An Interview of René Girard - Mimesis and Science

RG: All communities have crises, and I believe the mimetic crisis of the type I have described is a special human feature. Humans are an animal of crisis. The real problem with our social sciences is that they've never learned that. The social sciences confuse the science of humanity with what human beings say about the order of their community. If you're a sociologist, you study that order according to what people say about their own culture. If you're a psychologist, you talk about the self, according to what the self is telling you. But the question is: when a society gets into a serious crisis, who is in charge? If you listen to the government, of course you're listening to their propaganda, but very often the government is no longer in charge. None of the standard rules apply. What is a crisis? The social sciences have not been able to define it. There is a great political scientist who first said that. His name is Carl Schmitt. He said a social science should first be the science of crisis. It's very easy to define who the government is, but in most societies the government is not the most important authority. You have to study a crisis in order to see who is in charge there. Who is fighting whom? What's really going on? Now in a way, the Mimetic Theory would like to do that, because humanity necessarily starts with a crisis. It's true that it's not enough to talk about biological changes. You have to talk about cultural changes, because we know that the last stages of the evolution of humanity are both cultural and physical.
...

My tendency (of thought) is to see scapegoating violence, particularly the kind that must have involved the entire community, as creative of human culture. I'm not an expert in the actual cognitive science of human origins. I read avidly what I find, but it doesn't go beyond that. And my work has brought me to the conclusion that mimesis and violence are essential to account for human origins. So it is remarkable to me that these contemporary theories do not take this into account.
What is amazing is when there is no violence in a particular culture, not the fact that there is violence. Conflict should be permanent, constantly there, since we imitate each other and are prone to mimetic rivalry. What is  interesting is to explain how a society manages those conflicts. If a scapegoat phenomenon puts an end to these hostilities, it will be repeated artificially. This is the definition of sacrifice, which for me is the beginning of human culture.

QUESTION: How is scapegoating the foundation that sets us on the trajectory toward our higher cognitive abilities, including language and rational reflective thought?

RG: One should say, scapegoat unanimity is the beginning of rationality. It is false rationality, but why is the scapegoat chosen unanimously? Because the community spontaneously discovered and subsequently believed in the majority principle. They have become democrats right there. They say, "If we are all unanimous, how could we be wrong?" They are wrong, but they are more right than other animals that cannot have unanimity. Of course this is not a matter of conscious reflective thought initially, but of mimetic repetition. The self-conscious unanimity of scapegoating is the beginning of humanity. It's the beginning of rationality. It's still irrationality, no doubt, but it's a beginning. You have to go through that phase in order to reach rationality.

QUESTION: So the tendency is to ignore violence in archaic culture and to view it as a late-developing phenomenon. We prefer to view the beginning of humanity as fundamentally peaceful and then blame our violence on more contemporary religious or cultural beliefs.

RG: We are in a privileged position to be able to talk about the essence of human community as positive - and to be sure there are many positive aspects, but there is always some kind of violence lurking in the background, which we would prefer to keep hidden and not mention in the same breath.

QUESTION: I would like to connect this discussion on the presumed innocence of early humans to our previous discussion on the presumed innocence of the early parent-infant relationship. I believe the vast majority of crimes where children, especially younger children and infants, are abused, harmed or murdered occur within the family. An the Jewish story of Abraham and Isaac is a parent attempting to sacrifice their child. A parent is about to murder their chid because God asks him to, and he's willing to do so. And that is what leads to the covenant. So in almost the same way that the sacrifice of Jesus has been viewed as the founding of Christianity, the near-sacrifice of Isaac is related to the founding of Judaism. And we know that the ritual of sacrificing the firstborn predates both of these traditions.

RG: You're right to bring this up. The sacrifice of the firstborn is found in many places. It's almost a universal custom at some point. And I think the Passover story is a good example.

QUESTION: For the ancient Hebrews, once the angel stops Abraham form killing Isaac, a ram appears magically. And that's the beginning of the thousand-year tradition of the sacrifice of animals, and that's the substitute for human sacrifice. But Jesus's sacrifice, that's the end of all sacrifices, including animals. That's the last sacrifice. And then for the rest of the time, you remember it so as not to repeat it.

RG: Correct. But the shift to an animal comes before and has tremendous importance from a human point of view, from an evolutionary perspective. The near-sacrifice of Isaac is the only text we have about the shift from the sacrifice of the firstborn to the sacrifice of an animal, which probably, in the evolution of humanity, is an immense thing. I'm surprised that there is no interpretation of this. It's so obvious, the shift from human to animal sacrifice. And the Bible shows you steps of less and less sacrifice, of less and less precious victims being killed. Every step is a descending staircase towards no sacrifice in the archaic sense.

I think in a way the course of history is a constant revelation of scapegoating, and today this revelation is fruitful in the sense that it shows you really, with many exceptions of course, where the violence lies, where the victim is. It can be misused, distorted, and so on, but there is a historical trend toward the revelation of scapegoating.

QUESTION: You believe that this trend is linked to our modern concern for victims.

RG: Yes, what is important is the emotional leap in our attitude towards victims.

Man's Purpose is God - Something Outside Himself

There is only one end for man, and that end is not to be found within himself. Man's end, man's purpose is God, something outside himself which is greater than himself. It would be false Christian spirituality to say that the end of man is his own perfection. That is not the end of man. Man's perfection is not in himself, nor can it ever be in himself. Man's perfection is in God, in incorporation in Christ, and, through Christ, in God. All your virtues and all your piety, so to speak, would remain unfinished and incomplete if you were not raised above yourself to God.  And this is the spirit of childhood, an unreserved admiration of God, an unstinted praise of God, a constant movement towards God, rising above yourself, outside yourself, so that our life is merged in the greater life of God... When once you have penetrated into him you will understand him to have great and marvelous ways, mysterious dealings with his creatures...

- Dom Anscar Vonier, O.S.B. (+1906) was the abbot of Buckfast Abbey in Devon, England. Excerpt from The Art of Christ: Retreat Conferences

The Presentation - Heather King

"The Presentation," by Heather King in the February Magnificat:

""And you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed," Simeon told Mary. Whatever pierces our heart is a religious experience. Whatever pierces our heart we are invited to offer at the temple.

We bring all our joys and all our trials. We especially bring our contradictions, our compulsions, our wounds.

To present our experiences at the temple is to sacramentalize them. To present our experiences is to recognize that all experience, from the smallest to the largest, has a supernatural dimension. We offer our experiences on the altar of the fact that we are loved just as we are, and that everything that happens to us is an opportunity to draw closer to Christ. We present ourselves at the temple because our lives, our work, our sacrifices are not our own.

Before we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of the world.  After we present ourselves at the temple, we see ourselves through the eyes of God.

Outside of the temple, for example, I'm an aging spinster, alone and unloved.  Inside, I'm a woman rich in insight, wisdom, and friends; I'm reminded that I have a unique and special mission.  Before we "present" our drug-addicted son at the temple, we are crazy with worry.  We feel like failures as parents, that our life's work has gone for naught.  After presenting him at the temple, we remember that we have given our very best, that love is never wasted or lost, that our child is in the hands of God.  In fact, that is exactly what Mary and Joseph did with Jesus.

We bring our wounds and we also bring our strengths and talents. Otherwise we tend to forget that the purpose of our gifts is to glorify God. We start to think that our gifts make us special, or that we can use them to lord it over the rest.

When we do present ourselves, we find that the temple is not empty. Simeon is there, and the elderly prophetess Anna. People have been praying for us all our lives. We are part of a centuries-old tradition, and we are invited to participate in the ever-unfolding and perpetual resurrection.

We go in peace, knowing that we, too, are servants whose eyes have "seen your salvation."  We, too, are granted a share in showing forth the light of revelation.

"So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners... Through [Christ] the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph 2: 19-22).

Our experiences are "young."  The wisdom is old.

Heather King is a Catholic convert, contemplative, and writer.  She lives in Los Angeles and is the author of three memoirs.

Entering the Biblical Story during Advent

During class Father Albert Haase, OFM referenced a remark he made in his book, Living the Lord's Prayer - The Way of the Disciple and I was awe-struck by it. The remark was: "Remember your suffering. It need not be in vain. It can become the womb of compassion."  The womb is a place where something is in the process of being birthed - a place where something is formed.  Fr Albert goes on to say, "Compassion makes us aware of who we truly are as it bonds us to others in relationships." 

Interestingly, the word religion is a derivation from  re-ligare: meaning, "to bind back." As we are beings in and of and for relationships - and as we are always falling in and out of relationships we, by nature are religious beings patching ourselves back together. And so I was struck by how suffering works in all this and how compassion is connected.

Richard Rohr, when lecturing on suffering and pain says; "If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it." So at our point of suffering we are weaving these two strands of thoughts together and our choice says a lot about our faith. For how we deal with our suffering is the incubator of choice - we either are being transformed through our suffering or it is a source of transmitting the suffering on to others. 

During the Advent season we are ever reminded of Our Lord and how He came to awaken in us a self-donating transformation of suffering.

Link HERE for a powerful Advent reflection by my friend Gerry Straub, sfo.  Gerry will be coming to Bloomington-Normal the first part of April 2012.  We are lining up a couple presentations during his stay with us so we will let everyone know when we nail down the specfics.

Gerry begins his reflections with this Oscar Wilde quote:

“Jesus understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich, the thirst that can lead people to drink from muddy waters. He penetrated the outward shell of things and understood that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and whatever happens to oneself happens to another.”

These words make a connection - they link us to one another and they do it through suffering. It seems to be that we would do well to embrace our suffering and the embrace another in their suffering.  Another friend, Gil Bailie talked about suffering this way:

Jesus says take this cup, which is the cup of suffering. We don’t have to be melodramatic about it; there is suffering in our lives. The suffering that I should understand as redemptive is my suffering. The sufferings that I see other people undergoing I should not think that I am going to take it away, I won’t be able to, but I can be present with them in that suffering so they can feel that they are not alone in that suffering and perhaps feel the truth of the situation which is always, always, always that Christ is in it with them. They may not be able to experience that unless they know that I am in it with them. That act of being present with them may be their only entrée to the discovery that Christ is in it with them. Being in that suffering with others, and of course, that sometimes means helping to relieve the suffering, is our responsibility...

See link HERE to get the transcript of Gil's talk on entering the biblical story.

There seems no better time at which to enter the biblical story then now, during Advent.  One last link HERE to read an Advent selection from Father Alfred Delp.

The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words

Today’s Magnificat meditation is from Fr. Alfred Delp, SJ who was a German Jesuit priest condemned to death by the Nazis in Berlin, Germany.  What powerful words he speaks here - we should let them sink in and penetrate us to our very being for these words have the power to transform.

“The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words”

That God would become a Mother’s son and that a woman could walk upon this earth, her body consecrated as a holy temple and tabernacle for God, is truly the earth’s culmination and the fulfillment of its expectation…

Oh, that this was granted to the earth, to bring forth such fruit! That the world was permitted to enter into the presence of God through the sheltering warmth, as well as the helpful and reliable patronage of her motherly heart!

The gray horizons must light up. Only the foreground is screaming so loudly and penetratingly. Farther back, where it has to do with things that really count, the situation is already changing. The woman has conceived the Child, sheltered him under her heart, and has given birth to her Son. The world has come under a different law. All these are not merely one-time historical events upon which our salvation rests. They are simultaneously the model figures and events that announced to us the new order of things, of life, of our existence…

At a deeper level of being, even our times and our destiny bear the blessing and the mystery of God. The most important thing is to wait, to be able to wait, until their hour comes…

Let us pray for the openness and willingness to hear the warning prophets of the Lord and to overcome the devastation of life through conversion of heart.Let us not shun and suppress the earnest words of the calling voices, or those who are our executioners today may be our accusers once again tomorrow, because we silenced the truth.

Once again, let us kneel down and pray for keen eyes capable of seeing God’s messengers of annunciation, for vigilant hearts wise enough to perceive the words of the promise. The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere. Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.

Advent is the time of the promise, not yet the fulfillment. We are still standing in the middle of the whole thing, in the logical relentlessness and inevitability of destiny…

The sounds of devastation and destruction, the cries of self-importance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and powerlessness still fill the world. Yet, standing silently, all along the horizon are the eternal realities with their ago-old longing. The first gentle light of the glorious abundance to come is already shining above thing…This is today. And tomorrow the angels will relate loudly and jubilantly what has happened, and we will know it and will be blessed if we have believed and trusted in Advent.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9)

From The Magnificat to the Front Page.

The Magnificat Sunday, November 27, 2011

Since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.  Return to me, that I may return to you, says the LORD of hosts.  But you say, “Why should we return?” (MALACHI 3:7) 

Although we know that Christ has not in fact left us since the resurrection, we often experience his absence from a world that has not yet fully owned him and from lives not yet fully free from the hold of sin.  During Advent, we pray for his promised return in the fullness of salvation, as the sun, never absent from the universe, returns at dawn after the long hours on night.

To the front page that begs the question, How powerful are our actions ushering in Advent?

How much crazier can Black Friday get?

Pepper-sprayed customers, smash-and-grab looters and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. How did Black Friday devolve into this?

As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels.

The wave of violence revived memories of the 2008 Black Friday stampede that killed an employee and put a pregnant woman in the hospital at a Walmart on New York's Long Island.

The violence has prompted some analysts to wonder if the sales are worth it, and what solutions might work.

One shopper said, "If I'm going to get shot, at least let me get a good deal."

It seems that we humans wake up only The Day After Trinity unable to recognize the trajectory of our misplaced desires that inevitably leads to violence. What does it take to break the cycle?

Back to the reflection from The Magnificat:

"At a certain point in life, the profound desires and cravings of our heart reach a point of eruption. Yet, at the same time comes the awareness that we cannot bring about what we want - we do not have inside us what is needed to fulfill and satisfy our longings. And so, with our infinite yearnings we turn to the Infinite and cry, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down." Our experience of helplessness before the fact of our boundless human need moves us to ask for fellowship with God's Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. The nature of our desire assures us as we enter into Advent that we are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. "The Lord of the house is coming." "Be watchful! Be alert!"

Must read the following (and please do yourself a favor and link below on the title and read the entire message):

Waking Up to Ourselves by Father Alfed Delp

The deepest meaning of Advent cannot be understood by anyone who has not first experienced being terrified unto death about himself and his human prospects and likewise what is revealed within himself about the situation and constitution of mankind in general.

This entire message about God’s coming, about the Day of Salvation, about redemption drawing near, will be merely divine game-playing or sentimental lyricism unless it is grounded upon two clear findings of fact.

The first finding: insight into, and alarm over the powerlessness and futility of human life in relation to its ultimate meaning and fulfillment…The second finding: the promise of God to be on our side, to come to meet us.

Being Scene- the Self and the Sound of Two Hands Clapping

Link HERE to view the 2 videos from Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology April 2011.