Solstice 2014 / Rational Ritual Retreat - A Call to Arms

Very much agreed with this.

I've ended up specializing in ritual because almost nobody else was (both in Less Wrong and among the wider community of people affiliated with rationality), but that ritual is only really useful in the context of a thriving, varied community.

However, I filled in the application with the information about my personal location, so that he/they can see, that there is need for such events in Europe, too :) (maybe you should do that, too!)

Maybe he can give his plans for this event to some of us and we can organize our own event as a subunit.

Well, someone needs to fly there and copy all their know-how. Are we rational enough to coordinate at this?

Point taken, regarding the reasons for the low-emotional-validation style of discourse here. I wouldn't aim to change it, it just rules out engaging in it much for me, because of my own sensitivity/predisposition. Maybe those other communities are a better fit.

I think one intuition I have, though, is that part of the reason for the style of discourse here is that many of the people this kind of thing appeals to are not in the habit of assessing the emotions that come up naturally during discussion, for themselves or others. I say this because the degree to which I pay attention to that kind of thing has changed dramatically over the years, and I wouldn't be surprised to find those questions ("How am I feeling after reading this response? Do I need to take a break?", "How will this make the other person feel?") don't occur to lots of people. For a long time I operated under the assumption that reading someone's response to my post could not possibly put me in a difficult spot.

Onto the point about whether a ritual needs roles/tiers. I don't necessarily think it does either. For a thing like the retreat being proposed by Raemon, there will likely be a lot of self-selection going on and it may render the idea of more vs less outsiders moot. And you're right that an initiation ritual might be a high barrier to entry, which could be bad.

I do think, though, that having an initiation ritual, and a sense of more in vs out, can significantly enhance an individual's experience in a ritual. It can help turn a gathering into a memorable story with lasting power after the fact. And that is something any ritual should be shooting for.

The basic outline of the story goes like this:

• First I was my regular self, and I came to the group, and I was not part of the group.
• Then the group had me begin the rites of passage, and I was no longer my regular self, nor was I one of the group.
• Then I completed the rites of passage, and I was recognized as part of the group, and my identity was updated for the better.

This seems like a Good Thing To Have to me. There are plenty of other Good Things too, and this particular one is not needed, but it would be good to have it.

I like that post, about roles enabling agency. The argument made there is distinct from my own thoughts on how roles can be useful. Namely I think they are extremely useful for building coherent consensus narratives. While the post sort of alludes to this, it focuses more on how roles get people to do things that wouldn't otherwise get done.

I like to think of narratives in this sense as being a "System 1"-active "meme". And as a rule of thumb I think that the more collectively shared a narrative is, the more active it is in the minds of individuals. Until it is outside your own head and there is a sense of consensus about it, it's just an idea and it feels less real.

So into my experience with what I did. I wanted to get some friends together and have a good time, eating and drinking and sharing stories. And I wanted to introduce ritual into our activities to punch up the levels of awareness that recreation, good times with friends, was the goal of the night, and something to be celebrated in itself.

There were about 8 people present. I wrote up a short "ceremony script", about two pages in length, that included an intro by me, the leader, stating the goals for the night, the value of camaraderie and recreation, with a bent towards the ideas of excess and elation. I wrote up a short fable in which these ideas were personified in a character who comes and gets people to have a good time, and had us take turns reading pieces of the fable. I had a bit where we all take some time to come up with a thing we each want to happen that night, to make things personal. I finished with a section where the group does a sort of call-and-response, in an attempt to get people riled up for the festivities to come. Then we all hit the road to went out for dinner and drinks.

So, the non-ritual, dinner and drinks part, was actually a success. I had a mild sense that the ritual which took place beforehand was motivating people to be more lively, a bit less inhibited, and this sense drifted in and out as the night went on.

During the ritual itself, there were several members of our group who had a really hard time treating things unironically. They giggled through much of it and were very hesitant to share their input on things. Ideally I would have found a way to bake their skepticism into the ritual- where it is acknowledged that some of this might feel silly to you, and that is okay, and we're all just happy to have you here. And in retrospect, I think the idea of roles would be a great way to do this. If you don't feel you can take it super seriously, that's okay, you can take on a more peripheral role. For those who were more into it, roles could be created that gave them more central positioning in the ritual. E.g. someone gets to lead the fable reading, someone gets to lead call-and-response, someone is master of ceremonies. And what's more, I think it would be worthwhile to have an explicit ceremony recognizing these people.

One concept that has inspired me in my thinking about this is Liminality. (There aren't any particularly rational/skeptical takes on the idea, unfortunately.) Liminality is thought of as the state between an "outsider" and "insider". It is the middle step in a rites of passage. And I think it is crucial to generating powerful consensus narratives that stick with people. In other words, it helps everyone stay clear on where everyone else in the group is at with regards to the ritual, presumably helping the sense of "tribal familiarity" we are trying to achieve.

All this said, I'm definitely not opposed to something without a heavy focus on roles. I also don't think one needs a highly stratified system of roles for things to work out. Just some idea of "more peripheral vs more central".