Ritual

I have always felt that dancing is silly, when it is relegated to a ritual, group activity which is planned and takes place in a particular location, as a sort of spectator sport…”Hey, let’s dress up and go to the club. Let’s wait in line for an hour and a half while some guy with no neck and an IQ equivalent to the measure of his waist band decides if we deserve to pay a cover charge to enter a room where our hearing will be permanently damaged, and we can pay 20X the material value for a warm drink served by a dull and stoned waitsperson. EVERYBODY’S doing it!”  On the other hand, being “compelled to movement” spontaneously by the music, audible or just some internal urge, makes perfect sense to me.  

I have been uncomfortable with most all “rituals” for as long as I can remember.   I operationally define a ritual as a behavior, public or private, which has no obvious, direct, or immediate reason, or payoff.  For example: what is the obvious and immediate payoff for kneeling and genuflecting at the end of the aisle where you intend to sit, in a church dedicated to an imaginary friend in the sky?  The performer will not get something, or avoid something. The behavior is not adaptive, leading to something else of greater value. The fact that “everybody’s doing it” or at least everybody in a sub-group, is often reason enough for me to pause and delay doing it until I know why I would want to do it…why doing so would make sense for me?  The human contagion, and mimicking of movement once others near you begin to do it, feels embarrassing and wrong, regardless what the activity is…speaking in tongues…swooning at the alter…chanting the affirmations of the catechism, swaying while waving my Zippo in the air…leaving Teddy Bears and Flowers at the scene for Princess Di, ad infinitum…its how mobs work…its how hysteria is shared, spreads, and grows. Its infectious, and not in a good way.

Why am I so oppositional to ritual behavior?  Is there a “rebellion gene?” Is there a segment of my DNA which is present in me and others, but missing in most?  Is it social? Do I come from a long line of contrarians?  I don’t know.  All I know is when faced with the pressure to conform to a ritual behavior I feel something akin to refusing to go near the edge of a ledge, or a canyon.  I feel a “visceral” aversion which overcomes my desire to fit in…and, truth be told, I do desire to fit in, but not at the cost of my comfort, or my sense of self worth, my need to be congruent with Me.

Bowing, scraping, ritual posturing in prayers, upon entering a church or kneeling in the aisle at the pew, crossing, dabbing ‘holy water’…and on, and on…all seem mindlessly silly to me. Performing ritual movement in order to identify with a group seems to me mindless and cultish, herdish, automated, as though one has turned over one’s will and identity to a group, probably a group with a long-dead founder.  ”Oh! Look at me! I’m a Catholic! I’m bowing to the Virgin and crossing myself with a dab of H2O which has been blessed by some possible pedophile living a monastic life while wearing a cassock so no one will mistake him for a productive member of society!  Where did I leave my secret Latin decoder ring?” 

For me, secret handshakes, ritual fist bumping, chanted tribal grunts (“HOO-rah!”)…and more, all deserve avoidance…their performance simply serves to cast doubt on one’s intelligence, and one’s use of his personal liberty to make sensical choices.  Why would one want to resemble the lowest common denominator of a large group?  Why would one want to wear a red ball cap and cheer for an inarticulate, narcissistic “orange man?”  Why would one cheer for a politician of any ilk for that matter?  

My aversion to “ritual” extends to the mundane. For example, I would never wear a class-ring, or pay the money to do so.  It is incongruent with something in me. But, when it’s useful to do so, I will conform. For instance, I will use a placard or a tag for my disability condition because it allows me preferential parking, and, I will wear a button on my cap which identifies me as a Vietnam veteran, because it is sometimes a conversation starter. On the other hand, my cap has never gotten me a free breakfast and a "thank you for your service."

To me, ritual behavior is the equivalent of rushing to be first at the doors of the burning theater only to be crushed to lifeless mush by those behind you. As the man once said, “The 2nd mouse gets the cheese.”  The sensical thing to do is pause, wait, let the herd run over the proverbial cliff, then step over their lifeless bodies out into the fresh air of freedom wherein you can consider your options, one of which may be to return to the burning building and help the herd survive the results of its own hysteria.

So for me organized, ritual, dancing is an indicator…it begs the question, what else would I be willing to do just to fit in?  Would I ignore the smoke and smell of burning Jews wafting over my peaceful village?  Would I loot a small business owner’s building?  Would I jeer at Black children intending to attend my child’s school.