In the case of emergent or even semi-design cultural systems special status is equated with special support, by default. It’s an unstated tautology of the culture.
When a collection of stories or a collection of words is given treated in a ritualistic way by a cultural structure they take on part of the ritualization (I’m using something close to Catherine Bell’s usage here) - which both requires them to take on special status and protects them from the critique which other tales or books may receive.
There’s nothing particularly theistic or religious about it. You can see the same thing if you look carefully at the enshrinement of some science textbooks.
We will make rituals about anything.
One advantage of seriously experiencing rituals and ritualization is understanding the effects it can have on your decisions. And again, ritual is as important for secular culture as it is for spiritual and theistic culture.
So it’s easy to begin seeing this bias when you’ve peeled away the layers of ritualization and you’ve moved out of the cultural reference frame that quietly gave the special support.
The scary part is that we don’t start seeing it nearly so easily while we’re still within the culture. After all, it is one of the assumptions we don’t even realize we’re making.
In the case of emergent or even semi-design cultural systems special status is equated with special support, by default. It’s an unstated tautology of the culture.
When a collection of stories or a collection of words is given treated in a ritualistic way by a cultural structure they take on part of the ritualization (I’m using something close to Catherine Bell’s usage here) - which both requires them to take on special status and protects them from the critique which other tales or books may receive.
There’s nothing particularly theistic or religious about it. You can see the same thing if you look carefully at the enshrinement of some science textbooks.
We will make rituals about anything.
One advantage of seriously experiencing rituals and ritualization is understanding the effects it can have on your decisions. And again, ritual is as important for secular culture as it is for spiritual and theistic culture.
So it’s easy to begin seeing this bias when you’ve peeled away the layers of ritualization and you’ve moved out of the cultural reference frame that quietly gave the special support.
The scary part is that we don’t start seeing it nearly so easily while we’re still within the culture. After all, it is one of the assumptions we don’t even realize we’re making.