The importance of ritual

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls it a disappearance. He sees it as a symptom of modernity and the evils (as he views them) of neoliberalist life. The result has been a harmful erosion of community harmony or, in government speak, social cohesion. 

Han does not ‘necessarily’ call for a return to a world based on ritual. But he is deeply concerned about the loss of structure, meaning and shared experience ritual once provided. In Han’s words, the absence of ritual has resulted in a loss of ‘exalted time’.  

The idea of exalted time is intriguing. Han argues that in the modern world, time has been subordinated to the demands of production and individualism. Production time has societal value, but it does little to create and sustain meaningfully connected and fulfilled communities. 

In Han’s eyes, the exalted time created by ritual brings people together. It provides space for the creation and expression of community understanding and belonging. It provides a basis for shared celebration and a vehicle for transmitting and reinforcing community values and norms. It is, in short, the basis of a good society.

Confucius was another who promoted the importance of ritual. For Confucius, ritual provided a basis for ruling society via inspiration rather than coercion. His view of ritual included the types of formal ceremonies we most readily recognise with the word. But it also includes observance of the shared social norms and etiquette which grease the wheels of societal harmony. 

Ritual also plays a prominent role in the various nations and cultures of Australia’s First Peoples. In traditional cultures, the exalted time brought by ceremony is valued highly. This sometimes creates a disconnection with the production time focus of Australia’s modern nation. The priority given to sorry business provides an example of this disconnect. 

Words like ‘ritual’ and ‘exalted’ are generally avoided in national discussions. Indeed, the very idea of ritual is often treated with suspicion. For some, ritual is the province of religious practice and arcane movements like freemasonry. For others, it brings to mind images of sacrifice and paganism. These ceremonies clearly involve ritual, but ritual is so much more. 

Ritual usually develops in a specific cultural context over many generations. This process creates insiders and outsiders. Yet the deeper meaning of ritual is often universal. Marriage rituals provide one example. Funerals and mourning periods provide another. Welcome ceremonies exist throughout the world, these range from the truncated handshake of Western society to the intricate pōwhiri of the Māori. 

Zephyrs of ritual appear in our workdays. The daily stand-up or monthly executive meeting is an example. Meetings like these are as much about community belonging and sharing as they are about getting the job done (what Han calls production). Sadly, many meetings today fail to achieve either of these purposes. The result is dead time. It is the exact opposite of exalted time. 

Family rituals also play an important role in our lives. As do personal rituals. These also create a form of exalted time. But it is the loss of community-focused ritual that Han thinks is doing the most damage to modern society. 

Formal definitions of ritual tend to be surprisingly anodyne. The Cambridge Dictionary describes it as a ‘way of doing something in which the same actions are done in the same way every time’. Being honest, it is a strange definition. It may be accurate at a mechanical level, but it ignores the human essence of what ritual is about. 

Unlike Cambridge, Byung-Chul Han distinguishes ritual from repeated events. Events can be seen as rituals that have been stripped of their deeper meaning. Events may fit within the bland boundaries of the Cambridge Dictionary definition, but they miss something important. 

In reality, events and rituals overlap throughout our society. For some Australians, Diwali is a deeply meaningful ritual. For others, it is simply an annual event. The same is true for Ramadan, Chinese New Year, Easter and any number of other rituals different groups in our society hold dear. 

The challenge

The inter-mangling (yes, I know this isn’t really a word) of events and rituals we see in Australia has the potential to be a national strength. But it also poses a significant national challenge. 

In a nation made of many different cultures and communities, ritual can easily become a cleave rather than a join. Australia saw this recently in debates about the role of First Nation elders in welcoming people to Country. What was an important ritual for some, was seen as a meaningless (or worse) event by others. 

Welcome ceremonies were not imposed by some act of governmental tyranny. They developed naturally. Yet, despite this, some in our national community found the ritual difficult to embrace. In it, they saw a meaning that offended their own conception of Australia. 

Even some First Nations Peoples now feel that a ceremony that developed in the context of relatively rare inter-cultural gatherings has been misapplied. Evolving the ceremony to meet the needs of a world that is constantly gathering has proved harder than some might have expected. 

A similar debate exists around Australia Day. Here again, the inter-mangling of important rituals for some and offensive events for others creates a divide that our nation would be better without. The difficulty is that both groups have valid reasons for feeling the way they do.

It is possible the distemper created recently by Welcome to Country and Australia Day is simply a national growing pain. In time, it may be that both rituals will find an appropriate and unifying place in the greater Australian culture. Let’s hope so.  

Other cleaves exist. Ongoing conflict in the Middle East is creating a divide in our own community. Government sits in the middle, being called upon to support both sides. Government actions directed towards resolving a faraway conflict are viewed through an ‘are they with us or them’ lens by opposing groups in our community. 

Australia’s challenge is to create time and space for the diversity of ritual that exists in, and supports, the pantheon of communities making up our nation. Creating this space requires a generosity towards difference that is, sadly, all too rare. 

Another challenge also exists. This involves the creation of rituals that underpin the nation as a whole. For Australia to thrive, we need unifying rituals that create exalted time for our community of communities. 

To do this, Australia must meet the challenge outlined by Noel Pearson. It must create unity across Australia’s three grand narratives — first peoples, colonial and immigrant. Perfect unity is impossible. In any case, it would sit uncomfortably with our pluralistic society. But what we have today is not healthy. The divides are too great, and the direction of travel is worrying. 

An example from, of all places, the US

Turning to the United States of America for examples of unity is an odd thing to do right now. Current events in America tell us more about what Australia should avoid rather than what it should follow. Yet for all of that, examining one ritual, that of Thanksgiving, might provide something useful. 

Thanksgiving has a murky and complicated past. The original pilgrim-dominated event often depicted as the basis for Thanksgiving is somewhat false. Some also feel that the day simply appropriates longstanding Native American thanks-giving ceremonies at harvest time. Abraham Lincoln’s formal proclamation of Thanksgiving Day in 1863 had distinctly Christian overtones and was designed to promote healing during an ongoing civil war. 

Thanksgiving has risen above its specific cultural context, to be embraced across all of the cultures making up the US. A contested past has not prevented a more beneficent unifying present, even in a nation that is otherwise at war with itself, both politically and socially. 

Many Native American tribes now embrace the tradition, though some understandably retain reservations. People across all religions and social backgrounds celebrate Thanksgiving. It is neither a day of politics nor of nationalism. The day has become the ‘full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and union’ Lincoln had hoped. As national rituals go, to use an American expression, it is pretty darn good. 

The future

As we draw to the end of another calendar year, it may be worth reflecting on the role ritual plays in our lives. Exalted time — time that energises us as individuals and brings us together as families, communities and our community of communities – is a rare and precious thing. It needs to be nurtured and protected. Production time is important, but space is needed in our individual and community lives for something more. 

Imagination will be needed to create the exalted time that recognises and celebrates what is best in Australia’s national community of communities. Government can help. But ritual develops from below, rather than above. 

Perhaps it is time to re-engage the diverse people of the Australian nation on a new project. Rather than the motley collection of public holidays we now enjoy, perhaps we should commission a public process to remake our calendar to better suit our nation as it is today. A series of citizen juries could, for example, be established which brings the full diversity of our nation together to review and explore a new approach to our public holidays. 

As part of this process, we should also think about the broader balance our nation achieves between the production time needed to fuel our national economy and the exalted time needed to nourish our national soul. I, for one, suspect that some extra exalted time would benefit us all.