Violence and the Sacred

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1. soufronMar 2024
   I read Violence and the Sacred when I was 8... it changed my life forever.
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2. programmarchyJul 2023
   René Girard has done an anthropological investigation of this topic. The gist of it is through the psycho-social mechanism of scapegoating, opposing groups can simultaneously believe they are victims while acting as oppressors, often using their victim status as justification for their oppression of "the other".

   Girard explores this phenomenon of scapegoating and postulates it goes back to primitive humans e.g. during a drought tensions rise within a tribe, and a certain "witchy" tribe member is singled out to take the blame and either expelled or murdered. After this, social tensions in the tribe are relieved (even if the drought does not subside), and the scapegoat paradoxically becomes a sacred, or savior, figure. Through history, this develops into ritual and religion. It provides a useful lens to reason about messianic cults, as well as social power dynamics.

   There's a good overview on his Wikipedia page, but he delves into this particular topic in the book Violence and the Sacred. He also pioneered the field of Generative Anthropology, which other academics like Eric Gans have built upon, theorizing about the mechanism in much more detail, and using it to explain effects in modern culture.

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3. strogonoffJun 2023
   Violence and the Sacred is a book that tries to answer, among some other things, why ritual sacrifices used to happen. I haven’t finished it yet, René Girard could perhaps be a bit meandering, but it’s an insightful read so far (and impossible to do justice in a summary).

   He observes that in older human societies a transgression could easily lead to an infinite loop of vendetta-like bloodshed. He also observes that sacrifices always targeted a victim that is nearly a member of society (if not an actual human outcast or child, then an animal which people like and are reasonably close to on a daily basis) but never quite.

   Part of his theory appears to be that ritual sacrifice (a murder that follows a particular procedure) eventually emerged as a viable steam vent that made societies more resilient. It lets out the impulse that causes members of society to be violent to each other, but focuses this impulse on someone who is adjacent to yet outside of that society, carries no social function, and is unable to push back or seek revenge, thus defusing the impulse safely (for society).

   (A functioning justice system in modern civilization performs a similar role, taking revenge out of the hands of the victim.)

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4. zbyFeb 2019
   "Violence and the sacred" by Rene Girard.
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5. zbySep 2012
   Go read 'Violence and the Sacred' - there is a deep link between violence and religion - but religion is not the origin of the other.
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6. gen220Jun 2020
   It’s definitely not an idea that originates with me! :)

   I think I got it from a German Literature class. The professor had us read some formational texts, and one of them was a theory for the establishment of religion, written by some German 20th Century thinker. I can’t find the source now, but it was probably a pretty mainstream one, for all you internet sleuths out there.

   He tried to put forward an evolutionary theory of religion. Basically, a tribe would come into conflict and children would kill their parents as a result. To try and prevent the same thing from happening to themselves, the children invented rituals that they taught to their children, so that they could control and direct their violence away from the parents. Instead of killing people, they would kill effigies made to look like people. Eventually, the children associate the effigies with their parents. But they like their parents, so they leave out the whole killing part when they teach it to their kids, who come to worship the effigies. They then kill animals instead of people. And so on. It was a really interesting exercise of rationalism!

   If someone can find the source for me, I’ll give them my 2 internet points :)

   Edit: I think it was Violence and the Sacred by Rene Girard.

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