Outsiders & Ritual Followers

Focus questions

(feel free to add more of these) . Clearly not all of these questions can be properly covered in a meetup, but they give us a conscious choice about what to talk about while making the background context clearer.

1. A lonely figure, the Fastest Gun in the West, rides into a dusty town, strides into the saloon, and all the varmints scatter. After restoring Law and Order, the publican's beautiful daughter falls into his arms, but he sighs a deep sigh and rides off alone again into the sunset. This celluloid hero, the archetype of an outsider, is safely admired at a distance, but when it comes to down and dirty everyday boring existence, the varmints are the life of the party and where every pimply teenager in his heart of hearts wants to be. Playing Bad Boy with the gang is as much a ritual (a mating ritual) for the teenager as going to church on Sunday is for his mom and pop. So where are you - the lonely horseman or the ritual follower? Why?

2. Nature or nurture - what makes an outsider, and what makes a ritual follower?

3. What is your understanding of ritual, broadly defined?

4. How is ritual used to unite people psychologically? Why is it not equally effective on everyone?

5. What are some characteristic rituals of Australian culture(s)?

6. Cultures are defined by their conscious and unconscious rituals, yet they differ in their tolerance of social & psychological outsiders (as distinct from actual foreigners). What are some consequences of this tolerance or intolerance of outsiders?

7. Our civilizations are generally created for average people. The more average you are on any metric (height, intelligence, education, wealth, occupation, hobbies, whatever) the more easily you will fit in with the normal social rituals which go with that metric. Which of these metrics really put you beyond the pale if you are on the outer edge of the bell curve?

8. Some countries, at some point in their history, adopt an ideology or religion which forces the whole zoo of character types in that country to follow a set of official rituals regardless of their personal preferences. When is this kind of force-feeding of public belief productive, and when does it precipitate social breakdown? What is the role of natural outsiders in this scene?

9. The ritual of democracy in its many forms suffers from severe paradoxes. One of the worst is the so-called 'tyranny of the crowd'. This problem is so severe that some 'democratic' systems, (such as in the United States of America), are designed to insulate majority opinion from the actual choice of a leader (in the US through electoral colleges, non-compulsory voting and gerrymanders). What do you see as the best way to give as many people as possible an investment in governance while avoiding the tyranny of the crowd for those not in the crowd?

10. Can you think of historical and current examples of individuals who are instinctive outsiders with no taste for ritual, actually saving that flock wedded to form and ritual from themselves?

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Doodles:

Lone messenger or the cavalry?

The Greek chorus

Tyranny of the crowd

Myth cycles & heroes

Solo Performers Vs Spectators & Congregations

Archetypes or Social Constructs?

The highway or the road less taken

The traveller and the tourist

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Note:

1. All past topic questions are now listed at

http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/DiscussionTopics/DiscussionIndex.htm

2. From another meetup I run for English learners, thirty two sets of 10x questions (from Thor) designed for students of English as a Second Language are online at

http://thormay.net/lxesl/Discussion%20Topics/Adelaide%20ESL%20Meetup.htm

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Thor May

Here is a series of short, easy to read articles by Matthew Rossano on the effects of rituals in life and in religion: 'Mortal Rituals' at https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mortal-rituals . The value of articles like this (even if you don't agree with them) is that they offer key ideas for further questioning. Article headings : Eyes of faith / Ritual and life satisfaction / Religion and morality / What makes a terrorist? / Imitating to survive / Let 'Em Play! Using Ritual to Teach Self-Restraint / Baby rituals / The ritually defined person / Cultus Familiae II : the family meal /Cultus familiae: the key to domestic harmony? / Rituals and trust / Sucking the marrow out of life - with ritual / Civilization started with ritual, not farming / Rituals and sex / Rituals of absolution: "Go and sin no more?" / Song and dance as information / Two caves, two rituals, two species / The ritual species / Larger than life / Behaviour over belief / Enduring what you cannot control /

Like · Reply · 2 days ago · Mute

"Why Rituals Work - There are real benefits to rituals, religious or otherwise" - by Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton (May 14, 2013) Scientific American online @ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/

Like · Reply · 4 days ago · Mute

Thor May

=> remember to read the comments at the end of this article: very interesting.

Like · 4 days ago

If you are up for a bit of academic research, there is this: "The psychology of rituals: An integrative review and process-based framework" Hobson et al, 2017 (86 pages), SSRN at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2944235 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2944235 [downloadable PDF]

The concept of 'outsider' has been intensively studied in sociology, beginning with Howard S. Becker's Labeling Theory' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory). Being in some way different from a norm is often associated with the morally loaded term 'deviant'. Not surprisingly studies of 'deviants' have often focused on groups like criminals, prostitutes, gays etc whose deviance may or may not be punished officially. However geniuses are also, by definition 'deviant' or outsiders. So are musicians for that matter. The labeling idea is important since those who don't fit some norm are socially (and perhaps legally) labeled as different, then are treated as different, and come increasingly to define themselves as different. One property of a modern nation state with its endless laws and number IDs is that there is great pressure to be 'normal', not an outsider.

Like · Reply · 6 days ago · Mute

The peoples of all nations have stories they tell themselves about what their culture "is". These stories form the foundation of rituals to affirm the identity of culture & nation. The trouble is, people change across generations and the founding stories can cease to fit, so the rituals become unconvincing. Is this Australia's malaise? See "The threadbare stories we tell ourselves are wrong. Australia needs a new narrative", The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/02/the-threadbare-stories-we-tell-ourselves-are-wrong-australia-needs-a-new-narrative .

Some societies leave more space for individual values than others. A few years ago I wrote an article called "Individualism or the Group". See at https://www.academia.edu/2333623/Individualism_or_the_Group or http://thormay.net/unwiseideas/Individualism.html . In fairly individualistic societies perhaps more eccentric characters are not always forced to be absolute outsiders.

Hey Thor, join the conversation!

Thor May

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