issue207 永不言弃互改小组 by mycolting

MYcoltingUID: 2563080

TOPIC: ISSUE207 - "Rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Without them, societies or groups of people have a diminished sense of who they are."
WORDS: 500          TIME: 00:40:00          DATE: 2009-3-3 22:18:19

The speaker asserts that rituals and ceremonies have a function of defining a culture. And if is not of them, people in societies or groups may have a vague sense of who they are. Admittedly, I do concede that rituals and ceremonies are helpful in defining a culture, nevertheless, in my point of view the functions of ritual are not only limited on the opinion as the speaker support.

To begin with, no matter what else may be said, most people have to admit that, to some extent, rituals and ceremonies play a crucial role in the reservation of cultural identities. Consider, for example, there are two races in China who are similar to each other such as cloths, dictator, and so forth. The only difference between two races is the wedding ceremonies that Bai tribe  must hold on the wedding ceremony in the family of bridegroom, while the wedding ceremony of Yi tribe have to carry out in the family of bride according to traditional customs. From the example mentioned above, it is understandable and reasonable for us to agree with the notion of speaker for the relevant examples are around the corner.

However, do the rituals and ceremonies originally aim to identify different cultures? Then why there are rituals and ceremonies in some solo tribes which disseminate in tropical areas? Some experts in civilization give several explanations about the particular phenomenon. Perhaps the primary goal of rituals and ceremonies is to retreat god to ensure harvest or victory in war. And perhaps the phenomenon merely reveals the fear of nature or substitute because of lacking science knowledge. All in all, the fact that the existence of solo tribes still preserve their own special rituals and ceremonies is opposite to the speaker's conclusion, it is possible and feasible to maintain cultural identity without rituals and ceremonies.

Moreover, under some circumstances without rituals and ceremonies, residents there can also distinguish with each other effectively and successfully. Taking some similar races as examples, which races may be identical at the level of rituals, these races, in fact, through their special costumes to different from them. Turn our attention to another more persuasive example, language. Common sense tells us that the essential feature of nation is her own language which, generally speaking, is bond to have difference with her neighboring countries. For example, most of us should have read the famous novel "The Last Lesson" written by Daudet, which describes a real story that the Frenchmen were forced to stop the instruction of French after their motherland was invaded by German. From the novel, it is obvious and easily for us to understand the function of languages that tell his native speaker who they are.

To sum up, I agree with that culture identities is one of the functions of rituals and ceremonies. Yet, as far as I am concerned, there must be other functions of the rituals and ceremonies. In addition, it is not the rituals and ceremonies have that function.