issue207 jingjing（kito小组）互拍！^_^

jingjingtousUID：2164820

TOPIC：ISSUE 207 - "Rituals and ceremonies help define a culture. Without them, societies or groups of people have a diminished sense of who they are."
WORDS：525          TIME：0:45:00          DATE：2006-2-4

Here is a fast developing society towards economic globalization and cultural homogeneity. I strongly agree with the speaker on the foundation that rituals and ceremonies serve us as a tool to understand and define a culture. Nevertheless, I insist the part of the statement overstates the significance of rituals and ceremonies while trivializing some other factors such as the language and history which play an essential role in the process of defining a culture.

I agree with the statement insofar as rituals and ceremonies play an indispensable role in all traditions and cultures. They reflect the distinctiveness of different cultures including the values and ideas of a society and also tremendously influence our lives. For the individual perspective, we have different rituals and ceremonies for our distinct religious faith. Consider the Christian for example, they go to churches and pray regularly and celebrate the Christmas Day and Easter Day as their important activities each year. The Cross and the Bible are the symbols of Christianism, which brand every Christian who bless the God for the sake of good luck. Unlike the Christian, people from eastern countries almost believe the Buddhism, they always hold some significant ceremonies at the temples during their traditional festivals. Apparently, from different ceremonies we learn a variety of cultures and moreover, we understand the spiritual world of people with distinct cultural background.

For the societal perspective, it is rituals and ceremonies that set up the root of our diversified cultures, enhance the cohesion of different people in the nation as a whole and tie up the generations. We need not go further but just take a look at the culture of China. The old country has a long history as well as its civilization and moreover, the rituals and ceremonies which the culture cling to was never divided or interrupted. Admittedly, some conventional but trivial rituals such as the weddings, funerals and so forth were assimilated gradually by those of the western’s and spontaneously certain ceremonies which are traditional in the western countries, for instance, the commencement and coming of age are accepted by the indigenous culture. Nevertheless, until today, the Chinese people all over the world still hold banquets and rituals for celebrating their specific festivals such as Spring Festival and Mid-Autumn Day and through which, the identity of the unique culture was preserved and aware throughout the world. Eventually, the civilization of the race was imparted from generation to generation.

Therefore, I am hard-pressed to discern the differences of cultures without considering the various ceremonies. The lack of meaningful rituals in the mainstream culture of America underscores this point. Nonetheless, we should account for other elements such as history and language which also contribute a lot to the learning of the formulation and evolution of a unique culture. For one thing, history is the collective mirror of a special culture, which prevents the descendants from repeating the same mistakes while providing them wisdoms and inspiring them to learn about the current society as well as predict its future. With the better comprehension of the remarkable historical events or the famous heroes, we can obtain a more clear realization of current traditions and cultures. For another thing, rituals and ceremonies also require the assistance of language. Language is another fundamental tool for defining a culture. It helps impart the cultures and instill the descendants the merits and views that a particular group cherished commonly.

To sum up, as dicussed above, I concede the speaker's allegation on the foundation that rituals and ceremonies reflect the distinctiveness amony the different culture. However, when it comes to define a special culture, we should consider its history and language, which play a significant role in the evoluation of the culture.

临考，请大家多多指教！^_^

智恩UID：2160717

在word里改的，字要大些，看得没有那么恼火，直接在这里改，字太小了