Rituals, as symbolic actions, create a community without communication, since they settle as signifiers that, without transmitting anything, allow a community to recognize their identity in them. However, what predominates today is communication without community, since there has been a loss of social rituals. In the contemporary world, where the fluidity of communication is imperative, rites are perceived as obsolescence and an expendable hindrance. Byung-Chul Han wonders: why do symbolic forms unite society and what does it hold when it stops cultivating them? For Han, his progressive disappearance leads to community attrition and disorientation of the individual.
In this book, the rituals constitute a contrast background that serves to outline the contours of our societies. It is outlined, thus, a genealogy of his disappearance while realizing the pathologies of the present and, above all, the erosion that this entails. In this new essay Byung-Chul Han reflects on alternative lifestyles that would be able to free society from its collective narcissism.