# 30. Ritualism ## 30.5. Methodology/Refinements/Sub-species ### 30.5.3. Representational rituals These occur at certain moments in everyone's life. They are designed to mark, memorialise, and demonstrate to others a milestone in an individual or group's history, such as graduation or retirement. For instance, when a doctor finally takes the Hippocratic Oath, he is affirming his new status. They are also used to demonstrate or reaffirm a status, and in this sense, victims can have their status set for them by a manipulator. Such is the case in making inferior seating arrangements for a black audience in comparison with that of a white audience attending a South African cricket match during the apartheid years. Another common manipulative use of this type of ritual is the demonstration of an external threat which really doesn't exist - by marking out certain events as historically significant. Such was the case in the political witch hunt for non-existent communists by the FBI under McCarthy et al in the USA. We were all led to believe that communism had "come of age", it had achieved nuclear potential and it was about to take over the free world. US-led paranoia drove us all in the Western world into a ritualistic hatred of "the Soviets". ***Parent:** [[Ritualism]]*