This brings up some interesting history, actually. Synthetic subcultures—fraternal orders, service organizations, social clubs not associated with a particular hobby—used to be a lot more common than they are now; the Freemasons are probably the best-known example, but far from the only one. Ritual was quite common among them, basically as a group-cohesion hack. Now, the lines between an initiatory society and a mystery religion are pretty hard to draw, but generally these organizations didn’t claim religious status and I’m inclined to believe them.
For reasons I don’t fully understand, these started falling out of fashion sometime during the mid-20th century. The main survivals these days, at least in the United States, are college frats and sororities, service clubs along animal-club lines (Lions Club, etc.), and certain branches of Masonry; generally these are in decline, or have substantially changed their model, or both. You could also make a case for the Scouting movement. which survived thanks to its educational niche.
I’m starting to think of the social branch of the LW community as something like a stab at reviving this sort of organization, and I think rituals like the OP’s are best viewed in that context. Unfortunately that’s not a prototype that’s likely to occur to most people, and so I do see ritual as a potential PR difficulty, maybe something that should be offloaded onto local communities rather than promoted globally. Raemon seems to be thinking along similar lines, to his credit.
But in any case I wouldn’t consider it positive evidence for anything untoward. It’s just a social tool, and not even an intrinsically Dark Artsy one—though the existing rituals are not my cup of tea, personally speaking.
This brings up some interesting history, actually. Synthetic subcultures—fraternal orders, service organizations, social clubs not associated with a particular hobby—used to be a lot more common than they are now; the Freemasons are probably the best-known example, but far from the only one. Ritual was quite common among them, basically as a group-cohesion hack. Now, the lines between an initiatory society and a mystery religion are pretty hard to draw, but generally these organizations didn’t claim religious status and I’m inclined to believe them.
For reasons I don’t fully understand, these started falling out of fashion sometime during the mid-20th century. The main survivals these days, at least in the United States, are college frats and sororities, service clubs along animal-club lines (Lions Club, etc.), and certain branches of Masonry; generally these are in decline, or have substantially changed their model, or both. You could also make a case for the Scouting movement. which survived thanks to its educational niche.
I’m starting to think of the social branch of the LW community as something like a stab at reviving this sort of organization, and I think rituals like the OP’s are best viewed in that context. Unfortunately that’s not a prototype that’s likely to occur to most people, and so I do see ritual as a potential PR difficulty, maybe something that should be offloaded onto local communities rather than promoted globally. Raemon seems to be thinking along similar lines, to his credit.
But in any case I wouldn’t consider it positive evidence for anything untoward. It’s just a social tool, and not even an intrinsically Dark Artsy one—though the existing rituals are not my cup of tea, personally speaking.