Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living

'The great mystery of human behavior is ritual. How do we explain circumcisions, Debutante Balls, hazing, Royal Coronations, and fire-walking? Dimitris Xygalatas is a brilliant polymath and this fascinating book explores this question through a mix of scientific research, evolutionary theorizing, and deep immersion into cultures with gruesomeand painful rituals. An important intellectual contribution and a true delight to read - The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning'Why do people walk on hot coals, scarify themselves, pierce their bodies with sharp objects, fast, kneel, handle poisonous snakes, endure hours of boring sermons on their days off? Like the question of how dosing ourselves with alcohol, a low-grade neurotoxin, has persisted and endured so long as a practice among human cultures, the prevalence of pragmatically useless and yet often costly and painful rituals across human cultures is a mystery hiding in plain sight. Armed with new tools, such as biometric sensors and hormone sampling, Xygalatas reveals the inner workings and crucial functions of ritual,which explain both its antiquity and ubiquity ... An entertaining and engaging introduction to the cognitive science ofritual by one of the pioneers of the field - Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization'We are ritual beings; we surround ourselves with rituals - at birth, death and everywhere in between. But why do rituals matter to us when they so often bring so few obvious benefits? In this striking, wonderfully written, and original new book, Dimitris Xygalatas unravels the mystery of how rituals - from the mundane to the bizarrely violent - can be the source of transformative power - The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data'From the firewalking ceremonies of Greece to the terrifying rites of Amazonia, the anthropologist-cum-psychologistDimitris Xygalatas leads readers on a whitewater tour of the new science of Rituals, exploring and explaining how and why all human societies engage in seemingly senseless, repetitive and obscure customs that integrate rhythm, dance, music, pain and sacrifice. Rich in ethnographic detail, personal narratives and psychological experiments, Rituals tell us how we canuse this new science, and the wisdom embedded in ancient traditions, to elevate our lives, improve our health and strengthen our communities - The WEIRDest People in the World