The Scapegoat

Human beings, according to French thinker Rene Girard, are fundamentally imitative creatures. We copy each other's desires, and are in perpetual conflict with one another over the objects of our desire. In early human communities, this conflict created permanent threat of violence. The only way the violence would end was for it to be directed against a single victim, and it was around the victims of collective ciolence that Girard thinks that cultures first formed. Biblical religion, according to Girard, has attempted to overcome this historic plight. From the unjust murder of Abel by his brother Cain, to the crucifixion of Christ, the Bible reveals the innocence of the victim. It is on this revelation that modern society unquietly rests.