The cheap and easy answer is "media". Media's entire job is to distract you from being happy and self-sufficient.

The vast majority of the human population that has ever lived, has done so with very few concerns outside of the daily search for food, somewhere to sleep, and somewhere to shit.

Since every human sense and our key brain functions are finely tuned to seek out patterns, we attribute agency and motive to randomness constantly. For much of history that has manifested in people thinking gods or spirits of some form or another were responsible for things happening. The sun rising... flowers blooming... your sister breaking her leg.

To make the good things happen again (sun rising, flowers blooming), and to fend off the bad things (broken legs), we looked for patterns in our behavior that would explain why a thing did, or did not, happen.

And you now have a ritual. A pattern to live by that - you believe - will bring you good fortune.

For most of human existence we have sought out these patterns, and our brains are hard-wired to give us little endorphin boots of feel-good-juice whenever these patterns are replicated.

For the last 50-100 years, humans have developed a deficiency-model of need. This is entirely built around the advertising industry, and the advertising delivery mechanisms of the print and on-screen media. They operate on a distraction-based model that jerks your brain away from the patterns it knows and seeks, and instead short-circuits that wiring with instantly delivered triggers that produce similar endorphin rushes. Colors. Lights. Confirmation that you made the right decision. Giving you perceived power over situations in which you feel powerless. (Chewing gum in a meeting is not going to make your boss see the wisdom of your plan. No matter what Dentyne wants you to believe.)

So, feeding those base human needs for rituals taps into an inner feeling of calm. Your deep, animal brain, is satisfied when you sit around a bonfire and quietly chat with your friends. This is something your ancestors have been doing for tens of thousands of years.

Watching Baywatch isn't. So it doesn't cue the same parts of the brain that have that need for the Old Rituals, or whatever you want to call them.

That's why people get pushed away from the old rituals: Distraction. Saturation. A lack of space, physically and mentally.

At least, those are my beliefs.