The Last of the Hedgehogs: René Girard

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.

> 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.

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.