The Last of the Hedgehogs: René Girard | Hacker News Reader

The Last of the Hedgehogs: René Girard

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I think most people would have heard about him from Peter Thiel. Based on his recommendations I read The Scapegoat last year and it was a real eye opener, with many "mind blown" moments.

For me the really fascinating thought is that the reason the west thrived, was the fact that christianity has an inbuilt awareness about the scapegoat mechanism. Scapegoat being a person who is blamed for all societies ills, who by their martyrdom reduce the tension in a society. Blame all problems on someone, kill them, and suddenly society works better because you've taken the pressure off the pressure cooker.

However, if you understand this mechanism you don't tend to fall into it. Which is exactly what christianity did, the central story in it is literally the killing of a scapegoat. Therefore the west became almost immune to this self created violence.

But this theory in the modern world is completely unacceptable in the mainstream. Anyone who suggests that christianity has any positive side is automatically silenced everywhere. Which is a shame, as he has some really interested theories.

> christianity has an inbuilt awareness about the scapegoat mechanism [...] if you understand this mechanism you don't tend to fall into it [...] therefore the west became almost immune to this self created violence

leaving aside the claim of a link between understanding of the scapegoat mechanism and a reduction in self created violence - assume for argument's sake i'll take that as an axiom - is there any statistical analysis of historical data to back up the argument that the west is almost immune to self created violence?

> Which is exactly what christianity did, the central story in it is literally the killing of a scapegoat. Therefore the west became almost immune to this self created violence.

That's a very nice story that even a casual awareness of the history of the Christian West makes totally implausible.

The Christian West was not immune to scapegoating in much the same way that the sea is not above the sky.

Honestly, you could frame the entire history of the Christian West around who the main scapegoat was at a particular time and place (heck, the Christian understanding of witches/satanists was pretty much an invention almost from whole cloth to fill that role.)

Speaking of not immune to scapegoating, I loved Bulgakov's conspiracy theory in which The Passion turns out to have involved a roman false flag op.

https://www.weblitera.com/book/?id=205&lng=1&ch=25

> "The information is that one of Ha-Notsri's secret followers, revolted by this money-changer's monstrous treachery, has plotted with his confederates to kill the man tonight and to return his blood-money to the High Priest with a note reading:"

> "Take back your accursed money!"

Do your own research: jet fuel can't melt pieces of silver!

>That's a very nice story that even a casual awareness of the history of the Christian West makes totally implausible. The Christian West was not immune to scapegoating in much the same way that the sea is not above the sky.

Didn't have to be immune (humans are humans after all, nothing is 100% perfect), just more immune than what preceeded it.

The main idea Christianity added to the table was that the victims are not just unfortunate, or losers, or collatera damage to the natural order of things, but possibly even more justified than those who lord over them.

There were still masters and slaves, injustice, etc despite Christianism, and even in its name, but not because of it.

Similar to like there was injustice and slavery after the Constitution or injustice and racism in the US today, but it's not because of the Constitution itself - which was an improvement and placed a seed for betterment --, but because people are people).

The seed that got into the culture with Christianism was that this is not just "the way things are". Suddenly the victims had a claim to moral superiority and injustice. In the ancient/pagan world they would be laughed off. In the Christian world they might be driven off with sticks still, by those in power, by they couldn't totally eradicate their claim to injustice [that's also why Christianity caught on with oppressed populations, even with those that shared the religion with their opressors, like black slaves in the US or indians in Latin America: it offered a way for the slaves to claim moral superiority and dignity. Incidentally that's how it got its major boost in ancient Roman empire as well].

That's one of the themes of Nietzsche by the way, which he sees as a negative of Christianity (kind of like some lament the modern "victimhood culture") - he preferred the good old times, when masters where masters, and victims would just suck it up and admit defeat and accept that they are lesser men.

(As for the hunt for the "witches/satanists" it's an overplayed minor characteristic of Christianity. Plus, the reason we see those victims too in a favorable light, it's still because of Christian influence. The culture/religion of the group that persecuted them is exactly what promoted them to innocent victims to be pitied/vindicated. The ancient world only cared for effectiveness, victims were merely losers to be tossed aside.

People who suggest Christianity has a positive side sometimes show an astonishing lack of awareness about its history of self-promoting spin and its unarguable ethical and social flaws.

People who go on about its "unarguable ethical and social flaws" seldom have an understanding of the difference between it and the world that preceeded it, or the scale of its (the pagan world's) unarguable ethical and social flaws.

I think you're proving GP's point. The very thought of conceding that there may be a positive side to Christianity (anything! no matter how small!) has you going on about its "unarguable ethical and social flaws." These may indeed be grave. But this don't even begin to justify your implicit contention that there is no positive side to Christianity.

I think the truth is actually pretty obvious: Christianity had both good sides and unarguable ethical and social flaws.

Girard's theory also applies very well to mass culture movements for social and political change. Shameless plug: My book rests in large part upon his theories: https://www.nottotouchthesun.net/doorsinpoetryandhistory/

Someone here gave a link to a masterful takedown of Girard's claims in The Scapegoat. Basically, in order to make his claims, he's just making stuff up - about Christianity, and about Oedipus, and about almost everything else he cites as historical evidence for his position. If you look at pretty much anything he cites, and get past his beautiful writing enough to actually think about his claims, you look at the claim, and the citation, and you find that there is no actual evidence for the claim in the citation. He's making up the evidence by reading it into places that don't give evidence for his position at all.

That is not an approach that commends his position to me.

Wish I had kept a link to the article. Does anyone here remember? Will the original poster of that link be kind and post it again?

Here is a far better written intro to Rene Girard [0], the article linked is worst kind of overwritten academic verbiage with nothing substantive to say, almost incoherent.

[0] https://alexdanco.com/2019/04/28/secrets-about-people-a-shor...

Feudalism (and we still have monarchies to this day cough KSA cough) in tl;dr is the notion that social relations between homo sapiens should be built on the same asymmetric principles as social relations in other large herding domesticated species.

Can we come up with better, more primate, or even more human, systems? I would claim we could, by swapping reflexive antisymmetric transitive relations for reflexive symmetric transitive ones (as those of us with T-V distinguishing languages have largely done), but nearly a half century of people watching has convinced me there exist large numbers of people who are perfectly happy to be servile to some as long as they get to be arrogant to yet others.

Seconded. Danco's summary of Girard is fantastic. I don't look forward to the thoughts of many people, but his substack newsletter is worth a read as well. He's one of the few smart people still talking.

Girard's idea of mimetic violence, which is the result of people being too similar and not sufficiently different to be considered an un-threatening other, provides both explanatory and predictive power for the culture war as well. When we talk about the uncanny valley in tech, it's a similar visceral reaction. The out-group is us, and yet not us, and is thus an existential threat that makes total war seem inevitable. I didn't read his suggestions for how to unravel that Gordian (Girardian?) Knot, and rather hope he had some prescriptions for avoiding or rolling back points of no return.

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