We Killed the Rituals, and Now No One Knows What to Do with Their Hands
Whether it’s a birthday, wedding, or funeral, I like looking around. And no matter where I am, I always see the same thing: a bunch of people absorbed in their phones. Ironically, the more meaningful the event, the more people seem to want to escape it. I call this the ‘child recital syndrome.’ It’s what happens when parents at a school play spend the whole performance staring at their phones, capturing a memory they’ll never rewatch while the actual moment passes them by. In trying to preserve the moment, they miss it entirely. But this compulsion to record rather than experience hints at something deeper: we’ve forgotten how to be present during a ritual. Yes, even if your kid has one line in the school play and you sit through 90 more minutes of other people’s children pretending to be trees, just so your wife doesn’t give you that look when you suggest leaving to catch the Rams game. Then it’s your kid’s time to shine… and he gets the line wrong.
Rituals are symbolic ceremonies that help us mark transitions, connect with others, and find meaning in change. All cultures and religions have rituals of some kind, from graduation ceremonies to blowing out candles on your birthday. Rituals are profoundly important because they provide structure, meaning, and a sense of belonging. They mark transitions, reinforce social bonds, encode cultural values, and offer psychological comfort in times of uncertainty. But here’s the problem: rituals are vanishing, and we’ve replaced them with nothing that feeds us psychologically or spiritually.
Once Upon a Time, We Knew How to Be Human (Then We Got Wi-Fi)
You don’t need to chant in Latin to be part of a ritual. You already have them: morning coffee routines, going to the gym, and deleting and redownloading dating apps like it’s a full-time job. The question isn’t whether you have rituals, it’s whether you realize how much they shape you. Rituals are repetitive, structured actions often imbued with symbolic meaning and associated with specific beliefs, traditions, or social contexts. They can be sacred or secular, and involve gestures, words, or revered objects. Rituals are a fundamental part of human culture, found in religious practices, social events, and even everyday routines.
For something to be considered a ritual, it needs:
- Repetition: actions follow an order and are repeated. Like brushing your teeth every night. You do it not because it’s sacred, but because you fear the dentist more than you fear death.
- Structure: actions aren’t random, but have a defined order or sequence. Which is more than you can say about most meetings at work, those just have a beginning and then despair.
- Symbolism: there’s meaning behind the literal actions, representing values, beliefs, or spiritual concepts. Take wedding rings, for example, tiny metal circles that say “forever”… or at least until someone forgets to do the dishes.
- Context: rituals are often tied to specific times, places, or situations. Like bringing a guitar to a job interview. And playing “Wonderwall”.
The more important thing about rituals isn’t the actions themselves, but the intention behind them. Psychologists and anthropologists agree that rituals aren’t just old traditions. They help us manage uncertainty, process transitions, and reinforce identity. Whether it’s a wedding or a team huddle, rituals give us a sense of structure when life feels chaotic. The core function behind rituals is to create a sense of belonging and help us mark important life transitions, such as birth, graduation, marriage, or death. Jordan Peterson famously said: “The ritual lasts long after the reasons have been forgotten”. That’s the thing about rituals, they’re sticky. Even when you no longer know why you do them, you still feel the urge to do them. And when you stop, something goes missing. Like when you delete Instagram and you don’t know how to express your existential dread.
No One Becomes an Adult Anymore; They Just Start Paying for Their Own Netflix
Before moving on, here’s a subtle but meaningful distinction to make. Rituals are repetitive actions or ceremonies, often with symbolic meaning, that are part of a culture or personal practice. Rites of passage, on the other hand, are specific rituals that mark a transition in a person’s life, such as birth, marriage, or death, often with a focus on moving from one social status to another. Some have described rites of passage as a universal human need, but due to several causes, they’re going away, and the problem is we’re not replacing them with anything of meaning.
A rite of passage is a structured ritual or ceremony that marks a significant life transition, often with symbolic challenges, guidance, and reintegration into a new role or identity. According to anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, there are three phases to a rite of passage.
- Separation is where you leave your old identity behind.
- Liminality is a transitional phase.
- Incorporation is when you return to society with a new role.
Examples of rituals include reaching adulthood by turning 18 and getting the right to drink or vote. As you can see, rites of passage play a crucial developmental role in the lives of children and adolescents.
In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt talks about the importance of having age-defined rituals. It can start at 6 years old when the child gets simple chores to do around the house and ends at 18 when the kid gets full civic responsibility. This makes the ladder to adulthood more visible, since every couple of years, the child has something of meaning to think about: unsupervised play, starting high school, going from a dumb phone to a smart one, getting a driver’s license, and so on.
Haidt argues that rituals give resilience, identity, and social competence. Without them, there’s prolonged dependence and mental fragility. This is the kind of people who can’t tie their shoes or cry when you make fun of their shirt. It’s kind of cute when they’re 6, but not as cute when they’re 29. Interestingly, the decline of rituals in modern Western societies has led to problems such as anxiety, identity confusion, and a prolonged adolescence, which we’ll discuss in the next paragraph. Another problem is that when unmet with adult-created rituals, teenagers will create rituals of their own, and this leads to hazing or secret rituals that are often unsafe.
As we’ve discussed, both rituals and rites of passage are important, but they’re going away. Religious participation has declined, people don’t get married anymore, parties are disappearing, and there are fewer rites of passage than ever if you’re a teenager. There are several reasons why rituals and rites of passage are disappearing. First, we have secularization. Organized religions are fading, and as a consequence, people don’t know how to mark important life stages anymore. Second, individualism has encouraged people to “create their own meaning”. Most Western cultures encourage personal freedom over collective tradition, which makes some rites feel old-fashioned and unnecessary. Third (and you knew this was coming), most life transitions happen behind screens. As sad as it is to write this, important occasions like birthdays and graduations are about making Instagram posts rather than being there. It’s child recital syndrome all over again. Finally, there’s perpetual adolescence. Due to modern problems, people move out later from their parents’ house and generally avoid commitments. This is the kind of adult who hits snooze eight times and acts shocked every time they’re late to work.
We Stopped Dancing Around the Fire (and Started Doomscrolling)
What are the consequences of rituals going away? We can divide these into three: psychological, social, and philosophical. The psychological consequences include more anxiety and less coherence. Rituals add predictability to the chaos of life, which reduces anxiety. Additionally, rituals help us process complex emotions related to grief, aging, or change.
There are also social consequences to consider. One of the most important parts of rituals is that they make us feel like we’re part of a community. In other words, rituals connect us with others. When we stop being part of rituals, it weakens our shared identity, which means we no longer feel connected to our nation, community, or family.
Finally, and I’d argue more importantly, there’s the philosophical/spiritual side of rituals. When we don’t have rituals, we feel what Max Weber called the “disenchantment of the world”. Something that has come to define Western societies is rationalization and secularization. This means scientific explanations have become so central to our society that we no longer believe in anything magical or religious. As a consequence, we feel meaningless and alienated (or as Weber calls it, “disenchanted”) because we have replaced traditional frameworks to explain the world and our place in it with logic, efficiency, and calculability. The solution, according to Weber, is to develop new forms of spirituality and meaning-making, a process he calls re-enchantment. Our solution has been more disgraceful. We now how “pseudo-rituals” which involve scrolling endlessly on our phones, worshipping influencers, or taking gym selfies. Engaging with “pseudo-rituals” is like trying to quench your hunger with styrofoam. It fills you up, but it doesn’t nourish you in any meaningful way.
Bring Back the Weird Stuff (Or Make Up Your Own)
Like Weber said, we need to find our way to “re-enchantment”, and that means to intentionally reinvent rituals. Think about it, if the rituals we had before don’t make sense or are no longer relevant, you can’t simply move on with your life and do what everyone else is doing. We need to find meaning in a meaningless world, and we can’t no longer rely on institutions to do this for us. So we must find something of value and create a meaning behind it. If you can find someone to join you, that’s better. While you can certainly have your own rituals, adding a cultural aspect to them makes them even more meaningful. Sure, your new book club might just be an excuse to drink wine and complain about your boss, but hey, it’s a ritual. And unlike Instagram Stories, it actually marks time in a meaningful way.
The point isn’t to revive ancient rituals just for the aesthetic. It’s to consciously create moments of meaning, even if they involve pancakes and playlists instead of incense and chanting. Hold monthly friendship dinners, journal before bed, or select one day a week and avoid technology. And there’s something sacred about making coffee slowly, by hand, like a monk… if monks wore sweatpants and hated Mondays. In the end, we don’t need more dopamine. We need anchors, markers, and shared time. And that’s what rituals (even the awkward, homemade ones) can still give us.
Light a Candle, Put Your Phone Down, and Pretend It Means Something
I know it’s tempting to think that modern life lacks meaning, but I don’t think that’s the case. Modern life doesn’t lack meaning; we just need rituals to remember that it’s meaningful. We can’t live ritual-free lives. We either choose sacred rhythms that we’ve intentionally created ourselves or fall into meaningless routines. So from now on, we must reintegrate rituals into daily life, not out of nostalgia, but as an act of spiritual defiance. Not because we miss the smell of incense or the sound of medieval music. But because rituals are an act of psychological and spiritual defiance: a way of avoiding the algorithm everyone worships.
So light a candle. Breathe. Take a walk without tracking your steps. Look someone in the eye and say something you mean. Actually clap when you’re at a children’s recital and your kid just destroyed Frozen’s “Let It Go” on a plastic recorder. Not because it was good. But because you showed up, and so did he. After all, rituals don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be real.
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