Records indicate that I first became aware of Renin 1998 or so, upon reading Gil Bailie's Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads.
As indicated a few posts back, Girard admittedly has only one big idea, this being the logic of human sacrifice and of scapegoating violence more generally. I ran into Bailie's book when I was pondering the ubiquity of human sacrifice in premodern peoples. Indeed, it is so universal as to prompt one to wonder whether it might be instinctual.
Given the universality of the practice -- often including consumption of the victim -- what could be the common problem to which it was the solution?
For Girard, it is the pervasive intrahuman violence that is temporarily suspended when collective violence can be perpetrated on a single scapegoat. Someone said that human sacrifice is "unanimity minus one," and that's no joke, especially if you're the scapegoat.
Come to think of it, I myself was the victim of mob violence last night in a dream. I found myself in lone opposition to the mob over the question of the efficacy of border walls, and one of them -- you can't make this up -- snuck up from behind and actually micturated on me.
Distasteful as this was, it wan't fatal, and later in the dream I was going to return the favor by bunging him in the back of the head with a brick. But it was dark, so it was hard to identify him. I woke up before I could exact my revenge.
So my dream featured both scapegoating and mimetic violence, because supposing I had been successful in landing the brick, this would have only spurred more violence. Perhaps the mob would have literally sacrificed me, but things didn't get that far.
The violence that is unveiled in Bailie's book and in Girard's theory is precisely this scapegoating violence. Oddly enough, the very foundation stone(ing) of Western Civilization is a human sacrifice.
But the Crucifixion is utterly unique in the annals of scapegoating violence, this for several reasons. First, the victim is literally God, and you know what they say about striking at the King.
Second, this scapegoat is not only innocent, but said to be without sin. Therefore, the whole scapegoat mechanism is exposed for what it is -- again, it is for the first time *unveiled*, so the mob can no longer engage in it with a clear conscience. To the contrary, the violence turns back upon the perpetrators, such that we see our own guilt.
I am reminded of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, in which the first hand which is seen nailing Jesus to the cross belongs to Gibson himself.
Back when the film was released, secular critics accused Gibson of anti-Semitism -- ironically, trying to scapegoat him -- when he depicted his own guilt, not only as a member of the deicidal mob, but first among them.
But that's what secular progressives do, every day. After reading Violence Unveiled, I would scan the newspaper with an eye to identifying who is being scapegoated today.
But since Christ delegitimized the scapegoat mechanism, there's a new twist, in that every day is a new iteration of the question -- a competition over -- Who's the real victim here?, even -- or especially -- when the victim is actually the aggressor using victimhood as a weapon. The left is the very institutionalization of this inversion and perversion of Christianity.
That is to say, thanks to Christ, there is a new and unprecedented concern for the innocent victims of scapegoating violence. However, just because the Messiah is the innocent victim, it doesn't mean that every victim -- every covetous, underachieving bum with a grudge -- is the messiah.
But this hardly stops them from turning, say, St. George Floyd, into the innocent victim of institutional racial violence. The whole victim culture is predicated on the primordial -- but bogus -- innocence of their sacred Victim.
Now, I ask you: Every time some thug is micturated upon in this fair country, do we have to compensate the family, or the group to which he belongs?
Consider this only the introduction to a Large Subject.
15 comments:
I too was scapegoated in a dream over illegals, for declaring that most of them cross the border by flying in and overstaying their visas.
Thus came the reply: “So now you want us to wall off all the airports too? So who’s gonna pay for all that?”
I replied: “Aeromexico of course. Plus Air India and Pakistan International and Air China, among others.” And that’s when my own guy peed on me.
Turns out, he (or she?) was an unwitting scapegoat itself, wearing a Karl Marx tee shirt but secretly employed by private equity owners of stuff like meatpacking plants, construction firms, major hotel chains and Elon Musk who all benefit from the importation of cheap labor.
Anyhow… I also don’t like mandated reparations. I can see the unpopularity of such is going to be minimal when our anglo church attendees don’t donate free will squat to descendants of slavery as some kind of reparatin. Now imagine if reparations were actually mandated!
I see such talk as no less a political stunt than sending busloads of illegals up to Kamala Harris’ house. The solution is obviously to wheel guillotines over to the homes of corrupt private equity owners and make them the scapegoats, but then who’d be paying most of the bills for our many corrupt politicians?
I depress myself. For a bit of hopeful levity, I offer the biblical definition of scapegoating. In the bible, scapegoating is actually two goats. One gets released into the wild and the other gets sacrificed. I prefer this version. Because if I was one of the scapegoats I’d have a 50% chance.
Hi everyone! I’m having trouble synthesizing some new thoughts, and would be grateful for any help you metaphysical heavy hitters might provide.
I popped in here today for the first time in a while to see the recent discussion of Girard and Bailee. A buddy texted me shortly thereafter recommending a Gad Saad / JBP podcast about ideological memetic replication.
Both felt noteworthy, given that I started reading Bailee’s “God’s Gamble” about a week ago.
This got me thinking about Dawkins’ work on memetics which is insightful despite his flawed conclusions in other areas beyond the access of his intellect, as well as more recent memetic ideas coming out of effective accelerationism. Also about the concept of mind parasites that Bob introduced to me many years ago. And finally about Jeremy England’s reconciliation of evolution and self-organizing, self-replicating Life with thermodynamics.
Anyways, that’s more than enough about how my mind got here. The point is there seems to be a common pattern of “replication” found in many if not all of the systems or “movements” of the world, both material and immaterial.
It feels as if the World is formed of innumerable bits of Information, snippets of code, or fragments of narrative - some healthy and productive and others nefarious - all interacting, competing or uplifting each other, attaching themselves to the mediums of matter and mind to replicate, and building towards some information totality, master program or novel.
Those are imperfect, modern analogies, and can probably be more clearly understood as the radiance of the Logos into Being or the Kabbalah’s concept of tsimtsum. Basically, I’m curious if there is a deeper metaphysical principle of “replication” underlying and giving rise to evolution, genetics and memetics, and how that principle should be properly understood in the light of the Word Incarnate.
Thanks!!
-S
To say Infinitude is to say projection of archetype, idea, or form, and a form cannot be the only possible expression of what it expresses, hence replication.
Why gradual evolution through replication rather than pure novelty after novelty?
Evolutionism is the classical example of the bias that invents “horizontal” causes because one does not wish to admit a “vertical” dimension: one seeks to extort from the physical plane a cause that it cannot furnish and that is necessarily situated above matter
Evolutionism is the very negation of the archetypes and consequently of the divine
Intellect; it is therefore the negation of an entire dimension of the real, namely that of form, of the static, of the immutable; concretely speaking, it is as if one wished to make a fabric of the wefts only, omitting the warps.
From Love to Charity to Empathy to Care for the Poor, to Food Banks and Shelters and individual acts of Kindness, but also to Marxism and every evil act and institution derivative thereof.
Oversimplification, but is Charity not the form being expressed, projected in sequentially more “manifest” and crystallized worlds of Being, twisted as it is in some of those projections?
Why though does this unfolding make use of memetic and genetic replication as its means of projection? Why does this unfolding occur through gradual change introduced by slight variances in replication? Simply, why are ideas and mind parasites and genetic mutations contagious?
Perhaps it is a tautology and “unfolding” is synonymous with “directional” replication?
Given the universality of the practice -- often including consumption of the victim -- what could be the common problem to which it was the solution?
I'm inclined to flip this question on its head. The thing is, they're not wrong, exactly, they're just assouls.
Absent the new shit that came to light roughly 2000 years ago in a little backwater of the Roman Empire, people's thinking about the problem of existing had become very uptight. There was one particular sacrifice which, in light of the fall, had become a necessary condition for men to become what Man had originally been created to be. All other instances and tendencies toward human sacrifice are like incomplete and mutated copies of the only one that mattered. Without that knowledge and understanding, people are doomed to repeat the behavior in a fractal pattern that shows up in every level of human life.
Every act of human sacrifice besides that one is the practice of a cargo cult attempting to summon the planes to come back and rescue us, or at least drop some orange soda.
Ever since reading MotT, I’ve tended to view Being as script and stage, where the script has an immutable protagonist, climax and themes, but is otherwise somewhat vague with room for improv. As above so below. The Creator can be known through His Creation…
Using this model, I am wondering what these patterns of memetic and genetic replication we see in the domains of biology, psychology, sociology, technology, etc. are reflective of. Why does the expression/projection of the timeless into time appear to us as gradual change/variation via a process of replication? Is that just what the unfolding of a timeless plentitude looks like to a finite consciousness?
I feel myself hitting the limits of my ability to express these thoughts, which haven’t been particularly clear to begin with :-)
Going to put the kids to bed, listen to some Harpa Dei, and listen to my inner Petey. Thx for the pearls, Bob. Super helpful.
-S
--the script has an immutable protagonist, climax and themes, but is otherwise somewhat vague with room for improv.
Couldn't agree more. As for
--patterns of memetic and genetic replication we see in the domains of biology, psychology, sociology, technology, etc. are reflective of.
Why not the same principle of improv? And the stage is always at the intersection of transcendence and immanence.
Not to get carried away with the analogy, but…
- improv actors riff off of and build on each other
- even an improvised drama has no meaning without some sort of consistent, causally connected narrative to give it meaning
- improv often appears as script to the audience or even to other actors not familiar with the entire script
Thank you.
Suddenly I'm reminded of professional wrestling.
Or Curb Your Enthusiasm.
This kind of album in various magazines is the name of the illusion!! It is often introduced as such, but I always thought that I can not listen even if I want to listen to it if it is out of play. But, no, well, it made me CD (applause).
The work was released in 69. The tears and chorus work of guitar and wind instruments are wonderful. Soul-like rhythms will make you happy here. A piece that will make you dream.
Its contents are: jacket: the face of the gloomy youth, the sea, the sun, flowers, trees, drops, really piquant to buy ◎, music: in general the level is high ◎, performance: has been summarized with a Click in professional performance, garage smell and indie smell is not at all.
The music and performance stand out on the contrary as well as the high standard, and it is a level that cannot be saved by abstract words such as innocent or pure.
That said, it was because I got used to it after listening back several times, and I felt the taste of this person.
This is a cashitail without complaining.
I always defer to the serious customer. It’s sort of like joking around with the bank manager about the size of the last customers’ yabbos, and then another customer walks in with a serious inquiry. It’s polite to then refrain from making the ‘big droopy swingers’ gesture especially if you don’t know the new customer.
Of course, if the new customer is an old friend, then a coordinated ‘three guys with imaginary huge jiggly zonkers’ dance may ensue. Always good for breaking up another boring day at the bank. Especially if there are irrelevant worker minions witnessing, and grimacing helplessly.
That being said, I must report that I saw an “Oriental Hockeyman” on an NHL blog. At a Tejano Nation website I saw an “Oriental Supervato”. Is this Oriental bot thing replicating? Should we scapegoat these oriental bots? Honestly, I’m not quite sure yet.
What I do know is that scapegoating is a typical human’s preferred method for deflecting negative attentions away from ones own sins and failings. We’ve all known the tranny with the awful fashion sense who tries pointing to a pig with lipstick on it (as if any pig can apply lipstick) to try and get the mob to start victimizing the pig. It’s a deflection, and we should all know it as such. I remind us of John 8:7
“Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.
Indeed. Unless it’s a him/her. I think what John was saying, is that we must choose our victims wisely. Jesus was ready and willing, not to mention God did pull a few natural law strings to make eternal life subsequently possible if we allowed this victimization. But maybe we shouldn’t forget (or confuse) God’s other lessons.
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