Opinion  of the Month

A Ritual Rant

By  Ewen and Gladys

Its been a while since Glad and I put a rant together, but this one is something that we've played around with since we first started these things - The idea of, if you will, how the society in Survivorland would develop as time went on, and more specifically, the idea of Rituals. As usual, we're just going to throw out a few ideas and observations and see what happens.

It was brought home to me quite recently that Rituals surround us. I was at a place in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, called Archaeolink, which I suppose can be best described as an archaeology theme park. Apart from my immediate thought at what a great place for a Survivors community, it was quite a different day. May 1st, to be exact, or in the Celtic Calendar, the Feast of Beltane, at which basically my Caledonian ancestors got horribly drunk on birch-sap wine and picked their wives for the year. In other words, a Ritual, dictated by the time of year, the time of new life, and their religion.

Which sent me back to Survivorland. We've played around in these pages before with a few of the aspects that I'm about to go into, but one the worse for it. Any group, any society, will have, for want of a better word, things that are important to it. Rites of Passage, Celebrations, Mournings, whether these be based on religion or not. Obvious examples would be Naming Ceremonies, Birthdays, Burials, Marriages, whether or not these come with a religious trapping. Simple celebrations of times of year - Harvest festivals, Midsummer Celebrations in Scandinavia (if anybody can remember them !), even Christmas, which was originally Saturnalia and even more originally Midwinter. They all mark a time for communities to come together, to mourn, to celebrate, just to have a good time.

And in Surviorland, what do we have other than the type of small communities where these rituals would become important. Lets go right back to the Beginning, Charles Vaughn and the Corn Dollies, old symbols of fertility. The Party at the manor house, food and drink and dancing. The pregnancy party, the "ritual" of having a pint at the pub after working down the mine. The service of Thanksgiving, Greg and Charles looking superiorly on as the others saught solace in rituals of a religion that they neither subscribed to or could now never believe in.

So, to start this thread off, lets consider a few questions.

We saw in Survivors that most of the Leaders who emerged seemed to be what for want of a better word we could call "non-conformist". Intelligent, with an interest in what lay beyond their immediate wants and needs, even with an interest in "alternatives" - in religions, in ways of thought.

So, without the "formalisation" of the rituals of the WASP culture, and the "backbone" of the established church, would we see a development of, if you like, a "new" religion, perhaps more "nature-based", even Celtic in origin. Would rituals like Midsummer and Midwinter, celebrating Pregnancy and Death, become important to the Survivors ? Would the moral code change as the "trappings" of Judaeo-Christian myth and law dissolved, and what again became more important was what was going on around you and not what you were "told" by the Church was going to happen "in the next life".

Consider other parts of the world where the framework of religion was more important - The Buddhist world, Islam, India, and then where there was no religion, China. These are the most populous parts of the world, and the law of statistics tell us that more people survived there. Would they turn to the Holy Qu'ran, the Tripitaka, The Bhagvad-Gita, or Mao's Red Book as the fundamental basis of their society in a way that perhaps we in the West may or may not turn to the Bible ? Is there still something deeper within us that calls to Nature and her laws in a way that the Church was never able to extinguish ?

Rituals, Rites of Passage, even just getting together for a drink and a dance are perhaps more important to the fabric of a society than we acknowledge. When the fabric is torn, could the rituals re-knit the society together with a common bond, or would the very fractured nature of Survivorland mean that every community would develop it own ritual, its own religion, like the Ba'hais, a bit from here, a bit from there, a bit of our own, if you will, and that in itself be the cause for further conflict ?

Ewen

The idea of writing a rant on rituals sent me scuttling around looking for a sociology text to check on definitions. Though I have my own ideas on what constitutes a ritual, it never hurts to check and see what the experts think. The basic sociology text the kids use in my school pretty much defines ritual in terms of Merton's structural strain theory of deviance. Trust me on this, you don't need to know! It's the kind of thing that makes Ewen bellow "Sociology is bunk" and makes me, the sociology major, alternate between nodding my head and cringing with embarassment.

Not that the web page describing raves as a "community creating ritual in a post modern age" seemed to add much to the debate, but it was somewhat closer to the mark when it talked about "community-creating".

Some sociologists (Durkheim for one) see rituals as a way of distinguishing/seperating the sacred from the profane-or the ordinary from the non/ordinary, the ins from the outs. Most people tend to think of the "big" celebrations when the word is used, but I suspect in Survivor-Land, as in the present day, the dual meaning of the term will be maintained. There will be everyday rituals as well as the big excuse-for-a-party things, like Beltane.

What sorts of "everyday" rituals might we expect in a Survivor-Land community? Depending on the size and physical layout of the community, meals might be taken in common. In some situations, this might make pure logistical sense, as in the Grange, as well as reinforcing common purposes and helping people to get to know each other. As a union organizer I know once said, "It's hard to yell at people with your mouth full."

Another "ordinary" ritual might be storytelling, an art too little practiced in this day and age. Even now, many small children at my school enjoy making up their own stories to go with wordless picture books-before their brains get fried from too much tv. Story telling might eventually become "formalized" in the ways of bards and traveling companies of medieval times, but whether done in one household or having most of the community around a fire, it's going to redevelop on a local level first. Or even a household level first.

But as Ewen says, there's always the danger each community would develop rituals so distinct the function of using ritual as a means of identifying the "other" or "enemy" will emerge. Heck, we should know about identifying enemies! Though this is a VAST oversimplification, his clan fought with mine for 400 years and only recently-in 1978-declared an end to it. As usual, it's rumored that it all started over a woman.....and a ritual.....

Gladys