Ultrasociality Quotes

“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

“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

“A species equipped with vengeance and gratitude responses can support larger and more cooperative social groups because the payoff to cheaters is reduced by the costs they bear in making enemies.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Vengeful and grateful feelings appear to have evolved precisely because they are such useful tools for helping individuals create cooperative relationships, thereby reaping the gains from non-zero-zum games.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Vengeful and grateful feelings appear to have evolved precisely because they are such useful tools for helping individuals create cooperative relationships, thereby reaping the gains from non-zero-sum games.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Humans became able to move much more freely through the landscape because their support networks were more stable over time. These supportive relations between groups made it possible for sapiens to colonize forbidding environments with very limited foods supplies, supporting only very small residential groups. A band of a family or two would not be stable over the long term, without support from a wider network. While small groups can penetrate harsher environments, they need social risk management. They need to be able to reconnect at times of need.”
― Ronald J. Planer, From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language

“The elaborated kinship systems of ethnographic report impose steep linguistic demands. These systems feature a small set of basic kin terms: “mother” and (typically) “father”, “husband”, “wife”.”
― Ronald J. Planer, From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language

“Our deep-time ancestors very likely had the genetic resources needed for formal quantitative reasoning, but without the cultural invention of numerals and a umber line, those resources could not be exploited. The same may be true of language. The central role of cultural learning in the construction and transmission of language (qua social phenomenon) is enough to show that the use of language depends on cultural scaffolds, not just appropriate genetic potential.”
― Ronald J. Planer, From Signal to Symbol: The Evolution of Language