-- An attitude against pure symbolism is reflected in the Jewish prohibition against making a bracha levatala (= idle, null, purposeless). That’s why Jews hold their hands up to the havdalah candle: not to “feel the warmth of Shabbat” or “use all five senses”, but so that the candle is being actually used for its concrete function.
-- An example from Solstice of a “symbolic” ritual is the spreading-candle-lighting thing. I quite like the symbolism, but also, there’s a hollowness; it’s transparently symbolic, and on some level what’s communicated to me is less “the people around me will share their light with me, and I mine with them” and more “the people around me will participate in a showy performance of solidarity with an aesthetic, to trick me into trusting them, and I’ll go along with it out of fear”. It may almost as well be a high school pep rally.
-- Following this advice might be especially hard for Rationalists because the true Rationality is intimately involved with the possibility of surprise (confusion, curiosity, exploration, prediction, changing your mind), and it’s paradoxical to enact that attitude in a stereotyped ritual. A possible method would be to ritualize things that Rationalists already habitually do, like betting, though I don’t immediately see how to make a nice public ritual out of betting. (Maybe a cooperative game to resist information cascades, or something, could be made into a public ritual?)
-- An example from Solstice of a “symbolic” ritual is the spreading-candle-lighting thing. I quite like the symbolism, but also, there’s a hollowness; it’s transparently symbolic, and on some level what’s communicated to me is less “the people around me will share their light with me, and I mine with them” and more “the people around me will participate in a showy performance of solidarity with an aesthetic, to trick me into trusting them, and I’ll go along with it out of fear”. It may almost as well be a high school pep rally.
Interesting, I really love it and miss when Solstice doesn’t include the candle lighting. But then I just quite like rituals in general and in fact enjoy the rituality of everyday life (the ritual of walking into a room and turning on the light, the ritual of sitting down at my desk and opening my laptop and typing in my password, etc.). I wonder what causes some folks to like rituals so much and others to find them deeply uncomfortable?
This seems quite relevant to figuring out how to design something like a Solstice celebration that people will like.
Afterthoughts:
-- An attitude against pure symbolism is reflected in the Jewish prohibition against making a bracha levatala (= idle, null, purposeless). That’s why Jews hold their hands up to the havdalah candle: not to “feel the warmth of Shabbat” or “use all five senses”, but so that the candle is being actually used for its concrete function.
-- An example from Solstice of a “symbolic” ritual is the spreading-candle-lighting thing. I quite like the symbolism, but also, there’s a hollowness; it’s transparently symbolic, and on some level what’s communicated to me is less “the people around me will share their light with me, and I mine with them” and more “the people around me will participate in a showy performance of solidarity with an aesthetic, to trick me into trusting them, and I’ll go along with it out of fear”. It may almost as well be a high school pep rally.
-- Following this advice might be especially hard for Rationalists because the true Rationality is intimately involved with the possibility of surprise (confusion, curiosity, exploration, prediction, changing your mind), and it’s paradoxical to enact that attitude in a stereotyped ritual. A possible method would be to ritualize things that Rationalists already habitually do, like betting, though I don’t immediately see how to make a nice public ritual out of betting. (Maybe a cooperative game to resist information cascades, or something, could be made into a public ritual?)
Interesting, I really love it and miss when Solstice doesn’t include the candle lighting. But then I just quite like rituals in general and in fact enjoy the rituality of everyday life (the ritual of walking into a room and turning on the light, the ritual of sitting down at my desk and opening my laptop and typing in my password, etc.). I wonder what causes some folks to like rituals so much and others to find them deeply uncomfortable?
This seems quite relevant to figuring out how to design something like a Solstice celebration that people will like.