Reply #29: There is a good summary a little later...

[madmusic]

In Girard’s interpretation, the secret "hidden since the foundation of the world" referred to in Matt. 13:35 (and Luke 11:50-51)--and alluded to, of course, in his book’s title--was the founding role played in all human enterprises by the mécanisme victimaire (victimizing mechanism) of scapegoating, which is itself an outgrowth of mimetic desire. Mimetic desire is a deeply rooted tendency in human beings to imitate the desires of others. This eventually leads to mimetic rivalry and mimetic conflict--not only because to desire what another desires, in a world of finite resources, will inevitably lead to conflict over the same objects of desire, but also because even in a world of unlimited fungibility it would still be precisely our rival’s object we would desire and not even a perfect equivalent would satisfy us. The victimizing mechanism is both a further development in this process and also, in most societies that have developed historically, the solution to the crises it generates. To explain the logic of Girard’s idea very simply:

# Since mimetic desire is a fundamental trait of human beings, people will inevitably fall into mimetic rivalries and these will spread like wildfire, especially where no system of traditional restraints and boundaries has been developed or where such a system has broken down.

# When these circumstances (lack of an effective system of restraints) prevail, the mimetic conflict will multiply until it threatens to destroy the entire society in a paroxysm of violence.

# At this point the victimizing mechanism will be triggered by the same mechanism that started the trouble to begin with, namely mimesis. Some individual (perhaps someone with a limp, or with noticeable racial differences, or with non-conformist ideas) may attract the attention of several others who will gang up on him, and others will also be drawn to join them by the mimesis of their violence.

# Those drawn by mimesis into such shared hostility to a common victim will experience among themselves, in place of their earlier rivalry, a new unanimity and fellowship.

# But the peace that proceeds from this is inherently fragile: new rivalries may develop and threaten the group--until once again they seek a new common scapegoat.

# Or, as the ancient Israelites did, they may forswear intra-group violence and restrain themselves from mimetic rivalry by adherence to a Law deemed transcendent. And they may reinforce their loyalty to that system of restraint by instituting ritualized commemorations of the original collective victimization, i.e., ritual sacrifices, to remind them of its originating, life-giving effects while protecting them from having actually to repeat it in all its dangerous reality.

# But such a system of the control of violence is far from perfectly effective, especially because it masks the reality of the whole complex of mimetic desire, rivalry, and victimization. New crises therefore continue to arise and call for new victims.