It is so hard to see or even understand the water we swim in, isn’t it Merv? Being aware of this limitation does help us look for it, though, if we are willing.
Praise Jesus, we have his help in this, in recognizing these violent “failings” in ourselves and in learning to obey his command to love. May it more and more be so of me.
Maybe scapegoating isn’t the most apt description, it may be more like grasping at straws to explain that water we’re in. Things happen because of witches becomes things happen for logical reasons that science is even now uncovering. It isn’t science but scientism which is replacing witch’splaining.
Mark, I think you, Merv and I might be talking about slightly different things.
Actually, I think Girard’s concept of scapegoating (as I understand it from the video discussion that Merv recommended, which is based on the book Merv is reading) is appropriate. We…no, I’ll follow HeyMike3’s recommendation…I tend to vilify those I disagree with who disagree with me in ways that can be absurd and irrational. I hold “the other” to a different standard than I do myself and even do violence to their character in my own mind. When an entire segment of society carries out the same program, it can be horrific.
Grasping at straws is one thing. When it becomes “codified” in our thinking or culture, it’s a matter of ethics and morality.
In my mind, and too often with my words, I’m looking to lay blame, rather than understand the source of differences where understanding may be found. The first is SO much easier and less demanding of me as a person.
I think you’re right. I started listening to that interview when he first posted it but I got interrupted. It would help to start there.
I think you’re on to something there. 
I still need to finish though, too. About 15 minutes left, I think.
This reminds me of an article I read about the connection between societal scapegoating and the uncleans that must be purged from the camp.
I can’t find it now, but this article from Aaron Kheriaty, touches on some of the same ideas.
Yep - that article is exactly what all this is about. And a lot of it is pretty common-sense stuff, so it’s interesting that anybody (Google or anybody else) would have allegedly considered this “dangerous” to be discussing. And I’ll admit I took that little piece with a grain of salt because everybody and their dog these days imagines that Google (or whatever ‘overlords’) must be ‘persecuting’ them by not putting the looked-for search results at the top of the list for everyone else. But that’s a whole 'nother thing entirely. I’m certainly not suggesting that Google (or whatever tech giants) are all above nefarious motivations. It’s just that nobody today can manage to be ‘wronger’ more often and more consistently than conspiracy mongers. A random eight-ball oracle will be right more often than they will. When I want to be misinformed about the world, I’ll tune in to the fear-mongers. They are the bottom of the information heap.
Here are a couple more things to mull over.
“Casting the first stone” of course comes from the biblical practice of stoning, and from Christ’s most famous intercession that prevented a stoning. He interrupted a mimetic event. The first stone is always the hardest to cast because it has no models. The second one, a little easier because it has one model to follow, the third easier yet and so on until it begins to take considerable fortitude to not cast a stone. Girard makes much of how Christ makes use of this and even derails it - right up to the point where he himself is the scapegoat hanging from a cross.
Here is an observation that isn’t quite so common sense (to me - or wouldn’t have occured to me anyway until encountered the suggestion and reasoning.)
Girard finds that the farthest removed models from us (who live in the ‘celebrity-sphere’ and have zero chance of ever interacting with us) are less impactful on us than our peers that we do interact with. For one thing, we are less likely to be actively competitive with people who are so far above us that it isn’t realistic. Some young aspiring athelete might well admire and even emulate Michael Jordan as best he can, but he’s less likely to be under any illusions that his competition is anything close to that level. Our peers on the other hand … we very much attend to how they’re doing because we are much closer to them and can at least dream of competing well at that level. So in this way, we are much more engaged with and therefore threatened by ‘sameness’ (because now we have skin in the game and want to distinguish ourselves favorably from these peers). So sameness provokes our mimetic rivalry much more than radical difference does.
It’s for those reasons that Mr. Burgis thinks the final commandment (thou shalt not covet) is categorically set apart from all the preceding commandments, which were much more specific in their prohibitions. Suddenly that last one casts a very wide net for us. We are not to indulge ourselves in these envy games with others. It’s much much easier to talk about the dangers of sex or warn us against stealing than it is to dwell on this last commandment that probably consumes more of our waking moments (especially now) than activities involving all the other nine commandments put together.
Very interesting to see that Girard’s insight came in a moment of inspiration:
“Have you ever had an important insight come to you in the nature of a gift? Not as the result of a conclusion, as if you’d reached the end of a long math problem, but as the experience of a revelation? That seems to be the way that Girard experienced his initial insight into mimetic desire as he was working on the last chapter of his book, Deceit, Desire, and the Novel.”
I finally finished Mr. Burgis’ book. And while it did provide some further clarifications and insights, my take is that if you’ve watched the hour interview I linked in the OP, then you already harvested the juiciest benefits in summary form. He is obviously a business-oriented entrepreneur, and so can’t be faulted for writing from that perspective. Those of us who have not spent our careers breathing the air of stocks and mutual bonds speculations (I don’t know what some of that means or even if I splashed those words together correctly) … will always feel like outsiders looking in as we read of his high-life-aspiring business exploits. So even despite his self-critique on this very front, it still exudes something of elitist feel - though not nearly so much as it could have had he not been addressing this very problem in the self-aware and self-deprecating ways that he does. I think he’s pretty honest and candid in his sharing and I have benefitted from his (and through him, Girard’s) wisdom.
Has the same economicsy feel as the rest of that world, at least as seen from the planet I inhabit. Never been there though.
But is desiring God a narrowing of desire or an expansion of desire? I think it is the latter. The God I believe in is bigger than anything else, not smaller. Too often with the religious, God is the small part of their life when they do the religious things. And the “all you need is God” becomes “all you need is our religion.” This has happened a great deal in the history of religion to where religious groups have excluded art and humor to create such a dour repressive society, that I have difficulty believing this has anything to do with God and is far more about power and control over others.
Repressive religions opposed to all activities of human civilization other than their religion, like art, science, sports, and humor are a blight on mankind fomenting all manner of mental illness. In the interest of mental health these need to be exposed and condemned as much a failure in religion for worshipping such a small and petty deity as it is failure in adding anything of positive value to human civilization.
Looking back over this question (rebuke or scapegoating). I think the ultimate purpose is different, and while part of the process may look the same, the end result will be different.
With a scapegoat, the group or its representative, designates a bearer (real of constructed) of some real or perceived sin, of which the group is guilty as well. The purpose of the act is to free the conscience of the group of the sin, because a single perpetrator has been designated to bear all of the guilt of the entire group. And to bear it in perpetuity. There is no confession or forgiveness of this sin, because the sin has been transfered. The scapegoat would best disappear into the “wilderness.”
Hester Prynne (Scarlet Letter) comes to mind. No confession by the group, no justice, no forgiveness, no reconcilliation, no fellowship. And (most) guilty continue in hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Someone, at least the scapegoat, is sacrificed by the group .
Rebuke can appear/be violent. It must topple self-rightenous and address sin. However, the purpose is to correct and ultimately lead to forgiveness and reintegration of the rebuked into a loving community. Dealing properly with rebuke takes great wisdom and love on the parts of the community leaders as well as all it’s members.
I have seen this in my church, when I was a kid. Our church secretary and assistant pastor had an affair. It became public information. When it was found out, the pastor had to leave. Because the situation was publicly known, the husband of the secretary (I’m sure after much discussion with her and the head pastor) publicly forgave his wife, committed to remaining married, and they did. I’m sure for years the situation was very uncomfortable — publicly known guilt that doesn’t disappear. But as far as I could tell, people supported them both, and they remained at the church and are still married now. For their part, it would have been easier to just leave.
The former assistant pastor had to leave, which I think is understandable, but his wife forgave him, and they are still married. I know that they still have relationships with people from the old church, and the idea of placing blame for other members’ sin was not part of the picture.
Jesus often rebuked Peter as well. The purpose was never to destroy Peter, but to correct and perfect him, so that he could fullfil his vocation in the loving community of the budding church and remain in good fellowship with his Lord. This is what we should always want for each other.
You have obviously forgotten the memorable subtitle of the book you have seen here mentioned multiple times, Desiring God. The subtitle is Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. That sounds like a narrowing of desire! Sure it does.
It has everything to do with the true Source of all pleasure and nothing at all about power and control.
From 12 Life Lessons from One of the Most Penetrating Minds in History, above…
I forget from the interview, but Gerard himself and at least Dostoyevsky was mentioned that had an experience like that. Who else (mentioned in the book?), and did they become Christians?
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