Paul Watson’s Likes tagged “Ritual”

When deprived of rituals, people are driven to create their own. Family rituals or daily rituals become sources of joy and stability. Even the simple aspects of our daily routine can serve as a kind of ritual—but we also need and deserve larger communal rituals.

Indeed, it’s striking, even to a skeptic, that every culture in human history has used rituals to shape and entrench its norms. Equally, it is clear that arguments alone are not convincing us to live within the bounds of the Earth’s resources. Few manage to make the lifestyle changes necessary to slow climate change, rein in habitat loss or minimise pollution (and we authors are not among those few). So that Sunday morning we resolved to find out whether rituals could help us to close the gap between what we actually do and what we ought to do.