Issue207 [mettle小组]第五次作业

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Admittedly, rituals and ceremonies are conducive for people to acquire the certain essences of a culture. However, to my point of view, they are yet far away from objectively evaluating the all-round aspects of a culture owning to the complexity of culture, and besides, they are not the only way to observe a culture as well as identify the role of people in it.

First of all, it is true that rituals and ceremonies are of great importance to preserve culture identity and they are also helpful for people to be better aware of who they are among others, especially in the modern society where people are confronted with the ever-increasing pace of life accompanied with drastic impact from external culture. The current Chinese Spring Festival is a good case in point. Though some people would choose to keep on working or take a travel during the Spring Festival holiday, the majority of people will still reunion with families to enjoy traditional dinner through elaborately preparation and visit relatives with presents after meals. It is the above mentioned rituals that provide people with a real sense of culture and compose the tie among friends and relatives from which people are conscious of the actual role they play in the society. In addition, given this annually held ceremony, the custom of accentuating the harmony in family thus gets the chance to hand down form one generation to another, which is a typical example of preserving the culture identity. Hence, we can not afford to ignore the significance of rituals and ceremonies of our daily lives.

However, rituals and ceremonies are not eligible to represent the whole culture of a society or a nation. One tenable reason is that a culture is too complicated since it involves all aspects of people’s lives such as behaviors, habits, religion, educations and so on. Whereas rituals and ceremonies are no more than a simple culture symbol , which only release several certain facets rather than the general picture of a culture. Additionally, some kinds of rituals are limited to specific group of people which can not be held as representation of all the people of a society or a nation. Citing the Muslims in China for example, they loyally follow the religion of Islam, and absolutely conform to the principles of Koran while the rest Chinese do not act that way. Simply put, one should not draw the accurate definition from only several rituals in a culture which will probably lead to partial and superficial conclusion.

Furthermore, rituals and ceremonies are not yet the only means to help to identify a culture for there are many other methods available to distinguish the culture. For instance, the literary works supply a direct and concrete way to describe a culture and reflect the hidden meanings of rituals and ceremonies to some extent which may not be gained from external actions. Similarly, the art works such as paintings and sculptures can be utilized to define the value held by a culture. Far more other medium such as movies, radios, and TV programs all contribute for people to identify a culture in deep sight.

Taken together, we have to concede that with the absence of rituals and ceremonies we surely lose a crucial way to comprehend a culture. However, we can not conclude the overall sense of a culture relying on mere ceremonies and rituals which may lead to the insufficient or even false understanding. Given other means to define a culture, ceremonies and ritual are by no means the only way to accomplish the same aim.

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