Alienation is not overcome by ritual, but by the circumcision of the heart, the marriage of work and spirit, of faith and reason. If we find ourselves alienated it is not because we lack ritual, but because we find our reason, our logos, no longer renders a faithful account of spirit, that our rituals refer to nothing outside of themselves. Our rituals and our vocabulary no longer does any descriptive work. It’s not that we lack rituals, it’s just that they’re self referential and thus meaningless. It is not so much that we suffer from a personal narcissism, but that we suffer from a *cultural* narcissism, a liberalism too busy applauding itself to know that the audience went home long ago…

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4235846812