Closure, as Ted points out, is vital here. It is a structural part of all genuine ritual. A scroller never has closure on anything, which means he is de-structured, which soon enough produces de-struction - of attention, focus, meaning, significance. I'm reminded here of Hegel's concept of "bad infinity", which isn't infinity so much as endlessness - something quite different. What is more endless than a social media scroll? That is why articles like this are so helpful, because they encapsulate, limit and define, and thus enable us to get to grips with this toxic phenomenon in something like a constructive way.
You know, Hegel's "good" versus "bad" infinity is very relevant here: "good" infinity means sustained transformation and development that achieves genuine progress, like the development of a musical theme or a scientific idea. "Bad" infinity is the tedium of the disjointed, structure-less, never-ending parade of meaningless and decontextualized bits and pieces.
I'm sitting at a desktop, in a browser, with a proper keyboard, not the infantile touch screen. It feels very 90s: the Internet is something I sit down and go to, not something I carry around with me all the time and stare anxiously at.
Don't you love it when people who can't even walk ten paces without staring at their phones bump into other people, or trip and fall, or nearly get hit by cars, or don't notice that the manhole cover is off? I see people staring at their phones while RIDING BIKES! A danger to themselves and others, and just plain rude.
My painting is ritualised. All my concentration is focused upon my work. My senses connect my intention to it. Every movement of the edge of my brush is simultaneously a part of a ritual and a ritual in and of itself.
I'm sixty eight years old now and I have conducted this ritual on most days for as long as I can remember. I am conscious that everytime I enact this almost daily ritual I am continuing the ages old deeply needful human action of leaving a physical mark upon space as an expression of what it is to be alive and present.
I tried dipping an old obsolete phone in paint a while ago to see what kind of marks I could wrest out of it by utilising it as a replacement 'brush'. Big gestures. Big Marks. Painting from the shoulder.
I've only been painting for five or six years but yes, it's a ritual that more or less completely shuts off the outside world, or at least the fast-paces parts of it.
I like how you used an alternate object (the phone) for applying paint. This is fun to do and I do it all the time: spatulas, brushed tapes to long sticks, tree branches, cut up sponges, paper towel rolls, etc.....
Yep it's fun to do and surprisingly useful even if it only as a way of jolting one out of a painting rut. I like to draw with my eyes shut too for the same reason. I'm always looking for different ways to express what I see and how I feel about it. Learn the rules then break them joyously.
I dropped out of the online world from the summer of 2020 until December of 2022. Starting a vegetable garden was a beautiful and sane way to spend my days--no TV, no scrolling. Quiet gardening in the sun became my ritual.
My brain needed the break for so many reasons you listed here.
So you now have an employee who responds online? Sorry; I’m just teasing. This reply is a self own of my own online life. I do get something out of articles like this that is much more than a quick hit of dopamine- I get food for thought for times when I’m away from the device. Thank you Ted for this insightful piece!
This is why I make a point of listening to music predominantly on vinyl. I still use streaming services to discover new music or while on the move, but when I really like a record, I buy it on vinyl as and when I can. Apart from the much-needed break from my phone, vinyl gives me focus, intentionality, and purpose.
I second this. Although I use CDs instead of vinyl.
I have found that separating "hunting for new music" (which you can use streaming for just fine) from "actually listening to music" is useful for being present in my own life.
Yes, absolutely: there’s something about physical records (in whichever format) that gives a whole new meaning and purpose to the act of choosing, and enjoying, music.
Definitely. I use CDs and gave up vinyl long ago. But my older daughter might convince me otherwise ... (as long as we don't play Taylor Swift all the time).
Kinda related--I would rather use a cookbook than a website for recipes. The ads on food blogs / sites are insane. If I do resort to the internet for a recipe, I copy the text, paste it into a Word document and save it on my hard drive. So much more peaceful for working in the kitchen.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I love the attention required with vinyl, the embodiment of getting up to flip the record, the more careful (and limited) selection of what I'm going to listen to.
Ted, can you talk about the difference between ritual and habit? Getting up and making coffee and reading the newspaper before you get down to business may get you in the right mind for doing said business, but that just seems like a set of habits to me and not a ritual. Mindfully brushing your teeth is a good habit, not a ritual. If "ritual" is going to mean something substantial, it needs to be more than mere habit-chaining, even as it includes habit-chaining. Most people have habit-chains in their lives, for better or for worse, but that is not the same as, say, participating in a weekly religious event or even subscribing to a concert or theater series. I think you outline many of the differences in your Wallace-Stevens-referencing article structure, but detailed, attentive coffee prep is not a ritual in and of itself. What is the missing thing? It's not just mindfulness.
Yes. I thought the same thing. Ritual is much more than habit. Habit is a repetitious act that grounds daily life. Ritual has that repetitious form, but it does something more: it enacts a myth that binds one to a transcendent order.
Thanks for bringing up this point to consider! I think Ted mentioned it in point 12: the goal is always transformative and empowering. The definition of a habit is action taken without conscious thought (due to a trigger and reward system). Ritual is deliberate and there is an element of alchemy.
Could we view habit and ritual on a continuum? So habits (healthy ones at least, like mindfully making breakfast or taking a morning walk in nature) can be the foundation of a life that sometimes rises to ritual. For example, the mindful walk becomes a form of meditation. And if they don’t, well at least you’re filling your life with healthy things rather than excessive, endless consumption of content pushed at you by companies that make money from your ‘engagement’.
I get your point completely. My interpretation is that it depends on how the attendees of the ritual view its purpose. I brush my teeth because I don't want cavities -- and that is a good habit. I start my day in a certain way five days a week and in a different way two days a week because it is important for me to do so in order to have the rest of the day properly organized and more likely to be successful. So that habit, if you were, is more important to me for the structure of actions providing for me a foretaste of the day to come rather than just the individual actions themselves. Consequently for me, my morning routine is a ritual while for you it may not be. Depends on how the individual interprets its significance. I suspect that when one examines their life closely, they will find examples where more meaning is attached to some repetitive actions than others. I discovered that of myself some time ago and have learned to honor those (perhaps not wholly rational) cases accordingly.
I wonder if there has to be a greater-than-ourselves intention to it? A purpose beyond simply being? A ritual in honour of, remembrance of, observance of... #?
I think mindfulness, or awareness, combined with a bodily/emotional feeling of the metaphysical reality behind the ritual, is what makes it a ritual rather than a mere habit.
From the audience's perspective, yes. From the musicians point of view, no. A performance implies a predetermined destination, while an improvisation is about discovery.
It might, yeah, though I think for masterful performers, it's about finding something new in a song every time and leaving open spaces for experimentation even in established arrangements. Leonard Cohen says wise things about that, (as do most masterful performers, of course) but I'm not finding the passage just now... without that, it's just being a human jukebox, which happens probably to jazz musicians on bad nights, too.
Agreed .These things are on a continuum between all music of course. But the jazz aesthetic, uniquely in western music (in my opinion) prioritizes process over product. Thought was interesting to note, given Mr. Gioia's jazz background.
And since I'm the purveyor of a Beatles substack, I'll add here that one of my favourite comments ever made about them is the observation (I think it was Steve Turner) who noted that one of the keys to their extraordinary musical alchemy is that the Fabs were closer to jazz musicians in their approach to their music in the studio than pop or rock artists, being unusually (esp for the time) open to the role of improvision and accident in their arrangements and recordings, rather than a structured thought-out-ahead-of-time plan.
Lovely chatting with you! Stop by the Abbey sometime, if you're inclined.
I just reviewed what Joseph Campbell said about ritual. He mentioned that ritual came from vision, a higher form of insight than whatever comes from words used to describe the connection between myth and ritual. Whenever we are only talking about ritual, we aren't participating in a way where we can benefit from it. This column was a good reminder about how to get back into connecting myth with our daily lives. Thank you for it.
Even small rituals: washing one's face, brushing teeth, getting dressed, making the bed, eating breakfast, if done mindfully center us to start the day.
While your cultural critique is strong and important, it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how dopamine works, thankfully for humanity.
Anna Lembke is wrong— a dopamine fast is not a thing (or, if it were a thing, it would be Parkinson's disease— well beyond anhedonia). Dopamine is an extremely complex neurochemical, but for what we’re talking about here, it mainly drives only one type of pleasure: that is desire, the pleasure of the hunt, also known as “wanting.”
Satisfaction—the pleasure of the feast, known as “liking” to people unlike Lembke, who actually understand neuroscience and addiction— relies on endogenous opioids, endorphins etc. (In other words, you can get completely high on opioids even if you have no dopamine!)
What happens in addiction is that desire (“wanting”) escalates but satisfaction (“liking”) either stabilizes or drops. The reality is that most people DO NOT become addicted, even if they try cocaine, heroin, fentanyl or gambling. The percentage of people who become addicted to most drugs is around 10-20% and for gambling, it’s around 1%. We don’t know yet what the deal is with internet addiction, but you need to understand what addiction is and what drives it before you can make proclamations that we’re all hooked and doomed.
Basically, addiction is compulsive behavior despite negative consequences. If consequences of engagement with an activity are life-expanding (like love, art, child-rearing), compulsive behavior despite negative experience is necessary: if we couldn’t persist despite these experiences, we’d never succeed in love or art or parenting. So, if you are obsessively engaged with your art or your love but it’s making your life better, that’s not an addiction— if it’s making your life worse, it is.
Who is at highest risk for addiction? People in distress, typically due to childhood trauma, incipient mental illness, existential despair or all three. It is these predispositions that cause anhedonia and lead people to seek relief in drugs or other compulsive behavior. The drugs work at first— but over time, they start to fail and make things worse. This, not dopamine alone, is what drives anhedonia in addiction.
And this is why a “dopamine fast” is absolutely the last thing you want to do if you are attempting to recover from addiction and why punishment and tough love fail. The problem in addiction is not too much pleasure, but too little satisfaction and meaning.
Taking away pleasure therefore, fails. Replacing it with better pleasure— AKA art that satisfies, intrigues and shines or real love or motivation to making meaning— is what’s needed.
Please do not help drive pop culture misunderstanding of the neuroscience of addiction and recreate the horribly failed drug war approach to improving internet health!!
Maia, I'm enjoying your detailed response to TG here. Thank you. I think TG is suggesting that ritual is a satisfying and meaningful response to the emptiness that ensues from chasing dopamine, and he's using Substack to reach us. He doesn't appear to be endorsing a "drug war" approach.
thanks...It's just that the "chasing dopamine" idea endorses the drug war approach because it focuses on restricting the supply of "bad pleasures" rather than why we seek escape. If we don't understand how dopamine actually works and think it is something we should want to "fast" from, we're not going to solve this problem effectively.
I’m not sure ritual is the grounding antidote to our techno-virtual mania. The Catholic reenactment of Christ’s last supper has a grounding effect, but it’s a grounding in a story from Christ’s life—and story is always secondary, an interpretation of reality.
We postmoderns have been living through the wholesale destruction of the myths and rituals that have grounded Western culture for centuries—and into the vacuum of meaning have stepped the techno-dweebs and the lords of capital they serve. We live in the breach.
On that I think we agree, but the prime antidote is contact with the Real—“chopping wood and carrying water,” as the Zen monks put it. Out of THAT contact—out of an original relationship to humanity’s enduring realities—visionary men and women create new, authentic art and maybe someday even new rituals more adequate to our times.
I agree, but your estimation of the Catholic Mass fails to see that the Mass is real. In that, at least for the participants in the Rite, they are brought face to face with Christ's death on the Cross, not a mere remembrance of the Last Supper, though that is part of it. The more essential part of the Mass, I think, is that it is really a re-presentation of Calvary. Christ is *really* there.
To add to your last paragraph, here is a quote of St. Theresa of Avila, "God is in the pots and pans." Monastics and monks, Christian or Zen make their business out of acquainting themselves with the real, and the present moment, the only place where ultimate Transcendence is found, though both schools disagree on how that Transcendence searches for us.
The key phrase is “at least for the participants in the rite.” A self awareness of one’s role in making the rite real destroys its reality, for most modern people. Hence your scare quotes around “really.”
This agnostic finds great beauty in religious ritual, and in the places built for that purpose. The older, the better! Cathedrals, humble meeting houses, everything dedicated to ceremony. I grew up in a religion where the most important rituals take place behind closed doors--no non-believers allowed (Mormonism). It kinda follows that Mormon churches are, more often than not, the same wherever you go. Nothing special about them. That's why I like the old Mormon buildings with a history. Trouble is, they have often torn the beautiful old buildings down (see the tale of the lovely Coalville, Utah Tabernacle).
Kids unable to watch a movie without a dopamine fix? Maybe they exist. But in the very small pool of my teenagers and their friends, I don’t see it. I see kids devouring long and complex films to discuss and analyze. I see kids drawing all afternoon. I see kids learning instruments or singing sea shanties together. I see my son using his grandfather’s 60-year old Nikon to learn how to photograph slowly and deliberately. I see my other child reading books on the theatre and dreaming of their own shows. Maybe some kids of this generation are hooked on social media. But the kids I see blow me away with their thoughtfulness and curiosity. They encourage me put down my phone and finally pickup that huge book I bought in college but never read.
I can only hope my kids wind up with friends like your kids' some day! They're in middle childhood, not yet teenagers, but less and less accompanied by other children who want to play, create art, etc. They're all hooked into group chats and watching youtube shorts and tiktoks and playing video games while my kids are left wondering "what's so great about all that?"
May I ask what kind of environment these kids live in? There are definitely exceptions to the kids mentioned in my comment, but they're students at a school in most of the most deprived areas in the town where I live (with a higher than average percentage of kids in care or with a parent in prison, with the majority of the kids eligable for free school meals). There are some who get engaged with afterschool clubs, sports and school plays, but it's a very different environment to the private boarding school where I did a term of my training [for the record, I also find the kids at my school more consistently interesting and rewarding to teach when they //are// engaged, but phone addiction is a real and clear issue].
. . . and here I was, scrolling to read your post about ritual. Frightening. I find myself increasingly thankful that I am as old as I am (79) and won't be here for what is coming. Now I am even more grateful for my daily rituals. Spending time with nature is my most important one. Even if it's merely going out to our backyard and watching the birds and other little critters like lizards going about their own rituals. Plus staying in the moment and not worrying about what might happen or what I think ought to happen.
Pray…isolate yourself, find quiet, be quiet and self reflect. It is difficult at the start and one must go slowly. It is soul cleansing… calming to the spirit and uplifting. Search for the peace and it will be bright…thank you, Ted for your constant inspiration.
Ted: I'm enjoying your Substack immensely and I will over time probably buy half the albums you recommended in your 50 best lists. I won't download them. I will buy them as vinyl or CDs. Please tell anybody you know in the music industry. I am vaguely familiar with many of those artists but because of the devolution of music criticism and radio I haven't heard or read enough about these artists to put some money down.
As to solutions to the distraction culture, the easiest and most accessible recommendation I could give would be for someone to learn to play a musical instrument. A harmonica costs $50. Electric keyboard under $500. Good beginner guitar under $1000. There are a kajillion YouTube videos to help you. I started playing guitar in 1976 mostly learning from books, but once YouTube instructional videos got going, I've been able to learn 10X more than I ever did from books. And any kid from about age six can do this.
Another possibility is to take up a hobby like woodworking. This can get expensive over time, but you can always start with simple projects and gradually and build up your shop as budget allows. In a similar manner, working in one of the trades is a great way to learn to focus your attention--while making money to boot. Carpentry is a great trade to learn, more interesting and varied than the others. And the thing that people don't understand about the trades is how hard you have to focus, how creative you have to be every single hour of every job, and how satisfying it is to solve a problem. Read Matthew Crawford's book Shopcraft as Soulcraft on this. I've been doing carpentry and woodworking as a living, a hobby and occasional side gig for 50 years now. I'm arguably more knowledgeable than 80 percent of the people doing it now. I know enough to build my own house from the ground up and all the furniture in it but I'm still learning new things. I spent six hours in the shop yesterday and checked my phone twice.
Even if manual. arts or music isn't intrinsically valuable, six or eight hours of working with your hands is its own form of dopamine and one that leaves you feeling better at the end of a day instead of strung out and anxious.
Yes, vinyl records, not streaming. (although I do stream) and music music music overall. And ideally the music that had more substance, more meaning, and was less disposable and consumerist. (and no, I'm not a Boomer, but I don't listen to the music of my youth because it has no substance to engender any ritual beyond a club night.) <3
A few years ago, we went searching for a new bathroom vanity. We went shopping, but couldn't find anthing we liked. So I looked at hiring a local carpenter to build one. He delivered exactly what we wanted, and it turned out to be cheaper than most of the others we'd eyeballed. Solid wood, too! Not the standard made-in-China particle board. Carpentry is as much an art as it is a trade. Bravo.
Excellent piece Ted! My husband Peco and I experienced a similar reaction to our recent writing on the (esp. 3Rs of Unmachining: Guideposts for an Age of Technological Upheaval and Sowing Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private)https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/sowing-anachronism-how-to-be-weird.
Especially Parents and Educators are profoundly concerned with the distraction and addiction they are witnessing and desperately want guidance to help their children and students reconnect with reality. The "great rewiring" of digitally captive brains will require a turning away from the virtual, and a turning toward the Real: agency (action in the real world) and communion (with people in the real world)(see Build a Songbird Compass https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/cp/141896694). Thanks for your writing Ted!
I realise now my bedtime (sometimes morning, on days off) routine is actually a ritual to help me shuck off the often tech-mediated stresses of the day. I'm going to start calling it a ritual and honouring it more. Great piece, thank you.
Closure, as Ted points out, is vital here. It is a structural part of all genuine ritual. A scroller never has closure on anything, which means he is de-structured, which soon enough produces de-struction - of attention, focus, meaning, significance. I'm reminded here of Hegel's concept of "bad infinity", which isn't infinity so much as endlessness - something quite different. What is more endless than a social media scroll? That is why articles like this are so helpful, because they encapsulate, limit and define, and thus enable us to get to grips with this toxic phenomenon in something like a constructive way.
You know, Hegel's "good" versus "bad" infinity is very relevant here: "good" infinity means sustained transformation and development that achieves genuine progress, like the development of a musical theme or a scientific idea. "Bad" infinity is the tedium of the disjointed, structure-less, never-ending parade of meaningless and decontextualized bits and pieces.
There are a couple good new books about Hegel, trying to undo the false ideas about him that became popular in the second half of the 20th century.
All yes, but let’s not forget, when writing what you wrote, you were scrolling and swiping.
Couldn't he have been sitting at a desktop computer typing? Maybe you view them as one and the same but I find them to be very different practices.
I'm sitting at a desktop, in a browser, with a proper keyboard, not the infantile touch screen. It feels very 90s: the Internet is something I sit down and go to, not something I carry around with me all the time and stare anxiously at.
And when I'm done, I get up and leave it. Note the element of closure in my old-fashioned, 1990s-style use of the internet.
Well said, me likewise!
same!
Don't you love it when people who can't even walk ten paces without staring at their phones bump into other people, or trip and fall, or nearly get hit by cars, or don't notice that the manhole cover is off? I see people staring at their phones while RIDING BIKES! A danger to themselves and others, and just plain rude.
I love the irony of that comment…
And this, ladies and gentleman, is the irony of our online-self. Let’s (not) get lost.
Or we could fall - recurse - forever...
Chances are that we already are.
Not a metaphysical thing about that note on the comment, Frank....
Tio Mitchito
My painting is ritualised. All my concentration is focused upon my work. My senses connect my intention to it. Every movement of the edge of my brush is simultaneously a part of a ritual and a ritual in and of itself.
I'm sixty eight years old now and I have conducted this ritual on most days for as long as I can remember. I am conscious that everytime I enact this almost daily ritual I am continuing the ages old deeply needful human action of leaving a physical mark upon space as an expression of what it is to be alive and present.
I tried dipping an old obsolete phone in paint a while ago to see what kind of marks I could wrest out of it by utilising it as a replacement 'brush'. Big gestures. Big Marks. Painting from the shoulder.
The result was ugly.
It got recycled.
I've only been painting for five or six years but yes, it's a ritual that more or less completely shuts off the outside world, or at least the fast-paces parts of it.
I like how you used an alternate object (the phone) for applying paint. This is fun to do and I do it all the time: spatulas, brushed tapes to long sticks, tree branches, cut up sponges, paper towel rolls, etc.....
Yep it's fun to do and surprisingly useful even if it only as a way of jolting one out of a painting rut. I like to draw with my eyes shut too for the same reason. I'm always looking for different ways to express what I see and how I feel about it. Learn the rules then break them joyously.
I dropped out of the online world from the summer of 2020 until December of 2022. Starting a vegetable garden was a beautiful and sane way to spend my days--no TV, no scrolling. Quiet gardening in the sun became my ritual.
My brain needed the break for so many reasons you listed here.
So you now have an employee who responds online? Sorry; I’m just teasing. This reply is a self own of my own online life. I do get something out of articles like this that is much more than a quick hit of dopamine- I get food for thought for times when I’m away from the device. Thank you Ted for this insightful piece!
This is why I make a point of listening to music predominantly on vinyl. I still use streaming services to discover new music or while on the move, but when I really like a record, I buy it on vinyl as and when I can. Apart from the much-needed break from my phone, vinyl gives me focus, intentionality, and purpose.
I second this. Although I use CDs instead of vinyl.
I have found that separating "hunting for new music" (which you can use streaming for just fine) from "actually listening to music" is useful for being present in my own life.
I wrote about this just few days ago:
https://backtobasic.substack.com/p/music-may-yet-save-our-humanity
Yes, absolutely: there’s something about physical records (in whichever format) that gives a whole new meaning and purpose to the act of choosing, and enjoying, music.
Definitely. I use CDs and gave up vinyl long ago. But my older daughter might convince me otherwise ... (as long as we don't play Taylor Swift all the time).
Kinda related--I would rather use a cookbook than a website for recipes. The ads on food blogs / sites are insane. If I do resort to the internet for a recipe, I copy the text, paste it into a Word document and save it on my hard drive. So much more peaceful for working in the kitchen.
Exactly! Gives you clarity of mind and purpose
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I love the attention required with vinyl, the embodiment of getting up to flip the record, the more careful (and limited) selection of what I'm going to listen to.
Absolutely. It’s a whole experience, from start to finish.
somehow I thought I might find you on this thread, Andres 😎🎸
Lol. You know where to find me! 😉
In the local record store, yeah?
Yes. Or (between you and me) right in front of my laptop 😎😂
Ted, can you talk about the difference between ritual and habit? Getting up and making coffee and reading the newspaper before you get down to business may get you in the right mind for doing said business, but that just seems like a set of habits to me and not a ritual. Mindfully brushing your teeth is a good habit, not a ritual. If "ritual" is going to mean something substantial, it needs to be more than mere habit-chaining, even as it includes habit-chaining. Most people have habit-chains in their lives, for better or for worse, but that is not the same as, say, participating in a weekly religious event or even subscribing to a concert or theater series. I think you outline many of the differences in your Wallace-Stevens-referencing article structure, but detailed, attentive coffee prep is not a ritual in and of itself. What is the missing thing? It's not just mindfulness.
Yes. I thought the same thing. Ritual is much more than habit. Habit is a repetitious act that grounds daily life. Ritual has that repetitious form, but it does something more: it enacts a myth that binds one to a transcendent order.
Thanks for bringing up this point to consider! I think Ted mentioned it in point 12: the goal is always transformative and empowering. The definition of a habit is action taken without conscious thought (due to a trigger and reward system). Ritual is deliberate and there is an element of alchemy.
Could we view habit and ritual on a continuum? So habits (healthy ones at least, like mindfully making breakfast or taking a morning walk in nature) can be the foundation of a life that sometimes rises to ritual. For example, the mindful walk becomes a form of meditation. And if they don’t, well at least you’re filling your life with healthy things rather than excessive, endless consumption of content pushed at you by companies that make money from your ‘engagement’.
I get your point completely. My interpretation is that it depends on how the attendees of the ritual view its purpose. I brush my teeth because I don't want cavities -- and that is a good habit. I start my day in a certain way five days a week and in a different way two days a week because it is important for me to do so in order to have the rest of the day properly organized and more likely to be successful. So that habit, if you were, is more important to me for the structure of actions providing for me a foretaste of the day to come rather than just the individual actions themselves. Consequently for me, my morning routine is a ritual while for you it may not be. Depends on how the individual interprets its significance. I suspect that when one examines their life closely, they will find examples where more meaning is attached to some repetitive actions than others. I discovered that of myself some time ago and have learned to honor those (perhaps not wholly rational) cases accordingly.
You asked Ted, but I"ll drop in and say that maybe it's intention. Engaging mindfully and without thinking about a to do list, etc. ?
I'm feeling pretty strongly that mindfulness is not enough to make a habit into a ritual, but it's clear that others feel differently.
I wonder if there has to be a greater-than-ourselves intention to it? A purpose beyond simply being? A ritual in honour of, remembrance of, observance of... #?
I think mindfulness, or awareness, combined with a bodily/emotional feeling of the metaphysical reality behind the ritual, is what makes it a ritual rather than a mere habit.
I suspect you're right, though it does seem at least one step on the way from habit to ritual.
Catharsis, maybe? If you lift weights for strength and health, it is likely a habit. If you lift for catharsis, ritual.
13 ways of looking at a XXXX 🦋
A jazz concert is not a performance, but a ritual- Victor Lewis
I'd say any concert, maybe? Why would you say jazz is different?
From the audience's perspective, yes. From the musicians point of view, no. A performance implies a predetermined destination, while an improvisation is about discovery.
It might, yeah, though I think for masterful performers, it's about finding something new in a song every time and leaving open spaces for experimentation even in established arrangements. Leonard Cohen says wise things about that, (as do most masterful performers, of course) but I'm not finding the passage just now... without that, it's just being a human jukebox, which happens probably to jazz musicians on bad nights, too.
Agreed .These things are on a continuum between all music of course. But the jazz aesthetic, uniquely in western music (in my opinion) prioritizes process over product. Thought was interesting to note, given Mr. Gioia's jazz background.
Agreed!
And since I'm the purveyor of a Beatles substack, I'll add here that one of my favourite comments ever made about them is the observation (I think it was Steve Turner) who noted that one of the keys to their extraordinary musical alchemy is that the Fabs were closer to jazz musicians in their approach to their music in the studio than pop or rock artists, being unusually (esp for the time) open to the role of improvision and accident in their arrangements and recordings, rather than a structured thought-out-ahead-of-time plan.
Lovely chatting with you! Stop by the Abbey sometime, if you're inclined.
I just reviewed what Joseph Campbell said about ritual. He mentioned that ritual came from vision, a higher form of insight than whatever comes from words used to describe the connection between myth and ritual. Whenever we are only talking about ritual, we aren't participating in a way where we can benefit from it. This column was a good reminder about how to get back into connecting myth with our daily lives. Thank you for it.
Even small rituals: washing one's face, brushing teeth, getting dressed, making the bed, eating breakfast, if done mindfully center us to start the day.
While your cultural critique is strong and important, it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of how dopamine works, thankfully for humanity.
Anna Lembke is wrong— a dopamine fast is not a thing (or, if it were a thing, it would be Parkinson's disease— well beyond anhedonia). Dopamine is an extremely complex neurochemical, but for what we’re talking about here, it mainly drives only one type of pleasure: that is desire, the pleasure of the hunt, also known as “wanting.”
Satisfaction—the pleasure of the feast, known as “liking” to people unlike Lembke, who actually understand neuroscience and addiction— relies on endogenous opioids, endorphins etc. (In other words, you can get completely high on opioids even if you have no dopamine!)
What happens in addiction is that desire (“wanting”) escalates but satisfaction (“liking”) either stabilizes or drops. The reality is that most people DO NOT become addicted, even if they try cocaine, heroin, fentanyl or gambling. The percentage of people who become addicted to most drugs is around 10-20% and for gambling, it’s around 1%. We don’t know yet what the deal is with internet addiction, but you need to understand what addiction is and what drives it before you can make proclamations that we’re all hooked and doomed.
Basically, addiction is compulsive behavior despite negative consequences. If consequences of engagement with an activity are life-expanding (like love, art, child-rearing), compulsive behavior despite negative experience is necessary: if we couldn’t persist despite these experiences, we’d never succeed in love or art or parenting. So, if you are obsessively engaged with your art or your love but it’s making your life better, that’s not an addiction— if it’s making your life worse, it is.
Who is at highest risk for addiction? People in distress, typically due to childhood trauma, incipient mental illness, existential despair or all three. It is these predispositions that cause anhedonia and lead people to seek relief in drugs or other compulsive behavior. The drugs work at first— but over time, they start to fail and make things worse. This, not dopamine alone, is what drives anhedonia in addiction.
And this is why a “dopamine fast” is absolutely the last thing you want to do if you are attempting to recover from addiction and why punishment and tough love fail. The problem in addiction is not too much pleasure, but too little satisfaction and meaning.
Taking away pleasure therefore, fails. Replacing it with better pleasure— AKA art that satisfies, intrigues and shines or real love or motivation to making meaning— is what’s needed.
Please do not help drive pop culture misunderstanding of the neuroscience of addiction and recreate the horribly failed drug war approach to improving internet health!!
Maia, I'm enjoying your detailed response to TG here. Thank you. I think TG is suggesting that ritual is a satisfying and meaningful response to the emptiness that ensues from chasing dopamine, and he's using Substack to reach us. He doesn't appear to be endorsing a "drug war" approach.
thanks...It's just that the "chasing dopamine" idea endorses the drug war approach because it focuses on restricting the supply of "bad pleasures" rather than why we seek escape. If we don't understand how dopamine actually works and think it is something we should want to "fast" from, we're not going to solve this problem effectively.
I’m not sure ritual is the grounding antidote to our techno-virtual mania. The Catholic reenactment of Christ’s last supper has a grounding effect, but it’s a grounding in a story from Christ’s life—and story is always secondary, an interpretation of reality.
We postmoderns have been living through the wholesale destruction of the myths and rituals that have grounded Western culture for centuries—and into the vacuum of meaning have stepped the techno-dweebs and the lords of capital they serve. We live in the breach.
On that I think we agree, but the prime antidote is contact with the Real—“chopping wood and carrying water,” as the Zen monks put it. Out of THAT contact—out of an original relationship to humanity’s enduring realities—visionary men and women create new, authentic art and maybe someday even new rituals more adequate to our times.
I agree, but your estimation of the Catholic Mass fails to see that the Mass is real. In that, at least for the participants in the Rite, they are brought face to face with Christ's death on the Cross, not a mere remembrance of the Last Supper, though that is part of it. The more essential part of the Mass, I think, is that it is really a re-presentation of Calvary. Christ is *really* there.
To add to your last paragraph, here is a quote of St. Theresa of Avila, "God is in the pots and pans." Monastics and monks, Christian or Zen make their business out of acquainting themselves with the real, and the present moment, the only place where ultimate Transcendence is found, though both schools disagree on how that Transcendence searches for us.
The key phrase is “at least for the participants in the rite.” A self awareness of one’s role in making the rite real destroys its reality, for most modern people. Hence your scare quotes around “really.”
This agnostic finds great beauty in religious ritual, and in the places built for that purpose. The older, the better! Cathedrals, humble meeting houses, everything dedicated to ceremony. I grew up in a religion where the most important rituals take place behind closed doors--no non-believers allowed (Mormonism). It kinda follows that Mormon churches are, more often than not, the same wherever you go. Nothing special about them. That's why I like the old Mormon buildings with a history. Trouble is, they have often torn the beautiful old buildings down (see the tale of the lovely Coalville, Utah Tabernacle).
Your comment is making me wish you had a substack I could subscribe to.
Kids unable to watch a movie without a dopamine fix? Maybe they exist. But in the very small pool of my teenagers and their friends, I don’t see it. I see kids devouring long and complex films to discuss and analyze. I see kids drawing all afternoon. I see kids learning instruments or singing sea shanties together. I see my son using his grandfather’s 60-year old Nikon to learn how to photograph slowly and deliberately. I see my other child reading books on the theatre and dreaming of their own shows. Maybe some kids of this generation are hooked on social media. But the kids I see blow me away with their thoughtfulness and curiosity. They encourage me put down my phone and finally pickup that huge book I bought in college but never read.
I can only hope my kids wind up with friends like your kids' some day! They're in middle childhood, not yet teenagers, but less and less accompanied by other children who want to play, create art, etc. They're all hooked into group chats and watching youtube shorts and tiktoks and playing video games while my kids are left wondering "what's so great about all that?"
May I ask what kind of environment these kids live in? There are definitely exceptions to the kids mentioned in my comment, but they're students at a school in most of the most deprived areas in the town where I live (with a higher than average percentage of kids in care or with a parent in prison, with the majority of the kids eligable for free school meals). There are some who get engaged with afterschool clubs, sports and school plays, but it's a very different environment to the private boarding school where I did a term of my training [for the record, I also find the kids at my school more consistently interesting and rewarding to teach when they //are// engaged, but phone addiction is a real and clear issue].
This is wonderful for your family! But you have to know that is extremely outside of the current norm, right?
. . . and here I was, scrolling to read your post about ritual. Frightening. I find myself increasingly thankful that I am as old as I am (79) and won't be here for what is coming. Now I am even more grateful for my daily rituals. Spending time with nature is my most important one. Even if it's merely going out to our backyard and watching the birds and other little critters like lizards going about their own rituals. Plus staying in the moment and not worrying about what might happen or what I think ought to happen.
Music, for me. Vinyl records. (and I'm not anywhere near 79, but I feel the same) sending virtual socially distanced appropriate good vibes.
Yes—music. I play music all day. Can't write without it. Musical vibes back to you.
Pray…isolate yourself, find quiet, be quiet and self reflect. It is difficult at the start and one must go slowly. It is soul cleansing… calming to the spirit and uplifting. Search for the peace and it will be bright…thank you, Ted for your constant inspiration.
Ted: I'm enjoying your Substack immensely and I will over time probably buy half the albums you recommended in your 50 best lists. I won't download them. I will buy them as vinyl or CDs. Please tell anybody you know in the music industry. I am vaguely familiar with many of those artists but because of the devolution of music criticism and radio I haven't heard or read enough about these artists to put some money down.
As to solutions to the distraction culture, the easiest and most accessible recommendation I could give would be for someone to learn to play a musical instrument. A harmonica costs $50. Electric keyboard under $500. Good beginner guitar under $1000. There are a kajillion YouTube videos to help you. I started playing guitar in 1976 mostly learning from books, but once YouTube instructional videos got going, I've been able to learn 10X more than I ever did from books. And any kid from about age six can do this.
Another possibility is to take up a hobby like woodworking. This can get expensive over time, but you can always start with simple projects and gradually and build up your shop as budget allows. In a similar manner, working in one of the trades is a great way to learn to focus your attention--while making money to boot. Carpentry is a great trade to learn, more interesting and varied than the others. And the thing that people don't understand about the trades is how hard you have to focus, how creative you have to be every single hour of every job, and how satisfying it is to solve a problem. Read Matthew Crawford's book Shopcraft as Soulcraft on this. I've been doing carpentry and woodworking as a living, a hobby and occasional side gig for 50 years now. I'm arguably more knowledgeable than 80 percent of the people doing it now. I know enough to build my own house from the ground up and all the furniture in it but I'm still learning new things. I spent six hours in the shop yesterday and checked my phone twice.
Even if manual. arts or music isn't intrinsically valuable, six or eight hours of working with your hands is its own form of dopamine and one that leaves you feeling better at the end of a day instead of strung out and anxious.
Yes, vinyl records, not streaming. (although I do stream) and music music music overall. And ideally the music that had more substance, more meaning, and was less disposable and consumerist. (and no, I'm not a Boomer, but I don't listen to the music of my youth because it has no substance to engender any ritual beyond a club night.) <3
A few years ago, we went searching for a new bathroom vanity. We went shopping, but couldn't find anthing we liked. So I looked at hiring a local carpenter to build one. He delivered exactly what we wanted, and it turned out to be cheaper than most of the others we'd eyeballed. Solid wood, too! Not the standard made-in-China particle board. Carpentry is as much an art as it is a trade. Bravo.
Excellent piece Ted! My husband Peco and I experienced a similar reaction to our recent writing on the (esp. 3Rs of Unmachining: Guideposts for an Age of Technological Upheaval and Sowing Anachronism: How to be Weird in Public, and Private)https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/p/sowing-anachronism-how-to-be-weird.
Especially Parents and Educators are profoundly concerned with the distraction and addiction they are witnessing and desperately want guidance to help their children and students reconnect with reality. The "great rewiring" of digitally captive brains will require a turning away from the virtual, and a turning toward the Real: agency (action in the real world) and communion (with people in the real world)(see Build a Songbird Compass https://schooloftheunconformed.substack.com/cp/141896694). Thanks for your writing Ted!
I realise now my bedtime (sometimes morning, on days off) routine is actually a ritual to help me shuck off the often tech-mediated stresses of the day. I'm going to start calling it a ritual and honouring it more. Great piece, thank you.