I don’t know whether what I am about to write is true.  But it seems to me, from reading what Girard’s admirers, such as Alberg, have written, Professor Girard saw through the eyes of that parent, and concluded that, in human evolution, the “tearing the world apart” of infantile mimetic rivalry had to be mitigated.  In order to survive, groups had to evolve some cultural mechanism for short-circuiting the escalating violence.  That mechanism was scapegoating.

And weirdly, Girard was correct in his diagnosis, because in our realm, the realm of unconstrained complexity (and the realm of all writing, I must add) we are like infants without parents.  We do not have immediate experiential access to the “object that brings us into relation”; that is, “the object that we compete to sacrifice for”.  So we fight – like those children – over what we imagine that “thing” to be.

Revelation was necessary.  Girard was correct in his conclusion that Christianity (emerging from Judaism and Greek Philosophy) provides a unique antidote to scapegoating because it encourages us to recognize the phenomenon.

But even more weirdly, Girard never contemplated the possibility that mimetic rivalry could have been adaptive in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Girard saw through the eyes of the Parent.  But now, his insight is bound to pass from the Parent into the Laboratory, because, within the cultural physiology of the scapegoat beats the heart of a once adaptive algorithm, the sacrificial lamb, who dies according to “Your Will, not mine”.

Perhaps, an even more potent antidote to scapegoating is the very thing that gives it life.

Because my musings can be confusing, even to me, I sink back to ground level.

When a parent sees two children in the sandbox fighting over the same toy, each child desiring the same thing that the other desires, one can hardly see how this selfish behavior has any adaptive advantage. This type of desire will tear the band or the village apart.

So the parent separates them, taking the thing away, and tells them to get along, little realizing that her behavior provides a clue to the tykes that there is another “thing”, or maybe not even a “thing”, perhaps, an “object”, that allows them to both fight and get along.

This is their earliest introduction to “an object that brings them into relation”.

Alberg’s tentative answer seems to be that petrifying symbolic orders are scandalized by life-giving symbolic orders.

Petrifying symbolic orders do not want you to see some sort of re-animated corpse occupying the space where Nothing – I mean, their proposed “object” – should be.  It is scandalous.  It is a problem to be solved.

Also, he suggests that, in order to see “how the petrifying symbolic order achieves closure”, read the text with the eyes of a sinner, that is, through the lens of forgiveness, to see “what has been excluded”.  See through the scandal.  See past the solution.

Alberg discovered that, for both Nietzsche and Rousseau, “the cornerstone that the builder rejected” was, weirdly, “the exclusion that allowed the building to be erected”.  Both symbolic orders would crumble if their rejected cornerstone had … um … never been there.

At the same time, both symbolic orders demanded that this resurrected nobody vacate the premises that He created. After all, where else should they put the aesthetic dictates of Tragedy or the organizational mandates of Rational Man?

How scandalous is that? How brilliant a solution?

When people, despite Dante’s warning (Do not mimic me.), imitate Dante, they do by desiring the same “object”, Christ, the “victim that brings everyone into relation”.

Their imitation should blind them to petrifying literary medusas such as Nietzsche and Rousseau, but it doesn’t.  In our world of unconstrained complexity, one cannot easily tell whether a symbolic order is formative or deformative, that is, whether it will inspire you to become “what your (and everyone else’s) heart desires” or turn your heart to stone.

Alberg’s book is an attempt to find a way to tell.

In contrast, for mimesis^constrained, closure could never be achieved, because our ancestors talked in a fusion of icons, indexes and symbols. Language was both referential and symbolic.

Just as Dante pointed to a symbolic order that was beyond himself, our ancestors oriented to a world beyond themselves.  They had to be open to whatever was thrown at them.  The object was always the same, but never fixed, never petrifying.  The object was relational, personal, burning with fire yet never consumed.

As a result, there was no thing to be scandalized about.  There was no problem to be fixed.  Except of course, until civilization sent their envoys.

For mimesis^{unconstrained}, the styles of symbolic closure differ, but the effect is the same.  Desire for the object is rewarded with status. Others desire to imitate you.  Failure to desire the object is rewarded with ridicule and disgust.

Those who do not desire the “object” are anathema.  Either they are “out of touch” (like, incapable of appreciating theoretical aesthetics or tragic drama) or “ignorant” (like, incapable of appreciating the utility of Utilitarianism).

As a result, everything contrary is either a scandal or a problem that has to be solved.  It is like sculpting in stone.  A form is hidden beneath the surface of Society.  A hammer and chisel is required to get it out.

Allow me to contemplate the effects of passing to our own times from the timeless realm of evolutionary history, to unconstrained complexity from constrained complexity, to our comedic and unreasonable conundrum from biological adaptation, to mimesis^{unconstrained} from mimesis^constrained.

When individuals today mimic (the desires of) Nietzsche, playing the role of Zarathustra, the ultimate “golden calf” (a Socratic Dionysian visionary exclusively worthy of imitation), they (competitively) pursue the opportunity to gain the status of “the one who sacrifices for the ‘object’ that we all relate to”.  In doing so, they heroically parody the more ancient than “ancient” adaptive aspiration, characterizing our distant ancestors, to sacrifice everything for the sake of the “object that brings us into relation”.

We may call the resulting social construction, in all its manifestations, “modern art”.

When people today mimic (the desires of) Rousseau, playing the role of the theoretical man, the social scientist who is well aware of the ridiculousness of sacrifice, they (competitively) pursue the opportunity to gain the status of “the one who sacrifices for the ‘object’ that we all relate to”. They also strive to diminish the status of others engaging in the same pursuits (but in a different symbolic order).  Their pro-object is “the voice of reason” and their anti-object is “the voice of superstition”.

We may call the resulting social construction, in all its manifestations, “modern bureaucracy”.

Dante almost got himself petrified during his voyage through Hell.  The furies called for Medusa to appear.

They should have called for Nietzsche and Rousseau. They were equally capable of closing a symbolic order and making it watertight.  When they looked out onto their world, they saw only imitators or detractors.

The furies’ call would have instigated a hilarious scene, where Nietzsche and Rousseau regarded one another, and Nietzsche saw a “theoretical man” and Rousseau saw a “man without reason, full of primitive associations”, before each turning the other to stone, or maybe, before both falling in love.

When Medusa looked out, she saw only women and stones, so intense was her mimetic rivalry.

When Dante looked out, he did not turn anyone to stone.

Dante saw through the eyes of a sinner.  His message was: Do not mimic me.

As a result, he spoke a language (a symbolic order) much larger than himself, a symbolic order that could never close itself off as the imitators imitated and the detractors detracted, because the moment that one looked at the empty space, one saw the only thing that could not be – must not be – “the object that brings us all into relation”: a resurrected corpse.

Yet there He was.

Whenever you see a self-anointed pretender, acting out the total tragedy of Nietzsche or the social science of Rousseau, close your eyes, for fear that your heart will turn to stone.

The pretenders want (they desire) to incorporate you into the fullness of their Nothing.  Either you join them and speak their language or you are portrayed as the enemy of “art” or “science”.

There is no escape from their lapidary transfiguration.

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau, in their own ways, created symbolic orders – specialized languages – that put “something” in the “empty space” left when we stopped living in a world of constrained complexity.

Both Nietzsche and Rousseau, themselves, were keys to their symbolic orders.  Others (unwittingly, because this is what we do) mimicked their desires. Some mimicked in rivalry and some in admiration.

Their (adopted) desires set the stage for their competition to be the suffering servants of art or social science.