This bridge is the one Webelos walk over as they become Boy Scouts. I chose it because the wood is cheap: no frills, just utility. It serves the ritual perfectly because ritual is by definition an action with symbolic value: there's really no need for frills and fluff, right?
So why was the high school graduation I just attended a study in emphasizing frills? Imagine: The underclasses wore immaculate white, each carrying a red rose. The seniors wore white dresses with white gloves and an entire bouquet of roses. Music written specifically for them—composed over 30 years ago on the very organ in the stiflingly hot church we were in (Satan, I will believe in you if you get me out of here)--combined special “trumpet” pipes with the regualr organ pipes. Fanfare! It was as if a king were arriving.
Oh, and television cameras. Weeping parents. Me in a borrowed gown that cost $350 (thanks GC), which itself was deemed the mot remarkable gown of all 60-70 some odd gowns in attendence (notice my clever synecdoche—the gowns stand in for the people themselves. Which is precisely my point--both frills AND symbols--become greater in meaning than mere mortals in their reg'lar ol' skin.
Which brings me to my point. The ritual of graduation made it seem as if we were not people but saints or even gods. What I liked about it was that because regular people—many who are sloppy, disorganized people in their private lives—were made to compose and compartmentalize themselves. They were interpellated to behave. It is kinda funny seeing grown men who would rather be wearing sweat pants try to act "proper."
What I didn’t like about it was the religiosity, the ritualism. I’m using the word not in sense of the various Christian church disputes. Maybe the word is ceremonialism. Ceremony for its own sake. Or ceremony as its own object, the spectacle of it.
I'm not suggesting that there was no "real" object here, but the object was supposed to be graduation—the demarcation between being in high school and no longer being in high school. And certainly the categories of pre- and post-graduate are meaningful to me.
I just don’t know why we need the ritual/ceremony. If you complete the work and the teachers say you are done, then you’ve graduated. If employers and schools didn’t required documented proof of this, there would be no need for the diploma. In other words, in practical terms, there is no need for a graduation ceremony.
So what about the symbolic “needs”? We need rituals, right? Community bonds, public recognition, etc. Well, here are some possible reasons to participate. And these, I must add, are public reasons for the most part. There might also be private reasons, but one can thus perform one's own ritual in private: a ceremony has a public quality, and perhaps it is to conferm something official on a impetus that is private in origin.
1. Compliance. Someone told you you have to do it. You can’t be part of the “gang” unless you do it. This applies to religions and gangs the most, but I'm sure there are those who wear the gown against their will or are simply too brainwashed to know any better. Since I don’t believe in God or in the absolute necessity of organized religion in order to believe in God/spirits/etc., I will always have a hard time understanding why humans need outward signs of their inner beliefs, but oh well. I probably signify my own inner beliefs with my movie posters, Scotch bottles, and electronic devices. But at least no one made me do it. (But wouldn't it be great if, in order to be a horror movie buff, a horror "gang" beat you senseless, chopped off a finger, and locked you in a haunted house for the night? What set you playin', son?)
2.Tradition. Sorry, not a believer in tradition either, though I strongly value memory and history. The "cyclical return" via a ritual that involves the self in some grand participation, on extra-temporal level, in the "thing to be remembered/honored"—pheh! Gimme new words, new symbols, and new dates on which to party. Let the memories come naturally. I guess I'm showing my pagan colors here: aren't nature and its seasons enough for humans? What "believers" don't realize is that their traditions are so painfully obviously manmade that it's hard not to snicker when pople "feel the spirit." Even if God were in the room RIGHT NOW, the ritual is still as hokey as The Twist. The more they insist that that "God inspired" it, the more secular it appears to me, and the more I laugh.
3. Approval. I’m on the fence with this one. My (cult-side) family does not recognize my educational expertise as having any value whatsoever. So would seeing me in full regalia give them pause for thought? Some of my friends say that your getting recognition in a culture that doesn’t recognize you very often—feels awesome. For me, though, why should I seek approval from them? This sanctioned “moment” of "You've Accompllished So Much!" adds insult to injury by underscoring the ironic contrast between "this" moment and every other moment of my live when I don’t get approval or recognition. The school cranks us out, we all look the same, and they really care more about their tutition than the fact that they produced me, the scholar. No institiution has ever sent an officer to ask how I have been representing them these years. As for parents, only one will ever read my dissertation. If there's an approval I seek, it's from an intellectual or avid reader of my work, and this doesn't need a graduation day.
As for family approval—pppffft. I WISH my other family members really saw the "real me," but then I ask myself, why do I want them to? Are they really intelligent to understand anyway? What are they going to do with this approval? Tell others? Whom would they tell? Would those people help get me a better job, a book deal, etc.? See, we're back to the practical. IN the end, my (non-cult) dad approves of me already and believes I’m intelligent. His experience of my higher degree will come with the reading of my dissertation. My enjoyment of his experience will be in hearing what he as to say about what I’ve written. This is all an intellectual can hope for, and robes and colors and platitudes about the future given by some commencment speaker tha you don’t know gives me noe of waht I really want: it only suggests that I could, possibly, have a greater chance of getting it later.
3. Proof of Expertise. I very much want something to signify that I’m an expert. It can be my publications, my interests that peope know and then seek out for advice, even the title “Doctor.” But I don’t need rituals or ceremonies for any of that. If the graduation ceremony allowed each graduate to speak for 10 minutes about the subject on which they are an expert, that would be something!
4. Identity politics. “I belong with you guys.” Pfffft! Sorry, I’m an individual. And while I’m perhaps not unique or special in the elitist sense, I’d rather celebrate how unalike I am then alike. I belong with my friends because...we're friends! No ceremony required. (Although wouldn't it be neat if Best Friends got "married"--i.e promised to devote much of their lives to each other? Nope, sorry, spouses are more important than friends, at least legally. That's why they get a ceremony!
5. Community with others. The feeling of comradery is nice. But again, you can get this sitting around with your friends and colleagues—you don’t need a ritual. In fact, I can't feel intellectually intimate with more than a couple at a time. Also, feeling a “togetherness” is best when it’s rhizomatic—you are part of other communities, too, and while in “this” one you may be the expert, in “that” one, you are not.
6. Empty egotism. Whatever. Overcompensation for lack, perhaps. Aren’t all of these reason starting to smack of LACK? The ceremony gives you something that you ALREADY HAVE, people.
7. Communion with a Higher Power, i.e, The Institution, The State, an Author, God. I understand the need for participants to look around at each other and see mirrors of the self, but easy does it. People talking about God together are the worst because they start comfirming each other’s fantasies the way little kidss talk about unicorns or Transofrmers. I'm certainly guilty of this because nerd gathering start to emit a hummmmmmm...........
8. Unexamined Interpellation. “I dunno. Everyone else is doing it. I thought I’d get confirmed, married, etc. too.” I guess this is the opposite of Egoism. I rather envy these people because they are Indifferent, while I am Concerned and Involved with Why I Should Be Here.
9. Power. Boy did I feel the power surging through me as hundreds of people stared and marveled at the colorful gown I was wearing. Some people actually said, “I want to go back to school so that I can look like you.” Sigh. See what I’m getting at here? It’s ALL EXTERNALIZATION that matters to these people. The inner truth—their wish fulfillment, my accomplishment—is entirely separate from the ceremony.
And when I said, “Yeah, this is a nice gown. I'm glad I came and I do want to honor the hard work these kids have done. But I’m just not much for rituals,” you know what they--inevitably--said?
“Just wait until you have kids.”
