Democracy, Capitalism, Rituals, and Spirituality
One of the most common things I hear among my peers and colleagues is that they are spiritual but not religious. When I ask them to explain their stance, most people say that they subscribe to the idea of a formless divinity but stay away from organized religion because they find the rituals meaningless and taxing. I held this stance for many years.
However, life has been interesting over the past few years since I met my guru, Om Swami. He emphasizes that we all look past the various assumptions we make in life and reflect on our day-to-day actions to discover our own truth. I was examining my attitude towards rituals in spirituality when it struck me that our lives are based on rituals. At its most basic, a ritual is a set of steps you follow almost subconsciously. You can also look at rituals as a codified set of rules that you follow to reach a specific outcome.
Most people start their days by checking email, news, messages, tweets, and Instagram reels. The next ritual they participate in is drinking coffee or tea. My parents can only get out of bed if they have a cup of coffee ready. Then, you drive to work and attend some rituals such as scrum meetings and status meeting planning activities, which allow teams to understand each other’s progress on tasks. Almost everyone I know has lunch at a specific time with the same people every day. They often prefer to sit at the same table. We also have rituals during presentations where confident leaders like to start by sharing personal stories.
In contrast, others prefer to start with data. We even love listening to the same podcasts or songs while driving. Most of us have some closing rituals before going to sleep. Some people love to read, others listen to music, while a few others may meditate or drink a glass of warm milk.
Our lives are a collection of various rituals we consciously or subconsciously introduce. This is true at a personal and collective level. Let’s look at democracy, which has its roots in ancient Greece. Socrates criticized it scathingly because he believed that you cannot expect people not skilled in various aspects of governance to decide their next leader. They are prone to fall to people who appeal to their base emotions.
Here are a couple of quotes describing the contrasting points of view.
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”- Winston Churchill.
“Democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.” — John F. Kennedy.
Democracy, socialism, or any other form of governance is also based on mutually decided rituals.
Democracy is one of the most dearly cherished rituals in most countries. Americans love the presidential debates despite data showing they have minimal impact on elections. People typically use these debates to confirm their biases. If you examine democracy or any other system, you will see it is full of little rituals that both the candidate and the voting populations must participate in to ensure the system’s effectiveness.
We have similar rituals in capitalism. You need to see how companies use the bankruptcy code whenever founders walk away from bad decisions that ruin their company. Adam Neumann, the founder of We Work, remains a billionaire, while the company filed for bankruptcy and investors lost billions. A decade ago, a company could only go public if it was profitable. New rituals perpetrated by Venture Capital firms mean that capital-guzzling, loss-making companies such as Uber routinely debuted in the stock market while proudly stating they are still far from profitability.
Rituals in Spirituality
When I realized how rituals govern our everyday lives, I marveled at the wisdom of the sages of Sanatana Dharma, who included various rituals and hymns and the Vedas to help people reach the highest possibilities of human existence. Tomorrow, I am concluding a sixteen-day Sadhana called Sri Sukhtam. The Sadhana includes a series of rituals to celebrate Ma Lakshmi — the goddess of wealth and prosperity. As our guru explained the purpose of each ritual, I was amazed by the thought that went into designing the whole system many thousands of years ago.
At the end, there is a small ritual in which we mentally circumambulate around the fire pit where we conduct the Yagna. The mantra reminds us that just like Ganesha considered his parents to be his world and circumambulated around them to win a bet, we can pray to the divine energy to consider our sentiment similarly and liberate us from this cycle of life and death.
However, I can understand why most people don’t like rituals. They have seen their elders dogmatically practice various actions without a rational or esoteric explanation of why they are essential and how they can help you move closer to your final goal of liberation.
The following videos by my Guru Om Swami offer fantastic insights into rituals and how we can move beyond them.
