As mentioned a few posts ago, the editor of All Desire is a Desire for Being has compiled a list of 172 maxims by Girard, extracted from lengthier works.
But since Girard has only that one Big Theory, I'll bet I could sketch out the whole thing in 20 or fewer aphorisms, in which case we can all take 'er easy and enjoy the rest of the day. Since her list is just random, I will attempt to wrestle them into some kind of order from the bottom up:
When mutual love is absent, the only sentiment that can reconcile human being is its opposite, a common hatred.
Everywhere and always, when human beings either cannot or dare not take their anger out on the thing that has caused it, they unconsciously search for substitutes, and more often than not they find them.
Unanimity in accusation is in itself a cause for suspicion. It suggests that the accused is innocent.
To have a scapegoat is to not realize you have a scapegoat.
No one ever sees himself as casting the first stone.
Scapegoating is effective only if it is nonconscious. Then you do not call it scapegoating; you call it justice.
Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.
We are ready to deconstruct anything except the idea that we are self-directed and that the persecutors are always the others.
Christ reveals and uproots the structural matrix of all religions.
When we criticize the Bible we can only criticize it with the Bible.
The best way not to be crucified, in the final analysis, is to do as everyone else and join in the crucifixion.
Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology.
If you do not have a real religion, you end up with a more dreadful one.
There is a great irony in the fact that the modern process of stamping out religion produces countless caricatures of it.
[Political correctness] is the religion of the victim detached from any form of transcendence.
We are living through a caricatural 'ultra-Christianity' that tries to escape from the Judeo-Christian orbit by 'radicalizing' the concern for victims in an anti-Christian manner.
It is because we have wanted to distance ourselves from religion that it is now returning with such force and in a retrograde, violent form... In this it will perhaps have been our last mythology. We 'believed' in reason, as people used to believe in the gods.
It's now no longer possible to persecute except in the name of victims.
The current process of spiritual demagoguery and rhetorical overkill has transformed the concern for victims into a totalitarian command and a permanent inquisition.
The refusal of the real is the number one dogma of our time.
And here we're are, with the news of the day, whatever it is. You are now up to date with the scapegoat mechanism and logic of human sacrifice.
BUT WAIT, there's more! BONUS APHORISMS that converge with Girard:
Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.
When one does not concede to the leftist all that he demands, he proclaims himself the victim of an institutional violence that it is licit to repel with physical violence.
The political platforms of the left are gradually transformed into scaffolds.
If the leftist is not persecuting, he feels persecuted.
Only the honest prophets are lynched.
"Social justice" is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.
Minorities that become majorities continue to believe they are brave.
The leftist screams that freedom perishes when his victims refuse to finance their own murder.
Man prefers to apologize by offering another person's guilt, rather than his own innocence, as an excuse.
The diffusion of a few drops of Christianity into a leftist mind transforms the idiot into a perfect idiot.
The frightened liberal is a bloodthirsty animal.
The cult of Humanity is celebrated with human sacrifices.
28 comments:
Of what are aphorisms made, or is it aphorisms all the way down?
From the preface:
It's been said that the universe is made up not of atoms, but of stories.... But who crafts the narrative, and with what motives and vested interests?
There is something ahead and something behind, something above and something below; in between is someone and anyone.
The world isn't flat. Rather, the left.
Fidelity to the dictionary is resistance to tyrants.
Leftists don't have ideas. Ideas have them.
Ignorance is infinite, therefore God exists.
"Social justice" is envy with a Ph.D.
The news is an infomercial for leftism.
Verbicide is always prelude to genocide.
White Privilege: the right to be an imbecile without blaming another race.
Leftism is the hatred it pretends to oppose.
Ideology is envy laundering.
Progressivism: time become demonic.
Ignorance of ignorance is catastrophic.
Let's start with what we can't know.
Ideology eclipses whole worlds.
Excised from God, even truth is an idol.
White privilege is the whitest thing ever invented.
Progressives will have achieved equity when the DSM is eliminated.
The diffusion of a few drops of Christianity into a leftist mind transforms the idiot into a perfect idiot.
Reminds me of someone I used to be tentatively friends with. Her family went to church, not because they actually believed it but because it's What One Does and because they wanted their kids to have some degree of moral instruction,. When she realized we aren't members of the Order of Recycling in the Church of Anthropogenic Global Disaster, we weren't invited over anymore.
In the Christianity of the leftist Christian, one of the two elements sooner or later eliminates the other.
The Catholicism of the left is the pretense of baptizing theses that have not been converted.
As people can be a gateway for evil to enter this world, how many of those involved in The Manhattan Project were homosexual.
The man-hittin' project?
Einstein married his first cousin. It was based on his other theory of relativity.
I saw 25+ comments and was hoping it was a duel between an interloper and Dupree. Or maybe that Oriental Jazzman had discovered rap music. Turns out it's neither, just a very angry Petey.
I have a question. Is modern conservatism (not to be confused with the Liz Cheney or Swarzenigger kind) trying to bring about the end of days? The declaration of an impending end of days was all the rage some thirty years ago, along with much talk of raptures. Yet today not so much. But I do remember this:
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.
- 2 Timothy 3:1-5
I polled a bunch of leftist Christians and all said that this sounded exactly like Donald Trump. I then polled a bunch of MAGAs and all said this sounded exactly like Joe Biden, except they forgot the part where Biden is senile.
I may need Nicolás to advise, though maybe I’ll consider an idea from Dupree to be good enough.
Once again, nothing.
I haven’t been this disappointed since I got talked into going to the zoo and the only thing I saw was a camel licking a tree.
But It’s alright. It’s okay. Star Wars is on TV again. I wish I had a sidekick named Wedge. Half everyman, half nebbish, Wedge is the guy who always comes back alive. Everybody else, all the heroic pilots, the dentist looking guy, the token fat guy… everyone else always gets blown up. Blown up good. But who do ya always wind up flying home with? That goddamned Wedge.
I switched channels to my towns local parade. My wife’s former high school drill team was marching. We’d graduated about the time Star Wars was a big deal. She has photos of her with her drill team. Every single girl back then was fit and healthy looking. No tats, no Mexicans. Today, most of the girls on that team are obese. The band marchers and baton twirlers too. Hell, the token person was the fit healthy one.
And these new versions of Star Wars they’re making, featuring our old heroes turned losers. We all loved those quirky and imperfect people fighting through a gauntlet of challenges to grow into becoming heroes. Yeah, so that today they could end up these slow, old, cynical, and far too easily killed off losers. Goddamn CGI and its nebbish sidekick, A.I. Enough to make a MAGA wanna kick out a public school window.
And then they get replaced with these brand new politically correct heroes, like that junk-collecter girl who suddenly and magically can figure out every damned thing the very first time she ever sees it, and then defeats all these powerful men and terrible creatures twice her size without breaking a sweat. Brown and fat people all over the place. But enough already.
This has to be the end of days. For real this time.
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