issue207 51互助组第6次作业 by ruczephyr

ruczephyrUID: 2181202

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

In very recent society, there is a revealing phenomenon that people, gradually, take rituals and ceremonies mechanically and many even do not know the meanings and derivative of such rituals. So will people feel lost without the definition of culture from rituals and ceremonies? Fundamentally, I am prone to assert that people still have clear knowledge of who they are, even though an growing amount of individuals do not treat rituals seriously.

Obviously, increasingly speed-up pace of modern life does not grant people enough time to enjoy their traditional ceremonies, thus it can not be too difficult to understand the unseriousness of people when treating ceremonies. Inevitably, only the most paramount ritual would accompany with holidays, while the majority of rituals are fully filled with business. And even in the holidays people are still struggling with their works which results in that little spare time is available to enjoy the ritual traditions. A case in point could best illustrate such phenomenon that there is still large proportion of people are not able to enjoy the Spring Festival- the most grand ritual for Chinese for great accountability. Gradually, the position of tradition ceremonies only lies in a chance for people to have themselves relaxed rather than culturally celebrating commemorating value as the ancestors did.

Yet, insufficient time would not be a good reason for overlooking the significance of traditional rituals and ceremonies.  Providing that most time is occupied by business, people also have many ways to celebrate these ceremonies, such as deference toward ancestors from media including movie, book and so forth, and ritual habit of eating some certain kind of food, and etc. Thus, the omission of traditional ceremonies largely attributes to changed mind of the people that better lives have already numerous forms of amusement and traditional entertainment from traditional ritual and ceremonies weighs less comparing with modern amusements. Consider, for example, people are able to linger in theatres and cinemas to enjoy latest plays of movies, so they might not stick to pranks on Halloween for entertainment.

What is more, though people might intend to overlook rituals and ceremonies, here I would claim that the definition of culture is not completely made up of several rituals or ceremonies, and culture contains colorful elements in every detail of ordinary lives. As rituals and ceremonies are only presented to memorize significant spots in history,  so the entire definition of culture involves in diet ,life styles of people, value system toward life and the world and ways of entertainment for example. For instance, the romance of French suggests their leisure in life, African wildness implies their special vigor and celebrated Chinese diet has close relation with their traditional intelligence. Naturally, passed from generations, culture leaves many remnant in details of our lives, and our life styles are partly copied from our ancestors, though modified by ourselves to some extent.

Thus, the disregard of the rituals and ceremonies would not harmfully effect people to obtain the sense of who they are, people also are able to draw self-satisfactions of traditional derivative from such form of traditional vestiges embedded in most ordinary live of the people. As mentioned above, when watching French films one does not have troubles sensing lives full of romantic joy, when facing African dance we can also experience directly their braveness facing natural difficulties, and when tasting delicious Chinese food, it is easy to find the originality and creativity of ancient Chinese people. Consequently, if carefully distilled from the most common life, we can easily avoid getting cultural lost. And the only significant point lies in the requirement that we must draw careful attention to our lives rather than take it for granted or leave it too natural to place emphasis on.

In brief, it is true that rituals and ceremonies does not draw enough attention by modern people, however this does not result in a diminished sense of self-assurance. And it is the most detailed ordinary lives that can reflect the real definition of culture.