The Human Habit of Scapegoating
And what lays beyond.
While many intellectuals have discussed at length the origins of w0k€n€ss and the victimhood culture that emerged out of it, one of its most dangerous features has arguably been overlooked: the blame game.
The late René Girard explained that blame is a universal feature of the human psyche. It is present in all cultures and ensures a range of sociological functions carried out through the scapegoat mechanism.
The scapegoat mechanism refers to a psycho-sociological mechanism entailing the sacrifice of a scapegoat to appease the relational tensions that developed within a group of people.
While Girard believed the mechanism to have evolved in the early days of our species, it first explicitly appeared in the Old Testament.
According to the Bible, the Hebrews practiced a rite where they transferred their community’s sins onto a goat which became the symbol of their misdeeds (hence the name “scapegoat”).
They released the goat in the desert to ward off their wrongdoings then sacrificed and ate another goat, thereby redeeming the group of their misconduct and restoring social order.
What’s particular about the Hebrews is that they understood the symbolic character of their rite.
