Who gets the blame for collective irresponsibility (124-127)?

Here is a good option: a scapegoat.

Menninger preferred to blame the group leaders.  You know, “the golden calves”.

Not to fault Rene Girard on this, but focusing on the “scapegoat” ignores another feature of group-think: “golden-calfing”.

The golden calf is the person who is invested with all the invincibility associated with the collective.  This person cannot be questioned.  Everything she – I mean, he – does is correct, no matter how stupid or dysfunctional or short sighted or … without a conscience.  No doubt, the golden calf of the Exodus served a similar function.  That golden calf could do no wrong until … oh hell, is that Moses?

If you look at the Passion of Jesus the Messiah, you can see that He played the role of the scapegoat.  As Girard pointed out, there is significance to that.

At the same time, a host of figures were cast as the golden calves, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Pontius Pilate, Herod, and best of all, Barabbas.  There is significance to that as well.

The scapegoat gets the blame for the collective irresponsibility that is personified by the golden calf.

Perhaps, we can turn the question around, as Menninger did in a number vignettes in Chapter 7: Why would individuals resist wrongs (committed as part of a group)?

Menninger recounted the story of a Dominican friar, Antonio de Montesinos, who, in 1511, preached against putting the Indians of Hispaniola into slavery.  He and his monastery stood firm until word was sent to the King of Spain.  The learned men of the Spanish Church (of great influence at the time) rebuked Montesinos for his error.

The monastery had a conscience.  The King of Spain and his courtier scholars did not.  Shame on them.

This example shows why it is so easy to criticize Christianity.  Some Christians are always seeking accommodation with “the Powers that Be”.  “The Powers that Be” act without conscience.  Christians (as a group) get the blame.

This points out the obvious advantage to group-think: Group-think allows you to act without conscience.  Even better, to the extent that you buy into the system, group-think will exchange your old traditional super-ego (a system of tautologies that mark what is good and evil, formed from family, faith, community and guild) with its own (system of tautologies).

This offers an answer to the question: Why would individuals want to commit wrongs (as part of a group) that they never would have committed as individuals?

Answer: These individuals would have committed the wrongs on their own, if they lacked (what a Christian would call) “conscience”.

Group-think influences how members will act out.

Group-think provides the illusion of invulnerability, the capacity to ignore warnings and to construct rationalizations (no matter how nutty), the comfort of unquestioned belief in the inherent morality of the group, targets for aggression (Others, whether in-group or out-group), and the Holy Grail – um, Holy Idol – of “correct thought”.

Best of all, group-think provides absolution for all atrocities committed under its name.  Individuals can commit wrongs as members of a group that they would never have committed as individuals.

Menninger listed examples (101-123).  Each of these examples raises, in its own way, the question: Why would individuals want to commit wrongs (as part of a group) that they never would have committed as individuals?

Instead of a Judeo-Christian nested form underlying Menninger’s nested form of crime(sin(symptom)), “free-will” probably belongs to a separate, intersecting nested form.

In Chapter 7, titled “Sin as Collective Responsibility”, Menninger dramatically shifted from the nested form of “crime(sin(symptom))” to another form, something like “collective irresponsibility(sin(the seven deadly “vices” (Chapter 8))”.

For Menninger, individuals express themselves within the confines of the groups within which they have loose membership.  Groups spontaneously organize.  Why? Membership implies self-interest.

Member’s self-interest has all the qualities of the “symptom”, discussed in Chapter 6.  However, with groups, something new enters the picture, especially when it comes to “what groups do all the time”: “group-think”.

Group-think is a kind of self-deception, or maybe, a deception among selves. Just as “crime” puts “sin” into a normal context.  “Group-think” puts “sin” into a normal context.  But “group-think” and “crime” cannot be exchanged for one another.

The resulting intersecting nested form.

This is the resulting intersecting nested forms.

Step 2 for the intersecting nested form.

This is the second step in the intersecting nested form.

Let me put that into a picture.  This is step 1.

This is the first step in the intersecting nested form.

Now, I will raise a question that must be visited more than once: Does a Judeo-Christian nested structure underlie Menninger’s nested form of crime(sin(symptom)) as well as the Progressive nested form of crime(political incorrectness(symptom))?

The question itself hints that Menninger has already indicated a Judeo-Christian nested form beneath the Progressive.

But is that enough?  Are there even deeper forms?

One clue comes at the start of chapter 6, with Menninger’s brief discussion and dismissal of the idea of “free will”.

He raised the idea then asked: What if you were not conscious of what you were doing?

“Free will” clearly does not underlie “symptom”.

“Symptom” belongs to a different “coordinate axis” than “free will”.

A “nested form that contains free will“ complements a “nested form that contains symptom”, even though both “free will” and “symptom” label “coping with the stress of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance”.

So the nested patterns so far are, for Menninger’s original axis:

Crime(sin(symptom))

Then there is a suggestion of a complementary Judeo-Christian axis. We can only guess:

Possibly – something like divine judgment(sin(something to do with free will))

Notably, both nested forms intersect in the realm of actuality.

As noted in the introductory blogs, at the same time that Menninger proposed that “sin” go into the slot for the realm of actuality, the Public Cult of Progressivism had already initiated a host of alternatives that now fall under the label “political incorrectness”.

So, Menninger’s argument ended up as crime(political incorrectness(symptom)).

This substitution does not change the nested structure.  However, it does change the point of accountability.

According to Menninger, God holds the person accountable.  “Sin” is a “transgression of the law of God; disobedience of the divine will; moral failure.  Sin is failure to realize in conduct and character the moral ideal, at least as fully as possible under existing circumstances; failure to do as one ought towards one’s fellow man (Webster)” (18-19).

According to the Public Cult of Progressivism, the central state holds the person accountable.  “Sexist”, “polluter”, “racist”, “capitalist”, “homophobe” blame the person in precisely the way that “sin” does?

Is there a difference?

Perhaps it is this:

In Christianity, the accuser is also a sinner.

In Progressivism, the accuser is a saint.

In Chapter 6, Menninger showed how some “sins” were replaced by “symptoms” as “signs of coping with dis-ease”, where the “dis-ease” derived from the two drives of “seeing pleasure and avoiding pain”.

In the frame of the nested form, however, “symptoms” do not replace “sins”.  Instead, “symptoms make sins possible”.

Thus, Menninger’s argument can be encapsulated in the nested form of crime(sin(symptom)).

“Crime” puts “the actuality that is sin” into context.

“Symptoms” make “the actuality of sin” possible.

“The actualities of sin” make “crime” appear real.

“The actualities of sin” situate various “symptoms”.

In Menninger’s perspective, even though “sin” has been eclipsed by “crime” and “symptoms”, the term remains important.  Even if you excluded “sins that had been declared crimes” and “sins that could be explained as symptoms”, a lot of territory remained.

From the nested point of view, all the territory remains.