0:04 reason probably for mimemetic desire.
0:07 Shira took a term from shop satre to
0:10 understand the
0:14 the reason why we desire what others
0:17 desire why we imitate desire of others
0:19 and the term he took from satre is the
0:23 lack of being. The lack of being means
0:27 we all feel uh some lacks. We all feel
0:31 that we are not full. we are not uh already
0:32 already
0:35 completely in charge of everything.
0:39 Maybe it goes even back to our uh sense
0:42 of mortality and so on. And we guess in
0:45 some way that other peoples don't have
0:47 this lack. So they are cool. They they
0:51 don't worry as we all worry. And then we
0:55 imitate them and uh we think if we have
0:57 the same objects and long for the same
1:02 objects as the others uh then we will uh
1:04 be able to overcome our lack of being.
1:08 So that's the the deeper reason and in a
1:10 second stage
1:14 uh Sher asked himself and became aware
1:17 this imitation of desire of others
1:21 easily not automatically but easily
1:25 results in conflicts in violence. So how did
1:27 did
1:31 uh human uh groups in the beginning of
1:35 of uh humanity deal with this problem?
1:39 And by studying mythology and uh old
1:44 texts and and myth he he discovered that
1:46 uh those cultures
1:49 uh were the result of a scapegoat
1:53 mechanism. So scapegoat mechanism means
1:56 a group is in crisis. There are a lot of
2:00 conflicts between different uh people in
2:03 this group and suddenly such a group can
2:08 solve this crisis when one person hits
2:11 another very strongly and others observe
2:16 that and imitate again the the hitting
2:20 of uh a person. And the more the people
2:24 join this hitting of other p persons we
2:26 can observe that for instance in the
2:29 right of stoning. So some people throw
2:33 stones and then others imitate uh this
2:36 throwing of stones and you suddenly have
2:40 a snowball mechanism where suddenly the
2:44 whole group uh joins against a single person
2:46 person
2:49 and after this person is killed or
2:52 expelled suddenly there is a certain
2:57 peace and this piece is now seen as
3:00 caused by the same person that was
3:02 persecuted. That's one of the most
3:06 interesting insights of Shira that the
3:09 person who becomes a scapegoat is seen
3:11 as the cause of the crisis. So suddenly
3:15 the whole group is convinced as that if
3:17 this person would not have been among
3:20 us, we would be very nice and gentle and
3:23 peaceful people. But this troublemaker
3:28 made our life so difficult and now we uh
3:31 overcame this difficulty by expelling
3:34 him or stoning him and killing him. But
3:38 the sudden peace that uh uh appears in
3:42 the group is also attributed immediately
3:45 afterwards. And that's a thing we don't
3:47 understand in our modern world. But it's
3:50 very important to understand the
3:53 foundation of human culture that those
3:57 people also uh attributed the beast that
4:00 resulted from expulsion or killing the
4:03 scapegoat attributed to the scapegoat.
4:06 So the scapegoat becomes the god of the
4:09 tribe who persecuted it. I mean already
4:12 in the beginning he's seen as a monster
4:15 even if he originally was just a
4:18 ordinary member or ordinary guy of the
4:21 group could also be a woman of course.
4:24 But the more the group is convinced that
4:27 this monster caused all the problems it
4:30 becomes a very strange creature. And
4:34 when the sudden peace disappears
4:37 suddenly in the group, it's also uh seen
4:41 as a result of this strange being who
4:44 causes trouble and donates and gives
4:48 peace. And this double
4:52 this double this merging of the absolute
4:54 bad and absolute good in the same person
4:58 is the deep core of what we call today
5:01 in religious studies the sacred and it's
5:05 also a description of early gods. If you
5:08 go back to description of early gods in
5:12 mythology you will see almost all those
5:15 gods are doublefaced. They are very good
5:18 and very bad at the same time. Only in
5:22 the later world religions uh you see a
5:25 se a very strong separation. You have
5:29 the devil as the incarnation of evil on
5:32 the one side and god as the incarnation
5:34 of the absolute good but the original
5:38 gods are both at the same time. And that
5:40 we can explain with the help of Shira's
5:44 insight into the uh scapegoat mechanism
