Comments on: social scripts for rituals and ceremonies, of religion and culture

By: Sitting Shiva Sympathy Gift, the Jewish Tradition of Mourning

Sitting Shiva Sympathy Gift, the Jewish Tradition of Mourning — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:13:04 +0000

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By: John Beckwith

John Beckwith — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:30:19 +0000

I experience the same loss of protocol in many of the same situtations while my wife always seems to know exactly what to do. We both grew up in the SF Bay Area but had vastly different experiences. My family was very informal and by the time I was 10 I had met and hung out with bikers, punks, druggies, crazies, artists, etc. My wife grew up in a very insulated relgious Russian community where she hung out with, well, other religious Russian-Americans. Needless to say I saw about as many ways possible to handle situations (which helps me to this day as a user experience designer) while my wife really had this one way. So when situtations arise it’s not as though I’m necessarily at a total loss – I just don’t really feel like I know the *right* script to use – I mean should I user test a few first? My wife doesn’t blink and does what you’re supposed to do. At any rate, I guess my point is that there are aspects of a formal or informal upbringing that shape your protocol and how much you stick to it. Of course I’m probably totally off base here.

By: Kasey Curtiss

Kasey Curtiss — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:53:38 +0000

Thank you for this post. Wonderful to hear someone express this. In 1990 when my father died, the members of the fundamentalist church he & my mom had belong to all came to the house. They brought and served meals, cleaned up, answered the door, and in general took care of the niggling details of life we were not able to handle. I remember thinking at the time “THIS is the advantage of being part of a church” As I’m an adult now and very independent of ‘normal’ social groups, I find myself at a loss what to do in life situations such as births, deaths, weddings, holiday gifting… I feel totally inadequate to the tasks and expectations. Occasionally a script would be a relaxing thing to have.

By: Matt Kraai

Matt Kraai — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 07:19:09 +0000

This post made the feed invalid because it parsed “social scripts” as two tags, ‘”social’ and ‘scripts”‘. Would you please change it to social-scripts or something that doesn’t break the feed?

By: davesgonechina

davesgonechina — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:58:51 +0000

Thought you might like this Robert Epstein interview in Psychology Today:

http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20070302-000002&page=1

By: Jonathan vonbriesen

Jonathan vonbriesen — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:49:43 +0000

i lack any social script. my parents are both baptised. on one side there are buddhists, on the other muslims. as a youth i could never decide what to do, i always felt as if i was letting someone else down. now i long for a religion, a bigger family, something more than life to belong to. something of a script. the fact is. in the states there are none because of the imense diversity. each one a complete entity of itself. traditionally the countries, or regions, practiced one religion. therfore making it a larger community. this is where the scripts came from. growing up in the states, you either are raised a particular way, so that is the script, or you arent. maybe you are, but than you rebel. its all the same. when you go to the country around charlottesville va, you see different scripts depending on which direction you go. aethism towards richmond, islam towards dc, conservative christianity towards west va. i realize that i am relating scripts to religion, but traditionally, i believe that this is where they come from. now what does someone like me do? i find incredible aspects of all religions and cultures, yet there are things i dislike aswell. am i stuck to make a decision on an existing religion? i agree with “write your own script” but sometimes, like you said, i want to have a tradition. something to follow. in the states i think that is what we lose with “freedom.”

By: bedava dev indir

bedava dev indir — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:36:25 +0000

Write your own script. If you go with what you are comfortable with, you will rarely/never be wrong.

By: Ken

Ken — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:41:35 +0000

I’ve been there too, danah. I’ve many close friends who are Jewish, and was a regular visitor to St. James in Seattle when Hunthausen was Archbishop.

Since I am Unitarian myself, I’m often at a loss to know exactly what ritual and custom demands. But I’ve found that (just like learning a new language), friends and strangers alike have been enormously receptive to my interest in their traditions. It may be that a few may harbor dreams of converting me, but I really haven’t ever felt that pressure. Of course, I’ve got great friends.

My rule of thumb is to lead with curiosity, sincerity and humility. The rest is just translation.

By: Jay Fienberg

Jay Fienberg — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:08:53 +0000

One thing that I think is interesting about this is: why would you say that Jewish rituals and Christian rituals are both “religious” rituals?

There is an easy answer, which is something about how, by convention, we describe these kinds of things as “religions.” But, when one looks at these traditions in terms of their social rituals or scripts, I think many of the scripts function in very different ways in each tradition, in terms of defining identity.

It might be interesting to think about these scripts in terms of social (community), political, cultural and religious (doctrine-oriented) identities. And, for example, a lot of Jewish rituals would be in use for more social / cultural than political or religious identity (e.g., it’s not particularly hard to imagine Jewish Buddhist pacifists, Jewish secular socialists and Jewish right-wing nationalist celebrating Jewish holidays together every year–at least not amongst the people I know. . .).

By: Jane McG

Jane McG — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:07:19 +0000

I’m like you — I feel comforted by social scripts.

In the case of Peter’s memorial, I googled “memorial service etiquette” in an attempt to find some useful scripts. It was actually quite helpful. I’m always googling etiquette stuff for scripts; simple but effective!