Created Ritual entry

docs/index.md

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 <div id="pullquote">Democratic Mediums is a directory of patterns for decision, deliberation, and noise.</div>
 
-This is an early-stage project that is mostly incomplete. Browse some sample entries: [Bureaucracy](mediums/bureaucracy.md), [Condorcet](mediums/condorcet.md), [Sortition](mediums/sortition.md).
+This is an early-stage project that is mostly incomplete. Browse some sample entries: [Bureaucracy](mediums/bureaucracy.md), [Condorcet](mediums/condorcet.md), [Ritual](mediums/ritual.md), [Sortition](mediums/sortition.md).

docs/mediums/ritual.md

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 # Ritual
 
+Ritual is a repeated practice that a given culture deems significant, either implicitly or explicitly. It typically has the effect of binding the community that practices it together and of reinforcing certain governance habits.
+
+**Input:** community, culture, artful norm formation
+
+**Output:** self-reinforcing common habits
+
+## History
+
+Ritual is among the "[human universals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Universals)" that anthropologist Donald Brown argues can be found in every human society. It is a phenomenon frequently associated with religion, but it is by no means religion's exclusive purview. Rituals appear widely in childrearing, sports, the arts, and political life.
+
+## Feedback loops
+
+### Sensitivities
+
+* Establishes and protects norms at lower cost of effort than other enforcement mechanisms, such as [judicial](judiciary.md) sanctions
+* Connects and embeds governance processes organically into broader cultural systems
+
+### Oversights
+
+* Imposes expectations and habits that can be hard to change when change is necessary
+* Can defy rational explanation and thus reduce the rationality of the governance system as a whole
+
+## Implementations
+
+### Communities
+
+* [Beating the bounds](https://books.google.com/books?id=2kx7KiTEZCsC&lpg=PA74&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q&f=false), an ancient practice of collectively surveying community boundaries
+* Courtroom practices of respect and costume for judges
+* Inauguration ceremonies for public officials
+
+### Tools
+
+<!-- what software, methodologies, or organizations are available to facilitate implementation -->
+
+## Further resources
+
+* "[Rituals]," Wikimedia Commons
+* Smith, Jonathan Z. _To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual_. University of Chicago Press, 1987.