This morning on NPR, Shankar Vedantam talked about research on ritual. The research found that when people perform a ritual before eating, the food seems more flavorful.
Rituals, music, dance, and storytelling have been part of human culture for ages. Atheists scoff at religious rituals. But now science tells us that humans get something out of rituals.
To me, it seems to relate to the story "A Surprising Barrier to Clean Water: Human Nature." In this story, aid workers want Kenyans to add chlorine to water in order to purify it, but the people don't want to do it.
You have the so-called experts, the ones who think they live by science and logic and intelligence, thinking that what other people do is stupid. And yet, people do what they do for a reason. The experts just don't understand the reason. So it's the experts who are being ignorant.
If you think you know it all, you're probably wrong.
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