You can make fun of the strange hat of a pope or of a bishop,
and you think that that's funny, But somehow you still understand why you
need a uniform to play sports. You know, It's like these are all
different levels of the same reality. This is Jonathan Pjel Welcome to the symbolic
world. One of the reasons why it's difficult for several people to understand religion
and religious behavior is because they tend to want to isolate religious behavior from other
human behavior, and so they have this little category here called religion, and
it's broken off from all the other things that humans do. So because of
that, the religious behavior can appear arbitrary, superstitious, ridiculous. Sometimes also,
people want to reduce religion to a set of things that you believe,
rather than understanding it as a coherent set of behaviors and beliefs that kind of
go together. I found that the best way to understand religion from a secularist
perspective, or even from a purely materialist perspective, is to see it as
an extension of other types of behaviors, and even I would say as an
extension or similar in nature to some behaviors that animals have. And so one
of the things that I've noticed is that looking at the way that animals ritualize
behavior is actually a good way for humans to understand why does it we ritualize
behavior and what it is that ritualizing behavior can do. And so the first
thing to understand is that actually all behavior is ritualized. That is, anything
which is moving towards a goal has to be ordered. And so if you
don't like the word behavior, let's just use the word ordered. So ordered
behavior will happen as you move towards a goal. So if you have a
purpose, the things you do, you know will You'll probably experiment a little
bit at the outset, but at some point you'll realize that, you know,
if I want to get to the river, this is the best way
to go. At first, maybe I'll zigzag, I'll do this, but
then a trail will set itself up in the forest to go to the river,
and then that behavior going from the village to the river, for example,
will become ritualized in the sense that it will become ordered and will have
kind of reduced itself to its best to its best line. You could say,
to get to the river. And so this is something which happens in
all types of behaviors where there it is, you know, the way to
hunt or the way to prepare food, all of these will become ordered,
not like one hundred percent order, but there will always be a little aspect
of variability on the on the out, on the margins, but the behavior
will become ordered. And so you could say that when you order behavior,
the more you order it, you do it in order to avoid the cost
of the behavior. So you know, it's like if I could get to
the river by going all around and going in circles and doing all this,
and then I get to the river, and it's like, okay, but
that's very costly. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot
of effort. And so what I'll do is that I'll start to order my
behavior in order to reduce the cost that it has, you know, in
terms of energy, in terms of time and all of that, and in
terms of consequences, you could say. And so you can imagine that this
is something that happens even in animal ritual behavior. So think of, for
example, ritualized conflict between animals. The animals will ritualize their conflict and will
ritualize their capacity to recognize who is the superior and who is the inferior.
And they will do that to avoid the cost, because if they go all
out and they fight it out, then that becomes very costly, both for
the one that ends up on top and for the one that ends up submitting
to the higher power. And so because of that, the animals developed this
kind of ritualized version of a conflict which looks like a fight but isn't complete.
Does it reduces the cost towards something like meaning And we're going to use
the word meaning for now. We could use other words, but purpose maybe
we could say is a good way to think about it. As you move
towards purpose and meaning, and as you kind of encompass you know the reason
why the fight is there in the first place, then you can ritualize it
in order to avoid the cost. Right, so you can understand how that's
as true for going to the river, as it's especially true for animals that
will ritualize fighting behavior, or animals that will ritualize a type of mating behavior
as well, which is that the animal will have certain type of dance or
certain type of colors that will make the choice of a mate less costly than
it would if those things weren't there. Like I said, all aspects of
behavior are ritualized. They're just different levels of ritual So you could understand that
if you extend that into the human sphere, then you can see how we
of course do the same, which is that you know, we've developed short
cuts, shortcuts of meaning in order to avoid the cost of something. So
a good example is when you meet someone, we shake hands, we look
into each other's eyes. We have found ways in order to encounter someone in
a manner that cuts to the change right, gets to the meaning of it,
which is that we're meeting. We're not in conflict. We recognize that
there's a kind of piece between us, there's an uncertain level of communion,
and so we've ritualized that in the type of behavior shaking hands, all the
other ones that we have, which reduced the cost of figuring out, you
know, how who this person is, what it is that they want for
me, trying to you know, trying to move around asking questions. I
don't know what type of other types of behavior could exist in order to figure
out the intentions of the person in front of you. But you can imagine
that these types of behaviors, shaking hands and all this, you know,
was chosen out of a set of possible behaviors that were maybe a little more
costly, okay. And so as you move towards more and more contracted behavior,
which you do, is you move towards something like meaning. And so
what happens in that type of behavior is that really what happens in religious rituals,
especially those that we consider religious, is that the meaning becomes more and
more compressed, and more and more pure, more and more crystallized, which
is that you know, if there's a manner in which, let's say we
eat together as a people, and so we come together, we eat together,
and what that does is it binds us together as a people. We
noticed that if we eat in a certain manner together, if we sit together
on a table or whatever. There are multiple ways to do it. But
if we aim towards that purpose, there's a limited amount of ways that we
can do it. That it binds us together. Then it makes us also
share in the food, makes us share in the identity, makes us recognize
each other as one, for example, Then we realize it wait a minute,
if I can scale that up. And so if I meet together with
my family or with a friend and I eat, you know, that does
something. But if I have like a banquet at the city, or a
marriage banquet where we all kind of come together, or some ritual where we're
it's a bigger meeting. Let's say we have a banquet to celebrate, you
know, the thirtieth anniversary or the you know, one hundredth anniversary of a
city. Then all of a sudden we realize that this type of behavior,
these ritualizations, of ceremonies, of coming together, bind us together towards higher
purposes. And so you can understand. Then at some point people inevitably started
realizing that the more you ritualize it, and let's say, the higher you
aim, the more it binds reality together. And so religious ritual is an
extension of the lower rituals or lower behaviors all the way up so that you're
like, oh, wait a minute. If I offer this up to God,
if I offer this up to something which transcends my group or transcends you
know, the things down here, then I am in some ways bringing together
all these little meals. Let's say let's talk about a sacrifice of food,
all these little meals together, and so I'm giving you know, I'm pouring
out a libation or I'm giving up food to the ancestors or to the gods.
And what I'm doing that especially think about the ancestors for example, is
a good example. It's like, if I give something to the ancestors,
then I am doing more than if I eat with my parents, because I
am binding myself to something which is bigger, something which holds us all together.
And so if I kind of play that out, at some point you
realize that giving up to the gods, giving up to principalities which are higher
above, whether it is something like paying taxes to the king, that if
I pay taxes to the king, then it binds us together as a society.
Uh huh. But if I pay taxes to a higher level, if
I take my things and I bring and I give it up to a higher
level, then it basically binds me up higher and higher. And you could
imagine, you can see how people realize that at some point that kind of
moves up and up towards more and more meaning, until we reach something like
the infinite source of all things right, the infinite source, which is the
you know, the God that is being and non being. The God is
that is love which binds the universe together. You know, the manner in
which the monotheists start to talk about omnipotence, all of these infinite qualities which
end up binding everything together. And so if I act together with others towards
that, then I realize that it's an extension of you know, paying taxes
to the king and also binding together as a family, but also even within
yourself. So it's important to kind of see how ritualization in terms of religious
practice has to be seen in let's say, the scope of all the other
types of behavior which are ordered. Now, once again, as I say
this, you have to remember that all behavior is ordered, and so it's
not like religious behavior is ordered, but this other regular behavior we do isn't.
No, that's not true. It's like as you move towards religious behavior,
it's more and more ordered, more and more containing meaning. And as
you move to the more common space than it is ordered maybe less. And
the trade off is the trade off between meaning and power, universal meaning and
particularity. That's the way to understand the trade off and sometimes you actually need
to make that trade off. It's not you know, if you ritualize brushing
your teeth in the same way that you ritualize the eucharists, or you ritualize
a sacrifice to the gods, then you would lose some of the particularity,
and so it would actually become a actually not be the right fit of ordered
behavior and the thing you're doing. A good example to understand this is to
understand the way that martial arts develop themselves. So you can imagine that martial
arts start as fighting. Right, people are fighting fighting, and they realize
that if I order my fighting, if I have a technique, then I
can beat the other person because I'm kind of I am contracting my behavior towards
a certain thing. But then there's also a meta thing which starts to happen,
which is that if I understand certain rules, certain ways of doing martial
arts, then I'm also going to limit the all out cost of fighting,
you know, just even very similar to the way that animals ritualized behavior.
So people notice that in tribal warfare, for example, there is extreme ritualization,
which means that there's still a fight, but often the fight because it's
so ritualized, it will avoid massive, massive casualties because the ritualization, you
know, and it's kind of not even it doesn't even have to be conscious.
People just kind of learn this behavior and perform it. The ritualization will
be able to show who's winning the fight without completely decimating everything. So you
can imagine that even in the world of martial arts, that will happen where
certain behaviors are there to manifest. You know, it's say a kind of
imagine like a knight, the way that the Knights had certain ethics about fighting.
It's like the gentlemanly way of fighting, right, you don't hit someone
in the back, you know, you look at them in the face.
All of these types of behaviors are there to avoid the massive cost of fighting
and push it towards more meaning, but still keeping within the the the arena
of beating your opponent. Now you can imagine that in the world of martial
arts, especially in Asian cultures, people started to notice that if you ritualize
martial arts more and more, it can encompass more and more meaning, to
the point where it also almost becomes a type of ritual behavior where it is
almost metaphysical in the way in which the movements are capturing more and more meaning.
You know, if you think of putting Taoist principles into certain kung fu
moves and kung fu forms, all of this is happening, and so it
moves towards towards more meanings. So that actually, at some point the martial
artist is transforming himself. He is learning about reality, He is moving towards
higher and higher meanings as he is practicing his martial arts. Now, one
of the things that happened in the twentieth century is that somebody realized that that
in terms of power, it was losing power as it was moving towards ritualization.
So if you look at what the MMA fighters did is that they said,
no, forget all these forms, forget all of these these flighty things
that you're doing when you're prepared, when you're doing your martial arts forums.
It's like, get to cut to the chase, use what you need to
use in order to beat your opponent. And so what happened is that the
MMA fighters were able to make a trade off between ritualization and power, and
they move towards power. Now, this is something which is there's nothing.
It's like, it's not that one is better than the other, to be
honest, It's just that it's a trade off between ritual and power. So
think of an animal. Imagine it now in the world of the animals,
where the animals have a ritualized behavior and they understand and they're kind of dancing,
where one person show you know that I don't know, the wolf shows
its neck and the other one kind of comes and kind of puts their paw
on the other and to show that the one is submitting and the other is
dominating. Now, I imagine if there was one wolf who is smart and
said, man, forget all this rituals. It's like when the other wolf
thinks I'm down and I'm showing my neck and he's put his paw on me,
I'm just going to go for the throat what and that wolf would win
in the moment that wolf by breaking the ritual, the ritual would actually increase
his power tremendously. But what would happen is, of course, that would
also lead to let's say, in the long term, if a lot of
a lot of wolves did that, it would lead to the all out conflict
between between the wolves. And so this is the same thing that happened with
MMA, and by the way, with MMA, you end up having now
a new ritualization, which is that as you move towards more power, you
have to have rules in the fight, because obviously you don't want to kill
your opponent, And as you move towards power, that possibility of just killing
your opponent with one hit or in the right doing the right thing to kill
your opponent, it becomes more and more possible. So the type of ritualization
that happened in kung fu or in some of the in some of the more
ancient martial arts gets re incapitulated in the meta rules of the fighting game,
which is that you're not allowed to do this, and now these things are
not allowed to do because you're just going to kill your opponent, And so
the ritualization re establishes itself in another way. But what's important to understand is
mostly to see just how it is to understand just this relationship between ordered behavior,
moving towards more meaning and then finding the balance of order and power.
You say in a behavior in order to accomplish what it is you want to
accomplish, and if you do that, then you can understand everything from brushing
your teeth to going to church, because all of these ordered behaviors kind of
stack up and scale up towards the transcendent, towards the infinite good that binds
the universe together. Then all the way down to when I'm learning something new
and I don't know how to do it, and so I'm experimenting and I'm
kind of fiddling, you know, I'm trying to figure it out. So
it's messy and it's experimental, and then when I figure it out, I
try to order it at the right level so that I can accomplish what it
is that I need to do, moving towards the purpose of what it is
that I'm doing. And so hopefully this is helpful to kind of help you
understand a little bit how ritualization works and how it is better and it's more
productive for us to understand and religion in relationship to all the other behaviors that
we do, rather than isolating it. When we isolate it, then we
we just look at these weird types of behaviors and these strange hats and and
you know, strange costumes, and we're like, what, you know,
what's the what's the point. But if I can tell you that you can
make if you you can make fun of the strange hat of a pope or
of a bishop, and you think that that's funny, But somehow you still
understand why you need a uniform to play sports. You know, it's like
these are all different levels of the same reality. And why you would want
the policeman to wear a strange hat because you want the policeman to be recognized
in his role as an authority. But you don't think that's weird, but
you think that that the pope wearing a funny hat is hilarious and superstitious and
ridiculous. That's how if you're able to connect all these things together, then
you'll be able to understand more appropriately why it is that religion looks the way
it does. So hopefully this was helpful, uh to understand to understand things.
And don't forget folks, And if you love what we're doing, if
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World dot com. We've been growing quite a bit in the past few years.
You know, I've now hired several people full time to kind of do
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as possible. So thanks everybody, and I'll talk to you very soon.
Next year, February twenty nine to March second, we are going to have
the very first Symbolic World Summit in Tarpan Springs, Florida. There'll be some
amazing speakers. Of course I'll be speaking, but there will also be Father
Stephen DeYoung of Lord of Spirit's Fame. You will also find their Martin Shaw,
who's a mythographer and amazing storyteller. But a bunch of other people too.
Of course, Richard Rowland will be there, Nicholas Kotar Neild Great and
Dirt Poor Robbins are actually going to play a concert. They'll also be Vesper
Stamper, but also a lot of other people involved in the Symbolic World community.
Will come together to explore how we can recover rediscover the ancient cosmic image.
But it will also be time for people to connect together, to meet
in real time, in real space, develop relationships, you know, find
people thinking in the same line as we are. To further this community and
to further this type of thinking in the world. So I'm really looking forward
to meeting you in person in Tarpan Springs February twenty ninth, so hopefully see
you there.