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Hey Dude, Do You Collectively Effervesce?
One Saturday morning, long ago, I was walking the dog down a Venice Beach street and an old battered car pulled up next to me. In the driver’s seat, a tattooed guy with a burning cigarette between his fingers. In the passenger’s seat, a down-and-out looking woman who rolled down the window and asked, “Hey, do you party?”
As I said, it was about 10AM on a Saturday, and I was walking the dog and carrying a just-filled plastic bag — if you get my drift — so it was pretty clear I wasn’t in their target demo, for whatever it was they were targeting. But now, according to NYMagazine, we know that the urge to party is bedrock human behavior:
What contemporary Americans refer to as “partying” is of a piece with what French sociologist Émile Durkheim called “collective effervescence.” According to Durhkeim (and so many Snapchat stories), when people start moving in a shared, directed experience, a current of excitement starts pulsing through them.
Yeah, right. But there’s more:
In a tribal or religious setting, University of Connecticut anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas tells Science of Us, a shaman would have carried people through ecstatic experiences, but today that’s the role of the DJ (or rock band or soccer team, depending on your enthusiasm). Xygalatas has added empirical weight to collective effervescence. For a 2011 paper, Xygalatas and his colleagues went to a Greek village where fire-walking has been practiced for centuries. He rigged biomarker trackers to village people on the night of a fire-walking festival, where the emperor-saint Constantine is said to possess fire-walkers as they dance across hot coals. The ritual was “emotionally aligning” for the entire community, as indicated by heart rates. Viewers shared heart-rate synchrony with the fire-walkers, and the people who were socially closer with the fire-walkers — relatives and friends — had greater synchrony. That’s why, Xygalatas speculates, if you spend the weekend at a music festival, the acts that you identify with will sprinkle you with the fairy dust of collective effervescence while the ones that aren’t part of your identity might leave you disconnected, unsynchronized.
I guess nothing is worse than being unsynchronized.
But it does suggest — aside from whatever “partying” my curbside friends were engaged in — that it’s fun to be part of a big, loud, cheering group, aligned with a particular thing. Which may be why supporters of presidential candidates like Donald Trump and Gary Johnson (and Bernie Sanders, during the primaries) seem so pumped up and thrilled, and why they look a little too intense and transported to folks watching from the low-impact and lean-back perspective of the sofa.
At a festival or concert or dance party, you get a release from everyday routine and conventional expectations about behavior. To an outsider, she says, this is counterintuitive: The thump thump thump of electronic music may appear “mundanely repetitive,” but that misses the point. “Every night out can generate a good story,” she says, “maybe even the new love of your life!” After all, the music literally syncs people together.
Sounds like a political rally in 2016. For those of us who don’t, um, party.
Published in General
I think the thrill of collectively effervescing in synchronicity is why people will sometimes watch movies on network TV even though they have the DVD – they’re aglow in the knowledge that they’re sharing the experience with others around the country. Either that or they’re too lazy to get up and put the disc into the DVD player.
I am a million miles from the drug scene but I think they wanted to either buy or sell drugs. One of my younger neighbors talks about how he used to party and then talked about drug use.
In my part of the country, when someone is described as “likes to have a good time” it means they like to get drunk as a skunk.
This pretty well explains why people go to pro (and, at many schools, college) football games. There’s little case to be made that one can actually see the game better than on a 66 in. Samsung, but “partying” in the tailgate group before the game and then during the game is the thing. If you miss a block or a sack, or even a TD, no biggie.
I went to a dope clinic yesterday. First time. I was not a customer but a patient of mine owns it and invited me.
Currently there is a migration to burning man passing though town and that place is effervescent.
I don’t like crowds much but admit to being caught up in the spirit at Dead shows or sporting events.
Crowds and Power
Elias Canetti
You should have given them the bag. “Here’s some really good [CoC].”
Maui wowie crossed with Labrador.
Not with total strangers! That would be weird.
Thank goodness Hillary’s supporters are immune.
Hey Dude, Do You Collectively Effervesce?
Collectively effervesce. I think that’s what my girlfriend and I were doing one college evening after too many bean burritos.
Eric Hines
Now that you mention it, Trump does look like he’s spent a night at the Roxbury.
At my Catholic High School I was one of the few hold-outs who wouldn’t go on a retreat because I had heard about all the trust walks and trust falls and other psychobabble games that were played – all that crud was very much in vogue in the early 70s (maybe it still is) – and I didn’t feel I needed it. I’ve been to enough rock concerts when I was younger and had my fill. I guess I just don’t need to feel synchronous energy with a group. Mobs disturb me. I’d be content in a cabin in the mountains somewhere surrounded by my books, a wine collection, a few cases of Scotch, (oh, fine and some food), a couple of big dogs, and a couple of rifles to defend myself against bear or bikers or hippies looking to break in and steal food or cause trouble.
By the way…are you on my lawn? Get off my lawn!!
Why yes, I do on occasion.
Sounds perfectly reasonable that the urge to collectively effervesce is hard wired into the human psyche, but it should be liberals only who scratch that itch through political rallies. That’s 2008 Hope and Change explained.
As conservatives we should get our freak on with no more than polite skeptical applause. Hope those days return.
I effervesced. Once.
But, like Bromo-Seltzer, it’s fast and must be consumed at the moment.
*urp*
Yeah, like Obama supporter, Chris Matthews, only their legs effervesce.
This is not a retreat. If you want what to know what a real retreat is, re-Joyce with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Wait a minute . . . is this actually the new sales pitch, cleverly disguised as a news story?
I mean, it’s well-researched and informative with a nice personal hook for the opening and all but . . . I could have sworn I read that you were looking for something shorter.
(I do admit that I am looking forward to finding out how “Xygalatas” is pronounced, when you use this on the podcast.)
Thanks for the reference.
Nah, you got the wrong host for this sort of segue. Now if James had written the post, you’d be on to something.
But then Rob would have edited the post to add an interruption.
Yeah, me too. I think I’m immune from this group experience stuff.
Also, I have never used “party” as a verb.
“…when people start moving in a shared, directed experience, a current of excitement starts pulsing through them.”
So…track practice? I’ve got to say that I always did get that thrill just before the gun went off, but I don’t think that’s the kind of shared, directed motion he means.
Rob… You do realize he thought you were carrying in the bag what we used to call “some really good s**t.” In this case literally. You should have sold him the bag. Tim
The only time “party” is a verb to a software engineer is when using a pointer as an index to data, as in “I got the list pointer and partied on it.”
We are wild and crazy guys, you know. . Even those of us who are gals.
Hey, I learned something today! I’m in I.T. and I didn’t know that. I’m not a programmer. Thanks!
If this is fundamental to human nature, it may explain why my avatar is not a human.
Rob,
Is effervescing anything like swanning? I was effervescing down the street the other day,…
She was talking to the dog, you idiot.
How long have you lived in Venice Beach? Because I was born and raised in LA, and from your description of events, I think they wanted to rob you. Were walking down Lincoln? You said it happened long ago. But walking through Venice holding a bag of dog waste and not a glock, it was at least post 90s, right? I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d like for you to not die. The Sociologist you used for this analysis has another concept, methodology, and set of variables that would be more accurate.
Personally, I think the entire discipline of Sociology should be moved to a reddit thread. Still, Durkheim’s theory of conflict Anomie, is when displacement of a culture by another culture creates mass resentment and..well “Partying”. I apologize if this sounds derisive, but I really want you to live. Unless it was the 70s, or Spuds McKenzie was there-people dont use the word Party as slang for illicit activities. Gang Activity in LA originates in Venice. V13 as I’m sure you’ve seen scrawled in spraypaint have been rivaling w/Crips, now Rollin 20s for 40 years! What’s the gift for 40 years of feuding? The John Bait is a classic LA scam. You are enticed with world’s oldest profession, then robbed. If White, they were likely Heroin addicts who John Bait for Mexican Cartel to kidnap affluent White people for ransom.
So be happy you still have Kidneys?