Book Review: Disappearance of Rituals
The condition of the world in the demise of rituals.
Industrialization brought a sea change in the world. The modes of production changed, and so did the modes of consumption. The relationship that humans have: with nature, with community, and most of all with themselves, changed. During this transformation, a close companion of humanity: ritual, fell through the gaps. The consequence of that is what this book is all about.
As a book, Disappearance of Rituals is brief. In the space of 90 pages and 10 chapters, it diagnoses modern society and lays bare the hidden motivations and compulsions behind our capitalist tendencies. Being compact and information-dense however, it deserves multiple readings.
The author Byung Chul Han is a modern-day seer. He lives aloof and rarely gives interviews or uses smartphones, preferring to read and tend to his plants instead. This ‘slow’ lifestyle perhaps explains his deep insights into time and the impact of capital on the human psyche.
Time that rushes off is not habitable.
Beginning with the compulsion of production, the author explains how rituals are symbols that bring forth a community without communication. Through their repetitiveness, they stabilize life. They foster a collective consciousness that seeps through every member of society as wisdom.
This is under challenge in the modern way. Today, novelty is sought everywhere, and repetitiveness is castigated as boring. Consumption then replaces ritual as a sedative for boredom.
Even within consumption, the author notes that products cannot be consumed endlessly. The modern workaround for this is the tying up of products with emotions, a more durable and more damaging consumable. Emotions can be consumed endlessly, and consuming emotions can make one feel good without having to work for change. The revolution dies, and virtue signaling takes its place. It also makes the individual more narcissistic, and society moves towards communication without community.
Digital communication is extensive communication; it does not establish relationships, only connections.
Sequentially, the author lists the downstream effects of such changes. The compulsion of production is also linked with a compulsion for authenticity, as every act becomes performative in nature. It compels the individual to say more than he knows, whereas in the pre-modern society, everyone spoke less than what everyone knew. It is because, as the author correctly points out, capitalism dislikes silence.
Where the book truly shines is when it delves deeper into the artificial dichotomy between work and play. In the industrialized society, work is exalted, whereas play is frowned upon. The existence of life for play is an anathema to such a society because it challenges the status quo and authority. Even thinking may become obsolete in this approach. In the chapter From Myth to Dataism, the author says: “The proponents of dataism would argue that humans invented thinking because they cannot calculate fast enough, and that the age of thinking will prove to be a short historical interlude.”
Being a philosopher himself, the author profusely uses ancient philosophy to build his case, something which will elicit many nods from Indian readers. When he posits that today viva activa (intensity of life) is erroneously seen as the opposite of viva contemplavita (intensity of contemplation), one is reminded of Swami Vivekananda and his definition of a karmyogi: One who is meditative in the intensest of action and active in the intensest of meditation.
Another comparison that the author makes is between festivals and events, where he explains how today's festivals are fast turning into events and losing their inner touch. Events are sudden gatherings of masses, in comparison to festivals which represent the sanctified time of communities. Masses do not form communities, and events do not embody the sacred.
Each of the chapters uncovers a facet where life is becoming more wooden, more self-centered, and yet more exposed. There is a loss of shared meaning and subtlety. Duels have morphed into battles of profit, and adversaries have become figures on a screen. The ritual body, anointed with various symbols and mysteries, is giving way to the naked body which is a valueless consumable like porn.
Against the compelling arguments of the author, the critic may raise the question: If the old times were so good, would you prefer to live in one, where mortality was high and life was miserable? Such an argument would inevitably miss the point. The purpose of ritual is not to hold the present hostage to the past, but to go beyond the fear of death, a fear that is the mainstay of capitalism as it exists. Capitalism is pursued as a means of producing away death. Death is feared not as an untimely phenomenon, but as a foreboding beyond. Life is not meant to be wasted away, but neither is life meant to be clung to so fearfully that one stops living and exerting altogether.
Overall, the book is a highly recommended read.