mirar - a magazine about rituals

MEANING IDEA REPETITION ACTION RITUAL

a convenient magazine by Abdoulaziz Alsanousi, Liz Caputo, Francesc Casas, Ahnika Wood & Jean-Pierre Villafañe

MEANING IDEA REPETITION ACTION RITUAL

a magazine that exposes perspectives from five young thinkers. we set to explore, discover, solve & enhance.

our directions are simple, our path is direct. fix the variable and you’ll find yourself every ritual remains

the same

{problem/solution}learned

origin/age

ideap10.45

{problem/solution}learned

origin/age

actionp46.54

once in a lifetimescheduled-habit

before/after

frequency/repetitionp54.68

affinitylove

why/meaningp68.74

affinityritual

story*narrative+characterfaith for who acts in ritual

what75.100

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Do School Kill Careativity ?The Most watched Video

Ted The New Education’s Platform

Sir. Ken Robinson

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If one can open their mind to view the word ritual as encompassing more, one will realize just how frequently engage in rituals.

When you are confronted with a problem, no matter how overwhelming or trivial, you must create a plan to solve the prob-lem. If you repeat this plan the next time you are confronted with the same (or very similar) problem, you are no longer prob-lem solving. Every time you revisit a prob-lem and act with the same solution you become less aware of your original reason-ing for your “plan.”

The plan to the problem, acted upon with-out full understanding of why the plan solves the problem, is a RITUAL.

The more we repeat the ritual, and drift farther from the understanding of how it solved the original problem, the less we question what we are doing, and the less we worry. This is why rituals are comfort-able. They numb questions by provide escape with automatic answers, they sooth anxiety.

But they can be detrimental to our ability to problem solve. Problem solving is a muscle. You must exercise your ability to problem solve. Can we train ourselves to revisit problems and solve them differently again and again?

Can we still engage in rituals in a meaningful way without losing sight of the beautiful possibility in questions?

Loss of Problem SolvingJanuary 22

Mental StatesFebruary 15

Rituals are often used to transition our minds from one state to another. These are sometimes called “rituals of preparation,” because they can be used as tools to control our concentration.

Mental states refer to many factors includ-ing but not limited to; our ability to focus on completing tasks, ability to listen and learn, whether we are thinking in past, present or future tense, and whether our focus is interested in our internal or exter-nal worlds. The scenarios below explore several examples of mental states, which should allow you to recognize your own mental states and how you may use rituals to alter your states of being.

Mental StatesFebruary 15

1. Picture a small grey desk just big enough for your laptop. Now picture that grey desk holding your open laptop inside a small white room just big enough for the desk –and also there is a chair. You are in the chair, looking at your open laptop, at the violently bright white screen, at the blink-ing cursor ready, keeping rhythm while it waits for you to press some keys to make some letters jump into words into a phrase that maybe you could turn into a sentence that could be coherent if read aloud.You are in white box limbo. You have been here before. The cursor continues blinking at you.

2. Flamingos stare at you, heads cocked. How’d they get so pink? Their long spider legs shrink now they are ducks floating on the water whirlpools around the pretty pink ducks with velvet for feathers and the music doesn’t begin until you see your face reflected back to you moving and alive with the sun setting a green lollipop on your tongue.

3. You’ve paid to take this test so before you leave home you make coffee and pack your bag twice. On the ride there you must listen to jazz because it will help you clear your head. Perfect, there’s a parking spot on the left side, which you like. Silence your phone, collect your things. You are ready.

4. Your lover has brought you groceries! Peering inside the crinkly brown paper bag; Avocados and romaine! - enumerable possibilities colliding produce a summer salad. Rising chives and lettuce together in a bouquet of green shake into the sink droplets of water everywhere. Peeling florets apart in circles, round and round the lettuce head now just core is left. Knife falling smoothly to cutting board, again again and somewhere here you forget all else, cutting pouring blending taste togeth-er.

5. The crowd is buzzing, opponents fidget-ing, worlds overlapping – dissonance. Silence at the gunshot / you are gone and going / faster faster / go go / inhale exhale / there’s the line / breathe / across

6. Breath. Is. All. There. Is. With closed eyes all there is is a slight awareness of young tender grass between fingers and gentle wind on lips. Breath. Is. All. There. Is. Vibration of mind sharpens to find peace in emptiness.

7. Past tense is irritating but that’s what your tongue suddenly speaks time travel transportation almost like she is here again or you are there again but surely you are not here because he has to ask you his question two times over before you hear its meaning.

8. Here you have a rectangle screen with round corners. So solid in your hand. Smooth. Your fingerprint is a master key to unlock worlds beneath. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide. Touch touch tap slide.

Perhaps we are educated out of creativity: we all start life with wonderful imaginations and then we go to school and are taught there’s a structure to things and you must do it this way.’

Jesse Wine

Change & EducationFebruary 15

Change is not about changing the world it is about changing individuals. To do that we need to start with the mind - with education to free and unlock our minds - preparing for more. We need to rethink education and see how to make it a better tool. Sir. Ken Robinson has spoken all around the world about education and creativity. He says that we have no idea what's going to happen in the future. Children starting school in 2016 will be retiring in 2075.

Education has a seemingly impossible task of preparing our children for the unforesee-able future. How can we ensure we are looking forward to new ideas and adapting our education for the future?

Creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. He told that great story of a little girl who was in a drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said, "They will, in a minute."

Kids will take a chance if they don't know they are not frightened of being wrong. It doesn't mean being wrong is the same thing as being creative. If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original. Picasso once said all children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.

Sir. Robinson who is one of the most influ-ential educator in this century, raised the question are we grow into creativity? Or we grow out of it? In other words, we get educated out if it. So why ?

And to answer that question he talked about how every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do.

Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. There were no public systems of education before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. First, that most useful subjects for work are at the top.

And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything 60 years ago if you had a degree you had a job. We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence and know three things it. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, in sound, kinesthetically and in abstract terms. Secondly, intelli-gence is dynamic. If you look at the inter-actions of human brain intelligence is wonderfully interactive.

Third, it is distinct. For example Gillian Lynne, she is a choreographer of "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera” when she was at school they thought that she has a learn-ing disorder.

She went to see this specialist. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said, "I've listened to all these things your mother's told me, and I need to speak to her privately. He left the room after he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. And the minute they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. So he turned to her mother and said,"Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer. Take her to a dance school." And She has been responsible for some of the most success-ful musical theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multi-millionaire.We need celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future. And we may not see this future, but they will and our job is to help them make something of it.

Aziz Alsanousi

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Sir. Ken Robinson

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The Most Watched Video

37,5M Views

Did school kill creativity?Sir. Ken Robinson

TED

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37,5M Views

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12 Channals



Sir. Ken Robinson

73,215 Video

2,076

69,481

1,146 525

TEDx

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x

TEDEd TED

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1,525M Views

10,3M Subscribers

12 Channels 73,215 Video

TED

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37,5M Views

4,4M

3.6M

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12 Channals



Sir. Ken Robinson

73,215 Video

2,076

69,481

1,146 525

TEDx

TED

x

TEDEd TED

Ed

TEDMED

TED

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TED

TED

518M

759M

6,7M

245M

1,525M Views

37,5M Views

4,4M

3.6M

2.1M

30K

10,3M Subscribers

12 Channals



Sir. Ken Robinson

73,215 Video

2,076

69,481

1,146 525

TEDx

TED

x

TEDEd TED

Ed

TEDMED

TED

MED


TED

TED

518M

759M

6,7M

245M

1,525M Views

37,5M Views

4,4M

3.6M

2.1M

30K

10,3M Subscribers

12 Channals



Sir. Ken Robinson

73,215 Video

2,076

69,481

1,146 525

TEDx

TED

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TEDEd TED

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Perhaps we are educated out of creativity: we all start life with wonderful imaginations and then we go to school and are taught there’s a structure to things and

you must do it this way.’

Jesse Wine

What meaning lies beyond me?What meaning resides inside myself?

The vast umbrella of religion covers many ideas and all people. On the previous page, the Etymology of Religion illustrates religion’s origin of idea, though surely the word religion has also gained new meaning with time.

Anthropologist Anthony Wallace defines religion as “belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, power, and forces,” and Emile Durkheim considered religion as belonging to a scared domain rather one’s mundane domain. In other words, the religious realm is nonmaterial and “cannot be verified or falsified empiri-cally.” Some people view the supernatural world as a domain of power or force, which is not related to ones’ personal soul, well others feel the divine resides intrinsi-cally at the core of their being. Both concepts hold meaning and comfort. Many definitions of religion reference a group of people that gather together to worship, fostering intense community spirit that unifies and ties people together.

Just as religion brings people together, it can also divide people and can cause intense conflict. This is the strange duality of all cultural identification: its ability to create simultaneous connection and separateness.

“The power of religion affects action.” Rituals, meaningful repeated actions, are directly influenced by religion. Religion’s power can be utilized to create cultural change among groups of people and also to create social control.

Many formal organized religions are the glue to moral codes that help to maintain social order and stability. Oftentimes societies create systems that allow certain people to make a living from religious study, to become teachers, gurus, and religious specialists. In larger populations, religious specialists are organized like the state itself: hierarchically and bureaucrati-cally. This can create a civic element to religion and all its symbolic actions in daily life. Religion can be traced back to the Latin word “diligo” which means reckoning and election. If members of a society feel they have no election, but must participate in a religion in order to be accepted, religion moves away from its ancient idea.

Some society members may participate in rituals well remaining disconnected to traditional meaning associated with it, some may assign their own meaning to rituals, and still others will rebel rituals altogether as a purposeful and symbolic act against meaning. Ideally, everyone elects to participate in the same rituals and religion gives shared meaning to these actions, which strengthens a sense of community and allows members to feel accepted and safe.

Because religion creates meaning in the smallest aspects of life it often aids in social adaptation. For example, when foreign domination began in Africa, many religious leaders began influencing revital-ization movements and created cargo cults, which blended Christian doctrines with aboriginal beliefs. Today, there are over 15 million adherents of syncretic religions, otherwise known as hybrid religions, in Africa alone.

Religion can spread from one society to another and adapt to fit into that culture. Islam, for example, spread to Indonesia and has been incorporated into traditional local religions. In fact 90% of the 240 million Indonesians are Muslim, but most do not engage in the same rituals as Middle Eastern Muslims. For example, when Indo-nesians celebrate the Islamic New Year, it is common to pilgrimage to active volca-noes and black sand beaches to conduct elaborate ceremonies of offerings to native gods and goddesses as well as to Allah. Though a religion may be called by the same name throughout the world, and follow similar doctrines, religions vary in their appearance and rituals of observance among groups of people. It is not the actions that these distance peoples have in common, but the origin of the ideas and meanings that drive their actions.

FAITH

VALUE COMMUNITYCULTURE/

SELFHABITS

“cannot be empirically falsified or verified”

sacred

religion

“people who think like me”

CIVIC“prescribed manners”

individualismpredictability

believe

love

trust

NO MIDDLE EASTERN RITUALS

Bill Maher responded to the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo by attacking religion, saying,

“First of all, there are no great religions. They’re all stupid and dangerous — and we should insult them and we should be able to insult whatever we want. That is what free speech

is like.”

American Anthropological AssociationRitual, Kevin Carrico

Rituals can be performed independently by individual people,

or in group setting such as with clubs, teams, denominations,

families, and friends.

American Anthropological AssociationRitual, Kevin Carrico

“Ritual is arguably a universal feature of human social existence: just as one cannot envision a society without language or exchange, one would be equal-ly hard-pressed to imagine a society with-out ritual. And while the word “ritual” commonly brings to mind exoticized images of primitive others diligently engaged in mystical activities, one can find rituals, both sacred and secular, throughout “modern” society: collective experiences, from the Olympics to the commemoration of national tragedies; cyclical gatherings, from weekly congregations at the local church to the annual turkey carving at Thanksgiving to the intoxication of Mardi Gras; and personal life-patterns, from morning grooming routines to the ways in which we greet and interact with one another.

Ritual is in fact an inevitable component of culture, extending from the largest-scale social and political processes to the most intimate aspects of our self-ex-perience. Yet within this universality, the inherent multiplicity of ritual practices, both between and within cultures, also reflects the full diversity of the human experience. It was then neither pure coinci-dence nor primitivist exoticization that placed ritual at the center of the develop-ment of anthropological thought: it was instead ritual’s rich potential insights as an object of sociocultural analysis.”

When are you most comfortable?Where are you most comfortable?With whom are you most comfortable?Why are you so comfortable?What are you so comfortable doing with/around them? Are you a part of any: Teams Clubs Societies Classes Etc

How much do you value: Friendships Alone time Activity Relaxation

Liz CaputoFebruary 19

Everyone comes from different walks of life. Throughout our lives, we collect unique experiences and influences which shape how we view and interpret the world. Even from the moment we leave our homes- our little, personal worlds- and enter the outside we can begin to notice the differences. Interactions with others who not only have had a different morning than us but have had an entirely different upbringing can be a small look into how different our worlds can be. Every social interaction we witness or experience can be deciphered in entirely different ways from each other, depending on the point of view one take's on. In this sense, although we may be experiencing the same physical day, our interpretations are entirely independent of each other. These interpre-tations seem to create totally separate and unique realities.

As a way to better cope with our world, we gravitate towards people of similar backgrounds, values and goals. We gravitate towards people with whom our realities are the closest aligned. This not only makes it easier to connect with people but gives us a baseline understanding of that person, even if unconsciously. Surrounding yourself with people living in interpreted realities parallel to our own allows us to assume a seemingly cohesive environment which ultimately makes us more comfortable. We develop personal rituals, either by ourselves or in tandem with others, to maintain these relative reali-ties. We join packs like sororities, sports teams, and clubs. We form friendships and families around common perspectives. Most popularly and ideally, we create intimate relationships; seeking out exten-sions of our own realities to expand our comfort and relative happiness. When we find these qualities in one other person, we call it love.

Rituals can be performed independently by individual people,

or in group setting such as with clubs, teams, denominations,

families, and friends.

Jean-Pierre VillafañeFebruary 07

Because religion creates meaning in the smallest aspects of life it often aids in social adaptation. For example, when foreign domination began in Africa, many religious leaders began influencing revital-ization movements and created cargo cults, which blended Christian doctrines with aboriginal beliefs. Today, there are over 15 million adherents of syncretic religions, otherwise known as hybrid religions, in Africa alone.

Religion can spread from one society to another and adapt to fit into that culture. Islam, for example, spread to Indonesia and has been incorporated into traditional local religions. In fact 90% of the 240 million Indonesians are Muslim, but most do not engage in the same rituals as Middle Eastern Muslims. For example, when Indo-nesians celebrate the Islamic New Year, it is common to pilgrimage to active volca-noes and black sand beaches to conduct elaborate ceremonies of offerings to native gods and goddesses as well as to Allah. Though a religion may be called by the same name throughout the world, and follow similar doctrines, religions vary in their appearance and rituals of observance among groups of people. It is not the actions that these distance peoples have in common, but the origin of the ideas and meanings that drive their actions.

Humans have conformed into living on doctrines and values imposed by religion and government, forgetting the creation and development of their personal identity, therefore categorizing themselves into basic persona that can be easy character-ized by identifying repetitious patterns in their behavior.

This essay evaluates mistakes that have been propagated at massive levels by members of the ruling systems through out ages. These mistakes can be addressed through an etiquette of moral values that are standard to all cultures. As society takes a staggering climb to its number, religions have mistakenly misinterpreted their goals, forging a message upon a large number of people that was established centuries ago with circumstances that were completely different from the ones faced today.

Jean-Pierre VillafañeFebruary 07

Modern day world is filled with gadgets and tools that were facilitated by industrial revolutions that thank their existence to a rapid globalization set by European voyag-ers eager to discover and conquest lands filled with rich resources. These three topics have a large impact on how the 21st century human behaves and thinks. Its influence has shaped our modern society and standardized a set of norms that are continued throughout today.

As progress takes on our lives, there is an increasing complexity that has an effect on nature and society, This progress can be described as positive or negative. Every-day, human existence is threatened by the changes that come with progress. Ronald Wright, a Canadian historian, describes thenegative progress through a key concept called: progress traps. He defines the state-ment by explaining how are ancestors, the hunter gatherer population that left their homes to kill mammoths. Thanks to their evolving technology they produced weap-ons that were more efficient than they ever had and were killing more mammoths than needed. This produced a progress trap were actions are becoming unsustainable and the chain to which all these members belong is being perturbed and affected, producing a domino effect on the rest of its members.

Humans have continued to endorse this behavior through technological advances and massive cultural inventions such as religion. Regardless of any purpose for which religion has been indoctrinated into any culture, they have fallen into huge progress traps. Without naming any specif-ic religion, they have portrayed themselvesas the messenger of law, the “righteous body” of people in the coming years would have shaped our social-economic world and its development. The problem is, mixed with technological advances and globalization, countries were seeking lands rich in minerals and other sources. The only option these powerful nations had to forge their message, increase their capital and strengthen their nation was by imple-menting dictator like political systems that where governed by religion. Almost every single ruler that set to conquest land was doing so through religious means. This led much of our culture today to be represented by different religions. A lack of diversity was acquired to almost every country through a harsh enforcement of religious beliefs by a colonizing team of men who were set to change and impact cultures. These colonizers lacked sensitivity to the human race and its progression and decid-ed to extinguish its values, just like our ancestors, the hunter gatherers did through the stone age era.

At a large scale, this globalization has restricted the development of principles in cultures and has created a melting pot were traditions from other countries have been imposed to new. Without condemning this happening, as cultures evolve through collaboration, landing into a country andimplementing a lifestyle through violent means compares to being assigned a project at a city and building without realizing any type of analysis of the place.During this era of religious enforcement, builders erected building forms correspon-dent to their nationalities. These lacked not only cultural sensitivity but was impacting our environment at a scale we would have never imagined. During the era of industri-alization and machines, countries were importing this artificial intelligence to reproduce what their suppliers were doing at their lands, forgetting the effect it was having to their development.

Bapt

iste

deB

ombo

urg

This capacity that seems so wonderful to us, the ability to ask why, the very ability that under girds modern society is a double edged sword. If humans go extinct on this planets I think whats going to be on the epitaphs of our gravestone is going to be “why”.

It's not till the last century that we have seen this exponential rate in our popula-tion. Ronald describes this as running 21st century software, our knowledge, on hard-ware that hasn't been updated for all those years. Humans have been trying to solve problems that are ahead of their times, by producing problems that endanger our existence and our home.

CIVILIZATION= 5,000 YEARS

2% evolutionary

developement

98% hunter gatherer

Afte

r dis

cove

ring

the

impo

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e of

val

ue in

ritu

als,

we

had

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road

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. Ins

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am

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and

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f L

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rich

Fro

mm

engage in ritual

originate practice

of ritual

often practiced

checking appliances, lights

before bed

shooting marshmellows

when we reunitecurtsy in dance

JeffreyAge: 17

OCDmy family of four ballet students

“so I can sleep”he feels an overwhelming

need, stresses if he cannot- will cry

to celebreate being together + SongKran

to show respect, signify closing of

practice

from him, in his childhood, (12yr? when he stopped taking

meds for OCD)

SongKran Thailand + then my dade made marshmellow shooter

Victorian era,probably Europe

5 years old?a couple years, after we moved back to US & I was too cold for

waterguns

16th century origin of word “do

courtesy”

every night once a year, or two after every class happens constantly around the

world

interview

RITUAL

WHO

WHY

WHERE

AGE

HOW

personal research

Everyone comes from different walks of life. Throughout our lives, we collect unique experiences and influences which shape how we view and interpret the world. Even from the moment we leave our homes- our little, personal worlds- and enter the outside we can begin to notice the differences. Interactions with others who not only have had a different morning than us but have had an entirely different upbringing can be a small look into how different our worlds can be. Every social interaction we witness or experience can be deciphered in entirely different ways from each other, depending on the point of view one take's on. In this sense, although we may be experiencing the same physical day, our interpretations are entirely independent of each other. These interpre-tations seem to create totally separate and unique realities.

As a way to better cope with our world, we gravitate towards people of similar backgrounds, values and goals. We gravitate towards people with whom our realities are the closest aligned. This not only makes it easier to connect with people but gives us a baseline understanding of that person, even if unconsciously. Surrounding yourself with people living in interpreted realities parallel to our own allows us to assume a seemingly cohesive environment which ultimately makes us more comfortable. We develop personal rituals, either by ourselves or in tandem with others, to maintain these relative reali-ties. We join packs like sororities, sports teams, and clubs. We form friendships and families around common perspectives. Most popularly and ideally, we create intimate relationships; seeking out exten-sions of our own realities to expand our comfort and relative happiness. When we find these qualities in one other person, we call it love.

sacred domainmundane domainRITUALHABITS/ROUTINE

“anything can be a ritual”

“Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.” -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Social rituals are ceremonies involving symbolic action performed in a set, customary way. Year-end is a time rife with social ritual: The obligatory reflec-tions and ‘best of’ lists; the resolutions made to be broken. In Time Square the crowds gather, they count down, the ball drops, the people cheer, lovers kiss. Cham-pagne.

Rituals are a part of the life of every society. Performing a dual function, they both constitute and celebrate defining group characteristics. While the etiology and precise definition of ritualized behav-ior are a matter of much scholarly debate, the benefits of ritual (link is external) have been well documented. Rituals help us gain a sense of control over shaky circumstanc-es; they increase pro-social behavior (link is external), reduce fear, affirm loyalties, and energize group efforts (link is exter-nal).

In times of emotional chaos, rituals offer the comfort and hope of stability. Rituals facilitate continuity, providing a link between past and future; they cushion our psyche against the harsh awareness of our inherent fragility. They bind us to others, thus alleviating our inherent loneliness. They offer the soothing touch of the known and the hypnotizing calm of repetition amid life’s inscrutable caprice. They help make the abstract and elusive concrete and material. They provide clear external struc-tures by which to express and manage the murky swirl of our internal machinations. As the British anthropologist Mary Doug-las (link is external) once noted, ritual resembles money in that both represent concretely operations that are otherwise hard to pin down, both serve as social mediators (money mediates transactions; ritual mediates experience), and both provide standard measures of value.

But there’s a price to the ritualized experi-ence. Social rituals rely on action and experience in the same way myths rely on words and descriptions. Just as myth may obscure or distort reality and truth, so may ritual. For example, the myth of unfettered ‘upward mobility’ has persisted in the US long after the country has ceased to readily afford such mobility. The myth’s persistence has hindered efforts to fix current problems. Likewise, the rituals of college football fandom obscure the blatant lie of amateur “student-athletes” and the exploitative profiteering in which our lauded institutions of higher learning are actively engaged. The ancient myths of genesis and paradise lost continue to obscure the truth of evolution. Likewise, the ancient Passover rituals in Juda-ism—the chanting, the recitation, the dipping, the leaning—serve to effectively obscure the fact that we are celebrating, in part, the divinely sanctioned killing of innocent children.

Ritual Killing: In 2016, Resolve to Forego Mindless Rituals

January 02

Moreover, rituals serve, in essence, to divide our experiences, sorting them by value; they separate the sacred from the profane, assign special times and places vs. mundane times and places, and set “our” group apart from other groups. But in real life as it is lived within the self, sacred and profane may coexist, leak into each other. Within the stream of moment-by-moment living, any time and any place may become special, and we may actually have much in common—in terms of our temperament or values or interests—with members of other groups, or, for that matter, with the whole of humanity. Ritualized action on one hand undermines within-group individual agency and experience; on the other, it reinforces between-group chasms and magnifies trivial distinctions.

Ritual in this way is tied to the notion of script (link is external).

As psychological research has shown, our lives are thoroughly scripted; guided, that is, by sequences of expected behaviors for various social situations. In this way, we spend much time in automatic, prescribed, pre-defined interactions. Scripts, like rituals, have a function. They help coordi-nate and organize social behavior. When we all know, and follow, our culture’s ‘restaurant visit’ script, we are less likely to create public conflict and confusion, and more likely to get the food we want and can afford in a timely manner.

Alas, when we are scripted we also become predictable, and easily controlled. Auto-maticity overrides autonomy. We come to resemble factory products rather than works of art. When we participate willy-nilly in societal rituals, we abandon forging our own paths for the comforts of highway travel. When we make one day special, we downgrade the specialness inherent in every day (“Just go to the graveyard and ask around,” as the poet Mark Strand wrote). By deciding in advance that certain things should be said, or done, or felt only at a certain time and place, we sacrifice spontaneity, creativity, flexibility, and authenticity in meaningful measures. Should it really always and only be popcorn at the movies?

Rituals tend to be written in a major key—with bright colors and large gestures. But life is lived mostly in a minor key, in subtle shifts of moment and mood. Thus rituals, in their heavy grandeur, can crush an individual’s will or moral compass, often to tragic effect, as recurring tales of student hazing deaths (link is external) illustrate.

In addition, social rituals can serve to maintain the power of outdated, punitive social practices and beliefs. Consider the rituals surrounding widowhood (link is external) in India and other cultures, whereby, upon a husband’s death, women may lose their status, livelihood and prop-erty, face abuse, discrimination, disinheri-tance and destitution, and suffer practices such as widow burning and widow cleans-ing (link is external)—a ritual that often amounts to rape.

Moreover, rituals have a way of at once calcifying and metastasizing until they turn, like bureaucracies, into mere engines of their own perpetuation. Take for exam-ple our wedding ritual, which by now has become but a product delivered by a profit-driven industry, bearing little genu-ine connection to either the ancient purpos-es of the ceremony or, for that matter, the actual experience of contemporary married life.

The wedding ritual is a tyranny. You have to buy a diamond ring, even if you don’t have the money or don’t like diamonds. You have to get a bridal gown. You have to book a wedding hall, a band, a caterer; you must register at Bed Bath and Beyond— all of which illustrates an ironic aspect of social rituals: they are said to offer a break from the ordinary. But in fact, they are a part of it. When you get the wedding invitation, you already know the routine.

In sum, social rituals—proud products of our tribal impulse and our brain’s facility with scripts and symbols—possess a powerful dark side. Therefore, it is a good idea for us to periodically reflect upon the social rituals in which we participate. Does going to the game constitute a harmless celebration of students’ physical prowess and fighting spirit, or tacit support for their exploitation by crass commercial interests? Does it truly make sense to recite, “until death do us part” as opposed to something truer and more empowering like, “until one of us decides otherwise?”

More daringly, we may undertake a thought experiment: What would a ritual-free life look like? Imagine if you stopped celebrating prescribed experiences in prescribed ways. Holidays, birthdays, graduations, weddings, births—all would be experienced fully in their moment and marked or celebrated in your own idiosyn-cratic ways, at a time and place of your own choosing. What of life would be lost? What of life would be gained?

Perhaps at the beginning of this new year we’d be wise to, at the least, remember that any day is a good day for a resolution, if you are ready for change. Any day is good for a midnight kiss, if you have someone to kiss. And, of course, any day is good for champagne.

Noam Shpancer Ph.D.

birth of ritual idea frequency routinemeaningabstract

RITUAL= =++

Today, the term creativity is highly pursued after in all the spheres. Everyone wants to feel identified with some original and innovative idea that highlights him or her from the rest. Years ago, perfection was sought through an idea; then we found it extremely difficult to break with what was established. Throughout the history of mankind we have seen human beings being buried, discriminated and even exterminat-ing for their innovative ideas, and eventu-ally they were given the reason but it was too late to hear. We are in the era of constant change and differentiation thanks to sources of infor-mation and communication we have at our disposal. Every human being has the right to be heard and respected. Besides, their views and opinions can travel millions of miles in a matter of hours. It seems that we are in the ideal situation that creativity must flow between minds reaching the immense majority of the population. Furthermore, any opinion has the right to be examined. But ... we human beings, have a problem: we believe that only creative but in the mind of a few.

According to the dictionary, creativity means "to transcend the traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, and the life, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc: originality, progressiveness, or imagination." It is clearly stressed that the creative is a skill that is based primarily is to change old beliefs through new ideas. But if we go a little more towards the core of the defini-tion, the most important part of creativity is the ability to change the world. I see a considerable comparison between modify-ing existing elements in order to improve to some extent its functionality and creat-ing a completely new, revolutionizing concept that breaks with the traditional difference. I see the first premise as an upgrade and improvement but the second is a gamble, an act of trust and above all, a demonstration of inconformity, sacrifice and imagination.

Today, the artist ______ refers to creativity today in his books ______ where he shares clearly shares the idea that being creative is based on copying from others but modify-ing simple aspects to make it more person-al and (*). Hence the concept that creativi-ty is based on the connection of different existing issues for a shared idea. Other staff illustrious differentiates this reflec-tion is literally Steves Jobs said: "..."

Francesc CasasFebruary 18

Bapt

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deB

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The philosopher Plato based his theory dividing reality into two worlds: things and ideas. He argued that in the world of ideas everything already existed and remained intact and perfect, yet not varied. However, in the world of things everything is imper-fect and everything that exists in this has a lifetime. This unique philosophical concept is related to the idea of connecting different ideas to discover an improvement that is not a drastic change but an advance. They assimilate because they both share the idea that different parts of things that are created come from existing ideas.

Each person is considered unique and capable of each proposes themselves, but there are many common things between us such as needs, interests, ways of acting, feelings ... But besides we all have in common a number of proposals that we share the labels us as human beings: to be accepted, be part of a social group, communicate, have a social organization, make sense of existential questions, etc. We could confirm that we all have the same kind of problems but depending on some factors, each has been resolved in different ways, yet sharing utopian ideas developed differently.

But not everyone is this way; there is hope (it is said is the last thing that will be lost) and is that we are not able to meditate and reach new solutions. We are stuck in the imperfect traditions that are already estab-lished and accepted. We only limit us to become brighter, faster, smaller, bright-er.... But throughout history there have been famous people who decided to change some things, invent new ideologies really pushing the limits. Thanks to people like (*) we now know about creativity, originality and the loss of tradition and change. President Stuart J. Ellman * makes clear the difference when he said: "Social media and technology are not agents of change." These people can be any more composedly determined to see things in different ways that to this day exist but not in large numbers. Nonetheless, that only a few have the ability of creativity.

That is, today we have solved similar prob-lems in different, explainable ways, espe-cially because of cultures, but that the majority of these ideas are connected in different ways. Once the ideas of the world of ideas are removed, no longer perfect because they come into the imper-fect world and terminable things.

To this day, we continue with ideas from ancient times, some even carry more than three thousand years, a fact that is surreal because according to some, we are in the era of creativity and innovation. But we are not able to overcome barriers marked since Romans or the Greeks times.

In the field of religion it appears this situa-tion since according to official numbers… All this population bases its sense of life on ideas that were created by a group of people that lived before the year "o,” year 600 or even earlier. The same goes for politics; currently the same as when Aristocrats existed still remain. It’s been more than three thousand years that we have only update the system with minor modifications, but still with the same direc-tion.

PSYCHOLOGICALOCD, ANXIETY

COPYING MECH

smoking

HABITUAL

RITUALS

belongingCULTURE

rituals of perceptionsuperstition

irrational/

illogical

reasoning

changing mental states

comfort with

familiar

SPORTS

focus/reverie

MINDFULNESS/MEDITATION

now

nature

individualism

generations

*ON/OFFSwitch: coffee (good vs. bad)(right vs wrong)

nurture

individual; superstition, focus, trust, mental state

*yoga(state of absent-minded day-dreaming)*walking the dog

*calming me time

indentity

Rebellion of ritual or culture

PSYCHOLOGICALOCD, ANXIETY

COPYING MECH

smoking

HABITUAL

RITUALS

belonging

religion

ceremonial

meaning; love,life,

connection

CULTURE

rituals of perceptionsuperstition

irrational/

illogical

reasoning

changing mental states

comfort with

familiar

SPORTS

focus/reverie

MINDFULNESS/MEDITATION

now

nature

individualism

generations

*answers questions to comfort

*ON/OFFSwitch: coffee (good vs. bad)(right vs wrong)

nurture

individual; superstition, focus, trust, mental state

*yoga(state of absent-minded day-dreaming)*walking the dog

*calming me time

indentity

Rebellion of ritual or culture

enculturation

environmenthistory - events*tomato on bread

Social; to feel included

old generations

dance mass

fasting

praying

music

team sports

are teacherslearned

education

religion

ceremonial

meaning; love,life,

connection

COMMUNITY

CULTURElanguage


food work status sportsgender

roles

enculturation

environmenthistory - events*tomato on bread

Social; to feel included

old generations

dance mass

fasting

praying

music

team sports

are teacherslearned

education

ceremonial

meaning; love,life,

connection

COMMUNITY

language


food work status sportsgender

roles

The value, and especially the legitimisation of design will be, in the future, measured more in terms of how it can enable us to survive... on

this planet.

*Dieter Rams

mirar - a magazine about rituals

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