Meaningless rituals

I have always found human rituals astounding. You don't need to be married to live together and have children and they in turn don't need to be christened. If you die, you don't need a funeral in order to be buried or cremated either. You're dead, that's it. You're born, that's it. You have sex, that's it. You give birth, that's it. 

Then there's greetings, morning, afternoon, evening. Why tell someone what they can already see? Happy birthday! I'll decide that as it might be absolutely miserable for me on that day. Don't talk to me about parties. Crowds of people making noise, getting drunk, loud music so you can't hear yourself think or make sense of the simplified speech people have to resort to, in order to be misheard (see daily greetings for same thing). 

Personally I prefer to think than be deafened but each to their own, whatever that means (all these colloquialisms are another bugbear for me, whatever that means).