For Small Creatures Such as We summary

If you’re not religious, you may think that your life doesn’t include regular rituals. After all, you won’t be attending church services, praying the salat, or hosting Shabbat. But if you view rituals as a way to connect with your community, you may discover that you have several already – a weekly night of drinks with colleagues, a recurrent gym class, or your monthly volunteering shift.

Regular rituals create patterns in our lives, which bring us comfort. Simple daily rituals in particular can help us bear life’s inevitable uncertainty. For example, Sagan feels comforted each morning when her husband, Jon, brings her a cup of coffee to enjoy in bed. While sipping her coffee, Sagan reflects not only on Jon’s kindness, but on the many factors that resulted in the steaming brew in her mug: the beans that have grown in the earth; their harvesting, roasting, and grinding; the percolation in the kitchen. This reflection brings Sagan a sense of wonder while strengthening her connection with her husband. 

Even if you’re not a maths-fan, you’ll likely know that a 23.4-degree angle isn’t very big. And yet an angle of this size has a profound impact on your life: if Earth’s axis wasn’t tilted by just this amount, we wouldn’t have seasons. Our planet’s small tilt means that as we journey around the Sun over the course of a year, the distance between it and Earth’s two hemispheres changes, causing the variation of temperatures that we know as seasons.

The origins of many religious celebrations can be traced back to the change of seasons. If you examine religious calendars with reference to the Northern Hemisphere, you’ll notice a pattern. Spring – that wonderful season that reminds us we’ve survived winter – hosts events like Easter, Passover, and Kanamara Matsuri – Japan’s Festival of the Steel Phallus.

Whether we’re religious or not, we’re all human. It’s inevitable that at some point, we’ll hurt someone – either accidentally or intentionally – and we’ll feel guilty about it. And while the idea of transgression is often seen as a moral concept, guilt serves an evolutionary purpose. Without it, we would never go to the effort of sorting out our differences with members of our communities – people whose support helps keep us alive.

Humans have invented numerous rituals to atone for sins. For example, Catholics attend confession. Jews pound their chests and apologize to others during Yom Kippur. Hindus undertake penance during Prāyaścitta. Many indigenous tribes of the Americas view physical disease as a result of breaching social norms. By divulging their misdoings to their medicine man, patients can recover their health.

Nothing marks time more significantly than the passing of a year. Because of our planet’s orbital pathway, each anniversary places us in the same astronomical position that we were in a year earlier. And it’s inevitable that during the course of that year, our lives and the lives of those we love will have changed.

The repetition created by astronomical events – like Earth’s orbit around the Sun – is extremely compelling to humans because our brains are designed to seek patterns. This is partly why astrology attracts so many people. Anniversaries connect us to the movement of planets, and therefore, to something far greater than ourselves.

White dresses, rice throwing, the exchanging of rings: if you’ve attended a Western wedding, you’ve most likely observed these traditions. But where have they come from, and why do we still participate in them?

Weddings expose how deeply humans love to create and honor traditions – be they cultural, historical or religious. Many of these rituals relate to fertility, which is no surprise given the long-held role marriage has played in sanctioning sex. Food is often used to bring a couple luck in conceiving, which is the original reason for showering a bride and groom with rice. Muslim couples are given eggs, and Hungarian brides have wheat woven into their braids. If you happen to be Greek, someone might place a baby in your marriage bed before you arrive, to boost your chances of conception.

Sex – it’s not something you necessarily want to imagine your parents doing, but it’s extraordinary to think that the vast majority of people exist because of it. Despite sex being as natural as eating or sleeping, it’s been burdened with shame since ancient times.

So why does a stress-relieving act that floods us with happy hormones and connects us powerfully to others have such a social stigma? Firstly, sex is powerful. It can transform the most stable among us into heady, unpredictable creatures. Secondly, sex can be dangerous. It can result in disease and – among heterosexual couples – unwanted pregnancy. And even if a pregnancy is wanted, childbirth can still be fatal. These factors are potentially why humans have created so many social conventions around having sex.

Burial, cremation, mummification – death has inspired human rituals since our earliest days. Even our ancient cousins the Neanderthals buried their family members. According to some schools of anthropological thought, the ritualization of death signifies the beginning of humanity.

While cremation and burial are our most common contemporary rituals, they aren’t the only methods of laying a loved one’s body to rest. In Tana Toraja, Indonesia, mummification is still practiced. The dead aren’t buried but kept in the open and treated as though they’re ill rather than deceased. And while digging up a grave would be viewed by many as an appalling crime, in communities sprinkled across the globe from Vietnam to Madagascar, exhumation is viewed as a loving custom. After enough years have passed for a body to decompose, the bones are unearthed, cleaned, and carefully reburied.