Revenge of the Scapegoat | with Luke Burgis

I think it's really important to just to get at this idea of the scapegoat mechanism becoming less effective because of society's concern for victims and nobody hated so which you know Gerard would say this our Our concern for victims is the universal value that now unites the world pretty much who will you ever find that says that you shouldn't be concerned with victims or you know people being Injustice right um and Gerard says that this is really the fruit of the revelation of the scapegoat mechanisms we've now seen something that we can never unsee and it sort of LED over 2000 it led over a very long period of time to that becoming the the most important value in the world to the point that there's now memetic rivalry over who can be the best victim because nothing is nothing confers more status and power than becoming a good victim it's a weird weird um Paradox and inversion of like the true nature of of Christianity this is Jonathan Pedro welcome to the symbolic world [Applause] hello everybody I am here with Luke Bridges we've been trying to meet for months actually and we finally were able to meet uh he is the author of wanting the power of memetic desire in everyday life and an expert on Greninja and you know he's been following what I've been doing as well and seeing me talk about sacrifice and Indonesia also I'm definitely excited to see you know what kind of insight he can bring to us so Luke It's good to meet you hey it's a bit about about what brought you to thinking about uh and numeric desire today yeah well I'm glad we finally got to make this happen Jonathan um I've been following your work for a while and it was a consolation for me uh in the dark days of the pandemic uh yeah so I think a fundamental to Gerard is um you know he he explained the nature of desire in a way that I simply never heard before and I came across his work after I myself had underwent a complete um revolution in my life uh in my late 20s um a sort of a religious conversion like a very sort of dramatic spiritual conversion and I realized that the very nature of it was related to my my own desires right the nature of desires I'd never sort of understood a Telos or teleology to desire before and then I realized that I I had some but I I went most of my life totally blind to my own desires as as most of us are right and in many ways I still am so Gerard's work having revolved around desire was especially intriguing to me and gave me some language to sort of understand uh humanity and and myself both and you know fundamental to Gerard's thought in my opinion is that human beings are religious uh creatures even if you don't think you are we're religious creatures and if you don't sort of accept that premise there's all kinds of things about the world that you want to understand I know that you know that but you know this this was um uh really uh really eye-opening to me sort of an understanding the world and I in my opinion what's Central to his thought is the human desire for Transcendence um and Gerard articulated this his notion of desire in a very sort of spiritual way that human beings seek Transcendence whether they they know they are or not and the notion of transcendence is right is the thread that I think runs through all of Gerard's work the very idea of the scapegoat mechanism for instance right is is a form of false Transcendence right it's a it's a form of people trying to you know achieve something Beyond themselves um and and prevent some form of Destruction um but it's a form of false Transcendence so you know as as one who had been a a striving my entire life for something that I couldn't quite put my my finger on Gerard helped me make sense of of so much of the kind of uh religious quest in search that I was on which I didn't even quite frankly know that I was on uh until he sort of introduced me to some very ancient Concepts quite frankly right like fundamental things um that uh at least religious Traditions have known you know for for a very long time um you know especially in in Scripture and he sort of gave me a lens to see those things in an entirely new light um in in some senses I was um you know a bit arrogant in the way that I approached the um sort of religion of my youth you know like reading the Bible it doesn't have anything very interesting to say to me um you know Augustine the hippo thought the same thing uh when he first you know read the Bible right it's not very in many many cases not very beautiful language there's some weird things going on I was a bit similar to that and Gerard sort of gave me a land like a lens uh like glasses to sort of see myself in the story and to realize that I'm a participant in this story um and and to sort of see the way that I was I was part of that story so um you know Gerard couldn't be more relevant I think to them to the modern world that he explained so much when it comes to the World Grappling with false false ways of trying to achieve Transcendence and is so relevant to your work I think because Gerard was an expert at recognizing patterns so he he recognized patterns in human behavior he recognized patterns and the nature of human desire a structure to desire not specifically memetic desire and he recognized so at the micro level he recognized these patterns and at the macro level he saw that these problems of Desire manifest themselves in patterns of conflict rivalry and violence at the macro level in human culture so what is What is the relationship could you talk about this idea the desire for Transcendence and so what is the relationship between memetic desire uh and and the desire for Transcendence so my medic desire it just if you're hearing the word for the first time or the term for the first time uh Gerard sort of coined this phrase nomadic desire um to to say that human beings do not create their own desires ex nihilo out of nothing right um desire is not our own creation uh and there's a whole theology behind this right we go back to sort of creation Theology and the creation of the world um you know I'm not the I'm not the author of all of my own desires um even though you know we many of us think that we are right a lot so the nature of Desire because we're social creatures because we're part of a story uh we affect each other right and we we affect each other's desires and memetic desire simply means imitative desire so we imitate the desires of other people as part of the social process so desire is formed through this this highly social process through rituals through the culture that we're part of uh and especially through um specific people or groups that have a special importance to us that that act as models or mediators of our desire so you know if you grew up um in a in a strong uh religious Christian home some of your models of Desire might be the Saints if you grew up in other kinds of communities every kind of community has certain models of Desire these are people that are sort of held up as exemplars they're bind people together in sports right there might be some really great professional athletes that act as models of Desire so models of Desire help help inform our own desires and give shape to those desires whether we know it or not and we we usually don't know that this process is is happening but the reason that models of Desire affect us the reason that they're that they have some power over us in the first place according to Gerard is because we are seeking a sense of transcendence and we we're looking for a higher level of being right some to move into some higher level of reality and we we look to people that model various desires to us as maybe possessing some quality of being that we lack right um some some quality of being that we lack and we sort of enter into their orbit For Better or Worse right this can work in positive ways or negative ways um I can think of all kinds of positive examples of entering into the orbit of somebody who's modeling that desire for something like good and Noble but very often we sort of look to our right and our left and we find somebody that appears to have some quality of being or some higher level of being that that we seek and they become models of desire for us in some in some way um it seems to become extremely true in the world of influencers like the YouTube Instagram type influencer where in some ways the person is really just does become a focus of Desire they they just buy a bunch of stuff they wear a bunch of clothes they they it's not actually a quality that is they don't seem to have virtues they just seem to actually be desire holes like like vortexes of Desire that are celebrated because they're able to we can live our our excessive desires kind of through them something like that it's very odd yeah so it's the influencer it's the model that has the power over us it's not the it's not the objects themselves right it's like the definition of the medic desire is that the choice of the objects that we're fascinated with uh come from the model and not from the objects themselves right not from any objective qualities of the objects they're just imbued with some kind of symbolic magical quality because of whoever our model of Desire is right like what's what's a a watch other than some kind of Talisman of some kind of you know weird status that every man over a certain age that works on Wall Street wears like one of six different types of watches that all happen to be in the magazines that you see at Hudson News and airports there they're symbolic these things are literally symbols of some kind of quality of being or something like that right so these models have have is are what's powerful for us not the objects themselves and this creates problems a lot of problems because we have a love-hate relationship with anybody who's a model of of desire for us because those those same people act as obstacles to us right because then we start competing with them for the same things and measuring everything that we do according to the models so you know this this leads to rivalry right this is a huge part of Gerard's Theory it's that memetic desire the fact that our desires are formed in this through the social process with other people it leads to conflict and and to rivalry and some really weird things right like Gerard said one time yeah I think the reason that we talk about Envy so much is that nobody wants to talk about sex right like Envy is the form in which memetic desire takes in in the modern world and then you have somebody like um like in Montero we see there's some line where he says I want to F the ones I envy yeah right so you know this crude way that that that's literally like Gerard like gerardian most gerardian statement that he could possibly make because the reason that he wants to have sex with the person he envies the person that he envies is somehow a model of desire for him and through that act you're somehow achieving uh some some some form of equality with the being of the model right yes so integration you're like integrated to them or joined with them somehow yeah yeah so so we have a love-hate relationship with models that leads to rivalry um ultimately misery and then on the macro level that plays out in in very strange ways in our society as well um which is a whole another part of Gerard's Theory but going back I mean I I this all has to do with Transcendence in my opinion this this human desire to sort of go go beyond their current level level of being and there are sort of vertical form of transcendence which are found you know really in mostly in religion spirituality and then there are what I would call sort of horizontal forms of transcendence where we try to find Transcendence and all kinds of of strange ways right like through just trans shape shifting and Transforming Our identity and changing jobs and looking for it in all the wrong places basically yeah yeah and so so the vertical transformation the vertical call for Transit could account also for things like generals let's say Alexander or people who inspired their men to be have certain qualities and so it's not all positive but it it would you know he would appear as someone who kind of Drew people's desire into him and they would see him as an example but also someone to impress someone to outdo all of this all this kind of happening imagine it in sports you see you can see that quite clearly as well in terms of the relationship between players within a team and then with the other team how those things play out in terms of of the medic desire yeah I mean a sports team that kind of loses some uh that loses some kind of transcendent purpose like some kind of like Telos like outside of the team itself just lock up the locker room just evolves very very quickly right you sort of like forget what it is that you're that you're doing um and I guess that's why like I don't know like why some players or teams that um win all of the time uh like what what's what's next in the teleology for that team like what what happens next right and that's usually why people don't stay on top for very long um because you can only sort of go so far and if you're seeking like what's next right yeah I don't know you win the Super Bowl three times in a row what can you possibly do I don't know Tom Brady goes to the Hall of Fame like at some point he's sort of exhausts it's its purpose for exhausted by the category of the sport itself it's like you know like now we're gonna go like take over a country no that doesn't work like it's like you reach the limit and then it's held in by that very category yeah so it happens in sports teams it this happens within companies all of the time um you know I think uh you know we live in a world where there's a hierarchy of of values there's a hierarchy of being um again this is a very ancient uh religious concept right um and I think modern in the modern world people that reject that idea um do all kinds of weird things that end up resulting in more conflict and not less right they do things in the name of um in the name of progress that actually uh increase conflict right so to give you an example right like if there's a hierarchy if we live in a hierarchical world and people are sort of looking into other people as as models of Desire by the way it's very important for a culture to have like positive like models period but especially positive models um so there's like a weird thing happens right like one of the stories I talk about in the book is you know zappos.com decided to like move from a more traditional management structure which you know they have their problems right I'm not I'm not a fan of bureaucracy or anything like that to just totally collapsing the entire hierarchy overnight turned everybody that worked there into like very confused and in total crisis mode and Chaos because they literally collapsed their entire hierarchy almost overnight I don't think that they understood um that's the sort of the nature of reality itself is hierarchical and if you're going to collapse it visibly what happens is that an invisible hierarchy sort of develops under the surface that's becomes like a dragon you don't even know it's there you don't even know how it operates right and something is something similar has happened happening with the Sexes where we sort of like uh not necessarily collapsing hierarchy but but collapsing difference right like collapsing difference and not admitting of complementarity not admitting just fundamental things it leads to a situation where people are trying to Recon constitute some form of hierarchy in all kinds of different different ways because we we have like a need to do that yeah and you end up having both confused identities you have these confused kind of uh gender roles and gender identities but you also have hyper versions of extremes you know I pointed this out to someone recently you know you people think that it's only the this kind of uh leveling of gender only leads to you know let's say all the letters and and all this kind of fluidity but it also leads to you know hyper masculinity and the kind of hyper sexualized masculinity and hypersexualized femininity the types of characters you see in media today like this kind of hyper male and let's say kind of horror woman something that would never would never have been public in the world you know for thousands of years you never would have seen these kind of characters paraded out in public but now it's become completely normal to see these hypersexualized beings uh you know in hyper-gendered beings in ways that are that are that are very surprising and at the same time watching everything become fluid and break down in terms of identity at the same time it's like you need a proper like you said proper hierarchy that leads to some kind of real Transcendence right yeah so I I've you know I had a big part of Gerard's thinking it does have to do with sacrifice and that's kind of what I would call the societal macro Community level um pattern that he recognized right something that happens at the community level because when when a person when anybody is seeking Transcendence there's sort of something that has to die in order for them to achieve this sort of uh different quality of being that they're that they're looking for right so that happens at the individual level but it can also happen kind of at the societal level and you know I've listened to your your kind of theory on sacrifice um I know you mentioned Gerard in it but I'm just curious as to you know do you think that Gerard's sort of idea of the scapegoat mechanism squares of what you're saying um or do you do you think it's sort of just like a subset of a larger kind of theory of sacrifice that's what I I think but I mean maybe you can help you understand it better for me to change my mind I'd be fine with changing my mind but it seems when I look at sacrifice what I see the Yom Kippur sacrifice is probably the best version of a sacrifice because it's an atonement sacrifice it's an you know it's an at one minute sacrifice it's the the sacrifice that makes us one and it has two sacrifices as part of it there is on the one hand the scapegoat sacrifice literally where you take a goat you put all your all your evil on it and you kind of kick it out you abuse it whatever and then it falls off a cliff or it runs into the desert to to be become food for the demon but then you also have uh another sacrifice which is the pure animal which is sacrificed up towards God uh and what I see in sacrifice at least in scripture is those two types of sacrifices one which we could be called a scapegoat sacrifice and you see it in a lot of cultures you're right sacrificing a prisoner sacrificing uh you know you see they did it even all the way up to Roman times when they would have uh people fight in their in the Arenas it was basically a human sacrifice of their cap their captives in order to kind of manifest the glory of Rome and and doing it but then you also have a sacrifice which I would call a vertical sacrifice which is giving the best up and and you give the best up and then that constant that is part of what constitutes the the body and I've talked about it like let's say in terms of sports team on the one hand you you do have to scapegoat in the sense that you can't let anybody into your your sports team right you have to eliminate behaviors and players that don't fit into the team that's necessary um but then you also need to give your intention and your and your will and your best up towards the goal of what you're doing so that's what I see these two and so I don't know if Gerard accounts for them with his scapegoat sacrifice or if he has two theories or I don't know yeah I don't think there's any conflict between what Gerard is saying and kind of what I've what I've heard you articulate which is just it's simply like the Bro a broader view of sacrifice I don't think Gerard I think he he identified a very particular kind of sacrifice and I agree with you that there's all kinds of other sacrifices that don't necessarily fit into the pattern of the scapegoat uh mechanism necessarily it's like for sure identifying that has been amazing I think it's been really yeah do you understand Christianity but then also to understand the 20th century and to understand a lot of the things that that we went through you know uh as Christianity kind of started collapsing as well have you thought as did Gerard talk about because one of the things that we say we myself and also the people at uh Lord of spirits as we say you know Christ is both goats it is in the Yom Kippur sacrifice Christ seems to be both the sacrifice of the the one who accepts to be the sacrifice of the stranger outside the city who takes on the sins who accepts the blame all of that but then he also is something like the sacrifice of the firstborn and the sacrifice of the firstborn even in scripture is not the same as the scapegoat sacrifice so I don't I don't know like I also don't know if your art accounts for that idea like when when Abraham is going to sacrifice Isaac it's not a scapegoat sacrifice he's he's supposed to offer his best up to God um and so I don't know yeah these are things that I that I that I think about but I'm not an I don't know Gerard well enough to to be able to yeah well I want to go back to you your idea of what I like sort of horizontal and vertical sacrificing up triggered an idea so I want to get but what you're saying now brings um brings up questions like atonement theology that are super complex and we don't need to necessarily get into those right now but there is an idea I think you have to be careful that there is one conception of of you know Christ's sacrifice on the cross sort of you know God needing some kind of blood sacrifice right yeah no I don't like that either do I right and Gerard in his earlier days was sort of implying that and then he befriended this old um priest uh I shouldn't call him old I don't know how old they were when he met but in in Austria father Raymond schwager who sort of helped Gerard understand the theological implications of what he was saying and um I mean I come from just a very old tradition of Augustine and Aquinas and Gregory of Nissa and irenaeus and my understanding is that you know God could have achieved the salvation of the world in in many many different ways right it needed not be that particular way but this was a sacrifice of love right and in some senses it was this the most perfect uh sort of way but but needed not be that right so in other words it's not like we you know we chose to like affect what we thought was going to be yet one more effective scapegoat mechanism like right and yet it the whole thing was subverted by by the set by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross because there was the the Holy Spirit sort of enlightened the the minds after the resurrection of a very very small group of Christians that for the very first time sort of saw the mechanism that was taking place and saw like what we had brought on ourselves so there's a big difference by us sort of uh being responsible for the violence and God being responsible for the violence right big big difference right so it was the it's the revelation that we had so God gave the Revelation for us to be able to see the scapegoat mechanism in its fullness for the first time through the crucifixion it's not the first time that it was ever um there were never hints of it I mean the Old Testament is full of the story of Joseph and his brothers gives us a perspective of what's going on that there's really no comparable for in any other kind of literature like we see that Joseph is in innocent and sort of the victim of the scapegoating through the whole story it's almost like we we have the um the director's cut from the standpoint of the Joseph or something right and we know that he's not responsible for that yeah yeah but there's it's hard to sacrifice is one of the hardest things to think about by the way to be honest it is so difficult to think about because in some ways so primordial and so encompassing but so what one of the things you see I think this is my my perception also of what Christ is doing one of the things he's doing is that by willingly becoming someone's scapegoat you could say he's almost he's kind of flipping or joining the two sacrifices together where by be by in his willingness to die for others you could say he's turning the skateboard sacrifice into something like the the sacrifice of good odor right this idea of like of the best which is given up um and the reason also why I think that that's happening is because then you see that pattern modeled in in uh the early Christian Martyrs where the martyrs are basically saying I'll be your scapegoat and then that scapegoat will become like a a sacrifice of worship up to God and it's going to secretly change you without you even knowing what's going on it's like if I if I do that and I don't like I tell people like I don't want to do that like I don't want to die I don't want to I don't want people to kill me I'm not but but I can see it that that seems to be what's going on it's like there's a mechanism it really is like a mechanism where self-sacrifice seems to be the place where these two sacrifices get joined and it's like a refounding of reality if you do it properly I think that's I think that's right and that's um there's it this the idea of self self-sacrifice is the key to I think understanding right like Christianity um and and what's happening in in the Liturgy as well so um God willing you you or I will not have to become red Martyrs blood Martyrs and physically uh who knows um yeah and and you know give up our bodies and blood but there's what what's happening in the Christian liturgy in Orthodox and in the web is is a participation in that self-sacrificial act on the cross right so it's got what they you know the early church called the white martyrdom or you know it's it's a it's still a form of dying to yourself and self-sacrifice that you know if you're if you really understand what's happening you're sort of uniting your self-sacrifice to Christ's self-sacrifice on the cross and it's all being offered offered you know um and there's something really beautiful about that and and remembering part of a liturgy is animesis it's a remembrance of of you know what is what has happened right it only had to happen once right it doesn't mean that we can't predict continue to participate in it but it's a remembrance of that singular event um and also very importantly a remembrance of I mean this is why you know Good Friday is so important and I always for me it's always like one of the most I mean solemn and Powerful sort of liturgies of the year because it's a remembrance of um of the scapegoat mechanism and what the pattern of human behavior it's almost as if we we keep we default back to the old rights to the old sacrificial rights that involve not self-sacrifice but sacrifice of other people to preserve ourselves so sacrif there's a there's an element of like self-preservation in sacrifice yeah of course huge element of to protect protect myself and it's if that's like my default motive being then I will inevitably sacrifice somebody else at the altar of my of myself so there's an an aspect of remembering our our tendency to engage in that kind of behavior and then to see I mean every week or every day right to to see actually how that's been completely transformed into an act that can be an act of love and does I'm I've been curious about this does Gerard talk about the eating part of sacrifice does he address that in his theory or did he just talk about the killing part let's say in terms of sacrifice because of course this we don't eat the scapegoat nobody eats a scapegoat but you eat other sacred like the sacrifice up you tend to eat it it's part of the part of the sacrifice that you offer it to God but then you it becomes your body as well so so in the the Hebrew sacrifices you would give the meat up and then you would eat it um or in the Greek sacrifices that joke about how you know they would offer up the bones they tricked the gods and then they would eat the meat you know but but I don't know if Gerard talks about the the eating part he he in in terms of like like consuming the the very like being of the other person like in in the act of he he not a lot I think that it's in violence in the sacred um his book from the 70s um you know orphic religions or orphism um was sort of founded on his premise of um you know Dionysus right being like ripped apart and eaten by the Titans and you know that that form the basis of a lot of Cults for them I just wrote an article just a few weeks ago about the cultural fashion fascination with cannibalism like what yeah right now it's like what the hell is going on with that right there's a movie with Timothy Timothy chalamet coming out where he's like this teenage cannibal who's on this like love Adventure across the country I haven't seen it I don't think it's out in theaters yet but I I saw the premiere for that and I was like wow there's been like a lot of movies about cannibalism like like Jeffrey Dahmer on Netflix like what's going on there are like are people somehow like I don't know right like somehow fascinated by this idea I think they are I think I think it's definitely happening and it's not just movies and TV it's it's the idea of also the idea of growing your own meat like you saw a lot of that but like for some reason they're always talking about how you could grow your own meat like you could grow your own flesh and you could eat yourself let's say it has to do with it has to do with like cell causation and this problem of it all of these types of symbolism like incest cannibalism they're all related because they're about they're and sodomy as well I'm afraid so had to do with like self-causation it's like it's it's not normal normal uh procession of being it's like a a circular type of causation right that's why it has to do with clowns and Carnival and then others and and all of that stuff is all related so it's not surprising that cannibalism will appear and so also will more and more just the idea of suicide as a um as a normal part of reality the idea of self-killing self-creation self-identification all these things are all related to this kind of circular causality yeah yeah and and suicide um not to go off on a tangent but there's a very memetic quality to suicides as well right like the the imitation of a desire that one may have not uh had before it's it's it's modeled and actually carried out in some way um you know there's probably something to be said about school shootings and it the point is violence whether it's violence to oneself or violence to others according to Gerard is one of the most memetic kinds of behaviors right it's mimetic contagion it's it's contagious right this this desire for self-preservation or the desire to from Vengeance these things have some kind of of a memetic quality to them uh before I forget you know this this point that you made about some like the sort of noble I'll call it the noble sacrifice of the best right that form of sacrifice um as I read Gerard the way that he describes the scapegoat mechanism happening it can happen in sort of into in two forms right one of them one is just pure self-preservation um of of a community needing to having um decomposed uh and needing to reconstitute itself through this false Transcendence that it tries to achieve through singling out the cancer at usually in the form of a person or a group of people which it expels or eliminates um interestingly enough there's there's often a sacrifice only works if the person being sacrificed is not too strange right there has to be some similarity to the people that are that are doing the scapegoating so in ancient cultures you had um you know if an animal was going to be sacrificed that animal would need to be dressed up like a human would need to be fed human things and sort of integrated into the community before it worked so there was like a kindredness before it worked as an effective sacrifice um this by the way this is Gerard's sort of like weird theory about the domestic how the domestication of animals happened right like dogs and and cats since they were literally used for Human Sacrifice but they had to be domesticated first or else the sacrifice wasn't as effective so there's there's something sort of weird about that they're different they're different species different creature yet we have to sort of see ourselves in them in some way for the sacrifice enough yeah enough for you to recognize what you're doing let's say because it's like you sacrifice a flower and you know it has no it has no connection with you you know although you could offer flowers though you could offer them up but not that kind of scapegoat sacrifice that's for sure no so so that the idea of similarity is really important in Gerard so the two the two concepts of similarity and proximity right right views are these are what really trigger a memetic crisis and eventually the scapegoat mechanism so um as you know like the the symbolism of the twins is really important and and Gerard you know it's really weird in almost every culture in the world you have a myth where there are twins usually identical twins that one of them ends up killing the other one or they end up committing violence against one another right in the Book of Genesis I believe there are five stories of sibling rivalry alone in the book in the just in the Book of Genesis King kills Abel founds a city right then you have uh Joseph and his brothers you have Jacob and Esau and you've got who are twins like clearly like the clear twins that is a explicit one yeah yeah that's the explicit one so the similarity seems to breed conflict right um there's a um there it leads more easily to a conflict of Desire or the desire to differentiate one one self Romulus and Remus right the founders of Rome they're these mythological uh Twins and there's not enough room for the both of them so that leads to conflict and then proximity right proximity so again twins are in close proximity to one another these are what Gerard calls internal mediators of desire right internal meaning that they're inside of my world so the scapegoat mechanism only happens with people that are in close proximity to each other right like like within the community that's part of why the sacrificed animal needed to sort of become more um alike right it needed to become internal to the community so he wouldn't have seen for example the killing of foreign captors a foreign foreign prisoners as a scapegoat mechanism because that seems to be a universal practice too it's like you you win a war you catch a bunch of people then you ceremoniously murder some of them publicly in order to make a point about you know about your nation and about your strength you know up and against another another group let's say um I don't know if you would have I don't know if you would have said that but that doesn't seem to be effective anymore right I mean and then that could be because um maybe maybe at one point that was effective but it doesn't seem effective anymore when that's when that's happening maybe it's because it's not visible or something like that um and this is part of Gerard's whole thesis is that the scapegoat mechanism is becoming less and less effective right it doesn't work any anymore the way that it used to before it was sort of revealed to to humanity and the concern for victims prevents the scapegoat mechanism like our eyes are somehow opened to to the victim and that is a direct result of sort of what's been shown to us in in the Revelation really in the in the scriptures and it makes the scapegoat mechanism less less effective so we need we either need more of them we need we need them more often and they simply don't work to bind people together I guess in extraordinary cases the scapegoat mechanism has worked to bind the world together you could argue that the Holocaust um you know in in some sense did that and like we we're all United in this belief like this can never happen again yeah um but I've actually argued that that that Hiroshima was a human sacrifice in the sense that Americans said clearly we have to kill these innocent people in order to stop the war we have to kill these tens of thousands of innocent people and in once in one shot uh and if we do that then we'll get a blessing from heaven like we will we will end the war um because it they weren't killing soldiers and it wasn't it was like a gamble almost it really was it was very similar to the cliche of how people think Human Sacrifice used to happen right it's like you know if I kill this person you know then then the rain will come or something like that and it was like that's what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were I think yeah those are what a calculated human sacrifice in the sense that we knew that innocent lives were going to be lost but not knowing the future just hoping that there was some kind of a I don't know would you say it was like a binding force or just pure like deterrent and fear I think it was also a binding a binding Force I think it it for sure it it created I think the United States in like the United States is born in Hiroshima in some ways uh in terms of what it would become because it's like the the radical action and the the result of it let's say ending the war this kind of terrible thing terrible terrible action at the outset uh it seemed to be a kind of founding I think uh for America you know leading into the the next phase of their existence so but I don't know like like I said that's my intuition in terms of watching it well I I think I think the intuition is is I think is right in the sense that Gerard said that every culture is founded on some on a founding murder yeah so so culture is is always founded on some violent act it's it's why culture emerges as um the ritualized like like rituals and culture are in institutions arise to prevent the violence of the founding murder from happening again and in that sense I sort of see it's not like America's only had one culture I think we've had like a special culture since World War II yeah and and like maybe that I'm just talking out loud here I've never thought about this but like maybe that's the founding murder of the new um post-world War culture yeah and consensus right that that we've had right these these founding murders and yeah there's a few secret scandals in World War II that we can't that nobody thinks about because they become they kind of landed so deep in in our psyche the other example is that we always said we won the war but you know we never say that it was actually the Russians and greatly that run the war and those Russians we basically shook the hand with the devil in order to beat Hitler and now because of that communism gets a soft play in the United States and people always wonder like why is it people are so soft on communism it's a very very deep deep mythological reason it's because we come our society is based on a very deep compromise in which we gave half of Europe to an evil empire in order to stop the war so it's like there are these really deep sins that are at the origin of our of our civilization that that we can't see people kind of can't see them but I know that and that's not necessarily sacrifice but it's like a weird sin that's at the origin of things well I think I think it's very related right I mean Gerard's magnum opus is called things hidden since the foundation of the world these are the things that we don't want to admit about about Humanity about our own um violence in Christian terms you could say sinfulness right about about our own weakness and frailty the denial of death all these things there's these these things hidden since the foundation of the world are our own propensity to murder and cover cover up and and and to cover up these things under rituals under institutions right there's all kinds of like rituals in the world that are really um for the sole purpose of preventing violence right it's like a very important part of Gerard's theory is like there's there's an initial Act of the scapegoat mechanism that happened at some point and then it's re it's it's ritualized after that right in the form of of rituals right so companies can have these rituals like a lot of sports I think developed right especially like in the Roman Coliseum like developed as rituals to prevent the spread of more violence yeah it wasn't the scapegoat mechanism is always about stopping the spread of more violence right so Gerard's line Satan casts out Satan it's like I need to do a little bit of violence in order to prevent a lot of violence yeah which is a dangerous way to think right it's this like very sort of calculating way to think I think it's terrible ethics doesn't account for the Dignity of the human person there's all kinds of problems but Gerard is saying that that's this is the pattern that Humanity constantly falls back into is thinking that we can prevent a lot of violence through targeted violence through making scapegoats but we always need to find another one that's the cycle that you know Christ stopped right by becoming willingly the the scapegoat because some of the imagery in the story of Christ definitely has to do with this in the sense that even in many of the church fathers they'll often say or in the hymnography we hear you know how the world is Created from the side from Christ's side that is in Christ being pierced you know the water and the blood that come out is the church it's actually the world saying Maximus talks about the world is being created you know while Christ is is dying on the cross and this sense that the world comes out of its side like Eve comes out of Christ's side or the church comes out of his side and so there is there it seems like the symbolism is carried in to Christianity but like you said it's kind of flipped or it's it's subverted because because it's a form of self-sacrifice then it's like the the civilization that gets founded it ends up not being the Roman civilization that pierced Christ but the the civilization that's Christ is secretly planting is the one that will rise up and take over Rome ultimately um never completely but at least enough for the for for the transformation to be to be real yeah and that symbolism the symbolism that you're describing like you know the blood and water that flipped from the side the Eucharist itself is is is has all kinds of symbolism right you're talking about like like blood blood and and body right and the the it itself is constituted through a sacrificial uh act right you have to crush grapes until they can become so and and and and the wheat into the breast so all of the the the language and the symbolism of sacrifice is uh is now non-blooding sacrifice is Thoroughly infused in the symbolism of of liturgy um at least the one that you and I I think both know um but this idea that the the victim I think it's really important to just to get at this idea of the scapegoat mechanism becoming less effective because of society's concern for victims and nobody hated so which you know Gerard would say this our Our concern for victims is the universal value that now unites the world pretty much who will you ever find that says that you shouldn't be concerned with victims or you know people being Injustice right um and Gerard says this is really the fruit of the revelation of the scapegoat mechanisms we've now seen something that we can never unsee and it sort of LED over 2000 it led over a very long period of time to that becoming the the most important value in the world to the point that there's now memetic rivalry over who can be the best victim because nothing is nothing confers more status and power than becoming a good victim it's a weird weird um Paradox and inversion of like the true nature of of Christianity right and so did Gerard my understanding is that at the end towards the end he also started talking about the pattern of antichrist as related to something like that something like a kind of twisting of the the twisting of the the recognition of the victim into something like uh a disturbed version of Christianity or something well there's there's two there's two ways out of the conundrum that Society has got itself in according to this is my reading of Gerard um so one is Nietzsche who who Gerard thought was like the most important philosopher um of the last 150 years because nobody saw so clearly um the role of Christ who he compared to the the Dionysus myth and Dionysus by the way is the is the God of Insanity and ritualized Madness who unites people in ecstasy and drunken parties and and blesses the the scapegoat essentially the scapegoat mechanism and he says you know nobody saw the what the the Christian story was about more than Nietzsche but he rejected it and he he said you know the concern for victims is slave morality and you know we need to do away with the concern for victims and not only that in fact victims should be like the weak predict the protection of it they should be sacrificed in the name of society right achieving some higher levels of being which indirectly led to Nazi socialism right yeah um so so there's the Nietzsche approach that the concern for victims needs to be eradicated because this is the slave morality of Christianity or something like that and then on the on the flip side you have the Antichrist and the Antichrist is um the way one way that I would describe the I don't like the term but the so-called culture wars is essentially the culture really the secular culture trying to be more Christian than Christianity or more Christian than Christ and saying we care for victims more than um than you Christians do right or this is the grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky right like if you cared so much you know we do a better job at caring for victims than the church has ever done or whatever right um and and and so there's this weird rivalry almost that that is in some way the culture is like a memetic rival to Christianity to the extent that the two of them get in a weird uh double bind uh memetic War it's really bad for both especially for Christianity um and the anti what is the Antichrist but the one that comes along and does the best job at that totally unites Humanity promises peace promises to con to be you know to have the utmost concern for all victims to end poverty to do to do all of those things that Christianity promised and couldn't do so in a sense because of a lack of sort of eschatological sort of understanding of of and teleology the Antichrist replaces Christianity by almost becoming what those who have rejected Christ want him to be if that makes sense yeah yeah so there's one thing also about Gerard which which puzzles me a little it's my understanding it maybe you tell me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that he also had a sense in which this scapegoat after being sacrificed was also deified somehow like or was placed in the in a in a position of of Honor like a high position after the sacrifice so maybe if you can talk a little bit about that because I'm not sure I understand like I've seen it I've actually seen it myself I there there's some African tribe I remember dealing with in Congo named the Kuba tribe that they they had they had chased the pygmies out of their land and they had a mask which was a pygmy mask and the pygmy mask was something that they would like it was one of their most sacred objects and they would honor it but they also would see the the pygmies as like basically like force demons at the same time it was like it was just this weird thing I didn't understand well that's a that's a huge part of his theory and and it's it's because nobody has the power to unite a um a community that's embroiled in memetic violence which would otherwise destroy itself right that this the they can't save themselves and the the only thing that will unite them together one way to think of it the only thing they can agree on the only desire that that will unite them is a shared contempt for and hatred of the scapegoat so the scapegoat unites them together in this act and this ritual Act of um and by the way like the scapegoat ritual almost always happened through a long process of you know they would parade the scapegoat in in Greece it's called the pharmacos they would parade the pharmacos through the streets um with them um you know mock them um all the things that remind you of the crucifixion by the way um for days and it would that was important because that's that gave the people a sense of catharsis um and and released all of the pent-up memetic violence that they were aiming at each other they can collectively aim at the at the single scapegoat mechanism they expel the scapegoat kill the scapegoat do whatever horrible thing they do to the scapegoat and then magically magically in quotes here right because this is the false Transcendence there they achieved some level of temporary peace um and unity with each other it feels good they that that what Aristotle talked about that catharsis so what ends up happening a short time later is that they they this the scapegoat almost always in ancient cultures comes is worshiped they'll build a shrine over the site where the scapegoat was killed they'll do something like that because the scapegoat takes on like a like a sacred power because it's the only thing that had the power to solve their problem so and who outside of themselves and that has the nature of a God or some something that you worship some so like a higher being that was able to somehow solve the problem is attributed is projected onto this the scapegoat um in this I I know this is a little weird for people listening it's kind of a little hard to understand but um you know think about great figures in history that like are not revered until after they die I mean this happens like all the time like people that were assassinated murdered um who begin to sort of like take on almost sacred Aura I mean and we have Miss uh throughout all of our stories right in Tolkien you've got you know Gandalf the White comes back and and he's sort of more powerful than before like I mean we we just this is like just part of the the human story we have this sort of idea in our imagination somehow and you know this may be a controversial statement but I think what happened most recently maybe with the death of George Floyd right I mean it it sort of had this this sort of um almost there's been like sacred connotations that have been attached to to that to to him now yeah um and you know I I I've seen him like depicted as like as like Christ you know uniting people around the world and building shrines um and there is a bit of that uh like almost a process of deification um is how Gerard would describe it right and deification is I I think is is more of in in sort of the Orthodox tradition right the whole like spiritual like life is is often described as a process of deification um but this is almost like a false dude a false defecation which goes back to the false Transcendence where the real deification right being united and becoming more like God um becoming holy all of those things is is the is a real sort of positive sense of defecation yeah well that I mean it's interesting especially because a lot of people point out in the George Floyd Story how he was a criminal how he had done horrible things and so in this Theory or in this Vision it it almost serves the purpose like it actually almost narratively and mysteriously would function as a way in which it would even make it stronger that he would then ultimately kind of unite people together and act as this this this new angel that appears let's say and as over over this question and I hadn't thought about it that way it um yeah you know I think I think Gaddafi did the same thing to to the to people um you know Qaddafi you know by all accounts was not really a a good man I don't think he was a good leader I think he you know it committed crimes and um what one uh very well-known Gerard scholar Mark onspach I like his work a lot he said in fact it's because of Gaddafi's um kind of guilt that helped him become a better stand-in for the guilt of everybody else if that makes sense right this goes back to the similarity thing right it's almost as if because he's guilty he he can be an easier substitute or sacrificial victim for the guilt for the guilt of everybody else in the country and if you read and he was literally lynched in the street yeah right like these horrific images and if you read what some of the people said uh in Libya he the the one one guy in particular said all of the evil has now been purged from our country right like in a couple of days after he died you just can't have a more sort of textbook example of of that happening and they why do they have to get rid of his body well because right away they were going to be shrines built to it um and they were they were they were actually like worried about that process of deification happening huh huh so here's a very difficult question does Gerard talk about about the manner in which it seems at least to me that something similar happened to Hitler it's like the Germans were able to put all their guilt into one person and and to kind of absolve themselves to it not totally but at least to some extent and even the West in general by by making Hitler the one evil one evil player like the one that like the the one person that is the cause of it all it seems like there's something of that going on there like where we we just put all the evil in him and he's still like still today it's a he is the ultimate Evil character the one in which all evil kind of lands let's say yeah the personification of of all evil like almost standing in for taking the place of um of a satanic figure or or Satan himself right like there's almost something um there's almost it's almost as if Humanity um told us told itself a story for a certain amount of time that like you know we took care of um you know Hitler ended in demise we we took care of the problem um you know we built these institutions it'll never happen again we've built the memorials and and all of the evil has been personified in this one figure yet the scapegoat mechanism runs rampant throughout the world um even still and part of the problem with memetic violence and the scapegoat mechanism is the diversion of attention and I think mimesis in general has to do with what we pay attention to and what and what we focus on what we become obsessed with and because the only way that a scapegoat is made is if attention becomes focused in a group on a single individual through this kind of memetic process which diverts US in what which involves projection which involves of all of our shortcomings and our own violence and our own sins onto this one person and that it involves a process of transference and all of those things simply Kick the Can down the road and don't deal with any kind of structural problems any kind of structural sin our own propensity to to do to do violence right which we need to remind ourselves of so you would you could say that Gerard had a very augustinian or or sort of dark uh view of of of of of human nature and sort of against sort of Enlightenment rationality where like oh we just we all get like you know we just read a lot of books and we discover these secrets about the world and and therefore like we can Purge violence from our Miss it's like Stephen Pinker 101. you know what I'm saying and it's like like not not recognizing like sort of these ancient forces that that are still very much at work that now just manifest themselves in different ways and because the ways they manifest themselves are different um we might not recognize them um you know we're not usually in some parts of the world but we're usually not literally um you know murdering people and dragging them through the streets or just doing it in in other sort of spiritual ways often right which you know the gospels actually talk about that under the context of murder so you know I think this the scapegoat mechanism is just evolving and transforming yeah for sure they cancel the cancel culture that we're seeing happening is definitely has some of the scapegoat mechanism in it you know the way that it that manifests itself it's like we need to find especially like the hunt almost like the hunt for for someone to cancel like we need to find the next person we need to purge the world of of of these these two people and if we do so and we'll we'll find some kind of paradise um and so then then you have the other version which I don't which I'd like to know what you think about that because I mean Jordan Peterson has kind of brought brought out this new vision of of soldier nation's uh sold in itin's way of seeing this which is the idea of self-blaming you could say or of seeing us taking the sins on ourselves uh and that that could be the right transformational process to actually change the world ultimately and you see that of course like I said in terms of the the martyrs how they're willing to die despite their innocence you see it in terms of monastic practice where the monks will take the blame on themselves even for other people's sins that kind of stuff which I would never do but it's like you see it happen in monasteries where where the the spiritual father would like actually take the blame for other people's uh things um so I don't know if you if Gerard has talked about that if you've thought about that as well I have thought about that and you know that has to do with um again with self-sacrifice and with accepting certain um injustices that are committed against you you know perhaps even taking on injustices from other people without always seeking uh retribution which you know I think Gerard says is the is is the satanic lie right that the retribution or you know the line from the gospel Satan casts out Satan it has everything to do with that principle right that you know that that little bit of violence will will somehow do good that violence can do good um the self-blame thing is the flip side of that is this is something I was reading Gerard last night and I pulled up a quote so I think this is relevant to what you're saying I'm just going to read it he said since since Christians have become aware of their failings and charity of their connivance with established political orders in the past and present world that are always sacrificial so basically since Christians are sort of accusing themselves of their own failings and charity and have been part of sacrificial political orders in the past and even now they are particularly vulnerable to the ongoing blackmail of contemporary neopaganism that's a quote from Renaissance so that's there's a lot there right to unpack but one way that I interpret that is that because it's almost like the accuser right this ancient language of the accuser and The Advocate and when the accuser accuses you of your your own sins and shortcomings and and failings with Gerard is basically saying like that the church the the Christian world has has been is being accused of all of these things and has been for a very long time right this goes back to you know that we we care about victims more than Christ cares about victims right then they're sort of uh susceptible to the black male of neo-paganism right which is sort of like um holding um is is the is the accusation that because you know the history of Christianity has not been perfect that therefore it should cede all of the story and all of the kind of right to to like let's just select like a great president and he'll solve all of our problems right or something like that um so there's something to be said about this about the self-blame right because there's a negative sort of form of that which I think comes under the which comes from the accuser yeah that's self-blame is different because it's a weaponized it's like weaponized compassion you know I've talked about this recently in terms of uh in terms of if you want to recognize the difference between true let's say taking on of sins or the true uh examining of yourself in order to see you know the the good and evil going through your own heart the difference between that and weaponized compassion seems to be exemplified in the story of Judas when you see Judas when the woman comes to pour the perfume on Christ's feet Judas says you know you should give that to the poor it's like that's exactly that's exactly what we're talking about in terms of you know you know I I will care for the poor right that's that's what I'll do but in the story what's interesting is like it's actually I will care for the poor rather than worship the Divine you know worship God and so she's actually worshiping the son of man and he's saying you know you should give to the poor but in in the Scripture it says but what he was really doing was taking the money for himself I think that that's usually when you can see it because you just have to watch people who will want to uh let's say accuse Christianity of all the sins and you and then you just have to look a little bit and realize that it's it's actually a power play to take to to to gain power for themselves there's nothing authentic about it at all and the the accuser well just a really important point to make is that the accuser is always is never the truth yeah the accusation is never the truth right because the accuser in scripture and I I guess you know in 2022 it can be weird for some people that hear these two guys talking about Satan or the satanic principle but I mean Gerard identified the scapegoat mechanism with um sort of the spirit of Satan and what is what is how is what are some of the different ways that Satan is referred to that Jesus refers to Satan in the gospels the accuser right the father of lies in a murderer since the beginning so the accuser is always lying right there's always there's always like some some element of lie there it's not the whole at the very least it's never the whole truth yeah yeah it's it's very easy to believe um and I think that's where that Spirit of accusation is what's behind cancel culture and it's part of my personal just and my personal examination of conscience it's like how am I being an accuser and how am I being an advocate right The Advocate is usually refers to the holy spirit in scripture um how who in my life is an accuser who in my life as an advocate um what in the culture is is operating on the prince like literally gets power from accusation because anything that that derives power from accusation you might say like all of Twitter is basically like this hope Elon Musk can solve that problem um is is is certainly concerning to me yeah yeah yeah no you're right you're right there's definitely something and there's also the hip the hypocrisy part of the accuser which I think cries points out quite a bit in his ministry you know where he sees the accusers in terms of the the Pharisees and he says that the accuser is often hiding his own his own sin and uh and that in the case of Judas that's definitely the case whereas Judas is accusing the woman of not caring for the poor when in fact you know he just wants power for himself um and so there's definitely a lot of that going on in terms of in terms of the politics and also the yeah even even in terms of of the the fingers being pointed you know yeah yeah and you know that's the story of the woman caught in adultery is I think the most memetically charged um aside from the crucifixion in in the gospels right it's just it's literally there's a memetic process of accusation that's taking place um and it's defused by the only person in the story this is the woman who's caught in the act of adultery so we know she's guilty right they drag her in front of the temple in in the Gospel of John um you've got these Pharisees saying she's guilty breaking the law of Moses she deserves to be stoned and there's this memetic process of contagion everybody in the story is an accuser except her and one other person and you know Christ steps into the story as the only person who stands outside of the memetic processes the only person who's not susceptible to them right um one he's a Divine person um and and free of sin so he's the only in a sense most people don't think of that story as as him defusing the stoning um as a miracle but if what Gerard is saying it's true and that this is the memetic process of violence that's been operative it's the thing hidden since the foundation of the world it's the way that what humanity is always done you could almost say that there's some kind of divine intervention where the only anti-memetic the only person not participating in the pattern of memetic contagion in that story was Christ which is the only reason he's able to defuse it and this is the reason that people are really scared to step in and stop we don't really Stone people in this country anymore but people are really scared to step in and avert a cancel a cancellation or something like that because then they themselves get get singled out right yeah and they nobody's scared everybody just runs for the hills when something like that happens so I've often asked myself like we don't give ourselves enough credit for having the power to because sometimes it just takes one person to be a subversive like break in that process and and you know like in the gospel story Christ totally reverses it they drop their stones and walk away and it's one of the beaut the reason it's one of my favorite sort of stories is because it's negative memetic violence that's instantly transformed into positive memetic desire or positive like a positive form of Genesis because it says the fir the elders starting with the elders they drop their Stone models of desire and then one by one the rest of them left right so the elders dropped the stones and the rest of them left you know it's possible to actually affect some positive contagion of of desire and examination yeah but it's difficult it's difficult because we are caught up in the mimetic desire ourselves and so we also see that you know it's like the reason why you're afraid of being canceled is because you know you're not perfect you've got you know everybody has things that you look back and you're like oh you know I'm not I definitely have sins in my past so yeah it's difficult but you're right there are some people that seem to be able to to do it and uh and when it happens it's it's very powerful it's very beautiful yeah well you're the you know it's I don't know if the Observer problem is the right way to talk about this but we are ourselves it's weird talking about mimesis and the medic desire and memetic contagion because like at this very moment I'm being affected by forces that I probably don't even know right and I'm very much like inside of the same story that I'm talking about which makes all of these things somewhat day I would even say dangerous to talk you know not not to talk about but like to to pretend or to operate under the illusion that we can achieve some kind of permanent um you know um abstraction or removal from them right like we're embedded in these things and like one of the things I I I hope that when I you know walk into go in my Parish every Sunday like you know for for an hour it sort of feels like I'm you know I'm no longer in the world right um and then within within one minute of leaving I'm like you know yelling at the guy who cut me off in the parking lot right yeah yeah because I mean it's it's like we're making this video we're gonna put it on YouTube you know it's gonna get likes it's gonna get comments it's going to get shared these are the mimetic these are all these mimetic things that are on steroids right now in terms of social media and so it's definitely something that we're we're a part of and it's difficult to pull like you said it's difficult to pull ourselves through um and we kind of hope that the Eucharist and you know participation in the in the self-sacrifice of Christ if we do it if we do it regularly and properly that we it can somehow at least like you said give us a different perspective you know yeah but then also noticing the times I think like at least in my case I think noticing although it like you said sometimes it still is a memetic process but noticing the times where I've been able to just say give myself or sacrifice some aspects of myself for others and then seeing the fruits of that you know it's like wow that works like it's not just uh it actually really does do something uh but then that can also be that can also become a medic competition you know if you're not careful it's funny isn't it I I um I spent a few years living in Rome because I was in seminary studying Theology and uh it's it's a it's an alarming thing when you realize that the guys um that are participating in that process of formation like start competing um on in in engaged in memetic rivalries with each other in regards to like how long they're in the chapel praying and like who's praying on their knees and who's not and stuff like that like it's we can literally like anything can turn into this you know if we're not aware of it and if we're not original anything can be like good right like I'm I'm here trying to like make this sacrifice and give of myself to the world and you know grow and virtue and yet I can look to you know my right and my left and and get totally distracted from like what in the hell I even came here for in the first place yeah and you see I mean Christ seems to be warning us about that and they can help us understand some things that Christ said and talks about the importance of secret right the importance of doing things in secret because when you do things in secret If You Give in secret or you pray in secret or you you you you don't get the credit for it uh then it's actually a it it can be a good healing mechanism or maybe a good a good kind of position which you can find yourself where you can now see you know what's going on a little more clearly because you're you're not getting any not getting anything from what you what you've done uh so it's interesting to think about yeah listen I think this has been a great this is great conversation uh I I appreciate it we're having a a more spiritual conversation that I then I was uh I like that I I appreciate that thank you all right so I will just send everybody towards your towards your towards your book it's called wanting and uh it has great Peter Thiel gave it a great review and and a lot of I was really impressed to see how much how much it's gotten positive reactions and I think getting people to think about these questions is important especially with social media that acceleration of social connection and the the acceleration of contagions of these types of contingents is so everything's so fast now and it can happen so quickly that unders at least understanding some of the mechanisms is is useful for everybody to understand absolutely well thanks Jonathan I really hope we can continue the conversation sometime I appreciate it great yeah thanks for coming on thanks

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 30,664

Keywords: symbolism, myths, religion

Id: fItOlHFQHbw

Length: 78min 15sec (4695 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022