The reason for festivals and rituals is to provide opportunities for those for w

The reason for festivals and rituals is to provide opportunities for those for whom suppression of impulse is very costly to recharge their inventory of discipline in an environment that is sanctioned by the polity, while under their eye, showing you are not a danger to them; and to provide opportunities to learn the suppression of impulses necessary for the polity through safety and insurance in its shelter. And to demonstrate one is worthy of their sanction. The reason for law is to punish those impulses where not sanctioned by the polity. Both the sanction of excesses and the practice of indoctrination into the sacred, use the pack response to bind us through ‘thick plenty, and thin scarcity’.

Men demonstrate the behavior of pack animals, and women, herd animals. But these are non-trivial emotions we feel. And our celebrations of release in plenty, and disciplines of sanctity in scarcity provide opportunity for outliers to show themselves, and opportunity for everyone else to find sanction, and opportunity for our elites to provide venues for their imitation.