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Chapter 2 Realms of Meaning
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Function and Meaning

At present, the practical, or functional, aspects of ritual are widely recognized in traditional societies. It is standard fare in ethnographies to document that subsistence activities in traditional societies, like hunting, planting, and harvesting, are accompanied by ritual. For example, in Thailand, the king, who in the minds of most Thais is holy, sows the


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first seeds of rice each year. Based upon such evident connections between ritual and function, many anthropological studies have emphasized, to the exclusion of other interpretations, how ritual works to distribute food or organize human labor or accomplish many other practical tasks. These studies have not only seeped into popular consciousness, they are in accord with modern popular consciousness that sees the world operating on a practical, functional basis.

Consciousness is largely determined by a complex of habitual behavior, though, and so modern consciousness, while it sees the function in ritual, is largely blind to the ritual in function. Driving down the road right now, most of what "I" am, objectively speaking, is occupied by habit or by convention, which is social habit. I am at this place at this time engaging in what archaeologists, who are sorts of anthropologists, conventionally do (even if the field by convention is unconventional). My driving habits arc so firmly in place that I guide the car down the road on "autopilot." If I don't occasionally make a conscious effort to check where I am, I will probably drive right past some important intersection—and miss my plane. Both habit and convention are like that: They are convenient, even necessary (overall, people are safer drivers after driving skills become a habit), but they easily lead one to overlook important phenomena.

So it is with the habit of looking at the world from a "functionalist" perspective. From this angle, one can scarcely see that not only do functional activities conform in pattern to ritual ones, but that functional behavior depends upon ritual; it is socially inscribed by it. What motivates us to engage in the functionalist activities of the modern world is the traditional desire to locate ourselves in relation to culturally determined benchmarks. Ritualistic behavior reassures us that these benchmarks are of paramount importance, unchanging, and natural, and at the same time they establish our place among them. By ritual, "reality" is socially constructed.[11]

Even the most practical and "modern" actions must be to some degree ritualistic to be regarded as meaningful. They, must conform to a pattern of what has transpired before, of what was supposed to have transpired before. Meaning is predicated upon pattern established in the past. As a rule of thumb, the more distant the past, the more profound the meaning, no less in modern than in traditional societies. Ultimate legal precedent, for example, is constitutional. Moral laws—drawn from natural or supernatural orders—are generally considered superior to civil or criminal ones, as in civil disobedience, conscientious objection to the military draft, or refusing to obey an immoral command issued within the context of a governmental bureaucracy. Geometry is based upon axiomatic statements (and


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the ancient Greek Pythagoreans saw a mystical significance in geometry, as have others, a significance that derived from reference to eternal truths). The most important inventions and discoveries are commonly considered those that occurred "first." In the arts and literature, what is important is usually determined by how closely a work approximates or how radically it departs from what is regarded as "classic." One may argue with the desirability of these attitudes but cannot dispute that they exist.

Modernity, then, is an amplification of certain trends that one can notice early on, as in the obsession of the Maya with "numbers and time." In fact, this obsession is an essential part of modernity, of the culture of capitalism, industrialism, quantification, abstraction—and individualism. We have internalized the modern view of the world and the basic values and beliefs that shape it and at the same time motivate us to sustain it.


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Chapter 2 Realms of Meaning
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