Conversation on Value8/008

“Machine” has been a prevalent metaphor for business since the Industrial Revolution. And it seems that automated systems of machine learning have become the current direction in search of ever higher efficiency and optimization. But, increasingly, the consequences of this trajectory have had an adverse impact on people. Disengagement on both sides of the business transaction is the most salient and pervasive. People are cultural beings, not resources to be harvested. How can we put value back into things and experiences to enrich culture and ourselves? Ritual design is an overlooked territory within our own commercial culture.

<br /><br />As symbolic markers of a passage between one part of life and another, rituals require a shift in identity to match the scale of the transition. Through an immersive threshold experience in which participants become temporarily liberated from the restrictions that otherwise define their lives, rituals enable the transformation of psychological and social identities, bridging the world of the concrete and the abstract. Rituals help us discover moments of profound human significance in a complex society that many have discounted as hopelessly mundane and disenchanted. The conversation will explore the origins of rituals and commonalities with and applications to business.<br /><br />