(although that adjustment has been tempered by the suspicion, confirmed by a couple of comments on this post, that people who object to things such as rituals etc. often simply don’t speak up)
For epistemology’s sake I’ll speak up so you may be more confident in the suspicion...
I find these rituals, as described, to be completely uninteresting as social activities, and have a visceral negative reaction to imagining people doing this, even semi-seriously. “Group self-hacking for cohesion and bonding” is the...sort-of good way to put it I guess, because I would rather describe it as “optimistically wielding double-edged daggers forged from the Dark Arts”.
I do want to note that, for at least one proponent of the ritual (Yvain, see here), the “cohesion and bonding” turned out not to be the underlying motivation. This makes sense to me, and I am very suspicious about any claims such as “research indicates that group bonding increases happiness, so I choose to do this thing that I believe will generate group bonding”, or “group cohesiveness is beneficial, so we should have rituals because they promote group cohesiveness”. They just don’t ring true; I have a hard time believing that people think that way. It seems to me that some people just really like and enjoy rituals. I don’t really understand why, of course, but that’s just because my preference skews in the opposite direction. The stuff about bonding and cohesion seems like rationalization, or, at best, an attempt to describe one’s bare preference, rather than an explanation of what actually motivated a choice.
That having been said, I quite agree that rituals are forged from the Dark Arts. This contributes to, though does not constitute, my dislike of them.
For epistemology’s sake I’ll speak up so you may be more confident in the suspicion...
I find these rituals, as described, to be completely uninteresting as social activities, and have a visceral negative reaction to imagining people doing this, even semi-seriously. “Group self-hacking for cohesion and bonding” is the...sort-of good way to put it I guess, because I would rather describe it as “optimistically wielding double-edged daggers forged from the Dark Arts”.
Thank you for posting, I really do appreciate it.
I do want to note that, for at least one proponent of the ritual (Yvain, see here), the “cohesion and bonding” turned out not to be the underlying motivation. This makes sense to me, and I am very suspicious about any claims such as “research indicates that group bonding increases happiness, so I choose to do this thing that I believe will generate group bonding”, or “group cohesiveness is beneficial, so we should have rituals because they promote group cohesiveness”. They just don’t ring true; I have a hard time believing that people think that way. It seems to me that some people just really like and enjoy rituals. I don’t really understand why, of course, but that’s just because my preference skews in the opposite direction. The stuff about bonding and cohesion seems like rationalization, or, at best, an attempt to describe one’s bare preference, rather than an explanation of what actually motivated a choice.
That having been said, I quite agree that rituals are forged from the Dark Arts. This contributes to, though does not constitute, my dislike of them.