Summary of text [comment] page 63

Chapter 2 is titled “The Sequels of Sin”.

The first section is titled “Sin in itself as punishment”. This section examines more closely the conclusion “that it is not God who punishes sin, but sin punishes itself”.

From a judicial perspective, there is a sequence. A wrongdoing is followed by punishment.

From the perspective of decision, a sin and its punishment coincide, because the sin habituates behaviors and attitudes associated with a state of sin.

The state of self-destruction is not impenetrable to interpellation. The sin is always challenged by grace, just as grace is always challenged by temptations.

[In our current era, we rarely experience the cultural and natural clues that call us to survive. Compared to Paleolithic folk, we are rich, boring, conceited and dissatisfied. Even the poorest among us feels the emptiness.

Then comes think^pro-object. “The luminous object of organization” promises the Future. But that Future is “a utopia that returns us to the world before the first singularity”. That Future is not the future. That Future is “the past Lebenswelt of hand speech talk and constrained complexity”.

The idols pretend to be the portals to a wonderful world just beyond our reach. Yet that world is dead. The idols are death traps. They are passages to “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”. They are descents to civilizational annihilation.

Thus I conclude section 1.7, “God and sin”.]

[Why is think^pro-object attractive to those who are not elites?

The object may somehow remind the individual of “the Lebenswelt that ‘he’ evolved in”.

The object promises to resolve the tensions between wonder and terror, fullness and hunger, love and hate, collectivism and individualism, as well as any other dichotomy that you can speak of.

How could this be?

Well, these tensions could never be articulated in “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”. Our ancestors could not abstract these differences. They could sense them, feel them through their intuition, but they could never render them as either-or propositions. Our primordial innocence was full of poverty, drama, revelations and bliss. Before the first singularity, our ancestors lived life to the full. This is the way we evolved to be.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[Here is one guess concerning the hidden attraction of all think^pro-objects.

“The luminous object that brings individuals into organization” unconsciously lures the subject into “imagining that ‘he’ will return the Lebenswelt before civilization”.

“The Lebenswelt that we evolved in” serves (unconsciously) as an attractor or an object^rel. The object promises to create a world full of belonging, where creature comforts are heroically neglected, where matters of life and death are always before us, where our words have clear meanings, and where we do not know any better.]

[What about those who are not elites?

Why is think^pro-object attractive?]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[The elites will always be pro-object. Think^pro-object drove them to acquire sovereign power in the first place. Elites gain by accusing innocents of think^anti-object. The accused innocents are scapegoats.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[What was the hidden attraction of think^pro-Enlil?

What mimetic rivalry swept Enlil into dominance?

What was the mimetic contagion?]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[In our current Lebenswelt, only (actual or potential) elites accuse others of think^anti-object.

Who else benefits when golden calves sacrifice scapegoats? Who else has motivation?

Remember, John the Baptist was beheaded when Herod had to keep his promise to his dinner guests. Jesus was crucified when Pilate would not stand up to a crowd. Both preserved their positions as golden calves by sacrificing a scapegoat.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[How relevant are Rene Girard’s theories?

On the other hand, I can wonder:

Was the dehumanization and the scapegoating of others (within the group) a feature of pre-singularity band and village cultures? Was it a characteristic of the world of constrained complexity? Was it typical of “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”?

Or is it a unique characteristic of unconstrained complexity?

Here, the hypothesis in An Archaeology of the Fall proves valuable.

I think that scapegoating is a feature of unconstrained complexity, not constrained complexity. It is a feature of our current Lebenswelt, not “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in”.

Or, it may be a feature of “the Lebenswelt that we evolved in” that became deranged with the change of representation from innocent reference to projected reference.]

Summary of text [comment] pages 61-62

[Rene Girard’s scenario of “the scapegoat mechanism yielding (through reversal) sovereign power” is echoed in chapter 14 of a totally unrelated book: Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How To Build the Future by Peter A. Theil with Blake Masters (2014).

The chapter is titled, The Founders.

It sounds just like Rene Girard.]