Burn the Boats on the Beach

René Girard begins Part 5 of his CBC interviews with a comment straight out of Jordan Peterson when the latter confronts Sam Harris and other celebrity atheists:

We think we live in a secular society, but this is imaginary.  There is no society without religion, because without religion society cannot exist.  What we live in today is a form of Christianity that we do not recognize. 

The celebrity atheists and others who are trying to build a religion that is not a religion are all trying to recreate that which came from Christianity: The Golden Rule (which other traditions also recognize) and that all men are made in the image of God (which other traditions do not recognize).  They want these foundations, without the One who built the foundations.

Girard continues, offering an interesting interpretation of Matthew 10:

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household.

Why would Jesus create division and discord?  Girard offers: order was created and maintained by channeling hatred toward scapegoats.  Ritual violence institutionalizes this practice.  Jesus challenges this system, announcing the innocence of all sacrificial victims.  Jesus removes the possibility of ritual sacrifice as a means of bringing peace.

But this brings the violence to the fore, into the open.  Thus, we are left with a choice: either we are going to love each other or we are going to die. 

This is how Girard sees the apocalypse.  When we no longer sacrifice and also refuse to repent, violence will grow worse.  The apocalypse (Daniel, Revelation, Jesus, etc.) is read as fire coming from Heaven – God’s judgement on man.  But what it actually foresees is the raging of human violence when it is neither checked by sacrifice or by Christian love.  The ultimate violence comes from man’s sin, not from God.  Today, the apocalypse is either ignored or blasphemously turned into a tool for Christian support of Middle East war. 

It is believed that violence comes from differences – if we just do away with borders, cultures, traditions – the purpose of borders is to keep violence inside and protect from violence from the outside.  Without borders, nothing will contain or prevent violence.

Here again Girard’s views mesh with those of Peterson, this time on the necessity of borders.

Girard returns to the self-critical nature of Christianity, the call to always examine one’s heart relative to Christian love:

Christians see themselves as guilty from a Christian point of view, and this much is true.  But they are not guilty from the point of view of many other cultures and religious traditions – who find it appropriate to spread their views by the sword or other coercive means.

Christians are blamed by non-Christians who use Christian values to blame Christians.  Calls for reparations and equal treatment are possible only through a Christian lens. 

A Roman guard would never have entertained such notions from an enslaved minority: who are you to complain, you are not a citizen.  Off to the scaffold.

We further blame our ancestors.  It is a form of scapegoating our ancestors, hence sacrificing them in order to supposedly bring peace today.  We believe that we would have done better.  We lack gratitude.  We are self-righteous. 

We mean to say that we would do better if we were in the place of God.  The Enlightenment critiques Christianity, yet wants to keep its ethics.

There follows discussion of Nietzsche and Heidegger: the death of God – we killed him; we can only be saved by god – but not the Christian God.  This continues with a discussion of Nazism and today’s political correctness and social justice – we will show Christians how to actually defend victims; a super-ethic, reducing the world to nothing but victimization, oppression and power. 

This super-ethic takes up the victims but attempts to do so without Christianity.  This is the new totalitarianism – promising to keep what is good of Christianity while getting rid of what is supposedly bad.

He speaks of the idea of indemnification for slavery – despite most Americans being descendants of those who came after the Civil War.  We have a competition of victim status.  It is this new totalitarianism that advances the revelation we are living – reflecting Girard’s view on the apocalypse.  We will either move to ever-increasing violence or Christian love.

A colleague of Girard’s tells a story:

He wants to write a book in defense of Girard’s views, a book necessary because Girard is excluded from mainstream academic thought as “too Christian.”  He starts writing, but then decides that he might make matters worse – realizing that his book will also be deemed too Christian. 

He raises this point with Girard, who replies: Well then, let’s burn our boats on the beach!

Once again, returning to something from Jordan Peterson: recognizing that there would be a tremendous cost for speaking out as he has, Peterson felt that the cost would be even higher if he didn’t speak out.

Conclusion

Christian love or ever-increasing violence.  Or, I guess, we can return to sacrificing innocent victims as scapegoats.  Under which scenario do you expect liberty could thrive?  Because just chanting the NAP will not end the violence.

The Sign of the Cross

Continuing with Part 4 of René Girard’s CBC interviews from 2011, Girard connects the scapegoating mechanism to the story of Jesus:

When everyone believes the lie that the scapegoat is guilty, the violence of the group is transferred outside and the group can continue in peace.  The Bible undoes these illusions: the whole surrogate-victim mechanism is from Satan.  Jesus dies like any guilty hero, but the Cross does not ratify His guilt; it proclaims His innocence.

Of course, not everyone saw Jesus as innocent at the time.  Some saw Him as guilty.  But for scapegoating to work in preserving the peace, all must see the scapegoat as guilty.

Scapegoating preserves the peace as long as the scapegoaters believe the scapegoat to be guilty.  Jesus doesn’t work as a scapegoat, as He divided people – some saw Him as scapegoat, others as an innocent victim. 

We are living through continued attempts at scapegoating today.  Consider the scapegoating done by the social justice warriors.  Yet, this will not bring any peace as a good portion of society does not see the intended victims of this scapegoating as guilty.  This reality will play right into Girard’s points made later in this interview: focused violence via scapegoating no longer works to bring peace.

The discussion next turns to some interesting and thought-provoking views.  The first might offer an insight into why Christian societies have led the evolution from cultural acceptance of violence into a drive toward peace (and also therefore damns those current Christians who cheer on war):

Why do you notice the mote in his eye and ignore the beam in your own?  This self-critical spirit will transform the world. 

It is often pointed out by critics that Christians have not always lived up to the best of this self-critical spirit.  Girard confronts this challenge directly:

Christians will also be accusers, but will never break free from this constantly repeated call to examine themselves and reform.  We are the one society in the world that has this capacity for self-criticism.

It is also pointed out – as Girard hints at in the above – that slavery existed in Christian societies, war and the Crusades existed in Christian societies, the Inquisition gained fame in Christian societies, etc., etc., etc. 

Yet Christians continuously self-criticize – as long as Jesus is kept in view as the target for our ends and purpose, such practices diminish or are eliminated.  This didn’t happen despite Christianity; it happened because of it:

We constantly criticize ourselves, and rightly so.  But from what point of view do you criticize?  The permanence of Christianity is found in this self-critical power. 

Girard expands this point:

It is the Cross that gave us the key to decode mythology.  …We even use the Gospel to criticize such practices [as witch hunting]: how could such things have happened during Christian times? 

Yes, how could those terrible Christians advocate for such things?  Girard points out that those with such views are looking at history in the wrong direction:

The interesting thing about witch-hunting isn’t that it happened in Christian times – all societies had such practices.  The interesting thing is that it ended in Christian societies.  We recognize that witch-hunting is scapegoating. 

He makes a second thought-provoking point (including some commentary from the interviewer):

We didn’t stop burning witches because we invented science; we invented science because we stopped burning witches.  This sounds backwards to us, but Girard explains: we used to blame droughts on witches; once we stopped blaming witches, we looked for scientific explanations for drought.

Violence or Love

René Girard did a five-part series of interviews with the CBC in 2011.  Each part was one hour long, so this represents a very nice overview of his thoughts.  I will begin here with Part 3. As always, with audio or video interviews and discussions, quoted items are as close I as I can get them. 

Parts 1 & 2 offer a good introduction; I will not detail these here as the information is similar to an earlier post I wrote on Girard.  I only offer the following, from the earlier post:

Girard was a twentieth century philosopher.  His fundamental concept is ‘mimetic desire’.  This is more than imitation.  Students of Plato understand that humans are the species most apt at imitation; per Girard, we also imitate desire and this can sometimes lead to conflict as we desire the same things.  My focus will specifically be his views on the scapegoat and the victim, and how this mechanism was used to reduce conflict in early societies and how this evolved via Christianity.

For those still confused about what any of this has to do with liberty, might I suggest that liberty has a chance to be sustained in a peaceful society; it stands no chance in a society consumed by conflict.  Property rights, let alone life, stand no chance against a societal mob.

Now on to comments from the interview.  The general theme of Part 3 is that sacrifice would no longer work as a method of reducing conflict via the sacrifice of a scapegoat.  This change was seen even during the time of the Hebrew prophets:

The prophets offered that sacrifice no longer works; a new way had to be found.  The new way was through Jesus.  Instead of dealing with risk of escalating violence, we are to turn the other cheek.

It was the message of the Cross that put the exclamation point on this new way:

Regarding the Cross, when you see the truth of that violence, suddenly that violence repels you. 

The word Girard uses is “repels”: the violence of the Cross repels you.  It isn’t the Cross, but who was on the Cross, what He is, what He has done.  That He could have removed Himself from this violence with just a word; Herod was almost begging Him for this.  But He knew what had to be done if there was to be hope of ending the violence without further sacrifice.  So, He did not offer a word to Herod. 

Before the Cross, every violence is portrayed as heroic, epic, even tragedy – justifying the casting out of the victim. Only the Bible doesn’t do that. 

There were hints of the change to come in the Old Testament.  Elsewhere Girard has noted hints of this in the Cain and Abel story, or in the brothers casting out of Joseph.  In these stories, the violence was not heroic; it was condemned.  Jesus brought this change – hinted at in the Old Testament and in the prophets – to completion:

Jesus’s teaching is a teaching of escalating violence when the old sacrificial order is undone.  The injunction to love your enemy is the way of dealing with certain, critical situations. 

What does Girard mean by this?  Without the old sacrificial order, the choice is either escalating violence or love.  There is no third way.

Jesus destroys the whole concept of sacrificial violence by accepting it – even when forsaken by God and abandoned by Peter. 

The most perfect and innocent sacrifice was offered.  If this wasn’t sufficient to end the escalation of violence, it would mean the apocalypse.  By apocalypse, Girard doesn’t see God throwing down lightning bolts from heaven or any such thing as this; instead:

If we increase the violence, we are going to kill each other; the apocalypse is right here.  The apocalypse is not some invention; if we are without sacrifices, either we are going to kill each other or we are going to die.  We have no more protection of our own violence.  Either we are going to follow the Kingdom of God, or we are going to die.

I recall from something else I had seen or read of Girard.  He believes that what is written in the Bible about the apocalypse is a warning: this is what man will bring on himself if he does not move toward love.

It would seem that this is where we are.  We no longer have a community that will coalesce around a common scapegoat; we certainly are not following the Kingdom of God and love.  This is clear within the West.

We may also get the version of Armageddon as desired by Christian Zionists, but it won’t be God’s doing.  Per Girard (and it is also my view) mankind is perfectly capable of destroying itself without any help from God.

Conclusion

Therefore, we owe so much to the Bible – yet we cannot recognize our debt.  When we criticize the Bible, we can only criticize it with the Bible – we cannot criticize it with The Iliad, not with Greek philosophy. 

This is the farce of modern society.  Many believe that without the Bible, there will be peace.  But it was only through the Bible that we are able to criticize violence; violence was accepted as normal – even desired – outside of the Biblical tradition. 

We have assimilated it so much that we cannot even recognize that what we have assimilated comes from the Bible: violence is ugly, and not heroic.

Not that peace totally ruled the land after the Cross – even among Christians.  Human behavior does not change so quickly.  But when we look back at our history today, we condemn wrong that which was previously accepted.  We criticize, but we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.  We have the luxury of looking backwards on institutions such as slavery with a more refined ethic; but this ethic has only been refined thanks to Christianity.

Doing What I Must

Maximus: Do you find it difficult to do your duty? 

Cicero: Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.

-          Gladiator

I had just finished writing the Appendix for the book when I came across this Jonathan Pageau video, “René Girard: Desire and Sacrifice - with Craig Stewart.”  Now, nothing Pageau posts I would describe as easy listening, so after listening to a few minutes of this video I felt overwhelmed and stopped – not thinking about if this was a permanent or temporary stop.  It was just too much for me after just finishing the book.

I then started going through a couple of the more involved emails I had received over the last weeks; I will reply promptly, but some are so involved that I am not always able to immediately get into them thoroughly.  One of these I received after writing the first couple of chapters of the book – the chapters on Plato, Aristotle, the Form of the Good, etc.  The email opened “Welcome to the Journey.”

I know, it sounds pretentious.  But it is one of the more sincere and thorough emails I have received.  Very long, packed with many links, and involving much deeper content than I could handle – not only because I was just starting the book, but because it is much deeper content than I could handle.

Well, I thought to casually read it – not yet willing to get into it.  Lo and behold, one of the sources mentioned in this email is René Girard!  Well, this now got my attention and moved me to go back to the video.  I have watched it several times, and still can only scratch the surface – but it is a topic worth discovering.  I will also draw from an essay about René Girard from the peer-reviewed Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Girard was a twentieth century philosopher.  His fundamental concept is ‘mimetic desire’.  This is more than imitation.  Students of Plato understand that humans are the species most apt at imitation; per Girard, we also imitate desire and this can sometimes lead to conflict as we desire the same things.  My focus will specifically be his views on the scapegoat and the victim, and how this mechanism was used to reduce conflict in early societies and how this evolved via Christianity.

For those still confused about what any of this has to do with liberty, might I suggest that liberty has a chance to be sustained in a peaceful society; it stands no chance in a society consumed by conflict.  Property rights, let alone life, stand no chance against a societal mob.

When Girard first presented his work, the academy was ecstatic – in this work, we finally had a scientific, anthropological theory of religion.  Once he worked through the Bible and became a Christian apologist, the academy would reject him.

So, what of this work?  When it leads to conflict, this imitation of desire must be mediated.  How did communities overcome this internal strife?  From the essay:

Whereas the philosophers of the 18th century would have agreed that communal violence comes to an end due to a social contract, Girard believes that, paradoxically, the problem of violence is frequently solved with a lesser dose of violence.

I would often comment that a punch in the nose for the guy who insulted my wife might be the best mechanism to reduce the possibility of further, increased violence.  I know it is considered a violation of the non-aggression principle, but it might be useful in keeping the peace.

But this isn’t what Girard is getting at.  Instead, he sees this as communal violence aimed at a single individual – the scapegoat.  The entire community focuses its violence on one individual, and once the deed is done (the scapegoat is sacrificed), the community can move forward in peace. 

But the act must remain unconscious.  The victim cannot be considered by members of the community as a victim, innocent – rather he must be looked at as the monster; once purged, the community would again be clean.  Girard offers that, prior to Christianity, the idea of an innocent scapegoat was an oxymoron.  By definition, the individual was the source of the strife and therefore guilty.

This scapegoat mechanism was the foundation for the development of civilization and culture.  Through the repetition of the scapegoat cycle, societies reduced internal violence and conflict.  From the essay:

The murder of a victim brought forth communal peace, and this peace promoted the flourishing of the most basic cultural institutions.

These murders would be reenacted in rituals – the earliest form of religion – and these rituals were developed into myth.  The myth had to follow the narrative – the scapegoat is never a victim, but the cause of conflict.  Mythology was meant to legitimize violence against the scapegoat – stripping him of any victimhood.

Girard’s most often used example is that of Oedipus, expelled from Thebes for murdering his father and marrying his mother.  But, per Girard, the myth should be read with Oedipus as the scapegoat, accused of parricide and incest, and thus justifying his persecution.

This is all background to Girard’s Christian apologetics.  From the essay:

…whereas myths are caught under the dynamics of the scapegoat mechanism by telling the foundational stories from the perspective of the scapegoaters, the Bible contains plenty of stories that tell the story from the perspective of the victims.