【InEffable】第二次作业—Issue207—by azoi

azoiUID: 2636348

ISSUE207 - "Rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Without them, societies or groups of people have a diminished sense of who they are."


Do human beings only rely on rituals and ceremonies to realize our own sense of identities, as the statement maintains? I concede that rituals and ceremonies do reflect some aspects of our cultures, however, they are not the only ones that could evaluate the cultures.

Admittedly, rituals and ceremonies can more or less represent several aspects of one culture. The rituals can have a more basic social function in expressing, fixing and reinforcing the shared values and beliefs of a society. During wartime in ancient China, people often established rituals to pray for peace. This conduct reflects the good and honest, both of which are essences of Chinese traditional cultures. From this point of view, the rituals and ceremonies are set up to express human’s desires toward our society, usually, reveals our cultural expectations.

In addition, rituals and ceremonies also act as unique form to help people of the same culture backgrounds to establish the patriotic feelings and also contribute the harmonious of the nation. This is much more evident for those who living abroad for a long time, since certain scenarios which may inspire the reminder of the childhood or some other acquainting feelings. While, on the other hand, the splendid ceremonies also act like a window that may enable for those who come from the other cultures or other backgrounds to learn some respects of information or traditions. For example, we can see the differences of Chinese and western cultures from the marital ceremonies: Chinese ceremonies are more implicit while western ceremonies are more romantic, so do the two cultures. From this point of view, we can easily have a basic understanding of other cultures in a short time.

However, rituals and ceremonies do not demonstrate all the aspects of our cultures, that is to say, if rituals and ceremonies are diminished, our culture does not tend to be extinct as well. There are other factors that define a culture and people can distinguish different cultures from their dress, dietary habits, life-style and even speech and gestures. We cannot mistake an Arabian woman for American woman because they are wearing veils all the time. Also African-Americans distinguish themselves today by their manner of speech and gesture. In this situation, personal identity would be easily achieved.

Nowadays, most of our rituals and ceremonies remains are only symbols of a certain culture without any further traditions. Take Chinese traditional spring festival as an example, for Chinese all over the world the spring festival is the most important day during a year that families always get together to wish a happy and lucky next year. However, most of the Chinese have forgotten the origin of the important day in ancient time, the only thing the know is that spring festival is the first day in lunar calendar of China and in that day we often have delicious food and children would receive a myriad of lucky money. This culture is diminishing from generation to generation and as a result the remained rituals and ceremonies would represent nothing of a culture.

In sum, rituals and ceremonies are symbols for some aspects of a culture, not necessary but really important, and contribute to preserving some distinctive features of one culture. However, even if the rituals and ceremonies are extinct people won't loss its identities at the same time. It is the culture itself, which is represented by many factors that support our belief and manners.