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We need highly formal rituals + How a symmetry heretic sees the universe

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We need hightly formal rituals to in order to make life more democratic
https://aeon.co/ideas/we-need-highly-for...democratic

EXCERPT: . . . The past century has been a good one for individual freedoms – in almost every respect. This wholesale liberalisation has included the freedom of individuals to dress, dine and discourse how they like it. And how they like it is invariably: ‘casual’, ‘low key’, ‘without too much fuss’, ‘not too precious’, ‘not too pretentious’, ‘not ostentatious’ or, as I heard just the other day, ‘not too “bougie”’ (qua ‘bourgeois’)… in short, informal. Comfort is king in the modern world; and comfort is the excuse proffered for the evaporation of formality from daily life.

While formality and its rituals persist in little pockets, they do so only where they are bolstered by elaborate protective struts. In general (though decreasingly), government ceremonies remain somewhat formal. With ever increasing exceptions, weddings and funerals cling to formal traditions. The High Church has positioned itself as the last refuge of formal practice – a claim that would have no teeth had not the Low Church so effectively abolished the bells and smells and hymns and ceremony in favour of appealing to parishioners who want a service that ‘isn’t too fussy’.

Comfort has won, and most formality is gone. But the freedom of informality comes at a cost. Formality is the bulwark against some of the nastiest human impulses, and acts as a vaccine against our most dangerous tendency: forming in-groups and out-groups... (MORE - details)



‘The whole thing is a monstrosity!’ How a symmetry heretic sees the Universe
https://aeon.co/videos/the-whole-thing-i...e-universe

INTRO: Leonard Susskind, a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University in California and a self-described ‘beauty-symmetry-elegance heretic’, rejects the popular notion that there’s something wonderfully symmetrical and simple about the building blocks of our world. Rather, he contends, conceptions of physics as elegant and uncluttered are shortcuts created by our pattern-seeking brains that rarely hold up to scientific scrutiny. In this interview from the PBS series Closer to Truth, Susskind argues that, dating back to the Ancient Greeks, what’s often been perceived as elegant simplicity was almost always a fiction or an approximation covering for a much messier reality.


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/cVPNgHvSpCI
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