From: Wade T. Smith (wade.t.smith@verizon.net)
Date: Thu 26 Dec 2002 - 13:43:48 GMT
On Wednesday, December 25, 2002, at 12:49 PM, memetics-digest wrote:
> His theory is =
> that ritual and religion is the factor that enables cultural
> discourses =
> to adapt, in the same way organisms do, to environmental perturbations.
I personally don't think anything but ritual is necessary, and that
religion is a special form of ritual, implemented by exploitive persons.
There is much ritual that is not religious, and that serves the same
purpose. Don't forget laws, folks, which were primarily linked to
religion in most of both conventions' beginnings.
Cohesion is a required quality of any group's continuance, be it an army
or a state or a family.
My first reaction to a weekend I spent in a commune up in Vermont in the
late sixties was that they were like ants, and I had a strong repugnance
to this almost chemical dispensation of roles. I still do, although I
know, and appreciate, the efficacy of the apportioned division of labor.
But, unless the library that is the world (and that's science) is
available to them, ants are all they are, with the same queen feeding
the same workers the same potions.
And, yup, IMHO, that's way wrong.
- Wade
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