The document summarizes the key discussions from a cultural intelligence salon on rituals in a fluid modern world. The panel of four experts and audience discussed whether rituals are being eroded or if new ones are being created. They highlighted five major takeaways: 1) Rituals provide comfort and order in an unstable world. 2) Rituals become more meaningful when practiced mindfully rather than routinely. 3) Modern rituals emphasize performance and construction over past rituals constructed by institutions. 4) Rituals allow people to feel part of something bigger as a way to find belonging. 5) People use rituals to construct narratives and distract from mortality.

1. Flamingo Cultural Intelligence Salon
New Rituals in a Fluid World
Flamingo’s Cultural Intelligence practice assembled with four panel
members Kate Bussmann, author, A Twitter Year: 365 Days in 140
Characters, Dale Southerton, Professor of Sociology at Manchester
University, Peter Ayres, architect with Heatherwick Studio and Andy
Gibson, founder, Mindapples and an enthusiastic audience to discuss
a central question: are our rituals being eroded or are we creating new
ones?
Here we have highlighted our 5 big take-outs from the event.
Illustrations were created real-time by Danny Burgess.
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2. 1. Comfort in chaos
Rituals protect us in a de-stabilised and informalised world
Fear and anxiety grows around economic instability and loss of
institutional trust. We can’t keep up with rapid technological change.
Our rules, routines, etiquettes and tastes diversify, blur and informalise.
In this world fluidity is the norm. And this is why rituals may matter more
now than ever as they provide comfort from order, punctuation and
an accepted way of behaving. But it is more than a rational
patterning of the everyday. Rituals have an eternal quality which take
us away from the moment, as Peter Ayres says, ‘binding into the
eternal that promises to stretch both forwards and backwards in time.’
In this way a ritual becomes the friction to slow down the present whirl.
Regardless of the ever-volatile world around us, we remain anchored
to firm ground. As Kate Bussman explained, “ the fear of missing out
exhausts us. We need rituals to switch off”.
Brand Takeout: brands can use rituals to give consumers time and
space to enjoy experiences and each other more, without it feeling like
a disconnection from the world.

3. 2. Mindfulness enhances the meaning
Both routines and rituals are about repetition, but routine dulls the
senses, rituals make them more alive
The distinction between ritual and routine comes down to mindfulness.
Is going to church on Sunday a ritual or a routine? For panelist Peter
Ayres, the answer is simple: “Routine is unthinking and ritual is mindful.”
Examples such as the Japanese Tea Ceremony or the way in which the
Olympic Park was designed with ‘boundary markers’ like bridges to
encourage people to pause and deliberate or turnstiles in football
stadia with their familiar audio cues, all have distinct markers or stages
which invite some deliberation and therefore enhance the experience.
You feel involved and reflective. This chimes with sociologist Richard
Sennett’s view in his book ‘Together’ who writes that repetition in music
is more akin to ritual than routine because “playing a passage again
and again can make us concentrate ever more on the specifics, and
the value of the sounds, words or bodily movements becomes deeply
ingrained. In rituals the same ingraining occurs”.
Brand takeout: Always ask if what you think is your brand’s ritual is in
fact a routine. Brands should think of the triggers, cues, markers, bodily
movements which invite a more mindful ritual.

4. 3. The Power of performance
If it’s good enough for the Olympics…
The big shift over time is how our rituals have gone from something
constructed for us – by religion, timetables, regular patterns to our days
– to something we need to create ourselves in order to make sense of
the world and enhance our experiences. The panel were unified in
their belief that a greater sense of your performance and construction
was a hallmark of modern day rituals. Think of the lighting of London’s
Olympic Torch – re-invented as a ritual by it’s de-construction, re-
construction, lengthening of the performance of its lighting, with more
people involved. We can bring the music motif back in here if we think
how the Columbian government used the dramatisation of ritual
performance to ingrain hand-washing for the public
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlawAUA4OKo
Brand takeout: How can your brand enable consumers to create
develop their own rituals? Rituals as performance suggests brands can
create bigger rituals than their consumption moment or packaging or
gestures, think about the practices, infrastructures and communities
your brand is part of where rituals could enhance the brand’s role in
them.

5. 4. Feeling part of something bigger than yourself
Transcending the self in secular times
Andy Gibson provoked the audience with an assertion that our rituals
are becoming more individual compared to the past where they were
more collective. But the response was a concerted belief in the pursuit
of belonging as the motivation behind many modern ritualized
behaviours. Collective rituals drive both new ways of watching
television (bingeing on The House of Cards is a way for us to construct
shared spaces of intimacy) as well as keep traditional live TV viewing
buoyant. “Ritual is about losing yourself to something bigger which in
our individualistic society has real currency;” said one guest, “Surely the
word ritual implies a transcendence of the self,” says another.
Brand Takeout: examine whether your brand’s ritual is about helping
people feel part of something bigger rather than a gesture aimed at a
solo experience, making you think of the brand rather than other
people.

6. 5. A healthy distraction
Rituals to construct the narrative of our lives
When Dale Southerton reminded us we were all destined for death, the
audience and panel gasped. We all know this fact, but we all do our
best to distract ourselves from it. “We need to construct rituals to
create a narrative so that we can survive.” So we use rituals as a self-
management tool to enable us to get through our days, weeks and
years until we reach the inevitable. But far from being depressing, this is
perhaps what makes rituals such a rich topic. Because as Andy Gibson
explains, “We aren’t all rational beings looking for the fastest way to
get from cradle to grave, we’re all mad, and we live our lives through
a series of bizarre rituals.” Whether shared or individual, mindful or
habitual, passive or active, meaningful or banal, it’s these funny little
quirks that make it all so interesting. As one audience member says,
‘Ritualistic behavior is anti-efficient, it’s for its own sake and for that
reason, flies in the face of the time demands of culture.’
Brand Takeout: Learn from Gibson’s Mindapples, with their 5 a-day
model for mental health, helping individuals pinpoint rituals that
encourage wellbeing. What parts of life and culture are legitimate
spaces for your brand to create rituals in to enhance the narratives of
our lives?

7. A final thought…
Rituals go bad. They go stale. They can become conservative and the
norm. At their worst they can oppress. In many emerging markets, the
erosion of traditional rituals which bind people represents progress.
The final lesson for us all: keep rituals fresh.
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