ritual
Sarah Drinkwater and
ritual
Sarah Drinkwater and
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.

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.

andrea and
ordinary rituals:
-drying your hands all the way
-opening mail without ripping it
-putting an object back where you found it
-parallel parking
-hand washing the chopsticks
-drinking water from a glass
-actually tying your shoes
-closing the car door without slamming it
-kissing someone back
