issue207【today is the day】第九次作业 by revealiing

revealingUID: 2507748

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

Do rituals help define a culture? Is our sense of identity dependent upon ceremonies? Obviously, people will find it almost impossible to come to an agreement on the highly controversial issue due to their different experiences as well as conflicting values. In the last analysis, I am more inclined to support the first claim but oppose the second one in the title of the statement.

Consider the author's first assertion that rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Rituals and ceremonies are patterns of life; from the mirror of custom, we can know about a culture directly and vividly. For example, the greatest ceremony-Olympic Games in ancient Greece, which is still popular today, showed us ancient Greek culture of honor of Zeus as well as competition, peace and friendship. Or we can learn the culture of cruel slavery society from the ritual of ancient Roman wrestle. Even today, from various rituals and ceremonies in different countries and regions we know about colorful cultures of societies as well as distinct values of people. The ceremonies on the Christmas Eve, the Easter Day and so on in Euramerican countries show their religions of Christ, which is an important factor of their cultures. While, the rituals on the dragon boat festival, the mid-autumn festival and so on in China reveal more traditional eastern culture. As a result, rituals and ceremonies indeed reflect culture; even to some extent, we must concede that they help define a culture.

Consider the author's second claim that societies or groups of people will have a diminished sense of who they are without ceremonies and rituals. Admittedly, we cannot ignore the crucial part custom plays in our daily life. Nonetheless, we also have several other methods to show our culture and our identity. Rituals and ceremonies are not the only ways so we should not place over-emphasis on them. Take the Chinese culture which I am familiar with for an instance. We have delicious diet, interesting folklore, beautiful washes, delicate needlework, traditional medicine, ancient poems and the like, all of which are our cultures as well as the treasures of the whole world. Of course we also have rituals and ceremonies as mentioned in the above paragraph. Our sense of identity not simply depends on rituals and ceremonies but also depends on more aspects and several other factors. The loss of customs is a great pity indeed, but the sense of who we are cannot be easily diminished.

In addition, like it or not, with the advent of global era, our earth becomes smaller and smaller just like a global village. In every culture of the world, traditional rituals and ceremonies as well as other forms of culture are declining as a result of the modern trends of secularization and globalization. However, our sense of identity is not diminished but we try more efforts to preserve our culture and keep our identity than ever before. The sense of who we are is rooted in our hearts and souls but not relies on the superficial rituals and ceremonies; our identity sense, just as William Shakespeare once wrote “nothing of them doth fade”.

To sum up, there are several other aspects relevant to the issue under discussion, which, unfortunately, I have no time to explore in detail here. In my point of view above, we can define our culture through rituals and ceremonies, but they are not all or the only one. However, even more importantly, we should not ignore other factors either, which reflect and affect culture and society as well as the sense of who we are.

kangaroo323UID: 2448233

Argument & Issue的批改放到一个文档里了~见附件~