http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2019-01-03T15:10:27Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#2f063d54350b5fe309158044352e8f715de78d43 2019-01-03T15:10:27Z January 3. The other day I wondered "whether my immunity to ritual is related to my life-long struggles with motivation." Now I'll explain what I meant. When I see people doing a ritual, I'm like "Why are they wasting time on that boring and unnecessary behavior?" They must be getting something out of it that I can't see. Thus my definition:

A ritual is a highly predictable behavior, which might seem like a chore to people who don't understand it, but actually energizes the people who do it. Or, a ritual is an engine for turning activity into motivation.

On a personal level, I suspect that physical rituals don't work for me because of my poor mind-body integration. I have to use a lot of conscious attention to not constantly bump into things, and even after 25 years of flossing my teeth every night, it's still not something I feel like doing. Meanwhile, it seems like other people can get into a groove, where their body just does the right thing without guidance from their head, and where familiar physical actions feel good to them.

There are a lot of other directions to go with this. How are mental rituals different from physical rituals? How are rituals different from habits, including bad habits? Where do games fit in? How are rituals related to culture, to childhood imprinting, to personality?

Is our civilization failing because useful activity has been de-ritualized, so that it feels draining instead of energizing? How do rituals compare with other ways of motivating people, like grand narratives or reward-and-punishment?

Finally, a sci-fi idea. What if we had a technology to instantly make behaviors compulsive? Like you zap your head while washing a dish, and suddenly you love washing dishes. That would solve the problem of low motivation, and create more dangerous problems.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#e47eb2b78be0595828318300a321e6d34a73dc88 2019-01-01T13:50:43Z January 1, 2019. New Year's Day, and thinking about metaphors in the spectacle. A Rose Bowl ref just leapt and caught the string of a balloon, and popped it. The gif will surely be a meme. As an omen for 2019, what could it represent? The triumph of authority over fun? Or the triumph of good management over distraction?

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