Rituals

What are the most celebrated events all over the world?

If I were to ask you this the answers I'd expect are: New Year, Christmas, and probably a host of national holidays. But you do know every second you breathe someone dies, and someone is born. Perhaps I would have misguided you by using the word “celebrated”. There is always some “sense” with which I use words out here. In my defense, other popular personalities use it too – like Shakespear, Hemingway, or Tennyson. Else English Literature would have been extinct a long time ago.

Childbirth and Death are really old phenomenons; older than marriage. Many cultures hold rituals to commemorate both. Scientifically speaking people are born in the same manner, and they die in the same manner (more or less) (biologically speaking). Then why would different cultures have different rituals for each of these?

The fact we must importantly observe here is that a “culture” almost always “has” a ritual. Why?! What is the necessity? Scientists who have observed animals say that they do exhibit some crude form ritual practice. This may also be a basic answer as to why "we" have these ritual practices. But most importantly this sheds light to the fact that we are an emotional species. Some scientists today quote this as one of the reasons to explain why religions, cultures, and all those sacred religious practices exist. Its hard to imagine what would have happened if we were not emotional beings. This was a necessary part in our survival saga.

Here are a bundle of links to articles related to this article.

There are no facts; only interpretations

This is a quote by a famous person - Friedrich Nietzsche - a german philosopher.

Every word is a thought. So essentially when we speak we are communicating thoughts and ideas around. This is fundamental to any language – written or verbal. This is fundamental to how human beings communicate.

Now follow me closely.

So what is a rock?

You are probably imagining a lump of stone in your head right now. It is a rock. Someone told you its a rock; you might have learned it somewhere; saw it on tv, etc etc; irrespective of how you have come to learn – you know it is a rock you are thinking about.

All words have an origin; essentially every word is a thought. So when people first observed a rock – surely they didn't have a name for it. In fact at that stage it is similar to saying that it looks alien. Then what is it?

Well, the human beings that lived at the time never really cared to dissect a rock. Their survival goals never really demanded that they find the exact name of the object. However, they assigned a name, associated it with the pattern such objects portray, spread that idea to many generations, and thus that is how we have finally come to know that such an object is a rock.

But the fact is that pattern is never really supposed to be called a rock...and we can never really know what to absolutely call it.