By Gary Berg-Cross
To be sure the patterned form of communal behavior we
call rituals are very human phenomena
and belong in our social life. Rituals serve many symbolic roles such as an
identity reminder as we celebrate the 4th of July or a family birthday.
Although artifactual they may help slate periodic human needs for a sense of meaning,
belonging, history purpose, hope, love, forgiveness or gratitude. A collective ritualistic
celebration like a Memorial Day parade brings historical traditions into
ongoing life.
In many
cultures the religious aspects of every event and act in life are often celebrated
in ritual pattern such as a baptism. Religions have also developed some very specific
patterns of public or private worship and celebration that exhibit devotion and
commitment. Requiring Jews to walk to temple or Moslems to clean & pray on
a rug pointed to Mecca a few times a day come to
mind. Of course some big rituals are the religious ones that take place
communally on places of worship like temples, churches and mosques.
Sociologists and anthropologists have long studied and theorized on these sorts
of phenomena especially those using
synchronized or cooperative actions
such as the kneeling, standing sitting sequences at a catholic mass. The basic idea behind this was hypothesized a
while ago by Emile Durkheim (The Sociology of Religion) who
suggested that synchronized activities draw upon & enhance “intellectual” and
“moral” conformity. By moving or vocalizing together as a unit (think Buddhist
chanting), participants think of themselves as a unit. This firms up
individuals as a unit and potential enriches their subsequent cooperation. That’s
always useful if down the road it is “us against them” or a need to share water
in drought etc.
Recently a range of laboratory
experiments (for
example Miles, et al 2009. The rhythm of
rapport: interpersonal synchrony and social perception) have
tested some of these ideas and have begun to offer some real evidence supporting
this action/perception synchrony hypothesis. People investigate synchronous
behaviors among pairs and find that partners who match each other’s postures, motions,
and vocalizations tend to express higher levels of subjective liking, tend to sense
enhanced oneness (we are a single entity) with others). We become more
prosocial to others we partner with in this way as opposed to more passive and
unvocalized pairings. Behaviorally we tend
to trust them more, seeing you and they as a unit and become more charitable towards
them synchronous behavior partners, as in “pass the basket.” Well actually researchers use what they call a
public goods & charitable game where you make donations, but you get the
point. One can see why organized religions would want to leverage this
phenomena.
But there is another
part of this group cooperation. Durkheim
hypothesized a sacred dimension in religious rituals affect cooperation. Engaging in ritual reinforces a shared
conceptions of the “sacred,” which he defined as “things set apart and
forbidden” To test the hypothesis contemporary sociologists operationalize this ideas “sacred values” as that
a moral community treats as possessing transcendental significance. That is they are just proclaimed as separate
from secular values and hence can’t be compared to them or involved in a
trade-off/balancing between the two types. In effect religious rituals help
create a divide between the sacred and secular/profane domain. German
researchers developing the following type of questions to identify if sacred
values were involved in ritual activities:
“This
activity is something that you cannot value in terms of money,”
“This
activity is something that we should not sacrifice no matter how high the
benefits,” and “This activity concerns things or values that are untouchable
and should never be violated.”
Sure enough research (Fisher
et al How Do Rituals Affect Cooperation? 2013) shows that feelings of belonging
to a distinct and coherent group (one entity) intensify sacred values, which in
turn increases cooperative behaviors in a public goods game.
So here we have
religious synchronous ritual around some sacred concept producing people who
feel more part of the ritual group and are more generous/prosocial. This is part of what people think of as
perhaps a good part of religion. Is
there something the secular community can learn from this? Perhaps.
We
might more vigorously employ this very human part of us to generate prosocial
behavior from synchronic secular rituals.
We have some, such as a moment of silence used in response to a national or
international tragedy. WASH did
this in response to 9/11.
We have seasonal celebrations and Humanlight, but perhaps
these lack agreed upon behaviors. Free
thinking humanists tend not to be conformists, so there is an issue there.
What about the sacred value component? Well perhaps we can consider ideas from this
research which suggests that non-religious groups might target special
values such as rationalism, humanism,
justice, democracy, truth, the scientific method, or beauty as of this
kind. I’m not sure we are ready to put
that book of rational-humanist-justice songs together yet, but it might be fun
to experiment. After all we have a head
start on prosocial behavior and society should be hearing from us.
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