Ritual binds members through shared experience of awe rather than shared belief

Evidence

Perhaps the most striking similarity between the secret societies and the totalitarian movements lies in the role of the ritual. The marches around the Red Square in Moscow are in this respect no less characteristic than the pompous formalities of the Nuremberg party days. In the center of the Nazi ritual was the so-called “blood banner,” and in the center of the Bolshevik ritual stands the mummified corpse of Lenin, both of which introduce a strong element of idolatry into the ceremony. Such idolatry hardly is proof—as is sometimes asserted—of pseudoreligious or heretical tendencies. The “idols” are mere organizational devices, familiar from the ritual of secret societies, which also used to frighten their members into secretiveness by means of frightful, awe-inspiring symbols. It is obvious that people are more securely held together through the common experience of a secret ritual than by the common sharing of the secret itself. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 871

Categorization

• CANDY: ‘People are held together by shared ritual experience more than the shared secret itself’ is a light, memorable formulation worth quoting.
• XREF: connects to: Defamiliarization reveals the concert-attending ritual as pure attention to a nonverbal sign-system — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 48; Group solidarity can form through shared bodily practice, not shared ideas — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 686; Shared rituals alone can bind a group into a body without any political content. — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 827 (+2 more)