Aaron Haspel wrote:
“Etiquette and ritual are punctiliously observed long after traditions and religions have died, as fingernails still grow on a corpse.”
I was thinking about this yesterday, ritual is a natural human exercise and it doesn’t need a meaning. It’s what we do, preferably together. Actually it’s what we do together. The problem with rituals starts when people corrupt it with explanations and built and an entire religious superstructure on top of it. Thats where all the ugliness, the dirt and the intolerable doctrinal demagoguery slimes it’s way under those eternally, naturally growing fingernails.
Further reading:
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nails/hair after death:
http://www.snopes.com/science/nailgrow.asp
Ok, I guess it’s false. Will leave it here for the sake of the metaphor.
Actually it works perfectly. The rituals were once an organic part of a living culture. As the culture of the past dies and dries up, the rituals linger, decomposing at a much slower rate. They grow in imagination only; they attain a significance and prominence that they never had or deserved.
Yes the body dies but the nails and the hair linger.