrifices to sports teams, fraternities, or churches demonstrate.
Sarah Perry • Gardens Need Walls: On Boundaries, Ritual, and Beauty
Dancing With The Gods
catb.org