Word: ritual
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...Ritual Politics...
...human beings, eating has never been a simple matter. To a frog snagging a fly or a pelican nabbing a fish, food is fuel and nothing more. To a human, the ritual of eating--the act of pulling up and tucking in, of passing around and helping oneself--is one of the most primal of shared activities. We eat together when we celebrate, and we eat together when we grieve; we eat together when a loved one is preparing to leave, and we eat together when the loved one returns. We solve our problems over the family dinner table, conduct...
Although that has long been the way food works, it is becoming less so--at least in the developed world, where scarcity has been replaced by overabundance and undernourishment by obesity. Increasingly, the connection between eating and ritual is becoming unhinged. We turn too much to food for solace and celebration, and we do it with less and less reference to traditions or even formal mealtimes--to the detriment of our figure and our health...
...church understands this and has long left it up to the individual to wrestle with his or her conscience as to whether going to Communion is appropriate. To turn the tables and make the giving of Communion contingent on a public, political litmus test would politicize a sacred ritual that is and always should be beyond politics...
...stew while bigger networks raided its youth niche with reality shows. In the ultimate WB indignity, it was Fox that landed last year's hot teen soap with "The O.C." Network CEO Jordan Levin flatly apologized to advertisers, in particular by practically promising to commit ritual suicide for having decided, last year, to focus on scripted rather than reality shows. "We will never make that mistake again," he pledged, mustering as much contrition as an entire administration did over the Abu Ghraib scandal...