Issue207 【Persistence 小组】第十九次作业。不容易的一道题啊，拖了很久

欣馨之火UID: 2183210

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


(推迟了n多天，看了n多资料，参考了n多范文，下面写的很多东西都不是自己的了。我顶多起了一个拷贝、加工的作用。上帝保佑临场不是这道题，或者就是这道题——但是不要判我“雷同”啊！)
The speaker claims that societies or groups of people would not have a sense of who they are without rituals and ceremonies which help define a culture. I agree that ritual and ceremony benefits preserving cultural identity, to some extent, in modern times. Further reflection, however, shows that the speaker's statement overemphasized the status of the rituals and ceremonies in one culture. From my point of view, ritual and ceremony is one kind, not the only form, of cultural identity, and they are not the essence of one culture. Societies or groups of people will always have the sense of who they are even if some rituals and ceremonies have become extinct.

Admittedly, rituals and ceremonies can represent several aspects of one culture and provide the outsides with opportunities to know well about the culture. On one hand, rituals and ceremonies help people who have the same culture backgrounds to strengthen their cultural identity and to preserve their tradition of the culture. For instance, when people take part in a ceremony, the familiar scenarios can remind them which group they belong to and inspire their acquainting and patriotic feelings. On the other hand, through certain rituals and ceremonies, people from other culture will learn some respects of one culture. Rituals and ceremonies offer excellent windows through which people from different culture to learn and communicate with each other.

Though the rituals and ceremonies gave deep impression on either insides or outsides, it is the traditional cultures and customs, not the rituals and ceremonies, that serve as paramount figure in preservation and maintenance of one nation as discussed below.

First of all, the rituals and ceremonies is only the demonstration of one or several aspects of one culture and cannot define a culture in general. For example, playing firecrackers or fireworks in Chinese New Year has been used as a ceremony to frighten away evil spirits in the past year, and it has lost its original purpose with the maintenance of Spring Festival. Even without playing firecrackers, the traditional custom--celebrating Chinese New Year--which can strengthen the cultural identity of Chinese people is still preserved. In addition, the rituals and ceremonies is not the only way to identify the cultures. There are many other ways such as distinctive dress, foods and lifestyles that can also do the same thing. That is why many distinctive cultures survive in modern time while most of their traditional rituals and ceremonies have disappeared.

Furthermore, as I have mentioned above, a certain amount of rituals and ceremonies have lost their original purposes or even extinct because they originate from ignorance. In the ancient time when our ancestors have not gained enough knowledge about the unknown world, they have to cherish their hopes of deities and show their respects to the gods by certain rituals and ceremonies. Therefore, with the development of science and technology, these rituals and ceremonies have become extinct.

In the final analysis, the rituals and ceremonies, as one form of manifestation of several aspects of one culture, do contribute to preserving some distinctive traditions or customs of the culture. However, one cannot say that societies or groups of people probably loss their cultural identity when rituals and ceremonies become extinct.