"sorry means you don't do it again" I'm going to remember that one.

I learned a lot from this video. But I started falling asleep because of the narrator's soothing voice. Note to self: watch in the morning, not before bedtime :)

Saturnalia sounds pretty great. Almost like The Purge, without the violence and sins against humanity itself, just social crimes.

That is perhaps one of the best quality content video I've seen in years. In those 15 minutes you've managed to put so much information in a viewer-friendly form, outstanding! The best of it is that it's only after third or fourth time watching it, one is able to comprehend all it's integrity and true deepness of moral. Cheers guys, keep it going!

I like the idea of planning collective appointments with important emotions.

Wow, this really made me reassess my stance on rituals - I was never a fan of forced/dictated celebrating of ancient festivities. But now I see it in a different light. Great video!

There's a great quote from the "Inner Work" book by Robert A. Johnson that's totally congruent with the video: "All my experience as a psychologist leads me to the conclusion that a sense of reverence is necessary for psychological health . If a person has no sense of reverence, no feeling that there is anyone or anything that inspires awe , it generally indicates an ego inflation That cuts the conscious personality off completely from the nourishing springs of the unconscious. It is ironic, then, that so much of our modern culture is aimed at eradicating all reverence e, and respect for the high truth. and qualities that inspire a feeling of awe and worship in the human".

I say it's about time to celebrate the Roman heritage of Western culture and bring back Saturnalia! Io Saturnalia!

Thank you for posting thoughtful content on KZfaq. Subscribed after watching just one video!

In ritual "the world as lived and the world as imagined turn out to be the same world." -Geertz.

We just started a new global ritual. It's called quarantine.

Oddly comforting. Certainly one of my favorite school of life videos.

I can't put into words how grateful I am for these short videos, Alain de Botton and the School of Life team. Thank you.

The School of Life videos are wonderful, brilliantly conceived, concise, packed with information that includes a perspective that is not the "wiki history" that purports to be objective but one with a point of view that is enlightened, humble, broad and generous. Very impressive. Big fan.

Alain you are definitely an Ascended Master and I am forever thankful for your insights. You are supeeeeerb. And you make me believe that gentleness has not died in this world.

I thank this channel for existing. I have never taken this perspective on many topics shared here. I have gained so much more understanding thanks to what you do.

Internet memes are the new rituals

Thank you, SOL and Alaine. You are making a real difference.

This is, in my opinion, one of the best videos of this channel. You really nailed it this time.

This channel heals my soul in the most splendid way possible.

AMAZING VIDEOS... It was exactly the kind of videos I ve been looking for... Loved it❤️

I think that our rituals have just become smaller, in that its less about the whole group doing something together, and more about people picking rituals that are suited to them. Certain people will go to the same festival every year when it comes around, and others don't because they don't like it. Some people have parties at a certain time of the year every year, some people will take a vacation in a similar way. I don't think rituals are gone, but that they are more attuned to each person and therefore smaller groups gather for them.

What a superb video, thank you for acting on your ideas and creating this channel it has helped me beyond words.

10:43 "...while the ball is canonized in a special museum in Manchester." So, I'm to understand that it is currently a...canon ball? *Rimshot*

I love your videos, thank you for making this incredibly interesting channel!

since i discoverd your page it actually changed my life, keep with the amazing work(:

Loving this History of Ideas series. Learning a lot from it. Thanks. 🙏🙌

Couldn't agree more. Love your channel. it is so comforting.

This was a great video! So many of the ideas expressed in this video were entirely new to me and very thought provoking. Thanks!

We watch all of your videos, and this one is one of your best. Thanks.

Yeah perhaps the West need more spiritual and deeper types of rituals. One of the rituals we do that baffles me that Western countries don't have is 'The day of the dead' or 'All saints day'. It's celebrated by Hispanics and us Filipinos and it is a Christian ritual. Yes, it's a religious ritual but hear me out :) Basically, it's a day dedicated for the relatives you lost. You go visit their grave, clean it up, have a picnic for them and we tend to leave food and flowers for them. I think it's a pretty nice idea to have a day dedicated to those you lost :/ Not only will you be paying your respects but I think it kinda reduces the burden of losing someone. It's a day of remembrance and reflection. I may not be very religious but this celebration/ritual has always been one that I've enjoyed compared to Easter. Western Easter isn't good either since it's all about buying chocolate eggs nowadays :/

These videos are absolutely wonderful - many profound thoughts to ponder...

Saturnalia FTW!!

I don't think it's money that's displacing or driving out ritual. It's our attitude toward tradition and the past. "Rituals are old. Old things are dumb." So sayeth the modern.

Hello! I'm a new subscriber and a bug fan of your videos. I would really love to see a History of ideas on Comedy please! Thank you for all the wonderful material already.

I've been looking for a site like this for months. I read that the founder of SOL has written articles and stuff too so I can really bite my teeth in to things once I've sharpened up and established my interests and opinions. I'm so excited, thanks guys. Also, regardless of what rituals are - I loved this video!

I think raves are the best rituals we have today. You should talk about them !

How many of us in the US thought of how "Black Friday" has encroached ever more on the older ritual of Thanksgiving day? What can we do to stop it? Personally, I've completely avoided shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, spending the time with family or friends, instead.

The memories of calling his master a shit, lighten the load... with such Dulcet articulation I wasn’t expecting this and how it made me laugh!

Wow! Great video guys, I honestly think this is one of the best videos you've ever made.

I have a book called The Orphics, which is about Orphism, the religion that was in ancient Greece before the 12 Gods of Olympus. The origins of Orphism is dated by most historians around 18th century BC and this book, partially written in the 5th century BC, contains hymns, stories and rituals about various Gods, the Sun, the Moon, Mother Earth, Dreams, Demons, Death, Health, Luck and others. Owning a book like that makes me feel so excited, like i m one step closer to my ancestors 4000 years ago! You got so many interesting stuff School of Life, thank you!

This is one of your best videos so far!

very well made and animated video thank you @theschooloflife, personally find the last 2 minutes very interesting where we are doing things privately now ....

dudes you miss spelled yom kippur for some reason you flipped the text it's actually looks like this יום כיפור besides that great video guys really hope to see more :)

Hopefully one day we will have days of ritual like saturnalia without the need of false religions :)

YOU ARE IN MY TOP3 CHANNELS. AMAZING AND USEFUL WORK...TOTALLY APART FROM 99%IN KZfaq AND INTERNET KEEP ON PEACE

really great video, love the history of ideas series! does anybody think that music festivals are like a new form of ritual? they're not private as thousands of people take part and they're used as a way of letting out stress or just having a good time!

we enjoy your programs. very nice visual presentation too. thank you.

Good video, thanks School of Life (and mr Alain)

The educational system ruins learning, you bring it back and improve upon it! Thank you for existing! :)

Very unique message for the modern day. Society is very good at throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm now studying the role of ritual in anthropology and this video is amazing to understand it better thank you!!

Extremely interesting and educative video!

Once again, an excellent video. Thought provoking and yet also puts into a new perspective many things we know. Having moved to Israel many years ago from the US, one thing that delights me anew each year is ''Tu B'shavat''--the ''holiday of the trees'' (as in a popular song). Early spring and kindergarteners and their teachers, (looking like a duck with many ducklings), are out enjoying the almonds trees in beautiful blossom, singing songs, and having earnest discussions about trees. Our ''Day of Forgiveness'' and soul searching, Judaism's most sacred day, means no vehicles, no one at work or school, and still the sound of the shofar. Interesting that these rituals have lasted so very long.

Sorry Day was met with almost universal disdain because the idea of being held responsible for the crimes of someone else is a travesty of justice and an insult to anyone with a shred of intelligence, common sense, dignity or a sense of justice, for we are not responsible for crimes we did not commit. It was a thing of debasement and humiliation, rather than something of remembrance. Most people are no more likely to regularly grovel and beg for forgiveness for the crimes of strangers than they are to submit to a ritual where they must walk naked through the streets tolling a bell while people hurl rotten fruit at them and shouting "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!". THAT is why Sorry day disgusted most, NOT because of apathy.

Excellent video and analysis!

Wow... what a well rounded argument for a youtube video. It is the first thing i've seen of this channel, maybe it's my own fault, but either way, keep it up, I want to hear more from this channel. I agree we need new rituals that are geared toward our well-being and not necessarily religious ones.

This is amazing work.

I think the Romans got it right with Saturnalia. We should look into bringing back such a flamboyant ritual.

I love the rather recent ritual that happens in my country on the 4th of May at 20:00. The whole country stops working for 2 minutes and everybody is silent. Buses don't drive, people stop working, and in almost every town there's a gathering of people around a memorial to remember the people who died for our freedom. It's called de Nationale Dodenherdenking (The National remembrance of the dead).

Very well done. I appreciate the multi-cultural, cross-cultural emphasis which is important to the point that ritual is human rather than a culturally specific trait. And you can't comprehensively catalog every ritual around the world and through history while keeping your video to a reasonable length. I would draw a line from Saturnalia to some Euro-centric practices like Fool's Day as it was traditionally practiced. One could also mention Maying in this regard and its loosening of the the rather strict mores intended for the young in Celtic and Gaelic lands especially... (Oh that we two were Maying, Now is the time of Maying, etc.) The pagan calendar had its feast days, and the medieval Christian calendar was full of them. But your video is very good, has a very good breadth, and emphasizes something the modern world needs very much to rediscover. (Oh, and BTW, I think commerce has found a way to make peace - and money - with Christmas! ;-) Perhaps that could show a path toward incorporating other worthy ritual days in the world that business has created...)

Great video ! Thank you

love your videos!

this is a very fresh perspective to see the essence of rituals, thank you for the great video! but I wonder how can we make sure that peoples also can get the essence of rituals when the rituals have been repeated so many times, it tends to lose its meaning. it's no longer a ritual but more like a routine.

Fascinating and profound!

One of the best School of Life videos

All of the Arabic writing in the video was flipped backwards. Arabic is written from right to left, and is also a bit like cursive, in that the letters connect to each other in certain ways. So Ramadan, instead of ن ض م ر, should be رمضن. Great video, but if you need help with Arabic in the future (or Hebrew, since other comments suggest you made the same error), you do have viewers who speak these languages, and who would probably help out! :)

i can't give this enough thumbs up. the lack of rituals is what makes me feel disconnected with my culture/religion, but i am in the process of creating some of my own.

You know that lock on the refrigerator door like that will only force you to also take out ice cream every time you sin. :P

I really like this channel :) there's always something new to learn or to analyse :) never giving up on education

Love your outtake

Rituals for me is a way to get into a particular mental, emotional, physical and/or spiritual space. Writers may have a ritual they do before writing, to get into a space that is conducive for writing. I think if you view rituals as an helpful tool it removes some of the stigma attached to it - e.g. that it's just a way to brainwash people, etc.

One thing I like about Christmas is the connection it makes to people across cultures, especially the song attributed to the angels: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill towards men" (Luke 2:14, KJV).

This is a great video! And yet, I am pessimistic in regards to the creation of modern rituals. Part of the magic in traditional ritualism is the belief that such practices have been enjoying from above - in other words, from a transcendent principal from which all meaning and value is derived. I feel as though if I were to create/participate in a modern ritual, I would always feel somewhat silly about the whole affair because I would know that it's essentially made up by my imagination or people like myself.

@The School of Life: I love your videos, have watched a great many of them, and am subscribed to your channel. Congrats on all the great work - but you should also know that the arabic script and spelling in this video (e.g. Ramadan, Zakat, etc.) is all wrong!

amazing video !

I used to be kind of tired of the style of videos they were making, but the last few were actually on point!

Have fun for three days and keep salves the rest of the year. Fast for a month and don't worry during the rest of the year. All these rituals seem to me closer to scapegoating, excuses to avoid real change

This is a good segment. I'm glad there was differentiation between toxic rituals (that ruin them for everyone) and the rest. It is dangerous that we lack a sense of community, it would explain the rash of shootings which in many ways began as apathy for violence in poorer neighborhoods. We are our brothers (and sisters) keeper. Healthy minds should be cultivated and even distributed often among society. Just being in their presence can eradicate, pernicious simmering emotions. The right people in the right place in the right time dispersed frequently as well as moments of necessary private growth. Rituals are needed I think and they must be kept mentally healthy as well so that they last and have salutary effects on every generation. Just being in the presence of a right mind can make so much difference. This is good. We do need to plan and cultivate good mentally healthy communal gatherings.

Thanks for the interesting channel, but unfortunately not everyone can appreciate it. Do you plan to add subtitles?

This is what festivals are these days - everything from concerts, to burning man, and every other festival that allows space for us to feel deeply into that emotional connection to something deeper and bigger than ourselves

Who does the voice over for these videos? I just love listening to him speak.... I've listened to many other similar videos and i just prefer the general tone of this guy in particular

I do think we have rituals nowadays. for example, graduation, both in high school and university, are rituals in which the young person finishes a chapter of his/her life. parents and loved ones usually gather together to see how their child is a bit more grown up. Also, weddings are still very common, even if they are not made in a church, new year Eve is a big thing in most countries, you start a brand new year and think what you want to do to have a better life, and when someone dies there is always a funeral (which is also a ritual)

What a beautiful video 😊

If we had more naked rituals, I'd actually open up my schedule for them...

Ramadan was spelled backwards in Arabic. It's رمضان. However, I'm really glad that you have tackled the subject not only from an anglo-centric point of view and mentioned the Middle East and Africa. Thank you so much! :) You did a really good job!

sooothe Saturnalia is essentially a hedonistic version of the purge?

Let's relive Switzerland's tunnel debut celebration every year!

Some interesting rituals. 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Black Friday sale, Christmas, standing in for new iPhones (or Jordans)

Finally my favorite subject

Can you guys make a video about the history of funerals and/or mourning?

This is a sweeping generalization. Just because you don't celebrate religious rituals does not mean others fail to do so. All one has to do is work for a school system to know that people do celebrate days important to their particular religion, and to know, at least in the U.S., that absences to celebrate those days must be honored and cannot be penalized in any way. And not merely schools, just last year during a murder trial one of the lawyers who was an orthodox Jew had the due date for a brief he needed to submit changed because it fell during Shavuot, during which his religion commanded him not to work. Also, Muslim holidays are carefully honored. As far as secular rituals, many people just celebrated one, graduation, a time in the U.S. where commencement speeches are given, and diplomas awarded, and caps and gowns worn, and Pomp and Circumstance played, and each family throws a party in honor of the graduate for his/her hard work and accomplishment. Rituals mark key transitions in the life of an individual and in the life of a collective. They are still with us. Though you are an atheist, you, like Victorian Matthew Arnold, seem merely to be mourning the decline of religious faith in Europe, and religious myth and ritual, so you miss noticing all the other occasions humans take time to commemorate or celebrate with ritual. We also just celebrated Memorial Day here in the U.S., each town with its own small observance and, nationally, President Obama placed a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. To any family who has lost a loved one to war, this yearly ritual and yearly observance is profoundly meaningful.

one of the largest rituals in western society nowadays are the big summer music festivals.

This was beautiful. Thank you.

I love this channel, the animation and the narration. So much work is obviously put in to every video, so I was a little disappointed to see how incorrectly the Arabic words were displayed. The letters weren't joined or arranged in a way that made sense. Don't be on par with Homeland! :P

8:49 when he said James Patterson I immediately thought of the author

Have you guys thought about making a video on chomsky? his idea of language growth and its implications on the concept of human nature.

THANK YOU

Of the various series from The School of Life that I have watched, this series, "History of Ideas," is easily my favorite. Compared to the other School of Life videos that I have watched, the writing for this series is stronger and clearer. More importantly, I feel that the analysis is superior, on average, to the average of the other videos I have watched. Nevertheless, this particular video possibly contains the least rigorous and least defensible analysis of any video by The School of Life that I have yet watched. First, while the video is not a stereotypical noble savage story, most of the criticisms of the "truths" from noble savage stories can easily be applied here. Second, while the analysis obviously tries very hard to avoid saying anything that sounds like "the good old days," at heart, the analysis is so close to a good old days argument, that most of the same criticisms of the good old days myth can easily be applied here. Possibly the most important criticism is that this video does not mention any of the negative aspects of any of the example rituals or anything negative about rituals in general. Third, I cannot remember if there is a technical term for this analytical problem, but in many of the example rituals, the fallacy is asserting that the lives of those discussed are both representative of most people in that time and place and that the social class(es) of the people discussed are congruent with the social class(es) of the viewer (or with the typical person living in the viewer's culture). Most people in Rome were neither rich or a slave, so many of those rituals had no impact on their lives. Orgies were for the elite, and discussing that aspect of the ritual has no relevance or meaning to the contemporary person. Furthermore, the ritual itself is either not well-described or the historical record is wrong. At one point, the video claims that masters serve the slaves, but that seems improbable if the masters are attending orgies, having affairs, and getting drunk. Even the story of the Jewish community in Alexandria fits within this fallacy because the overwhelming majority of people at the time lived in rural areas, not cities, so anything that happened in the city, and only in the city, is by definition, an uncommon event rather than an example of the typical life of people at the time. Fourth, the video defines "ritual," and eventually declares that contemporary rituals "tend to be" about sports. But the definition in the video obviously includes many more events, such as family reunions, funerals, [examples from the USA:] eating together on Memorial day, Labor day, Independence day, and Thanksgiving [end USA-centric examples], May the Fourth, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Children's Day, DEFCON, 14 March (3.14), Comiket, Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Burning Man, and about eleventy grillion other "periodic invitations by society to come together with other people to mark an occassion." Fifth, the claim that old rituals have been "stripped out" of contemporary culture because of money is barely supported in the video. Are the viewers expected to believe that we do not have three-day orgies anymore because of the capitalists? Sixth, if we assume that all of the example rituals are accurately explained, the explanations are certainly problematic because they confuse what the purpose of the ritual ought to be with what the results of the rituals actually are. I doubt I need to give any examples of how most rituals have lost their ability to achieve their intended goal and instead are empty of meaning or have been transformed so much that the actual effects on the participants have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of the ritual. In the video, the example rituals of the noble savages are only explained by their alleged purpose. In contrast, the contemporary ritual of "Sorry Day" is denigrated because the actual effects of the ritual fail to achieve the purpose of the ritual. A critical analysis of a ritual should look much more like the analysis of Sorry Day than the analyses of the noble savage rituals. Finally, I think there is one particular claim in the video that epitomizes the lack of rigor and critical analysis in this video. [At 10:46] "Rituals have continued into the [contemporary] age. . . . They are very limited in their ambitions and they lack a lot of the psychological richness of religious minded rituals of old." There is not one word of evidence to support a) that old rituals had psychological richness in practice rather than just in theory, b) that old rituals were not also very limited in their ambitions, c) that limited ambitions are bad or less desirable than unlimited (grandiose? this-porridge-is-just-right?) ambitions, d) that contemporary rituals, as a class, are actually limited, or e) that contemporary rituals, as a class, lack psychological richness. ----------------- Coda This video is certainly not representative of the other videos I have watched from The School of Life. The topic itself is extremely interesting, and I believe that many people would benefit from a thoughtful, rigorous analysis of the subject. I am confident that your organization includes many people who could work together to create a video that would contribute to the discussion about the role of rituals in contemporary life. I do not know your business model or how to produce the plethora of videos you manage to produce, so I will not offer a suggestion about what to do if you agree that this video could be dramatically improved. For most people, in most situations, speaking about most topics, _accurate_ statements are sufficient and sometimes preferable to _precise_ statements: including in your videos. With that in mind, because the majority of your videos discuss history explicitly or implicitly, it is quite important to use the words "modern" and "contemporary" with precision. At 12:42, the video tells us that we, the viewers, are "modern." Many people in your audience will remember this idea, and when they survey another academic discipline (or another historical opinion) that tells your viewer that we are in the post-modern age, your viewer will be confused. How is she supposed to synthesize "modern" from this video with the meaning of "modern" in the other discussion? You can avoid this confusion by referring to your audience as "contemporary" people rather than modern people.

can you make a series of vídeos explaining the psychology of people and why do some of us act different thab others