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The Scapegoat Mechanism Explained (Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory) | Robert meets World. | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: The Scapegoat Mechanism Explained (Rene Girard's Mimetic Theory)
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Summary
Core Theme
The core theme explores René Girard's theory of mimetic desire, explaining that humans imitate others' desires due to an inherent "lack of being," and how this imitation historically led to conflict resolved through the scapegoat mechanism, which in turn formed the basis of early religious concepts of the sacred.
reason probably for mimemetic desire.
Shira took a term from shop satre to
understand the
the reason why we desire what others
desire why we imitate desire of others
and the term he took from satre is the
lack of being. The lack of being means
we all feel uh some lacks. We all feel
that we are not full. we are not uh already
already
completely in charge of everything.
Maybe it goes even back to our uh sense
of mortality and so on. And we guess in
some way that other peoples don't have
this lack. So they are cool. They they
don't worry as we all worry. And then we
imitate them and uh we think if we have
the same objects and long for the same
objects as the others uh then we will uh
be able to overcome our lack of being.
So that's the the deeper reason and in a
second stage
uh Sher asked himself and became aware
this imitation of desire of others
easily not automatically but easily
results in conflicts in violence. So how did
did
uh human uh groups in the beginning of
of uh humanity deal with this problem?
And by studying mythology and uh old
texts and and myth he he discovered that
uh those cultures
uh were the result of a scapegoat
mechanism. So scapegoat mechanism means
a group is in crisis. There are a lot of
conflicts between different uh people in
this group and suddenly such a group can
solve this crisis when one person hits
another very strongly and others observe
that and imitate again the the hitting
of uh a person. And the more the people
join this hitting of other p persons we
can observe that for instance in the
right of stoning. So some people throw
stones and then others imitate uh this
throwing of stones and you suddenly have
a snowball mechanism where suddenly the
whole group uh joins against a single person
person
and after this person is killed or
expelled suddenly there is a certain
peace and this piece is now seen as
caused by the same person that was
persecuted. That's one of the most
interesting insights of Shira that the
person who becomes a scapegoat is seen
as the cause of the crisis. So suddenly
the whole group is convinced as that if
this person would not have been among
us, we would be very nice and gentle and
peaceful people. But this troublemaker
made our life so difficult and now we uh
overcame this difficulty by expelling
him or stoning him and killing him. But
the sudden peace that uh uh appears in
the group is also attributed immediately
afterwards. And that's a thing we don't
understand in our modern world. But it's
very important to understand the
foundation of human culture that those
people also uh attributed the beast that
resulted from expulsion or killing the
scapegoat attributed to the scapegoat.
So the scapegoat becomes the god of the
tribe who persecuted it. I mean already
in the beginning he's seen as a monster
even if he originally was just a
ordinary member or ordinary guy of the
group could also be a woman of course.
But the more the group is convinced that
this monster caused all the problems it
becomes a very strange creature. And
when the sudden peace disappears
suddenly in the group, it's also uh seen
as a result of this strange being who
causes trouble and donates and gives
peace. And this double
this double this merging of the absolute
bad and absolute good in the same person
is the deep core of what we call today
in religious studies the sacred and it's
also a description of early gods. If you
go back to description of early gods in
mythology you will see almost all those
gods are doublefaced. They are very good
and very bad at the same time. Only in
the later world religions uh you see a
se a very strong separation. You have
the devil as the incarnation of evil on
the one side and god as the incarnation
of the absolute good but the original
gods are both at the same time. And that
we can explain with the help of Shira's
insight into the uh scapegoat mechanism
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