The link to "The Sun Is A Miasma..." is broken. My best guess is that you forgot to prefix a "http://".

Yup. Thanks.

One thing I wish I had known was that if you skip the ritual and just come to the "general meetup" the next day -- as seemed like a perfectly good option on paper -- not only do you miss out on the fun described in the post, but you look and feel totally lame. Well, okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, since you still do get to meet (and re-meet) great LW (and LWish[*]) people; but those people will have just spent the previous day in, you know, a bonding ritual which, strangely enough, has this weird effect of bonding them together more closely to each other than to you who weren't there. (Also, they will have gotten most of their general meetup-socializing done the previous day, before the ritual, so as not to be strangers to each other during the latter.)

Still, I'm glad I did at least get to go to the meetup, and I'm particularly grateful to Raemon and his housemates for their hospitality.

[*]It's a well-known phenomenon, which I've encountered at every meetup I've been to regardless of location, that many meetup attenders are not regular commenters on or even readers of the actual LW website.

Edited at 2012-12-18 11:27 am (UTC)

There were so many people at the ritual I couldn't even be sure who was or wasn't there, so it wasn't like when you showed up Sunday I was thinking "Intruder! I have not yet bonded with this person!"

I rarely play music at parties for just that reason! I want to TALK (or maybe play games) with people. If I wanted music I'd go to a club...

The inability of people to sit quietly always astounds me.

But I think it's pretty cool to build a secular ceremony; I guess it takes a while to manage to arrange it into something just right (the Catholic church has had centuries) but actually trying is cool. My brain likes ceremonies and rituals; I'm sure these buttons are useful for something, but mostly I like having them pushed.

I'm also a fan of rituals, though I'll admit that I spent some of the more tedious choral parts of the last carol service trying to work out how you would write a rationalist version of It Came Upon The Midnight Clear; the general connotations of cleaving the sky with powerful wings unfurled in this day and age don't help.

The Word Of God does manage to give me a degree of shivering awe.

Edited at 2012-12-18 12:19 pm (UTC)

I appprove of this.

I sort of get sacredness vibes from some church. But I have to say that atheists often suck at that kind of high drama. (although I like drama better than most people.

What about 'Gloria In Excecis Scientum' or something (no idea if correct latin) (thinking about an anti-deathist opera)


The main thing that annnoys me is that people always want to make these things funnny.

You know what's ALREADY a pro-reason opera?

The Magic Flute.

I am not kidding. Mozart was an Illuminatus and a Freemason. (Not a conspiracy theory, those were real organizations.) They were big on individual self-development, anti-superstition, reason, friendship, and enlightenment values generally. The Magic Flute is the story of a young man rescuing a princess from the evil Queen of the Night (symbolizing the forces of malicious ignorance) and in the process getting inducted into the brotherhood.

Rationalists ALREADY have our theme music. We have a heritage.

"It was his bequest to mankind, his appeal to the ideals of humanity. His last work is not Tito or the Requiem; it is Die Zauberflöte. Into the Overture, which is anything but a Singspiel overture, he compressed the struggle and victory of mankind, using the symbolic means of polyphony; working out, laborious working out in the development section; struggle and triumph"

---Alfred Einstein. "Mozart His Character, His Work". 1961

The 1991 performance at the Met, with Kurt Moll as Sarastro, is on Youtube in full: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewOx80kxFsQ

High Church is Burning Man.

[in my case, more synagogue than church...I should tell you about that sometime.]

One of these days, though, I want to get good enough to pull off something a little more "high church" for you of my own, in a more convenient location.

By the way, if in the future there ever is a Rationalist High Church that wishes to use High-Church-style music for Rationalist Solemn Masses, I would be totally willing to compose such music.

One more thing: "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" was originally a chorale written by Mendelssohn about Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the original lyrics aren't particularly usable for a modern secular ritual in America, given that they're explicitly German nationalist. Somebody would have to do a very free translation.

I know about The Magic Flute (I LVOE OPERA!) although I don't think it would sit all that well with Less Wrong in modern times.

Original lyrics: Yeah, they are definitely German nationalist. I google-translated it, looks kind of cool. That's just awesome.

The 'Anti-Deathist Opera' idea was actually a specfic plot I have outlined in which a utilitarian and an immoralist anti-agathics researchers get in a love triangle, the immoralist's super-conservative religious parents pick a fight, and all the main characters are the last people in the world to die. I'm not sure if it's a good or terrible idea, but mostly its something that will never see the light of day since I am unlikely to become capable of composing operas ever.

One thing to note - while my original inspiration for the core of the event (singing carols in a living room on Christmas Eve) was from a Catholic tradition, a lot of my inspiration for the style and presentation of music was a lot more protestant. I'd consider Baptist Gospel music as much "High Church" as Catholic music, but it is much more exuberant and loud.

More recently, there's a subgenre of protestant whose name I don't know (they like to just call themselves "The Church" so they can pretend that of course *they* don't care about sectarianism and just want everyone to believe in Christ... but seriously their particular church is the right one).

"The Church" features a lot of Christian Rock, and services often resemble rock concerts. The best one I went to was Francelle's old church. Oddly enough, she took me there after the Reason Rally earlier this year (it was in DC). They had a mix of sort of hymn-like songs, and more rock-like songs.

Their musicians were extremely good at improvisation, and the part that most impressed me was when the pastor was giving his sermon, hitting the equivalent of my speech where I'd be about to say "but here's what I know. We ate whatever food we wanted because...", and the pianist started playing this slow, ponderous melody that perfectly accented his words. It was like the big speech at the end of a football movie when the team is feeling dejected and sad and worthless, and the coach is berating them for being worthless but then suddenly turning it around and being incredibly inspirational, and cinematic music starts swelling and even if you hate football you feel yourself lift up a bit.

Except in real life. And somehow managed to feel natural and beautiful rather than artificial and lame.

I'm sorry there were a lot of snags in the sacred part. (I had a similar issue at Burning Man - people were talking during the Burning of the Temple and it was awful). Also sorry that the afterparty was loud and frustrating, although this is unfortunately a bit of a cost benefit issue that is going to hurt people with preferences on your end of the bellcurve and I don't have a good solution for/ apart from acquiring *two* houses next year and having one be "the quiet one." (Or I guess a house with much better sound insulation, I admit ours is awful at that - you can hear someone receiving a g-chat on the first floor from inside a third floor bedroom).

I planned the music playlist for our Halloween party a few months ago, and I approached from a similar perspective to yours - I did a four-hour playlist that was mostly quietish, ambient music that only built up into rave-dance music towards later in the evening for about an hour.

I found out that you can't plan for *when* people want to dance, and if you have mostly ambient music you'll get people sitting around being frustrated they can't dance at random intervals. It also takes people a while to warm up to dance music, so you need more than the hour or so that you expect people to actually dance once they get moving.

(that said, there was actually only about an hour of bass playing after the party. I do confess that I was optimizing for "people being able to have private conversations" [by going upstairs] but NOT optimizing for "people being able to actually sleep prior to 2 AM" and I do apologize for that).

(I'm also pretty sure the service was about 3 hours, counting from the time I gave to Stonehenge speech to the Road to Wisdom - but I agree it was too long. Different people had different opinions on *how* much longer it was than it should have been, but I was deliberately going for "make it the upper limit of how long it can be, so I can learn as much as possible about which songs resonate with people and what people's tolerances are for length).

Your review, of both the good and bad elements, is pretty spot on. Thanks! I'll have an official writeup published on Friday (just in time for the actual Solstice)

Also, another correction: I have done this exactly once before, I just wrote a really impressive looking writeup of it.

Also, "Less Wrong, More Rite" is basically the best title ever.

What you describe, and particularly the elaborations in the comments, sounds like something I would find not just unpleasant but creepy as hell. Particularly the part where avoiding it would have exposed me to social sanction.

See, I thought there would be a lot of people like you who would have come on Sunday but not Saturday -- but there weren't! The Sunday people were more like a subset of the Saturday people, rather than a superset as I had expected.

But I should make absolutely clear that "social sanction" feels way too strong as a description of the phenomenon I was describing above. There's a major difference between, on the one hand, sensing the existence of a "core" group that one isn't quite a member of, and on the other hand actually feeling unwelcome.

I should also say that I'm not myself anti-ritual at all. In fact, I can't quite figure out exactly why I didn't come on Saturday. Maybe I was squeamish, or maybe it was simply a matter of procrastination -- putting off the complicated task of long-distance travel until the last possible moment (Sunday morning).

mechanisms for party design
It sounds like there are a bunch of people who prefer loud oontzy music, so that they can dance, and/or sit quietly and cuddle and people-watch without feeling a social obligation to make conversation. Maybe that last one is just me.
Here are some silly ideas which might accommodate both groups.

(1) A party where loud oontzy music is being broadcast over wifi. Everyone gets a pair of wifi headphones (those are a thing, right?) which can be turned loud or quiet. If you want to hear better, you just turn your particular headphones down.

(2) A party with loud oontzy music, but there's a group IRC server set up specifically for the event. Rather than talk, people are asked to communicate via chat. No more waiting-for-your-turn-to-speak-because-some-other-guy-keeps-talking-over-everyone! On the other hand, some magic might be needed to keep chat groups local if you wanted to talk to a specific person. For bonus points, this party should take place in a Faraday cage (and/or behind a firewall) so that people don't get distracted by their phones/tablets/laptops and start surfing the interwebs.

(3) A party with loud oontzy music, and it's very dark so you can't see very well. But there's a bunch of those darklight things, and everyone has glow-in-the-dark gloves. Communication is via sign language. This might also make for awesome-looking dancing. It's not clear how you'd persuade enough interesting people to learn sign language, though.

I think those are interesting ideas worth trying and would probably make for a novel experience, but also seem like the sort of thing designed by someone who doesn't understand why you would have parties with oontzy music in the first place. (Frat boys are not just crazy, they have reasons and preferences that might or might not be alien to you)

Loud music has a few characteristics which some people consider feature rather than bugs:

1) they force you to lean in close in order to talk to people. This is used in some clubs to facilitate people getting close enough for pheromones to fire at point blank range and help people hook up. This is not the reason I had loud music but it's actually extremely instrumental to frat party goals. (Note that it's still kind of obnoxious to have an extended conversations, but frat parties just aren't about bonding via talking)

2) Some people actually like the sensation of bass physically pumping through you. It's this majestic, powerful feeling and when combined with a large group of people all experiencing it at once it's a form of group bonding ritual all its own. I DO enjoy this to some degree. What I hate about club atmospheres is that this goes on FOREVER, and as far as I'm concerned the optimal length of this is maybe an hour tops. (I had an hour of afterparty music, about 1/3 of which was "oontzy"). So doing oontz music over private wi-fi completely misses this point (also, turning it up high enough to get the "loudness is awesome" experience would damage your ears more than it would over regular speakers)

That said - last year, the Solstice-proper didn't have much high quality music that everyone knew - there were maybe 3-4 songs that everyone came away from it really excited by. It was also only a one day event, so people were more willing to stay up super late. An extended dance-music-afterpartyw was pretty important.

This time there was a lot more music in the Solstice proper (it was about twice as long), the average quality of music was much better, and the afterparty soundtrack was largely unnecessary IMO. There's a good possibility it won't be included next year (even with a shorter main ceremony), and if it is I'll certainly make sure that people who don't like it have a place to go.

Edited at 2012-12-18 08:11 pm (UTC)

I really wouldn't describe The Word of God as "explicitly atheist". I agree it can be read godlessly without any particular violence, by taking "God" in an Einsteinian sort of sense, but given that every single verse ends with an assertion of the form "God did such-and-such" it's hard to see how "explicitly atheist" can be right.

It's certainly explicitly anti-fundamentalist, but that's not the same thing. For what it's worth, I always assumed the writer was a theist of the more non-dogmatic sort. It turns out she's an atheist and goes to a UU church. But, looky here: 'Well, actually "Acts of Creation" and "Word of God" both explicitly assume the existence of a supernatural agent. Both of them talk about God as if God actually existed.' So I think it's fair to say: not an explicitly atheist song, even though it was written by an atheist.

Good point. I should have phrased that more as "explicitly anti-religion" than as "explicitly atheist"

I was trying to think of a context where ritual goes as solemnly as one might wish. I'm not sure it's really possible except as a performance rather than an actual community event - you would need to weed out children, anyone with a cold, etc. Someone always sneezes or drops a hymnal or comes in late or starts talking to their neighbor. A baby starts babbling. I remember being surprised that in "silent" Quaker meetings, people still coughed and adjusted in their chairs.

The most seriously done ritual I've seen is probably the Tenebrae service in some churches on Maundy Thursday. It's a commemoration of Jesus' last night, with foot washing and Last Supper, and ending with the lights being gradually extinguished (Ray, is that where you got the idea?) The decorations are removed from the church. It's the only service I've been to where people actually leave in silence with no socializing afterwards (although with the expectations that they'll see each other three days later for a much happier ritual and much socializing). Part of it is that it's kind of a minor occasion and on a school night, so the only people who come are those who really want to be there for the ritual itself.

>ending with the lights being gradually extinguished (Ray, is that where you got the idea?)

Huh, no. But it sounds interesting. (Solstice was inspired in a roundabout way by Zvi's Rationalist Seder, which prompted me to think of "Reverse Hanukkah")

I remember being surprised talking to someone and realizing that family was attending a Catholic church now despite disagreeing with some of the Catholic church's official positions. It boiled down to her liking their ritual and rites. That party sounds like a lot of fun -- like the nerdiest party I've ever heard of.

> hire one of those Zen monks with the sticks who whacks anyone who disturbs the profundity of meditation by so much as moving a muscle.

This sounds like an amusing way to spend a few hours, if Raemon wants to implement it next year. Plus it'd give me an excuse to acquire some robes (I love robes, but I have no reason to own any, sadface) and maybe a new stick. (Something tall with a sign-holder on the top, so people can see it over the crowd and I can put a sign on it to let people know that the profundity rules are in effect?)

Nice review! Can I ask what you thought of the singalong "When I Die"? My song Quantum Entanglement is vaguely on-theme and has become kind of an old standby for this audience, but "When I Die" was new and still kind of evolving. Did it work for you? Would it have worked better or worse to leave out the funnier bits and keep it more solemn? (eg, I could have left off the zombie one "they may EAT my body when I die")

I found it pretty easy to ignore the "sorry I'm late" guy and didn't notice a lot of background conversation but that might depend on where you were in the room. Also I might have been distracted due to some running the presentation duties. I thought Ray's intro and in-the-dark portion were so strong as to make the whole thing work pretty well.

It would have made sense to *test* turning the lights out in advance. I was surprised at how many VERY BRIGHT LEDs were there to ruin the effect - it would have been sensible to have some black electrical tape in place or at the ready to deal with that.

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