Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity

Abstract

This book shows how rituals allow us to live in a perennially imperfect world. The book, building on anthropological theories, draws examples of ritual attitudes from a variety of cultural settings, including original comparisons of Chinese and Jewish discussions of ritual and its importance. The book utilizes psychoanalytic and anthropological perspectives on how ritual, like play, creates “as if” worlds, drawing upon the imaginative capacity of the human mind to create a subjunctive universe. This ability to cross between imagined worlds is central to the human capacity for empathy. The limits of this capacity mark the boundaries of empathy. The chapters juxtapose this ritual orientation to a “sincere” search for unity and wholeness. The sincere world sees fragmentation and incoherence as signs of inauthenticity that must be overcome. Our modern world has accepted the sincere viewpoint, at the expense of ritual, to a degree rarely seen in other times. It has often dismissed ritual as mere convention. The chapters point to the modern disavowal of ritual in the creation of fundamentalist movements as well as other extremist positions. Portions of the book take up questions of music, architecture, and literature, which also show the tensions between ritual and sincerity. The book shows that ritual, at least in its relationship to the rest of experience, is never totally coherent and never complete. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things that we humans do.