Rituals & Change

Religion doesn’t have a monopoly on ritual, it’s just written most of the classic hits. 

But rituals can come from anyone, from anywhere. 

They just require a specific combination of action, location, timing, meaning and sincere belief. 

Rituals can be a powerful way of codifying behaviour, of ensuring that specific actions are repeated with a high degree of consistency and that people understand what they mean. 

Rituals are fantastic for high stakes areas where the fundamentals don’t shift. 

But if we’re creating new rituals, or we are the custodians of existing rituals, we need to also understand their weaknesses. 

Rituals are highly resistant to change. Rituals establish a status quo and a narrative, often containing penalties for transgression of the specific rites. 

This is highly relevant given the rate of change that we experience in the world. There are few areas in which change does not carve a slow, but inexorable path right through the fabric of reality. 

When the world changes, but rituals don’t, they become disconnected from the lived experience. They become ceremonial. And in many instances they become maladapted, preventing us from taking good actions in the circumstances we face. 

We need guidelines and procedures and structures to help us navigate this complex world, but rituals should be few and far between. 

To serve us in this period of hyper uncertainty and change, we need our processes to embrace the notion of update and evolution. They should adapt to help us counter new threats and to leverage new opportunities. 

It may have been top down religion which wrote the greatest hits of the past, but it will require much more nimble thinking to help us navigate the shifting sands of the future.