Bringing Ritual to Mind Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms

Much of our discussion in the previous chapter dealt with specific rituals Tanotka and Baninge created. One pervasive trend in these rituals was their substantially increased levels of sensory pageantry relative to that surrounding the community's earlier performances of Pomio Kivung rituals. We shall show that such elevated levels of sensory pageantry inevit- ably become associated with special agent rituals and how Whitehouse's reasoning about some of the psychological issues at stake goes some way toward explaining why.

By introducing virtual nudity to all dimensions of community life, Baninge clearly raised the bar with respect to what we have broadly called “sensory pageantry. ” One of the consequences of this innovation was that the splinter group's subsequent performances of the standard Kivung rites were more arousing than they had been before. Therein lies a revealing problem.Neither our theory of religious ritual competence nor the ritual form hypothesis addresses such broad, overall trends in religious ritual systems directly. However, since the transition from conventional Pomio Kivung practices to the splinter group is one from a religious ritual system that performed special patient rites only to one in which special agent rituals dominate, it does follow that the predictions of the ritual form hypothesis about particular rituals would collectively entail an elevation in the average amounts of sensory pageantry present in the community's rituals. We should be clear, though, that

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But that is just what is so revealing. The theory of religious modes' explanatory success here indicates that the ritual frequency hypothesis cannot be telling the right story about that theory's cognitive founda- tions, because the predictions of the ritual frequency hypothesis about the splinter group's performances of the Pomio Kivung rituals are false. The problems are clear. First, the performance frequencies of the Cemetery Temple ritual, garden ritual, and absolution ritual did not change. Hence, the frequency hypothesis predicts that neither should their associated levels of sensory pageantry. Second, although the performance frequency of the ritual connected with Bernard's Temple did change, it increased. Consequently, the ritual frequency hypothesis predicts that its related sensory pageantry should have, if anything, decreased — but, of course, it did not. So, the ritual frequency hypothesis does not explain why the sensory pageantry associated with all of these rituals increased during the splinter group's era of imagistic religious practices.

Our suggestion, in short, is that although both hypotheses get at critical cognitive variables, religious ritual form proves the more fundamental of the two and, thus, the ritual form hypothesis constitutes a sounder cognitive foundation for any theory about larger religious ritual patterns.
Psychological constraints on religious ritual systems and the emergingprominence of special agent rituals

Whitehouse argues that such splintering in religious systems arises as the result of the tedium effect. The logical rigor and ritual routines of his doctrinal mode may purchase uniformity of belief and practice (though see Boyer, 2001), but it comes at the price of tedium and boredom and, sometimes, disaffection (Whitehouse, 2000, p. 147). It does, at least, if these doctrinal religious systems do not include some means for insuring their reinvigoration, i.e., for insuring a periodic injection of imagistic practices to counteract the impact of the tedium.

A religious system whose rituals congregate exclusively (or nearly so) around the first attractor is what we are calling an unbalanced system. Sooner or later such systems will induce boredom. Such ritual tedium will provoke creative reactions sufficient to spring ritual systems out of this position. Those reactions will generate enough energy to break the ritual system free from the first attractor. (See figure 5.1. )

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Of course, we have already seen that rituals associated with White- house's imagistic mode carry psychological hazards of their own. The high levels of sensory pageantry connected with rituals of this sort must be dispensed in measured doses. Otherwise, as Whitehouse has warned, participants will become habituated to such conditions, raising the thresh- old necessary to induce strong emotional effects the next time around and that (typically) requires increasingly greater expenditures of resources.

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Figure 5.2 The problem of habituation

Habituation seems to be just what happened in the Dadul-Maranagi splinter group after Baninge introduced pervasive nudity to the commu- nity. It ended up doing nothing more than elevating the community's collective threshold for arousal. All of this suggests that, regardless of cultural mechanisms, at least one region in the space of possible ritual arrangements will be unlikely to support stable systems at all. Religious ritual systems simply cannot rely on rituals that simultaneously have high levels of sensory pageantry and high performance frequencies (regardless of their forms). (See figure 5.2. )

The frustrations that tedium provokes and the constraints that habitu- ation imposes go a good deal of the way toward explaining the evolution- ary trajectory of the Dadul-Maranagi splinter group's innovations. The former makes sense of the sudden outburst of ritual activities with sub- stantially increased levels of sensory pageantry. The latter accounts for the trend toward more and more sensory stimulation associated gener- ally with the emerging ritual system and especially with the performances

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All of the innovative rituals and all of the ritual innovations that unequiv- ocally involved extraordinary sensory pageantry and emotional arousal were special agent rituals. Since what counts as unequivocal involvement of “extraordinary” sensory pageantry and emotional arousal here are levels elevated relative to the new baseline, all of the splinter group's per- formances (save one ¹ ) of the standard Kivung rites and all of their performances of the two special patient versions of the ring ceremony (for acknowledging Tanotka and Baninge and for driving out Satan) do not qualify.

The ritual form hypothesis predicts that the increases in sensory pag- eantry in a ritual system (in response to the tedium effect) will inevitably become associated with special agent rituals, where CPS-agents or their rep- resentatives do something that they need only do once (such as inaugurate a new age). The splinter group introduced greater pageantry (nudity) into the special patient rituals of the Kivung. But since these rituals are re- peatable and, indeed, frequently repeated, the inevitability of habituation insures that these are not the rituals that can carry the pivotal emotional punch that will increase the probabilities that participants will transmit their religious representations. The introduction of nudity in these ritu- als and in everyday activities simply raised the floor of the entire system. (See figure 4.9. )

Even if it does not predict it, the ritual frequency hypothesis is certainly consistent with the fact that new rituals must shoulder the motivational burden. New rituals, after all, will be ones with the lowest possible perfor- mance frequencies. The ritual frequency hypothesis, however, is utterly mute about those new rituals' forms. By contrast, the ritual form hy- pothesis holds that — new or not — the rituals that incorporate the most flashy sensory effects (for both motivational and mnemonic purposes) will be special agent rituals. These sorts of unbalanced ritual systems are bereft of special agent rituals, so the ritual form hypothesis predicts that their splinter groups will eventually invent such rituals when they are not available.

Rituals that serve to resuscitate a religious system choking on tedium must inspire many participants. As we have seen, the way to do so is to make them the patients of some highly arousing special agent rituals in which the actions of CPS-agents mark a fundamental moment in their lives that brings about a super-permanent change. Consequently, it seems a reasonable prediction that not just any special agent ritual will do. These new special agent rituals must be ones in which all or most participants

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It is important to recognize that this is not the only possibility. Repeat- able, but infrequently repeated, special patient rituals that are arousing do, in fact, exist (e.g., human sacrifices of in-group members). But such variants are rare, and they are even more rarely (if ever) the rituals splinter groups invent — and not just because they are extreme. First, any partici- pant who serves as the victim in such a ritual will not be in a position to transmit representations at its conclusion. In addition, such rituals must necessarily relegate most other participants in the religious system to the status of observers (at best), which seems far less likely to produce either vivid or accurate memories or high levels of motivation. In short, these rituals just aren't up to the job.

Their comparatively high levels of sensory pageantry notwithstanding, special agent rituals are — not coincidentally — also well suited to pre- vent habituation, since they are non-repeated. Participants serve as their patients only once. For each of their patients, they constitute a unique event. This point is critical. ²

The cognitive alarm hypothesis holds that, at least initially, partici- pants will regard rituals containing unprecedentedly high levels of sensory pageantry as ones that mark potentially significant events in their lives. These events will prove worthy of unique episodic memories, if partici- pants' subsequent experiences corroborate that initial assessment. The ritual form hypothesis maintains that these rituals will inevitably take the profile of special agent rituals. The fact that special patient or special in- strument rituals with such high levels of sensory pageantry can be done repeatedly — even frequently — will lead to habituation, and habituation will require steady increases in the resources devoted to producing sen- sory pageantry and, eventually, push participants up through what we might call a “sensory overload ceiling. ” (See figure 5.3. ) Ever greater levels of sensory pageantry will inevitably push human beings beyond their abilities to endure it. Whether the sensory manipulation involves deprivation or excess (e.g., hunger or gluttonous feasting), human beings reach their limits and shut down by either falling asleep or experiencing shock or (if things get really bad) dying. It is clear enough that initiates cannot go indefinitely without water or endure endless torture. But it is no less true that they cannot continue to feast indefinitely or sustain extraordinary ecstatic states forever.

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Figure 5.3 A sensory overload ceiling

The region in the space of possible ritual arrangements in which habituation presents a problem is large. Like an invisible hand, it pushes ritual innovations that wander into this region upward toward the sensory overload ceiling, where memory and motivation and, thus, transmission may all be in jeopardy.

If a religious ritual system clearly undergoes an overall increase in sen- sory pageantry and is to avoid the problems of habituation, its most ex- treme expressions will reliably arise in non-repeated, special agent rituals, and, as we noted above, if the system has no such rituals, it will invent them. A substantial increase in sensory pageantry in a religious ritual sys- tem overall will always correlate with a growing prominence of special agent rituals, even if they have to be fabricated precisely for that purpose.

The theory of religious ritual competence specifies that such special agent rituals are the ones in which CPS-agents take the initiative in human affairs. In interactions with fellow agents we sometimes serve as the agent and sometimes as the patient of actions. The theory of religious ritual competence shows how participants can represent CPS-agents as op- erating in either role in religious rituals. Presumptive transactions with the gods imply that, at least occasionally, they have some things to do

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Perhaps the better way to put this, though, is that special agent ritu- als contain higher levels of sensory stimulation precisely because there is little or nothing about these experiences in themselves that would sig- nal their putative importance. If the underlying psychological dynamics have some of their roots in reactions to the tedium effect, then what is called for are (ritual) measures that will overcome that effect and moti- vate participants to transmit the system in question. If such motivation results from the stimulation of human passions, then these rituals must contain materials sufficient to that task. This undoubtedly includes the myriad ways religious ritual practitioners have struck upon to stimulate participants' senses. (Baninge's experimentation with this arsenal is an ideal case in point. )

Although the constraints that habituation and mnemonic requirements impose are substantial, they are not even jointly sufficient to drive rit- ual innovations toward the second attractor. As we noted above, highly arousing, infrequently performed, special patient rituals, after all, are not a mere logical possibility. A few, such as the sacrifice of selected reli- gious participants, have certainly existed. But for what we assume are obvious reasons, they are unlikely to generate much motivation, and as

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Figure 5.4 Constraining ritual innovation

The action structures of special agent rituals in which each partici- pant can serve as the ritual's patient are more likely to generate religious consequences and psychological effects consonant with both enhanced memory and motivation. CPS-agents' actions will bring about a super- permanent change in each specific ritual patient. That ritual change is culturally significant, emotionally arousing, and construed as the result of the gods' actions. The reintroduction of full immersion baptism by the Dissenters in seventeenth-century England illustrates this pattern. It is not by chance that splinter group innovations often take the profile of special agent rituals. This is the first reason to think that considerations of ritual form are not quite so causally inert as the proposal outlined in the previous two paragraphs seems to suggest. There is another.

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The imposition of special agent profile on these rituals plays a deci- sive causal role on a second front. In the course of introducing our two dynamic profiles of religious ritual systems, we shall show how conceiv- ing of these rituals in this way requires that religious conceptual schemes fulfill quite specific functions in order to ensure the long-term stability of the larger religious systems.

It is difficult to imagine a ritual system that illustrates all of this any better than that of the Pomio Kivung, because few persisting religious systems put so little emphasis on special agent rituals. (See, however, Severi, 1987 and 1993 and Sherzer, 1983 and 1990. ) All of the rituals of the original Pomio Kivung system are special patient rituals. The two most central rituals, viz., the Cemetery Temple ritual and the ritual asso- ciated with Bernard's Temple, involve elaborate preparations of offerings to the ancestors. The garden ritual and the absolution ritual involve shar- ing resources (at least indirectly) with the ancestors too.

In the first years many who joined the Pomio Kivung had undergone traditional Baining initiations earlier in their lives, and they were well aware of the confrontations with the ancestors and the resulting revela- tions such rites evoked. So, too, were the leaders of the Pomio Kivung. They seem to have shared Whitehouse's insight that such imagistic prac- tices do not resonate well with the sort of rigidly structured, logically coherent, doctrinal system they were propounding. Consequently, they explicitly prohibited members from participating in any sort of initiation (Whitehouse, 1992, p. 794). Originally, the system included no special agent rituals. So, there are no unique Pomio Kivung rituals associated with the traditional rites of passage. The Pomio Kivung ritual system does not mark long-term pair bonding or death ritually (Whitehouse, 1996a, p. 174). The ritual system of the Pomio Kivung includes none of the special agent rituals that typically recur across most religious sys- tems. Participants simply continue to enact traditional Baining practices in connection with such events.

Subsequent developments necessitated one minor exception to this pattern. The Pomio Kivung system is now entering its fifth decade and it has become a victim of its own success. According to Whitehouse's theory of religious modes, the principal form of transmission in doctrinal systems such as these is proselytization. But since the ancestors have not returned, the Pomio Kivung conceptual scheme has had to accommodate persons who are born into the faith. Eventually, Kivung leaders permitted a perfunctory baptism ritual for members' infant children (Whitehouse, 2000, p. 74). It is not clear that this ritual even qualifies as a religious

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ritual in our technical sense, since it is not clear that it involves any appeal (direct or indirect) to the actions of any CPS-agents. That take is consis- tent with what, according to Whitehouse's own account, is its completely peripheral status in Pomio Kivung ideology.