Why Do People Perform Ritual? It’s an Excellent Method of Self-Improvement

Doing ritual, whether it’s a religious ceremony or a simple greeting on th[image error]e street, is a powerful way to break bad habits and improve our lives, says Harvard historian Michael Puett, author of Ritual and its consequences.

[image error] Are rituals a bad thing?

A lot of our philosophers have what would seem to us a very counterintuitive idea of how to break patterns. Among the key things they will say are rituals. Now we often find rituals to be a bad thing. Some of them are okay, you know, prayer ritu...