Guillermo Rendueles is one of Spain’s leading psychiatrists. He says that every culture had elaborated complex webs of practices that allowed micro-communities to help people process and act out their personal grief. Once fluidity and alienation destroyed these micro-communities, people tried to share the burden of grief not with other people but with pills.
I agree with Rendueles and have this to add. In post-industrial societies, there are no shared, collective rituals of grief. So everybody has to create their own micro-micro-community and come up with some rituals. Without rituals, we are fucked.
“Without rituals, we are fucked.”
Truer words were never spoken.
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