The Art of Manliness - The Power of Ritual

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.140 Our lives are populated by rituals, baptisms, funerals, graduations, singing happy birthday,

00:00:17.960 chanting cheers at a sports event, saying grace before dinner.

00:00:21.140 When we perform rituals, there's no causal link between the behavior and the hope for

00:00:25.080 effect.

00:00:25.480 For example, there's no causal connection between exchanging rings on an altar and becoming

00:00:30.120 wedded to another human being.

00:00:32.320 But my guests would say that doesn't mean that rituals are useless and irrational.

00:00:36.240 In fact, doing two decades of research on rituals caused him to do a 180 on his perception of

00:00:40.760 their value.

00:00:41.740 His name is Demetrius Ziggaladas.

00:00:43.180 He's an anthropologist and the author of Ritual, How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth

00:00:47.740 Living.

00:00:48.660 Today on the show, Demetrius explains what defines a ritual and how a ritual is different

00:00:52.160 from a mere habit.

00:00:52.960 He shares how a greater understanding of ritual is upending our theories of human civilization

00:00:57.060 and the idea that first came the temple and then the city.

00:01:00.940 Demetrius describes how rituals can be seen to have their own kind of logic and purpose

00:01:04.240 as they build trust and togetherness, serve as an effective way to deal with stress, signal

00:01:08.820 someone's commitment to a group, and ultimately contribute to people's overall well-being.

00:01:13.900 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash rituals.

00:01:22.960 All right.

00:01:31.340 Demetrius Ziggaladas, welcome to the show.

00:01:33.360 Great to be with you.

00:01:34.580 So you work in the anthropology department at the University of Connecticut, but your approach

00:01:38.880 to anthropology is different from a lot of other anthropologists.

00:01:42.060 You study the cognition of people and also their physiology of how it interacts with their

00:01:48.180 culture.

00:01:49.020 So your approach is almost, it seems like it intersects with the field of psychology.

00:01:52.560 How did you land on this approach to anthropology?

00:01:55.860 Yeah, it's true that I am an unusual anthropologist or an unusual anything for that matter.

00:02:03.200 See, in academia, we have these strictly defined disciplines and they approach human nature from

00:02:09.800 very different perspectives. But at the end of the day, we are studying the same thing,

00:02:15.060 which is human nature. So in my case, I guess it felt natural to me because growing up, the kinds

00:02:21.800 of heroes that I had, that I was watching on television were people like Jane Goodall, people

00:02:27.160 like David Attenborough, people like Jacques Cousteau. And what these people were doing is that they

00:02:32.560 were going into the field and they were combining firsthand personal experience with scientific

00:02:39.280 measurement and scientific explanation. So it always felt natural to me that to study human

00:02:46.080 nature, you should apply this holistic perspective. Now, of course, we're not always able to do this

00:02:51.060 in academia. I was just lucky enough that as a graduate student and later as a faculty member,

00:02:56.660 I was always part of institutions that just allow me the creative freedom to do that.

00:03:00.840 So one thing you've focused your area of study on is the influence of ritual on individuals,

00:03:08.200 psychologically, physiologically. How did you end up studying rituals? Did you have a

00:03:12.420 personal experience with ritual where you thought, well, I want to explore that even more?

00:03:15.760 I was always puzzled by ritual. Growing up in Greece, I was reading National Geographic magazine and I

00:03:22.720 would read about all of those exotic or seemingly exotic rituals that were happening in faraway places,

00:03:28.600 initiation ceremonies, some of them really painful, really flamboyant, really extravagant.

00:03:34.540 And I always considered them as relics of the past, something very distant that you couldn't find in

00:03:40.500 Western societies. So at some point as an adolescent already, I had this realization, which for me was

00:03:46.560 a big revelation, that these types of rituals were also happening in my own backyard, in my home country.

00:03:53.500 There were people who walked on fire and who engaged in these long pilgrimages that were very painful.

00:03:59.660 They were crawling on hands and knees and they were bloody and bruised and all that.

00:04:05.040 And suddenly the switch flipped and I started seeing ritual everywhere. I realized that my life too was

00:04:10.820 extremely ritualized. This is not something that only exotic people do. This is something that is

00:04:15.940 a common thread in humanity.

00:04:17.560 Well, I think, you know, in the book, in one ritual you noticed that happened on a daily or

00:04:21.920 regular occurrence, but if you don't look at it right, you don't think of it as rituals, like sports,

00:04:26.100 like soccer games in Europe are very ritualistic.

00:04:30.140 Absolutely. And this is in a sense, the essence of anthropology, the kinds of things, the kinds of

00:04:34.680 cultural patterns that happen right in front of our eyes. Sometimes we can't see them. We're just too

00:04:39.720 close to them or to see them. So we need to, to go to another society to realize sometimes something

00:04:46.300 about our own society.

00:04:48.520 So as an anthropologist, how do you define a ritual? Like what makes an activity ritualistic?

00:04:54.580 So anthropologists like to disagree about most things. So you will find many definitions of

00:05:00.600 ritual, but in my book, figuratively and literally, when I talk about ritual, I mean, those repetitive

00:05:09.880 sequences of action that we consider to be very special. And yet, either we have no explicit

00:05:21.560 reason for doing them, or even when we do, there's no connection between the means and the goals.

00:05:27.100 So for example, if I perform a rain dance, there's no causal link between my dancing about and

00:05:33.200 water falling from the sky.

00:05:34.340 So what makes a ritual different from a habit? You know, say someone who brushes their teeth

00:05:40.240 every day. I mean, someone like an anthropologist or an alien could look at that. Well, that's some

00:05:43.960 kind of weird ritual that these humans take part in, but you'd say, no, it's not a ritual.

00:05:48.520 Yeah, exactly. And that's a good, and brushing your teeth is a good example because it has a clear

00:05:52.060 utilitarian function and the actions are causally connected to the outcome. So I'm brushing my teeth

00:06:00.060 in order to cleanse them. Now, if I were to brush, to wave my toothbrush in the air, with a belief

00:06:05.100 that that cleanses my teeth, or with no belief at all, now that would be a ritual.

00:06:11.020 Okay, and so that's interesting. So ritual activity, they have no effect on the external world,

00:06:17.320 but that's not to say they're useless.

00:06:20.740 That is correct. So even though, and that's my perspective in this book, that's the perspective on

00:06:25.880 ritual, that even though it has no direct causal outcome, that is not to say that it has no impact

00:06:33.820 on our inner world and our social world.

00:06:39.140 Gotcha. So yeah, like, so a ritual, like pledging allegiance to the flag,

00:06:42.560 it doesn't have an effect on the external world, but it does something to the person or people taking

00:06:48.080 part in that.

00:06:49.280 Correct. These types of rituals will help us internalize social norms by getting us to

00:06:55.000 align our appearances, if we all dress the same, our movements, if we all march together,

00:07:01.500 our symbols, our sensory input, our emotions. They also get us to feel like one. If we behave like

00:07:09.580 one, we feel like one. So these rituals help us essentially integrate into society.

00:07:18.160 Well, another good example of just a regular activity that has an effect on the external world,

00:07:22.200 but it can become ritualistic, right? That's another interesting thing is you talk about

00:07:26.380 Japanese tea ceremonies. So you can make tea and it has a purpose, right? All the things you do is to

00:07:32.260 make the tea, but you can change it up so that it becomes a ritual. So what, how can you make an

00:07:38.720 activity that does have an effect on the external world ritualistic?

00:07:42.480 So one of the effects of ritual is that they create special experiences. In a sense, our brain recognizes

00:07:50.160 those kinds of special experiences by their very structure. So ritualized activities, they tend to be

00:07:58.460 extremely repetitive. They tend to be very rigid. They have to be performed in the right way, the same

00:08:04.860 way, always. They're very redundant. They might go on for a very long time. They are typically loaded with

00:08:11.660 sensory pageantry. They might arouse our sense of smell or sense of touch, or they have colors and bells and

00:08:17.980 whistles. All of those things, they signal to our brain that something of value is happening.

00:08:23.900 So it sounds like a habit or a practice becomes a ritual when it's not just repetitious, but you do the

00:08:30.640 thing with an exactitude, with a formal exactitude that goes above and beyond what's necessary. If you were just

00:08:38.700 doing something for a practical purpose, like if you're just making tea to drink it, ritual also

00:08:45.100 stimulates your senses. And it sounds like there's an intent to make it special and above the ordinary.

00:08:52.820 You know, there's like a certain mindset you have to bring to an activity to, to make it a ritual.

00:08:58.340 Something else you talk about in the book is that there's this idea of the paradox ritual.

00:09:03.180 What's that paradox?

00:09:05.220 The paradox is that if you look at all human societies across time and space, people have

00:09:11.860 always spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and even material resources in practicing all kinds

00:09:19.960 of rituals. And yet when we ask people why they do that, the most common answer is just puzzled looks.

00:09:26.480 People look at you and they say, what do you mean? That's just what we do. It's our tradition.

00:09:30.060 They might often refer to some, some myth or some ancestor, but generally what they're saying is

00:09:36.020 that, well, we just do them because that makes us who we are.

00:09:39.800 So your job as an anthropologist, try to figure out, well, why do they do these things? Why do

00:09:44.360 humans do this stuff?

00:09:46.000 Exactly.

00:09:46.780 Well, okay. Let's talk about this. Are humans the only species that engage in ritual or do other

00:09:53.100 animals engage in ritualistic behavior?

00:09:55.860 Yeah, not at all. We're not the only animal who does that. Of course, we all know about the

00:09:59.740 mating rituals for birds. But the more we look in nature, the more ritual we find. We will see

00:10:05.640 that, for example, giraffes have these elaborate mating dances where they wrap their necks together.

00:10:11.660 We know that chimpanzees, they will visit trees that seem to be special to them and they will

00:10:18.080 carry rocks that they pile in front of those trees. So they use them to drum on them. They perform

00:10:23.080 what Jane Goodall called a waterfall dance. They have this, in the presence of a waterfall,

00:10:29.500 sometimes they get into this seemingly trance mode. We know that elephants have mourning rituals.

00:10:35.900 So sometimes they will travel long distances to visit the bones of their dead relatives,

00:10:40.840 especially if it's some matriarch and so on and so forth. So ritual is everywhere in nature. 0.91

00:10:46.480 Yeah. Another one I've learned about recently is magpies, the bird. They'll do like a funeral

00:10:52.680 ritual. Like when there's a dead magpie, they'll all just line up in front of the bird and it looks

00:10:56.500 like they're having a funeral.

00:10:58.060 A lot of animals seem to have these kinds of mourning rituals. We see it in magpies and it's

00:11:02.780 been observed in species like geese and dolphins and whales and of course elephants and also in humans.

00:11:10.500 Archaeologists very often pinpoint the beginnings of our own species. One of the hallmarks,

00:11:19.440 the behavioral hallmarks for defining our species is the presence of these death rituals.

00:11:25.960 What makes a human ritual different from animal rituals?

00:11:30.160 So what makes us different is that we have taken this behavior that is very common in nature and we

00:11:35.840 just run with it. So human rituals, first of all, they're full of symbolism. They go beyond merely

00:11:43.960 engaging in these stereotypical behaviors. They have all kinds of layers that involve wearing similar

00:11:50.820 clothes or wearing all kinds of markers from body paint to waving flags. And of course, also in their

00:11:57.300 sheer quantity, ritual pervades all aspects of our lives. And also the fact that we have taken

00:12:04.000 what feels intuitive at the individual level and turning into a social technology. So every human

00:12:10.500 group has these very elaborate rituals that other animals lack.

00:12:14.840 So yeah, you just mentioned earlier that anthropologists and archaeologists show that

00:12:18.860 humans engaging in ritual was like a turning point, right? Where you start seeing this as 1.00

00:12:22.920 a collective and it's spreading. You also talk about there's this theory that your research and

00:12:28.880 other research is suggesting that about ritual that could potentially upend how we think about the

00:12:33.840 development of civilization. Can you walk us through that idea?

00:12:37.660 Yes, it's a very provocative hypothesis, which has gained ground recently. It seems that it is

00:12:43.860 possible that everything we thought we knew about the origins of civilization may actually be wrong.

00:12:49.940 And evidence in favor of that hypothesis comes from sites like Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. This is the

00:12:57.120 oldest known ceremonial structure. In fact, the oldest known structure of any kind. It goes back 12,000

00:13:03.980 years, which means that it's not just twice as old as stone heads and three times older than the pyramids,

00:13:10.800 but it actually predates all of the things that we consider as the hallmarks of civilization. It predates the

00:13:16.360 invention of writing. It predates farming and permanent settlement, the wheel, and so forth.

00:13:22.080 And this site is just gigantic. It took so much effort to build. It consists of these circular

00:13:32.240 structures, I would call them temples, that are surrounded by monolithic pillars, each one of

00:13:37.760 them about 15 tons. And they have all been carved by a nearby quarry. Now, if you think about how a group of

00:13:46.000 people who are living in the stone age were able to carve those stones and transport them those distances

00:13:51.300 and use them to build those megalithic sites, this must have taken them years. And it must have taken

00:13:57.660 hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals working together. And the most astonishing thing about that

00:14:02.420 is that those individuals were hunter-gatherers. It looks, for all intents and purposes, that

00:14:08.620 these individuals just came together just to build this temple and then only use it for these ceremonies.

00:14:15.820 And they traveled sometimes thousands of miles to visit that temple. And further excavations in the

00:14:23.420 area show that permanent settlement only begins several centuries later. So this raises the very

00:14:31.340 provocative hypothesis that despite what we might have thought, it is not permanent settlement and

00:14:38.140 farming and the creation of a food surplus that allowed us to create things like art and elaborate

00:14:44.700 social organization or religious rituals. It might've been the other way around. It might've been the

00:14:49.260 human thirst for ritual that led those individuals to congregate there, to work together, to build this

00:14:55.820 temple, and then by necessity to establish a permanent settlement in order to support it. In the words of

00:15:03.040 Klaus Schmidt, who is the archaeologist who discovered this site and excavated it, first came the temple,

00:15:08.360 then the city.

00:15:09.400 So that's interesting. So why does ritual exist? Because from an evolutionary perspective, it seems

00:15:16.780 pretty wasteful, right? I mean, you're doing these activities. Okay, so take these Stone Age guys you're

00:15:23.940 talking about. They're building these giant temples. They're traveling long distances to get to this

00:15:28.940 temple. They're using lots of resources, spending a lot of time. And they may believe their rituals have an

00:15:35.800 effect on the world, but that effect, it's not, it's not clear or immediate. You know, it's, they're

00:15:41.440 doing these things based on a belief. So why do humans spend all this energy and time on ritual?

00:15:47.860 Like, like, why does it exist?

00:15:49.760 So this is exactly the question that this book is asking. And I've spent about two decades trying to

00:15:55.100 answer that question. And the more we look, the more we realize that ritual actually has tangible

00:16:01.420 functions that can be studied scientifically and can even be measured. So at the collective level,

00:16:08.280 for example, for over 100 years, anthropologists have argued that ritual serves to boost social

00:16:15.960 bonding and create social cohesion. But beyond that, there wasn't much scientific research to

00:16:21.860 support those claims. And in recent decades, we know from experimental work, both mine and by other

00:16:27.900 people, that this seems to be true. For example, we have conducted field experiments in Spain and in

00:16:35.420 Mauritius and in other places. And we find that when people take part in those rituals, their emotional

00:16:41.300 reactions are aligned, and that is predictive of their social sentiments. So they feel closer to each

00:16:47.320 other. So their experience changes, they have a more transformational experience, and then their

00:16:52.500 behavior changes. For example, we use economic experiments, and we see that people become more

00:16:58.660 generous towards each other after the performance of those rituals. We also see that their status

00:17:03.500 increases. They begin to trust each other more. And we can see this even at the level of hormones.

00:17:09.660 Well, how do you, so I'm curious, how do you measure that stuff? So when someone's engaging in a

00:17:13.900 ritual, like, do you stop and take blood tests? Like, how are you able to see these physiological

00:17:17.880 changes take place? So just a few decades ago, this, these types of studies would not be possible

00:17:23.720 just because we didn't have the right equipment to do them. But now we have things like wearable

00:17:28.640 sensors. So now we can go into a context, as you said, these are some of the, some of these people's

00:17:34.640 most important moments in their lives. So you can't just interrupt the ritual to take your samples.

00:17:39.780 What you have to do is use wearable devices that are going to record continuously throughout the

00:17:45.460 ritual. And you have to use devices that are small enough so that they're unintrusive, that they're

00:17:49.620 worn under the clothes and nobody can see them and so on and so forth. And today we have the ability

00:17:53.880 to do that. For example, we have measured, we have used these types of devices to measure heart rate

00:17:59.780 responses in the context of a fire walking ritual. And in that context, we see that people's heart

00:18:05.560 rates begin to synchronize and they do that no matter what they're doing. So it's not just that they're

00:18:11.400 dancing together and their heart rates are synchronized. Some of them are walking on fire,

00:18:15.820 others are watching, but they have the same emotional reaction. And in further studies that

00:18:21.000 we conducted in sports stadiums, we see that this heart rate synchrony is predictive of both how they

00:18:29.620 experience those events and how they feel towards each other.

00:18:33.740 Interesting. So rituals can bring people together. You also talk about, there's this chapter where you

00:18:38.140 talk about how ritual plays a part in just human development and that even kids at a pretty early

00:18:44.420 age, they're able to recognize when an activity is a ritual. What's the research say there?

00:18:50.880 So it seems that some of the mental mechanisms involved that allow us to acquire and use ritual

00:18:59.100 throughout their lives are already there in early childhood. For example, I have a two-year-old

00:19:05.320 in my house and he already has very strict, very rigid routines. He'll wake up in the morning and he

00:19:14.660 wants his specific little toy car. And then he will want to sit in the specific chair in a specific

00:19:21.680 way. And even if he doesn't need the belt on that chair, he insists that he has to wear it because

00:19:28.580 that's the right way to do it and so on and so forth.

00:19:30.860 So already from the age of two, we see that children are obsessed with structure, with order,

00:19:38.060 and they're also very good at imitating. And these are very useful things for a human being

00:19:43.820 because we are a hyper-social animal. We're social learners. So it's very useful to us at an early

00:19:50.600 age to start imitating others and to start doing the things the way we have been taught to do them.

00:19:56.200 And these are some of the traits that really allow us to be very good at ritual.

00:20:02.340 No, I've noticed that with my own kids. They get really hung up on traditions. So it's like,

00:20:06.960 you know, once Christmas rolls around, it's like we have to do these things. And sometimes,

00:20:11.780 you know, as parents are like, oh, geez, I don't want to do that. It's going to take a lot of work.

00:20:14.400 I'm tired. Like, no, we have to do it. It's tradition. And I think it's interesting that as a kid,

00:20:19.420 they get really focused on that. Okay. So early on, kids are able to see ritual. And then you just

00:20:25.460 make, you make this case that cultures use ritual as a way to inculcate societal norms and what's

00:20:31.620 important to the culture to children. Yes. We're going to take a quick break for your word from

00:20:36.360 our sponsors. And now back to the show. So let's talk about, well, you've done research is like,

00:20:44.820 okay, when is it that humans take part in ritualistic behavior? Because we don't do it

00:20:49.180 all the time. So what does your research say? Like, when are we more likely to take part in

00:20:54.020 ritualistic behavior? So if you look at ritualization, so our tendency to behave in

00:20:59.980 ritualistic ways, in repetitive behavioral patterns, or to just fall back to our familiar

00:21:06.780 cultural patterns, that tendency really increases when we're under some of the most stressful

00:21:12.040 situations. So what are some of the most stressful contexts that we can find humans in? Those are

00:21:17.780 situations like warfare, illness, when they're gambling in the context of sports. What those

00:21:26.380 scenarios have in common is that all of them include a lot of uncertainty. And a lot of the time,

00:21:32.080 the stakes can be very high there. And in fact, we know that the higher the stakes, the more ritual

00:21:37.060 we observe. For example, athletes are very famous for their superstitions and their rituals.

00:21:42.040 Now, you might expect that better athletes would rely less on ritual and more on their skill. In fact,

00:21:49.640 studies show the opposite. They show that the better the athlete, the more rituals they have.

00:21:55.220 And that, my interpretation of that is that it's because the stakes are higher in their,

00:22:00.240 when they compete with other better athletes.

00:22:03.200 Yeah, I thought the research on sports and superstition was interesting because you highlight

00:22:07.240 that they don't do it all the time. And in not all sports, and there's some sports that are more

00:22:12.040 likely to encourage superstitious behavior. And it's basically sports where there's a lot of

00:22:17.900 uncertainty and there's like a lot of luck. So in baseball is a perfect example that you have

00:22:22.760 batters have this, have a lot of superstitious behavior because there is skill involved, but a lot

00:22:28.360 of it is, is luck. And so there, there's a tendency where there's, since there's uncertainty,

00:22:32.560 they're going to do these certain things in order to get a hit. Yes. And of course, some sports also

00:22:37.360 might encourage or allow for more ritualistic behavior just because of their structure,

00:22:43.040 just because of the fact that they, there are a lot of breaks. That's why it was, so we see

00:22:46.800 basketball players, for example, they engage in a lot of rituals before shooting free throws.

00:22:51.600 Tennis players, they have a lot of rituals because there are a lot of breaks in tennis and so on.

00:22:56.160 So, I mean, so is ritual just a way to soothe our feelings of worry and anxiety?

00:23:01.680 So that is the idea that has been proposed for over a hundred years by anthropologists.

00:23:06.100 And until very recently, nobody had tested it. So me and my colleagues were among the first teams to

00:23:11.920 test that theory. And we went about in, in several steps. So we started in the lab and in a laboratory

00:23:20.520 experiment, we induced anxiety. We brought people in inside the lab and we stressed them up by telling

00:23:26.780 them they had to prepare for a public speech, which really tends to stress people up. And we were

00:23:31.680 monitoring their physiology. So we know they were stressed and we were also monitoring their behavior.

00:23:36.980 So we had motion detectors and we see that the more stress they get, the more ritualized their behavior.

00:23:42.880 So the more patterned and rigid and repetitive it becomes. So this was the first step.

00:23:49.140 For the second step, we went out to the real world and we studied Hindu rituals in the island of

00:23:55.240 Mauritius. And we saw that when people go into the temple to perform those rituals, their heart rate

00:24:01.900 variability increases, which shows that they're better able to cope with stress. And we followed up with

00:24:08.160 other studies. We found that people who take part in more collective rituals, they have lower cortisol

00:24:13.340 levels. And we found that they are electrodermal activity. Another indicator of stress is reduced

00:24:19.540 after performing ritualized behaviors and so on and so forth. So from all this evidence and from other

00:24:24.840 studies, we know that ritual can actually work as a coping strategy to soothe anxiety.

00:24:30.900 So yeah, it sounds like what we do with rituals, we're creating order out of chaos.

00:24:34.680 Exactly. So our brain is a predictive machine. It makes active inferences about the state of the

00:24:41.760 world all the time. We don't just passively absorb stimuli. We use our prior knowledge to expect what's

00:24:48.060 going to happen. If I see a tiger out there, I don't wait to see if it's aggressive. I have some

00:24:54.340 assumptions about it, which come from my prior knowledge. So because our brain does this all the

00:24:59.540 time, when it has no ability to make predictions, which means when the situation is very uncertain,

00:25:05.320 when we don't know what to make of it, what to expect, that's when we experience anxiety.

00:25:09.720 And that's where ritual comes in. If ritual is anything, it is structure and order. When we

00:25:15.560 participate in a ritual, we know exactly what's going to happen. And we know exactly when and how.

00:25:20.880 And this gives us a sense of control over the world. And it doesn't really matter if that control is

00:25:26.660 is real or illusory. All that matters is that it has actual, tangible, measurable effects on our

00:25:33.480 ability to reduce stress. Yeah. It increases our sense of agency. I feel like we have more control

00:25:38.400 of the situation. And that makes sense, like why death would have rituals, not only in humans,

00:25:43.420 but in animals. It gives you, like, that's the most uncertain thing there is. And so it gives you a

00:25:47.800 sense of discomfort engaging those rituals around death. Absolutely. We might be tempted to think

00:25:54.980 that death rituals are for the dead. And of course, they're addressed to the dead, but their most

00:26:01.220 important function is for the living. It helps them cope with their anxiety. It helps them part

00:26:07.280 with their dead through a more gradual process. It allows them to say goodbye. And that's why in

00:26:12.060 some societies, we have mortuary rituals that involve keeping the dead around for sometimes even for

00:26:17.720 months to perform those rituals. What countries? That's an Asian country, right? Where they'll make like, 1.00

00:26:22.840 basically, they'll just treat them like they're still alive, like dress them up for a long time.

00:26:27.520 Yeah. So there's an Indonesian tribe called the Taraja. And in that context, when somebody dies,

00:26:34.080 they will keep their body in a room, in their house, on a bed for months. And as the body gets

00:26:42.080 dried up, they prepare for this elaborate ceremony that sometimes can require tons of material resources,

00:26:50.180 things like the sacrifice of buffalo. And during that time, they treat the dead as if they were

00:26:56.600 living. They bring them food, they bring them the latest gossip, they chat with them. And you can

00:27:02.120 really see that this is a process that allows the family members to gradually come to terms with the

00:27:07.380 new reality. And even after they lay them to rest, once a year, they will take them out of their tomb,

00:27:13.480 and they will parade those desiccated bodies around the village for everybody to see. 0.91

00:27:19.680 Okay. So ritual can make us feel calm and soothe our anxiety in a world of uncertainty.

00:27:25.180 And I think that's why we like to do rituals, even if it's like, not even like things you do on a

00:27:30.040 daily basis, but like you have holidays, you celebrate, you're like, at least there's Christmas,

00:27:33.520 or at least there's Thanksgiving I can look forward to in my life. That gives me some stability.

00:27:36.960 Going back to this idea of how ritual encourages group cohesion, your study showed that individuals

00:27:44.520 who take part in rituals, they sync up emotionally, their hormones, oxytocin is released, and there's

00:27:50.080 sort of a sense of togetherness. But you also talk about the type of ritual can influence whether a

00:27:57.540 group feels more or less cohesive. You talk about that there are two modes of ritual. What are those

00:28:02.700 modes and which promotes group cohesion more? Yeah. So this is an idea that comes from Oxford

00:28:08.120 anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse, who was my doctoral advisor. And he says there, if you look at the

00:28:16.380 rituals that are practiced around the world, you might get the impression at first that there's

00:28:23.880 infinite variability. But when you study them more systematically, you see that they fall into

00:28:28.380 patterns. So when you look at what types of rituals are out there, they almost invariably

00:28:34.020 fall into one of two types. One type is those rituals that are performed very frequently. For

00:28:40.000 example, Islamic prayer five times a day, Christian mass may take place every week, and so on and so

00:28:45.760 forth. Those rituals will tend to be low key, low arousal, even on the boring side, because they rely on

00:28:53.300 repetition to drill in the sense of identity and similarity with others. On the other hand of the

00:29:02.540 spectrum, you have these rituals that are very high in arousal. And those rituals, they don't tend to

00:29:08.300 take part very frequently. They will happen once a year, sometimes once a generation. Think of a wedding

00:29:15.360 or a presidential inauguration, those types of rituals. Now, those types of rituals, if they are to have the

00:29:21.880 same kind of impact, because they cannot rely on repetition, they have to rely on arousal. And arousal

00:29:29.040 creates a scar, if you will, in our brain. It creates those episodic memories that do not come

00:29:37.900 through doing the same thing again and again and again. They just come through doing this one big,

00:29:45.080 very impactful, and sometimes even traumatic thing. And if you think about the kinds of situations

00:29:51.020 in which we experience those kinds of traumatic events and the kinds of people that we tend to be

00:29:56.880 with, so who are you more likely to cry with? Who are you more likely to experience pain and suffering

00:30:03.220 and sorrow with? Typically, that's your closest relatives. So by engaging in those rituals with

00:30:09.920 other people, you get this sense of kinship. You get this strong sense of bonding that is stronger than

00:30:19.460 than the type of bonding that you can get through those low-key rituals. And one example of this

00:30:24.380 is going to war. So a lot of people have pointed out to the fact that when soldiers are willing to

00:30:31.360 sacrifice their life in the battlefield, they don't do it for any higher ideals, or they don't do it for

00:30:38.320 the flag. They don't do it for their country. They do it for their comrades. And the reason they do it for

00:30:44.180 their comrades is that those are the people they have experienced those highly intense, often traumatic

00:30:49.980 moments in the battlefield. Now, these high arousal rituals, rather than waiting for something like

00:30:55.940 war to happen, they proactively put participants through those painful experiences or stressful

00:31:03.240 experiences in order to create that sense, that strong sense of kinship and bonding.

00:31:08.300 Yeah. And that's why the military, they put recruits through this really arduous bootcamp

00:31:14.800 experience because it builds a sense of camaraderie and commitment to the group. And the more intense

00:31:21.420 the training, I'm thinking like buds for Navy SEALs, the more transformative the ritual is.

00:31:27.780 And as you were talking about those high arousal rituals, the type of thing that happens maybe

00:31:32.740 once a lifetime, it made me think of like rites of passage rituals from different cultures.

00:31:38.160 They're like that. Were there any that stood out to you that were high arousal and really left an

00:31:43.880 impact on the participants? Yeah, absolutely. Some of the rituals that I have studied can be

00:31:49.020 extremely painful. For example, in Mauritius, I study some of the rituals of the local Tamil community.

00:31:56.740 And those are rituals that are very widespread. They're performed in Southern India and Sri Lanka,

00:32:01.480 but wherever else you have members of the Indian diaspora, especially Tamils. And some of those 0.51

00:32:07.860 rituals involve piercing the body with hundreds of needles and skewers and even rods the size of

00:32:16.020 broomsticks that are pierced through the cheeks. And you can imagine that people have to hold them

00:32:21.360 with both hands and bite down at them because if they don't, just by the weight and the size of them,

00:32:25.940 they will rip their faces off. And as they do this, they will also carry these large miniature shrines

00:32:32.860 that can weigh up to a hundred pounds. And they're called kavadi, which literally means burden.

00:32:38.800 And they carry this burden throughout the entire day until they reach the temple of Murugan. And when

00:32:45.000 they do that, they also have to carry them up the hill. So it's an excruciatingly painful ritual.

00:32:50.240 We have studied this over many seasons. And we also see that this type of ritual can create very strong

00:32:57.580 bonding effects and it can play a fundamental role. It can leave an indelible mark on people's

00:33:04.320 individual and collective identity. Well, you also talk about these painful rituals. So the one you

00:33:09.740 just described and other ones, they serve as a strong signal to those in the community that you are

00:33:17.360 your potential ally. So how do these like painful rituals serve as a strong signal?

00:33:22.360 Yes. So ritual can have a communicative value. It can signal some things that are otherwise very

00:33:29.940 hard to observe. In a lot of human rituals, we see that what people are signaling is their

00:33:35.960 commitment to the community. Now, commitment is very tricky to discern. Of course, you can always say

00:33:43.100 that you're committed to a group, but that's a cheap signal, right? Anybody can say that they're

00:33:46.760 loyal to the group. But the only way to know is through observing other people's behavior. And

00:33:53.000 of course, when can you observe other people's behavior? When can you observe loyalty? Well,

00:33:57.960 when you go to the battlefield, for example, but that might be too late. So that's what these

00:34:03.260 rituals do. They preemptively put people into a situation where they have to signal their commitment.

00:34:08.400 So let's take, for example, a gang initiation ceremony. In those initiations, a lot of the time

00:34:14.920 people are asked to do something either extremely painful or psychologically horrible, something

00:34:20.580 like murdering somebody. Now, if you're willing to do this just to be one of us, then we can

00:34:26.740 be pretty certain that you really want to be one of us. That's the underlying logic of that

00:34:32.240 type of communicative signal. So if you're willing to put a skewer through your cheeks to take part

00:34:39.740 in that ceremony, then we can be pretty certain that you're a committed, loyal member of our group.

00:34:45.680 And it's a very effective device because it helps both those who send the signal and those who

00:34:51.500 receive the signal. So those who send the signal, their status increases in their community. And we

00:34:56.580 know this from a lot of studies that show that people who perform these acts of devotion, they're

00:35:02.140 seen as more moral, they're seen as more hardworking, more trustworthy, and so on and so forth.

00:35:07.740 And to those who receive the signal, that's also very valuable because they can discern the most

00:35:14.120 trustworthy individuals and the best cooperators, and then they can preferentially relate to them.

00:35:22.400 Okay. So it can build cohesion in multiple ways. I'm curious, when people are taking part in these

00:35:27.700 really painful, intense rituals, what's going on physiologically? Are they under stress or have

00:35:35.660 they somehow be able to separate mind from body where they can no longer feel the pain of the ritual?

00:35:42.040 So our measurements show that people are under extreme stress. We see that their levels of

00:35:46.700 electrodermal activity are higher than anything else they experience in their lives. We see that their

00:35:51.920 heart rates can sometimes reach 230, 240 beats per minute, levels that I never thought were possible,

00:35:57.880 actually, before I went into this. At the same time, we see that in some of those rituals,

00:36:03.360 people might experience a state of dissociation, so they don't necessarily remember their stress. So when

00:36:08.340 we ask them to describe their state of arousal during those rituals, in some cases, people have

00:36:13.700 told me that they felt as calm as they had ever been. And they thought that during the far walking

00:36:19.500 ritual, for example, their heart rates would be lower than any other part of the ceremony. Well, in fact,

00:36:24.300 it was the exact opposite. Invariably, we found that people had 200, 220 beats per minute

00:36:29.980 at that time. So it is both extremely stressful, but at times, because of that stress, perhaps,

00:36:37.020 it can lead to these states of dissociation where people do not at least remember their stress.

00:36:43.320 It's interesting. So the sociologist Emil Durkheim talked a lot about this idea of collective

00:36:47.880 effervescence that happened during rituals. What is collective effervescence and what role does that

00:36:52.540 play in ritual?

00:36:53.960 So Durkheim described this as a jolt of electricity running through a group of people when they

00:36:59.760 congregate to enact one of those highly emotional ceremonies. The best way I would describe

00:37:05.520 it is if you've ever felt goosebumps at the back of your neck while you were in the middle

00:37:11.620 of a large concert or sports stadium or a large demonstration where you have a large number

00:37:21.040 of people congregating and joined for a common cause and engaging in all those ritualized behaviors

00:37:27.340 like chanting. For Durkheim, that's one of the ways by which these rituals, they transform

00:37:34.020 a group of individuals into a cohesive whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

00:37:41.940 And for over a hundred years, this was a very elusive term.

00:37:46.780 Nobody knew what to do with it. Nobody knew how to measure the alignment of emotional states.

00:37:51.600 Nobody knew how to measure this togetherness that people are set to feel in the context

00:37:57.440 of those rituals. So my team and I were the first ones to try to quantify collective effervescence.

00:38:03.640 So we looked at people's physiology during those rituals and we see that when they take part

00:38:07.380 in highly arousing rituals, their heart rates begin to synchronize. And that physiological

00:38:14.060 synchrony in turn is predictive of social bonding. So Durkheim was right.

00:38:21.360 Yeah, I can. So yeah, I experienced that collective effervescence whenever I go to a University of

00:38:26.600 Oklahoma football game. And it's really interesting because like over, I've gotten kind of cynical

00:38:31.000 about collegiate sports. I just think it's, I go and I see these big giant stadiums like, man,

00:38:35.480 we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on sports. What's going on here? But then when I go

00:38:40.920 to a game, because my kid loves football, so we'll go to a game and they start doing the chants and

00:38:46.800 like the bands coming out and the drum majors got his head tilted back and I start getting the chills

00:38:53.040 down my neck. I'm like, this is great. I mean, even like the most cynical person can experience that

00:38:58.060 collective effervescence. Absolutely. And you know, American universities might be unique in the world

00:39:03.820 in terms of how much attention they pay to sports. And a lot of people think that might be just a

00:39:10.760 waste of resources. But at the same time, they might also be unique at the level of loyalty

00:39:15.960 they induce in their alumni. And that can be seen by the levels of donations that they receive.

00:39:24.040 So we've talked about how ritual can help us soothe their anxiety. It can give us order in our life

00:39:30.000 when everything seems crazy. It can bring us together with people. It can signal to others

00:39:35.000 that we are committed to the group. You've also looked at how ritual can influence just our overall

00:39:40.220 well-being, like our well-being in general. What does the research say there?

00:39:45.180 So there are a lot of correlational studies that mostly focus on religion. And they often find

00:39:51.380 a positive relationship between religiosity and well-being. But if you probe a little bit deeper,

00:39:59.600 you begin to see that it's not really about belief. This is more about ritual. So it's people who go to

00:40:05.980 a lot of ceremonies, who take part in those collective ceremonies. Those are the ones that reap the benefits

00:40:11.160 of those religious systems. And I believe this happens at at least two levels.

00:40:18.740 So at the psychological level, taking part in those ceremonies, as we discussed, gives you a sense

00:40:24.840 of order and control and helps you reduce anxiety. At the social level, it helps create bonds and helps

00:40:32.980 elicit, create and elicit networks of social support. And we know from other studies that social support networks

00:40:39.860 are probably the best buffer against anxiety. So rituals are these very efficient social technologies

00:40:47.080 that manage to harness different types of mechanisms in our psychology in order to produce

00:40:54.880 these effects at multiple levels.

00:40:57.100 So I'm curious, you've been studying ritual for over two decades. How has your research

00:41:02.100 changed how you approach ritual? I mean, do you try to incorporate ritual in your own life?

00:41:07.360 What's gone on there?

00:41:09.220 It might be a ritual since completely. It was a 180 because I grew up in Greece where the types of rituals

00:41:16.920 that I would take part in, at least the collective ones, were all forced upon me. So at school,

00:41:23.000 we had morning prayer and we had compulsory church attendance once a month and we had to take part in

00:41:28.920 parades. And if we didn't, we would get penalized. So I despised those kinds of rituals. I couldn't

00:41:36.040 understand why they made us do them. And now through after two decades of studying rituals, I've come to see that

00:41:42.620 those types of behaviors have very tangible effects. And I've also come to see that in my own life, I do have

00:41:50.740 a lot of rituals and I too consider them very important. So for example, if you see me prepare my morning

00:41:57.780 coffee and the level of detail that goes into that and the fact that I have to have it in a specific cup and in a

00:42:03.640 specific way, and if I don't do that, I feel that my day is not starting very well. Or the types of

00:42:09.920 collective rituals, for example, whenever I go back to my home country, whenever there's a game, I have to

00:42:15.680 visit that football stadium and I have to engage in those collective rituals, the group chanting, and I

00:42:20.820 still get those goosebumps at the back of my neck. And one important thing to note here is that I've been in

00:42:28.160 bigger stadiums. I've seen presumably bigger teams, although my team, of course, is the best,

00:42:34.580 but I don't get goosebumps there. So going back to Durkheim's view, he said that those types of

00:42:41.760 rituals, they don't just create social emotions out of thin air. They bring those who share them

00:42:47.700 into a closer communion. And that's exactly what I see in myself.

00:42:52.780 Well, Dimitris, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and

00:42:56.380 your work? You can go to my website, which is my last name. This is a perk of having a very rare

00:43:02.840 last name. So it's zigalatis.com and the links will lead you from there.

00:43:08.420 All right. Well, Dimitris Zigalatis, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:43:12.240 My pleasure.

00:43:13.520 My guest is Dimitris Zigalatis. He's the author of the book, Ritual, How Seemingly Senseless Acts

00:43:17.860 Make Life Worth Living. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more

00:43:21.980 information about his work at his website, zigalatis.com. And that's spelled X-Y-G-A-L-A-T-A-S.com.

00:43:29.780 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash rituals, where you can find links to resources,

00:43:33.880 where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:43:42.220 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:43:46.160 artofmanlius.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles written

00:43:49.820 over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

00:43:53.120 episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com,

00:43:57.240 sign up, use code MANLIUS at checkout for a free month's trial. Once you're signed up,

00:44:00.840 download the Stitcher app on Android and iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM

00:44:04.140 Podcast. And if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us your

00:44:07.720 view on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. Done that already. Thank you. Please consider sharing the

00:44:12.420 show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always,

00:44:15.740 thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay. Remind you on

00:44:18.780 Listen AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - September 19, 2022

The Power of Ritual

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript