Matt J. Rossano > Quotes

“We no longer -bless- fields to reap abundant crops because scientifically-informed farming methods are more reliable for achieving that end. Thus, the claim of ritual inefficacy is based on the laws of physics, not Western prejudice.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Ritual is as old as humanity. The first humans ritually raised hands and voices in both desperation and exaltation, just as we do today. That protracted continuity is no historical accident. Ritual has been as critical to our success as fire and tools.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“...cooperation on a grand scale required ritual on a grand scale.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“So confident are we in ritual's power that we dare brandish it against the might of Nature herself. Nature will have its way with us, but we have always used ritual to rob it of the last word. It is nature that determines when a baby is born. But it has always been ritual that decides when a child's body has taken adult form. But it has always been ritual that decides when the boy is recognized as a man or the girl has become a woman. Nature directs our lusts and desires, but it has always been ritual that decides who our legitimate partner is. And in the end, nature snuffs the life from the body. But it has always been ritual that determines when our beloved is dismissed from our care. Humans are the only species that take offense at Nature's indifference to our plight. Ritual is a defiant gesture expressing that offence. If we abandon ritual do we give up something of our humanity? No. It is much simpler than that. If we abandon ritual, we give up being human.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“We tend to trust others with whom we share similar values or worldviews. The shared belief in the supernatural world accesible through trance, where one interacts with watchful ancestors and spirits might be a basis upon which trust could be built. If while ritually interacting with beloved ancestors, members of both groups pledge their mutual allegiance, then rivals might become friends and trading partners. Once again, a psychological resource, trust, gives access to the material resources of trade.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Getting people together is always a risk, Ritualizing reduces risk.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Ritual is not about doing something. It is about doing something right. By doing it right, we express the value we place on what we do. The very act of doing becomes more compelling, more beautiful, more perfect.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“...doing right in life sometimes means that reason cannot be the sole light by which your moral compass is set.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Imaginistic rituals, especially more severe types involving high stress, trauma, or other forms of shared intense emotion, can lead to identity fusion. Identity fusion is a visceral sense of -oneness- with other group members where acts of self-sacrifice on behalf of the group are not uncommon. Imaginistic rituals tend to be more frequent among smaller, more closely-knit groups where a strong sense of unity is necessary to accomplish challenging goals (for example, sports teams, Nay Seals, subversive political movements, etc.).”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“The ubiquitous singing, chanting, and dancing of traditional societies laid the requisite groundwork from which civilization and modernity sprouted. Take that away and Homo Sapiens are thoroughly ordinary primates - upright chimpanzees, nothing more.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“The wealth of social rituals present among our primate cousins indicates that our hominin ancestors were preadapted for using ritual as a means of social bonding and could call upon a rich repertoire of them in their everyday lives.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Soviet leaders wanted hearts and minds as much as mmoney and property. To get heart and minds, they needed to get at rituals; and they did. From the Revolution's earliest days, redesigning citizens' ritual lives was a key part of the reformist movement.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“...religion is not philosophy. Philosophy is largely confined to ivory-tower seminar rooms, but religion can be found in nearly every living room -or just about anywhere else you might care to look. Religion is not just (or even primarily) an intellectual pursuit; it is emotional.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“For example, if children are told that a horse has been disguised such that
it looks exactly like a zebra and trained such that it behaves exactly like a
zebra, they will still claim that it is “really” a horse. This claim is based on
the notion that within the horse there is some fundamental “horseness”
that remains unaffected by external changes. People are thought of similarly.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“For example, if children are told that a horse has been disguised such that it looks exactly like a zebra and trained such that it behaves exactly like a zebra, they will still claim that it is “really” a horse. This claim is based on the notion that within the horse there is some fundamental “horseness” that remains unaffected by external changes. People are thought of similarly.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is a way of relating where supernatural agents are active players.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Despite the many material comforts of modern life, anyone who has lived long enough knows that life's joys are at minimum balanced by its sorrows. Loved ones die, jobs are lost, houses flood, fields burn, hearts and bones get broken, able bodies grow old and ill. None of this is new. Humans have been struggling - and rejoicing- since time immemorial. To keep their footing while shouldering their burdens, our ancestors always turned to ritual. Ritual mobilized the psychologiacl resources necessary to withstand whatever life threw at us.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Fear may blind us to the fact that individual survival often depends on working with others.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Long ago, our ancestors realized that the natural world was not the only wellspring of resources essential to our survival. The mind was just as rich. Humans possess a wealth of psychological resources necessary for survival: empathy, loyalty, commitment, and goodwill. Just as material resources must be processed and managed, so too with psychological resources.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“One study found interesting gender differences regarding how pain and synchrony affect social bonding. For women, greater social bonding was reported for painful ritual without synchronized movements. For men, however, synchrony and pain created a greater sense of social bonding. One possible reason for this is that males, more than females, over our evolutionary history were responsible for coordinated violent action against perceived threats, which may have selected them for greater sensitivity to synchrony as a bonding mechanism.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Religion is complicated- the emphasis here being on the verb -is-. Religion as we see it today is the product of many millennia of evolutionary history. Neither the Olympian pantheon nor the Roman magisterium was part of religion in our ancestral world. To understand religion as a cultural adaptation, we must understand what it was when it first emerged, and what kind of world it was born into.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Despite the many material comforts of modern life, anyone who has lived long enough knows that life's joys are at minimum balanced by its sorrows. Loved ones die, jobs are lost, houses flood, fields burn, hearts and bones get broken, able bodies grow old and ill. None of this is new. Humans have been struggling - and rejoicing- since time immemorial. To keep their footing while shouldering their burdens, our ancestors always turned to ritual. Ritual mobilized the psychological resources necessary to withstand whatever life threw at us.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Human life is not a science. The good life isn't a theory to be operationalized, tested, and replicated before it is deemed useful. For better or worse, life must be lived, here and now; and what is valuable about it we often must discern, on the fly, as best we can. The hard-nosed rationality so valued in scientific circles seems oddly imcompetent when facing the human complications of real life.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“As if the natural world alone was not sufficiently demoralizing, our ancestors seemed compelled to augment it with supernatural forces designed to intensify its gloom. If religion's primary purpose was comfort against the vagaries of life, we could have wished for much better than the gods and myths we inherited.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is many things, but the relational element is at its core. Nonrelational religion, if it is religion at all, is hollow.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Eventually, identity, ritual, and memory became one: -We are the people born of this past event, who share this past history, and who, because of that history, dance, cook, eat, pray, and celebrate in this unique way. That is who we are-. We are like nothing else on earth, We are a human tribe.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Ritual in Human Evolution and Religion: Psychological and Ritual Resources

“Episodic memory is our (possibly unique) ability to mentally travel back in time when recalling past personal events of project forward in time to envision future scenarios. It is this system that very likely provides the basis for our existential anxieties -our concern over the inevitability of suffering and death.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is paradoxical. It emerged out of intergroup competition, yet it has a remarkable power to unite. It sets people apart from one another, yet can also draw vastly different people together. Long ago we envisioned relationship with spiritual beings. In one sense these relationships were very mundane -they served practical human needs. The practical side of these relationships is also the source of their power to divide us, to pit one group against another. The divine side is in their capacity to quietly but persistently call us to transcend ourselves and find common ground for trust.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“The -natural- world included the -supernatural-, and religion (as we call it today) was simply the means by which that part of the social world was made accessible.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“For some scholars, the only effective response to the threat of creationism and militant fundamentalism is a more aggressive atheism. This atheism finds no virtue in peaceful coexistence with moderate religion. Instead, it seeks to stamp out all religion. This atheism itself has been harshly critiqued.”
― Matt J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved