Issue207 【Persistence 小组】第19次作业

iamstoicUID: 2294314

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


The speaker contends that if there were no rituals and ceremonies that could help define a culture, societies or communities would have a declined sense of who they are. I concede that rituals and ceremonies are not the only way to remind people of their cultural background, otherwise, I fundamentally agree with this claim in that rituals and ceremonies play a significant role in maintaining the cultural identity which is at risk due to the globalization.

Admittedly, without rituals and ceremonies, people could have an sense of who they are through other aspects such as clothes, food, lifestyle, language to name but a few. For example, children could be saturated in the culture by learning literature, history, arts, music and any other curriculums which could manifest the culture of that society. Accordingly, children can acquire the knowledge of the Thanksgiving Day via the history and carols relating to it before they take part in the rituals or ceremonies of the Thanksgiving. Additionally, there are some rituals and ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and so forth which are not so different that can distinguish one culture from another. For instance, the funeral ceremonies have certain common features: the laying out, the watching of , and the mourning of the dead.

However, almost every culture is characterized by a distinctive set of rituals and ceremonies which can unite a group by preserving the cultural identity. The primary purpose of rituals and ceremonies which are the enactment of a cultural value is to associate the belief system of the individual with that of the society, since each individual sees the world edited by a definite set of patterns of culture in his/her society that is handed down mainly through traditional customs such as rituals and ceremonies, shaping each individual born into it experience and behavior. For instance, one of the holiday rituals – Thanksgiving Day – has been maintained since the year of 1863 in order to remind Americans that we should be thankful even at times of difficulties. Therefore, we can know who we are and the community around us through understanding and observing a unique set of rituals and ceremonies prescribed by our culture.

In the final analysis, in this era of globalization leading to the homogenization of culture and erasing the differences between locality, rituals and ceremonies, which are refined through many thousands of years of experience, provide us with a tool for defining cultures. Furthermore, it is through the rituals and ceremonies that our human beings can have the knowledge as well as experience of our own cultural identities.

[ 本帖最后由 iamstoic 于 2007-2-19 19:57 编辑 ]