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.

When it turned out that our distant ancestors could not survive without helping one another, without bonding to one another, mimesis^constrained came into God’s creation.

We desire the “object that brings us into relation” because that is what allows us “to be alive in the way that we are alive”.  That is our animating principle.

Through this “object”, each one of us finds her own “niche”. We do not even know what we are doing.  We just do it.  Our nature is to find “the object” that brings each one of us into relation.

If that nature defines us as “the image of God”, then by definition, God must be the Object that brings Himself into Relation.

This error prone machination did not operate in our heart of hearts before the Fall.

All of evolved life, up to the point of our departure, paralleled mimesis^constrained, in this most realistic and fantastic sense:

Life sacrificed itself in order to live.

Individuals risked everything.  For what?  Reproductive success?  Yes, and more: the desire to be alive in the way that they are alive.

A simple rule coupled to an animating principle.  Voila, the diversity of life.

Every species learned their desires from others, insofar as others provided their niche.  “The Umwelt” is “the creature being in its niche”; a space that others created in their desire for – their pursuit of – the same “object”; “to live”.

Here we have “the object that brings all creatures into relation” in its wondrous simplicity.