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René Girard on Blood Sacrifice // 270 · PlasticPills Critical Theory & Philosophy

0:08
Speaker 1: Let's start with this guys the public has not heard
0:11
Speaker 1: our amazing if i if i do say so myself
0:14
Speaker 1: amazing and unmissable premium dives into violence this is number
0:20
Speaker 1: four or five thereabouts but we have discussed violence all
0:26
Speaker 1: agree that violence is never perhaps Yes, I'm going to
0:31
Speaker 1: say that. Never an irrational outburst. It is almost always symbolic,
0:37
Speaker 1: and it is always communicative. Now, there may be goodly
0:42
Speaker 1: communicative violence and badly communicated violence, but mostly everyone agrees
0:47
Speaker 1: in the value of violence, as we've already learned. And now,
0:51
Speaker 1: as we enter the dark season, the dark season on
0:55
Speaker 1: the earth, the season of 9-11, Charlie Chirk, carly chirk
1:03
Speaker 1: carly chirk rip october 7 luigi's mansion you know a
1:09
Speaker 1: bunch of symbolic violence anniversaries and we're the fact that
1:15
Speaker 1: we're all going to be mowed down by andreal drones
1:17
Speaker 1: as soon as this ai vet collapses you know yeah
1:22
Speaker 1: it really is the least you could do for yourself
1:25
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our patreon because when your own your
1:29
Speaker 1: own increasingly likely to be violent death occurs, you will
1:34
Speaker 1: have wanted to be able to understand it symbolically on
1:38
Speaker 1: your way out as you depart this world. So join
1:41
Speaker 1: the conversation. I hope that's a good selling point. Now today,
1:45
Speaker 1: we're looking at an older, perhaps oldest form of symbolic violence,
1:51
Speaker 1: one that perhaps underpins all the others, and that is
1:56
Speaker 1: blood sacrifice. Now, we don't typically see blood sacrifice walking
2:01
Speaker 1: down the streets of Toronto, but maybe we actually do.
2:06
Speaker 1: Maybe we do in a different sublimated form. There is
2:12
Speaker 1: a bunch of precursors to this episode that we've already
2:15
Speaker 1: covered that it felt like this was a very natural progression.
2:19
Speaker 1: We have references to the Homo Sacer in here. Indirect,
2:24
Speaker 1: not direct. We have references to symbolic exchange and death.
2:29
Speaker 1: We have references to Jordan Peterson, because this is very
2:32
Speaker 1: much in the Jordan Peterson family of philosophy, which I
2:37
Speaker 1: mean only partially to disparage it. What I mean is,
2:41
Speaker 1: here's my premise. Here's one Bible story that proves it.
2:44
Speaker 1: Here's a Greek myth that proves it.
2:46
Speaker 2: There we go.
2:46
Speaker 1: It's a universal truth. Now, Girard is not as bad
2:50
Speaker 1: as Peterson. No one will be surprised to hear. But
2:54
Speaker 1: it's this style. Here I have three examples, therefore I've
2:58
Speaker 1: discovered a universal truth.
3:00
Speaker 3: Yeah.
3:01
Speaker 1: And Girard also, we talked about J.D. Vance and Peter
3:08
Speaker 1: Thiel and Peter Thiel's apocalypticism. And there are a lot
3:12
Speaker 1: of accounts circulating that are trying to explain Peter Thiel's
3:19
Speaker 1: frankly psychotic behavior i think we described him as having
3:22
Speaker 1: chat gbt psychosis except he got psychosis from real life
3:26
Speaker 1: instead of from a sycophantic chat bot he got it
3:29
Speaker 1: from sycophantic people but yeah um i don't think we
3:32
Speaker 1: can account for peter teal's insanity from gerard but it's
3:39
Speaker 1: not a bad place to start yeah and i say
3:43
Speaker 1: that as someone who liked the reading actually you know
3:45
Speaker 1: i i know what the schizo conservatives are doing with
3:48
Speaker 1: it but I am here for it whenever someone says
3:52
Speaker 1: everything we do still has that same underlying, meaning that
3:57
Speaker 1: it did 5,000 years ago. We just rationalize it in
4:00
Speaker 1: a way that makes our social rituals appear normal to
4:04
Speaker 1: us when they remain the same. They remain the same irrational, symbolic,
4:10
Speaker 1: egregoric ritual magic, basically.
4:12
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I agree.
4:13
Speaker 3: I felt like it was a fun read. It does
4:16
Speaker 3: kind of make these big broad sweeping generalizations and explanations
4:22
Speaker 3: that you know i think there's a lot of room
4:24
Speaker 3: to contest them but i think the the story he
4:26
Speaker 3: tells is kind of a fun one it's also pretty
4:29
Speaker 3: like easy read i felt in some ways like it
4:31
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't like hyper like as far as these
4:34
Speaker 3: kinds of topics go i felt like the writing was
4:37
Speaker 3: relatively clear i don't know.
4:39
Speaker 4: If you guys agree like it was just like but.
4:42
Speaker 3: Like not in a bad way.
4:43
Speaker 4: Like it was it was like it was it was
4:45
Speaker 4: It was just like pretty.
4:45
Speaker 3: Direct, like not using too much jargon, kind of just
4:48
Speaker 3: explaining what he means in like a pretty good way.
4:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't be deceived. We only like French people on
4:54
Speaker 1: this podcast and this guy is fake French because he
4:57
Speaker 1: did his PhD in the States and I think only
5:00
Speaker 1: taught in the States, like since the 50s even.
5:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he randomly, I think, did his PhD, I
5:06
Speaker 3: want to say, at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. So
5:09
Speaker 3: it's just like a weird, like, I mean, that's a
5:11
Speaker 3: good university. I'm not throwing shade at that university. I'm
5:13
Speaker 3: just saying it's like, an unusual place for someone with
5:15
Speaker 3: that kind of name and like that kind of topic
5:19
Speaker 3: to have done their PhD. Yeah.
5:21
Speaker 2: And I think he, he worked at Stanford. He was
5:26
Speaker 2: at it.
5:26
Speaker 5: He worked at Stanford. That's why he has all these
5:29
Speaker 5: American followers. And I think Peter Thiel went to Stanford
5:32
Speaker 5: for like philosophy or something.
5:34
Speaker 2: That's why he knows about him.
5:36
Speaker 1: He studied philosophy. Are you sure? I know he did
5:39
Speaker 1: his JD and, But did he do... That's what.
5:42
Speaker 5: Teal said in one of the videos I watched. He's like,
5:44
Speaker 5: I was at Stanford doing philosophy, but whatever.
5:49
Speaker 2: They meet there. He's got some disciples from Stanford.
5:52
Speaker 3: He might have been hanging around at Stanford. Maybe he
5:55
Speaker 3: was studying there for a bit.
5:56
Speaker 4: I don't know.
5:58
Speaker 5: I think he might have been a professor there or something.
6:00
Speaker 4: Oh, Girard.
6:01
Speaker 1: Oh, you're right.
6:02
Speaker 4: Yeah, Girard.
6:03
Speaker 1: His degree, his second degree was in law, but his
6:06
Speaker 1: undergrad was in philosophy.
6:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Gerard must have been a visiting or a
6:12
Speaker 5: permanent prof there. But anyway, yeah, he's known for his mimesis,
6:19
Speaker 5: his theory of mimesis and mimetic violence, right? Which is
6:26
Speaker 5: another broad theory. But this one, you know, violence and
6:31
Speaker 5: the sacred, reminds me of one of those, yeah, big
6:34
Speaker 5: universalizing theories. Like he's found a new way to read
6:39
Speaker 5: The text of human history, it kind of reminds me
6:43
Speaker 5: of like Freud unlocking a new reading of like Oedipus.
6:48
Speaker 5: And then suddenly it's like, oh, look, like father-son conflict, Oedipus, oh, Hamlet, oh,
6:56
Speaker 5: Greek myth, like everywhere.
6:58
Speaker 2: And then all throughout.
6:59
Speaker 5: The biblical texts and all the religious traditions. And you
7:03
Speaker 5: just trace this like discovery through everything. And it becomes
7:08
Speaker 5: this big universalizing claim. And then it starts having this
7:12
Speaker 5: interdisciplinary effect where, as we saw last time we talked
7:17
Speaker 5: about it, the sociology of violence with Gesa Lindemann, she
7:22
Speaker 5: takes up some of Gerard's. I guess Agamben must be
7:26
Speaker 5: like taking a lot of cues from Gerard's theory of sacrifice.
7:33
Speaker 4: As well.
7:34
Speaker 2: Homo, you mentioned Homo Sacer, the sacred sacrifice.
7:38
Speaker 1: Human it may be that they're working from the same
7:40
Speaker 1: sources which are uber a mouse and a tie i
7:45
Speaker 1: think it may be the same sources or maybe them
7:48
Speaker 1: in dialogue i'm not sure well the theory that i
7:52
Speaker 1: guess gerard unlocked much like like freud's major insight is
7:58
Speaker 1: that sacrifice is a method of for society to manage
8:06
Speaker 1: its internal conflicts. Since mimesis leads to people desiring the
8:14
Speaker 1: same sorts of things and it leads to conflict, mimetic desire,
8:20
Speaker 1: meaning the desire of the other, you start to get
8:24
Speaker 1: into conflicts over objects that are commonly desired. So it
8:29
Speaker 1: leads to violence.
8:30
Speaker 5: And sacrifice is one of these methods for society to, um,
8:36
Speaker 5: choose a victim as a substitute for ongoing cycles of
8:40
Speaker 5: violence or mass violence, a sacrificial victim is needed in
8:45
Speaker 5: order to prevent violence from getting out of hand temporarily,
8:51
Speaker 5: at least. And he traced that's the insight he kind
8:54
Speaker 5: of traces through biblical scenes from biblical literature, Greek mythology.
9:03
Speaker 2: And literature in general.
9:04
Speaker 5: He's, he is, he's very literary in his sensibilities.
9:09
Speaker 1: Yeah.
9:09
Speaker 3: And then it goes on, uh, so like, like to
9:12
Speaker 3: kind of, to give maybe a bird's eye view of
9:14
Speaker 3: what the chapter does is, yeah, like makes this, this
9:18
Speaker 3: observation about like mimetic ritualized, or sorry, not ritualized, uh, like,
9:22
Speaker 3: like reciprocal violence kind of, right. That, that people will
9:26
Speaker 3: seek vengeance on each other, and then that creates kind
9:29
Speaker 3: of a never-ending.
9:31
Speaker 4: Cycle of violence, right?
9:33
Speaker 3: With revenge, and then you kill someone, and then you
9:36
Speaker 3: want to get revenge, which, you know, fits into with
9:38
Speaker 3: this mimesis thing, and then sacrifices one level that can
9:41
Speaker 3: kind of try to replace that cycle. And then he
9:45
Speaker 3: talks about, like, these other levels, right? Like, ritualized settlements. So, like,
9:51
Speaker 3: I think he talks about, like, trial by combat, And
9:54
Speaker 3: like this specific type of like killing by kinsmen called
9:59
Speaker 3: like Chukchi. and like a few other things. And then,
10:04
Speaker 3: and then like now we have the judicial system, which
10:06
Speaker 3: is like the final level that, that now has replaced
10:10
Speaker 3: the cycle of violence. So like the judicial system is
10:13
Speaker 3: something that then kind of yeah, like channels that stabilizes
10:18
Speaker 3: that desire to, for like perpetual violence by putting the
10:23
Speaker 3: function in this like impersonal state to carry out those things.
10:27
Speaker 3: But he also thinks it's kind of unstable potentially that.
10:31
Speaker 4: Like it could regress towards us.
10:34
Speaker 3: So that's kind of like a bird's eye view sort of,
10:36
Speaker 3: I think what the chapter is describing these like different levels,
10:40
Speaker 3: these developments in trying to address this like never ending
10:44
Speaker 3: cycle of violence.
10:45
Speaker 1: He takes our understanding of, Because one of the very
10:49
Speaker 1: common Steven Pinker type of statements is like, look at
10:54
Speaker 1: how barbaric the past was. They just killed animals for
10:57
Speaker 1: no reason because they believed superstitiously in some god that
11:02
Speaker 1: they were trying to appease. Look at how stupid they are. Now,
11:07
Speaker 1: I guess he kind of agrees with that.
11:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, kind of. This is a former....
11:13
Speaker 1: An earlier stage of evolution and the highest stage of
11:16
Speaker 1: evolution is the justice system, which replaces sacrifice. Sacrifice, dare
11:21
Speaker 1: I say, is sacrificed for the sake of a judicial system.
11:27
Speaker 1: But he also says there's a necessary logic to this.
11:32
Speaker 1: And there's a few presuppositions that go into this, which
11:34
Speaker 1: is okay. I just wanted to point them out. But
11:37
Speaker 1: he at least, Thiel at least got from him, this
11:41
Speaker 1: is a very... socially pessimistic view in that society is
11:50
Speaker 1: agonistic from day one, and on day two, it turns
11:54
Speaker 1: to violence. What evidence do we have for this? Well,
11:58
Speaker 1: Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel were the third and
12:04
Speaker 1: the fourth person alive, and one kills the other over
12:08
Speaker 1: a sacrifice. And this is the proof that the necessary
12:12
Speaker 1: proof that violence is always and forever part of the
12:16
Speaker 1: social process. If it's not going to be external violence,
12:19
Speaker 1: then it's going to be internal violence. And the only
12:21
Speaker 1: way to prevent internal violence is by other violence, like
12:26
Speaker 1: killing animals. There was no evidence presented for this. He
12:30
Speaker 1: just continent-hopped around to societies that did animal sacrifice. But
12:36
Speaker 1: I think an anthropologist would have some questions as to
12:40
Speaker 1: the method. including I'm sure there are societies that exist
12:45
Speaker 1: that don't have this as part of it.
12:47
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, that's interesting. But I mean, aren't those other
12:51
Speaker 3: societies like couldn't, I'm guessing a Gerard type person would
12:55
Speaker 3: find some mechanism that society that's replacing the violence, right?
12:59
Speaker 3: He would be like, I don't know, like, I don't
13:00
Speaker 3: know if you have an example in mind, but he
13:02
Speaker 3: would probably say like, Oh, this is, you know, this is,
13:05
Speaker 3: this is doing some, some form of, of, um, what's
13:09
Speaker 3: it called of like ritualized settlement.
13:11
Speaker 4: Right.
13:11
Speaker 3: So maybe it doesn't have a judicial system and maybe,
13:14
Speaker 3: maybe there's like, cause like, I mean, I just like,
13:18
Speaker 3: depends on maybe what we're defining as violence, but like,
13:20
Speaker 3: it just, it just does seem like a base fact
13:24
Speaker 3: that there's always going to be conflict. Like, I mean,
13:26
Speaker 3: it's like, I mean, it's the, it's the claim like, Oh,
13:28
Speaker 3: there's societies where there is no conflict and like conflict
13:30
Speaker 3: is going to lead to the temptation of violence. Like,
13:32
Speaker 3: I think that's, I don't know if you need, like,
13:35
Speaker 3: I don't know if you need like justification for that.
13:39
Speaker 1: I mean, you're slipping between an inane truism and then
13:41
Speaker 1: what he's actually doing, because you're saying, well, conflict exists.
13:44
Speaker 1: No one says that conflict doesn't exist, but he's saying
13:47
Speaker 1: conflict is the mechanism underlying all social processes ultimately, which
13:52
Speaker 1: is a different claim. And then he sees, if he
13:55
Speaker 1: sees some people that are doing something besides violence, then
13:59
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, well, that's violence in disguise. Whereas, for example,
14:02
Speaker 1: he cites another anthropologist here, Maus. Maus explains sacrifice not
14:07
Speaker 1: through sublimated violence, but he says if you get a
14:13
Speaker 1: good harvest or something, you're creating debt, and in order
14:16
Speaker 1: to repay the debt to the other world, the gods,
14:21
Speaker 1: the true world, you have to burn some of it
14:23
Speaker 1: so that you can refill up their shit. So, I mean,
14:27
Speaker 1: it's not to say that violence does or doesn't exist anywhere.
14:30
Speaker 1: It's if if you look at something and you say, well,
14:33
Speaker 1: that's just violence in disguise, you're already finding the thing
14:36
Speaker 1: that you want to find. And that's why I think
14:38
Speaker 1: he's a social pessimist.
14:39
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
14:39
Speaker 4: Okay.
14:40
Speaker 1: I mean that you can have alternate stories and he's
14:44
Speaker 1: telling the violent plus psychological pressure. Plus we need a
14:50
Speaker 1: vent and the vent is going to be killing one
14:52
Speaker 1: of our own.
14:53
Speaker 3: Yeah. It might, it might just be like a difference
14:55
Speaker 3: in emphasis, but you're right. He does really emphasize that
14:57
Speaker 3: as being the foundation. Um, maybe I was just reading
15:00
Speaker 3: it a bit more like, generously or, or generally like, yeah,
15:05
Speaker 3: well of course there's always going to be like the, the,
15:07
Speaker 3: the temptation, the possibility of violence. Like when someone wrongs you,
15:12
Speaker 3: it's like, uh, you know, I don't know. I was like, I,
15:16
Speaker 3: this read, this reading got me thinking about a whole
15:19
Speaker 3: bunch of phenomena that happen. Like I, I, I often
15:22
Speaker 3: think about, I watch a lot of true crime docs
15:25
Speaker 3: about how maybe this person's not actually guilty. And it
15:29
Speaker 3: always strikes me how, the family of the victims, is
15:34
Speaker 3: always resistant to the idea that it could have been
15:37
Speaker 3: someone else. And then I think to myself, it's like, well,
15:40
Speaker 3: wouldn't it be, like, I don't know, there might be
15:43
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons for that.
15:43
Speaker 4: I don't know if it exactly relates to this, like, this.
15:46
Speaker 3: Vengeance function or something, but it just strikes, that always
15:50
Speaker 3: strikes me as kind of interesting, and this, for some reason,
15:52
Speaker 3: made me think about that. I'm not exactly sure what
15:54
Speaker 3: the connection is, but it just makes me think that, like,
15:56
Speaker 3: in us, there's always this nascent, like, uh, like potential
16:02
Speaker 3: to want retribution, uh, in, in potentially like a violent form, uh,
16:08
Speaker 3: like above and beyond, uh, like, like some procedural settlement, right?
16:14
Speaker 3: It's like, we actually, like we get attached to no,
16:16
Speaker 3: like that person's like, I want that person punished. Right.
16:19
Speaker 3: And it's like, well, what if there's evidence they didn't
16:21
Speaker 3: do that? It's like, that almost becomes forget it. Like I'm,
16:24
Speaker 3: I'm attached now to this person being the one that,
16:26
Speaker 3: that is going to be the object of punishment.
16:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, he does sort of talk about violence as
16:35
Speaker 5: a universal phenomenon. Right at the beginning, when he says,
16:41
Speaker 5: you know, violence is something that arises in somebody, it's
16:46
Speaker 5: easier to stoke up than it is to sort of
16:49
Speaker 5: quell the impulse towards violence. And so once the set
16:54
Speaker 5: towards violence is there, it needs a resolution or it's
17:01
Speaker 5: not going away. And so if, if you don't have access,
17:06
Speaker 5: if you don't have easy access to the thing that
17:10
Speaker 5: you're trying to like, whatever, be violent towards, get revenge upon,
17:15
Speaker 5: like vent your frustration upon, then you will naturally seek
17:20
Speaker 5: a substitute for that object of violence. And he even
17:25
Speaker 5: cites like an animal ethnologist who, ethologist saying that some
17:31
Speaker 5: species of fish, if they're deprived of their natural enemies,
17:35
Speaker 5: they'll turn their aggression upon their own family members and
17:38
Speaker 5: destroy them. It's like violence demands this object, almost like
17:45
Speaker 5: a sacrifice. And if it can't get its object, then
17:49
Speaker 5: it needs a substitute. And he seems to be saying
17:52
Speaker 5: on the one hand that like anthropologists who study violence
17:56
Speaker 5: in like non-modern societies have got it all wrong because
18:00
Speaker 5: they haven't paid attention to this substitutional relationship. They focus
18:07
Speaker 5: on the violence towards the sacrificial victim and not towards
18:11
Speaker 5: this substitutional function, which turns out to be an important
18:17
Speaker 5: social function in pre-modern societies. And on the other hand,
18:21
Speaker 5: they focus too much on a religious interpretation of sacrifice
18:24
Speaker 5: and So that religious interpretation, since we're all modern and
18:28
Speaker 5: we're not religious anymore, it makes the sacrifice seem completely meaningless.
18:34
Speaker 5: So they miss it on like two accounts. I think
18:38
Speaker 5: he says that the theological interpretation of violence is not
18:47
Speaker 5: important in the sense that like, okay, if you're not, religious,
18:53
Speaker 5: if you think it's meaningless because it's in a religious context, well,
18:56
Speaker 5: like think again, because these stories he talks about, like the, uh,
19:01
Speaker 5: or is it the sub the, the, when, when Jacob
19:06
Speaker 5: fools his father into giving him his blessing, instead of
19:10
Speaker 5: giving the blessing to Jacob's older brother, a sow or whatever, there's,
19:15
Speaker 5: there's no involvement of God in that at all. Anyway,
19:20
Speaker 5: when you're reading the stories, like the religious, the deity
19:25
Speaker 5: component is usually kind of in the background anyway. So
19:28
Speaker 5: we can sort of read them without that theological baggage anyway.
19:34
Speaker 5: So really, yeah, it's to say that it has this
19:39
Speaker 5: important social function that the previous interpretations kind of miss.
19:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good. And I also have to note, he
19:47
Speaker 1: uses this example, yeah, there's some fish, you got the
19:52
Speaker 1: fish in the tank, if you take all natural predators out,
19:56
Speaker 1: then the fish, I don't know, probably this one species,
20:00
Speaker 1: it turns on itself and starts eating the members of
20:02
Speaker 1: the group. Anyone else that you can think of who
20:06
Speaker 1: relies on examples of Marine animals in tanks.
20:12
Speaker 3: I don't know.
20:12
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson.
20:14
Speaker 4: Oh, does he?
20:14
Speaker 1: Lobsters.
20:16
Speaker 4: Oh, true.
20:17
Speaker 1: Every man's a lobster fighting in the tank. Every man's
20:20
Speaker 1: a cane or an able. Blah, blah, blah. The crab bucket.
20:24
Speaker 1: The question is, of course, to Mr. Gerard or Mr. Peterson,
20:28
Speaker 1: what about all the animals that don't do that? You
20:30
Speaker 1: found the one that does.
20:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
20:33
Speaker 1: But anyway, back to the argument.
20:35
Speaker 4: Yeah.
20:37
Speaker 1: What is the theology approach to sacrifice is usually the scapegoat,
20:43
Speaker 1: the other scapegoat, not the one that Gerard is associated with,
20:47
Speaker 1: but we need an innocent suffering victim to take the
20:51
Speaker 1: place of the people that have sinned. So we take
20:55
Speaker 1: an animal because an animal is innocent. It can't be,
20:58
Speaker 1: it can't be guilty of anything. And because it's innocent,
21:02
Speaker 1: then it can bear all the sin of the community.
21:04
Speaker 1: And he basically says that's wrong. And that, Sacrifice has
21:09
Speaker 1: nothing to do with appeasing an angry God or anything
21:12
Speaker 1: like that. Like Eric just said, the God, God doesn't
21:15
Speaker 1: even show up in the story. It's rather that you
21:18
Speaker 1: have to have used, you take something that is going
21:23
Speaker 1: to take the place of the violence in the community.
21:28
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing as that kind of scapegoat,
21:31
Speaker 1: except we take the language of guilty and innocent out
21:36
Speaker 1: of it. And it's, we need something that's outside of
21:39
Speaker 1: the community, but close enough that it looks like it
21:43
Speaker 1: fits in. Like an animal, he constantly makes this analogy
21:48
Speaker 1: that the animals that are sacrificed are human enough, or
21:52
Speaker 1: they grow up around humans, or they're close by, or
21:54
Speaker 1: they're important to the human community. You can't like, You
21:57
Speaker 1: can't sacrifice a squirrel, say. It has to be a
22:00
Speaker 1: cow or a sheep or a goat or something central.
22:03
Speaker 1: You're not killing insects. Insects are not suitable sacrifices.
22:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, like wild animals, I guess you wouldn't touch, but
22:10
Speaker 5: domesticated animals would be appropriate.
22:14
Speaker 2: But then there's that double.
22:17
Speaker 5: He points out stories like the Cain and Abel story,
22:21
Speaker 5: where I think I'd say this is like in its
22:25
Speaker 5: most concentrated form. there is this like sort of double function.
22:30
Speaker 5: There's this double substitution where you have, uh, one, one
22:35
Speaker 5: person being substituted for another or one victim for another,
22:40
Speaker 5: the substitute victim for the, for the other victim of where,
22:45
Speaker 5: where the violence is displaced onto the sacrificial victim. And
22:49
Speaker 5: then you have the animal human switch too.
22:53
Speaker 1: So I.
22:55
Speaker 5: Think in the Jacob story, That came through pretty clearly too.
23:00
Speaker 1: You know, our listeners might not be biblically literate.
23:03
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not either.
23:06
Speaker 1: What Eric was saying about the Cain and Abel story
23:08
Speaker 1: is that Cain sacrifices plants, like his crops.
23:14
Speaker 2: Cain is a tiller.
23:15
Speaker 1: And the crops are not a suitable sacrifice. So the
23:18
Speaker 1: other guy, his brother, kills a sheep. This is an
23:22
Speaker 1: acceptable sacrifice. And then Cain kills Abel. to pay back
23:28
Speaker 1: for the accepted versus unaccepted sacrifice. So the Girardian explanation
23:32
Speaker 1: of this is that the lamb successfully absorbed Abel's violence
23:38
Speaker 1: towards Cain, but the plants did not successfully absorb Cain's
23:43
Speaker 1: violence towards Abel. That's why Abel ends up dead. You
23:46
Speaker 1: don't need God to explain the story.
23:48
Speaker 2: Here's the line.
23:49
Speaker 5: He says, one of the brothers kills the other, And
23:52
Speaker 5: the murderer is the one who does not have the
23:55
Speaker 5: violence outlet of animal sacrifice at his disposal.
23:59
Speaker 2: I thought that was really interesting.
24:01
Speaker 3: Yeah.
24:01
Speaker 5: Cain is a tiller of the soil. So his quote
24:05
Speaker 5: unquote sacrifices are just like wheat. Whereas Abel is the shepherd.
24:10
Speaker 5: So he can regularly sacrifice the firstborn of his herds.
24:14
Speaker 5: He could make full animal sacrifices. So Cain kills Abel.
24:19
Speaker 5: Because Cain does not have that animal sacrifice outlet. So
24:24
Speaker 5: he demands, well, he's reading it that way. And likewise, Jacob,
24:30
Speaker 5: the animal-human thing comes into that as well. Because Esau,
24:34
Speaker 5: Jacob's older brother, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing his
24:36
Speaker 5: name right, is a hairy dude. Whereas Jacob is a
24:41
Speaker 5: smooth man. So when he makes the switcheroo, Isaac is
24:47
Speaker 5: blind at this point, but he will touch his son,
24:50
Speaker 5: and he's worried. Jacob's like, oh, he's going to touch me,
24:54
Speaker 5: and he's going to notice that I'm all smooth and
24:57
Speaker 5: not actually my older brother. So he puts on the
25:00
Speaker 5: skin of an animal, the hairy skin of an animal,
25:05
Speaker 5: so that he can fool his father when his father
25:08
Speaker 5: strokes his son, and there's all that hair there. it
25:11
Speaker 5: doesn't reveal that it's actually Jacob usurping his brother's, the
25:20
Speaker 5: blessing that's meant for his older brother. So there's that
25:24
Speaker 5: animal component to it as well, the double sacrifice. And
25:29
Speaker 5: you see that pretty, it's pretty good. It's pretty like
25:33
Speaker 5: those components are there in a lot of these stories.
25:37
Speaker 1: And the third element that's there that you mentioned is trickery.
25:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, deceit.
25:43
Speaker 1: He brings this, of course, up also in a Greek story, Odysseus.
25:48
Speaker 1: Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops. And again, I have no
25:51
Speaker 1: idea if this is true, but he brings it up
25:55
Speaker 1: in two stories and then says, okay, trickery is always
25:58
Speaker 1: part of the sacrifice ritual. So that's probably not true,
26:02
Speaker 1: but he found two cases where it is. But the
26:05
Speaker 1: trickery to him is, is the social community needs to
26:09
Speaker 1: have this outlet of violence that's metaphoric. It's, well, technically metonymic.
26:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, the part for the whole.
26:17
Speaker 1: So you have to catharsize the social violence by letting
26:27
Speaker 1: everyone see this other thing get killed. But you can't
26:32
Speaker 1: make it clear that that's what's happening. So the element
26:35
Speaker 1: of sacrifice, the sacrifice of the goat or whatever at
26:39
Speaker 1: the festival, there's an element of trickery here in that
26:43
Speaker 1: in the stories, you're tricking the cyclops or you're tricking
26:47
Speaker 1: the father figure, you're tricking God and saying, I'm quickly
26:51
Speaker 1: sneaking this in here and giving you an animal instead
26:55
Speaker 1: of the person that the animal represents. So this is
27:00
Speaker 1: to say, if we're still doing sacrificial rituals... we wouldn't
27:06
Speaker 1: be able to notice. So Girard goes one step further
27:10
Speaker 1: and says, we're still doing sacrificial rituals in a way,
27:14
Speaker 1: but even if we were, we wouldn't be able to
27:16
Speaker 1: understand sacrifice anymore, looking back, because it was always about
27:21
Speaker 1: trickery from the start. So we're tricking even ourselves when
27:24
Speaker 1: we try to explain sacrifice.
27:27
Speaker 5: Yeah, I read that as on the social level, when
27:31
Speaker 5: these rituals are being performed, like the deception in the
27:35
Speaker 5: literary expression of it is important on the social level
27:40
Speaker 5: because the ritual, the sacrificial ritual itself has to sort
27:45
Speaker 5: of like make that substitution, substitute the sacrificial victim for
27:52
Speaker 5: the previous intended object of violence, which is bad. So
27:58
Speaker 5: make the sacrificial victim has to substitute for that. So
28:02
Speaker 5: at the same time, like, The illusion has to be
28:06
Speaker 5: there that the sacrificial victim is the victim and it's
28:11
Speaker 5: not really a substitute for anything. But at the same time,
28:15
Speaker 5: the ritual sort of has to preserve that overall substitution
28:19
Speaker 5: structure as well. So there has to be an element
28:22
Speaker 5: of almost self-deception to those involved in the social rituals.
28:27
Speaker 5: It's almost like a social ritual of self-deception where We say, okay,
28:33
Speaker 5: this victim is the one who's going to resolve the
28:36
Speaker 5: cycle of violence. We just need to sacrifice this victim.
28:41
Speaker 5: But at the same time, we know that the victim
28:43
Speaker 5: is not really the intended object of the violence.
28:47
Speaker 2: It's just a stand-in.
28:49
Speaker 5: It's possibly quite innocent and not deserving of the violence
28:53
Speaker 5: that we're directing towards them. But that doesn't matter because
28:56
Speaker 5: the social function of preserving the integrity of the community
29:01
Speaker 5: is is more important than the sort of individual-level justice,
29:06
Speaker 5: which I guess is a major problem with viewing sacrifice
29:11
Speaker 5: today as something preserving the integrity of a broader community.
29:17
Speaker 5: Individualism would see that as unacceptable.
29:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did talk about that recently at some point,
29:24
Speaker 1: that we are the historical aberration for having... individual punishment
29:31
Speaker 1: without any collective punishment. Collective punishment is more often the norm,
29:38
Speaker 1: but our legal systems tend to make a distinction there.
29:43
Speaker 5: And he seems to be saying that the sacrifice story
29:47
Speaker 5: in the Bible, like Christ being sacrificed on the cross,
29:51
Speaker 5: that's obviously one of the most important concentrations of all
29:57
Speaker 5: of this analysis of sacrifice is christ on the cross
30:02
Speaker 5: god's self-sacrificing for the sins of humanity blah blah blah
30:06
Speaker 5: right but there's a shift there because i think with
30:12
Speaker 5: the christian the difference with christianity now and this is
30:17
Speaker 5: why theologians like love gerard gerard gerard and there's like
30:22
Speaker 5: a a Girardian theological school and all that sort of stuff.
30:26
Speaker 5: Because Christianity is different, right? It takes the side of
30:30
Speaker 5: the victim. It takes the side of the innocent victim
30:35
Speaker 5: who's being, who's sort of, I guess, becomes the hero
30:38
Speaker 5: of the sacrifice story. Whereas in other stories, in previous stories,
30:44
Speaker 5: the sacrificial victim is just a means to an end.
30:48
Speaker 5: Whoever is sacrificing the victim, the victim is just instrumentalized.
30:51
Speaker 5: You know, Like Iphigenia, is it, in the story of
30:57
Speaker 5: the Trojan War? If you've seen the movie, I think
31:01
Speaker 5: it goes over this part, the recent movie by Christopher Nolan,
31:05
Speaker 5: that Menelaus, I believe, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to get
31:09
Speaker 5: good winds so that the fleet can sail to Troy
31:13
Speaker 5: in the first place. So the daughter just becomes a
31:16
Speaker 5: sort of, you know, instrument, tool. But Christianity takes the
31:22
Speaker 5: side of the victim. That's a major turning point he sees.
31:26
Speaker 5: Like Christianity is different than all the other stories.
31:30
Speaker 1: And he's Catholic, so. He's paid to say that.
31:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, which is one of the things that I don't
31:38
Speaker 5: really like, I guess, about his whole shtick is how
31:43
Speaker 5: Christian it feels like sometimes when I'm reading his stuff. Yeah,
31:48
Speaker 5: it's like nice and analytical and the stories illustrate what
31:52
Speaker 5: he's saying very well. And he doesn't seem French in
31:55
Speaker 5: that way because it's actually something you can understand. But
31:59
Speaker 5: then on the other hand, it does seem to have
32:00
Speaker 5: like a very Christian message when you watch like an
32:03
Speaker 5: interview with him and it's all kind of concentrated into
32:06
Speaker 5: a 45 minute discussion. Then it seems like very like
32:09
Speaker 5: as a Christian ethic message, which is a little bit weird.
32:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, so sacrifice is really about, it's not about gods
32:20
Speaker 1: or God. I think he even said, not in this text,
32:24
Speaker 1: but I think I've heard him say that the real
32:27
Speaker 1: message of Christianity actually has nothing to do with God,
32:30
Speaker 1: or the death on the cross is not a theological event,
32:33
Speaker 1: it's more a human event, because of the thing that
32:37
Speaker 1: you said. The humans see this kind of model, and
32:40
Speaker 1: from there they can discover the underlying truth. I think
32:44
Speaker 1: it's you discover, you discover via Christ that we're all
32:49
Speaker 1: a part of the cycle of violence. And then we
32:52
Speaker 1: can accept forgiveness and then like extract ourself from the
32:57
Speaker 1: cycle of violence. And that's called what in Christian terms,
33:00
Speaker 1: like salvation and anybody can be redeemed from the cycle.
33:06
Speaker 5: Yeah.
33:07
Speaker 1: But what sacrifice traditionally is really about is the group
33:11
Speaker 1: protecting itself from itself, by choosing an element that is
33:18
Speaker 1: not truly in the group. So it's an animal. And
33:21
Speaker 1: then he goes into debates among, um, anthropologists who say
33:25
Speaker 1: that like, uh, human sacrifice is a completely different order.
33:31
Speaker 1: This is like truly barbaric, or it's only in times
33:34
Speaker 1: of extreme necessity that ancient societies turned out, uh, human sacrifice.
33:39
Speaker 1: And he kind of says, no, that's not true. It's just,
33:42
Speaker 1: The humans that are sacrificed are, what does he say?
33:45
Speaker 1: They're always on the fringes anyway because they're like a virgin.
33:50
Speaker 1: They could be captured. Yeah, prisoners of war or slaves
33:55
Speaker 1: or virgins. Virgins because they have not entered society yet.
34:00
Speaker 1: They're kind of technically outside of it until whatever. Or children.
34:04
Speaker 2: Children.
34:05
Speaker 1: So it seems barbaric, but they do it because they're
34:08
Speaker 1: not real people yet.
34:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
34:11
Speaker 1: But the other one, The other one is sacrificing a ruler. Like,
34:14
Speaker 1: you kill your king or even, like, the king's daughter.
34:18
Speaker 3: And they're not in society either.
34:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're outside.
34:21
Speaker 1: They're above it. I was going to say, perhaps we
34:25
Speaker 1: do it now via celebrities. Celebrities who deserve to take,
34:35
Speaker 1: to absorb all the conflict and dissension and proto-violence in society.
34:42
Speaker 1: when we need to punish them. And I hadn't read
34:45
Speaker 1: this before I made the Ed Sheeran sacrifice video, but
34:50
Speaker 1: you can see the call to sacrifice Ed Sheeran is
34:54
Speaker 1: a call for justice. We need justice for the Palestinians.
35:01
Speaker 1: We need justice against ourselves for supporting killing the Palestinians.
35:07
Speaker 1: Ed Sheeran is at the wrong place at the wrong time.
35:10
Speaker 1: I don't mean to assuage his responsibility, but he didn't
35:13
Speaker 1: kill any Palestinians. I'm sorry. But he now needs to
35:17
Speaker 1: take on the role of being like goaded, scapegoated, as
35:23
Speaker 1: if he was the most responsible party in here. And
35:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if he is or not because he
35:29
Speaker 1: absorbs the feeling. He's public enough. He's outside of society
35:33
Speaker 1: enough being a very rich person. a half a billionaire
35:38
Speaker 1: or whatever. So it satisfies the dissension. The dissension in
35:45
Speaker 1: the rest of society is temporarily abated. So it's that
35:51
Speaker 1: injustice that we know about flowing through our community, the
35:56
Speaker 1: Israel-Palestine injustice. If we burn Ed Sheeran, we can abate
36:02
Speaker 1: that justice. And I mean in effigy, we're burning him
36:05
Speaker 1: on Twitter. And he's the type of object, the acceptable
36:09
Speaker 1: sacrificial object. One reason it's pointed out in every discussion
36:13
Speaker 1: is his net worth, right? It's because his net worth
36:16
Speaker 1: allows him to be sacrificed because he is distinct from
36:20
Speaker 1: a normal person by virtue of net worth. And according
36:25
Speaker 1: to this logic, we need to kill him so that
36:27
Speaker 1: we don't need to kill any of us.
36:31
Speaker 5: And then is, so then is scapegoating like that kind
36:34
Speaker 5: of like the modern holdover? of, of sacrifice where, where
36:39
Speaker 5: society requires a scapegoat and other some, someone to be
36:44
Speaker 5: sort of symbolically or, or excluded to, in, in order
36:49
Speaker 5: to make everything function. I mean, this seems to be
36:53
Speaker 5: the right wing reading of, of Gerard.
36:55
Speaker 3: He doesn't talk that much about scapegoating in this text,
36:57
Speaker 3: does he? I didn't see much of it.
36:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't get to the scapegoat mechanism, but we
37:02
Speaker 1: can see the scapegoat mechanism here on display. But yeah,
37:05
Speaker 1: we have institutions, quote unquote, that do replace the sacrifice,
37:12
Speaker 1: the public sacrifice function that are supposed to do the
37:15
Speaker 1: same thing. So Twitter is an example. You can see,
37:20
Speaker 1: you know, group emotion being directed in this way and
37:25
Speaker 1: then that way. But we also have functional equivalents to
37:29
Speaker 1: sacrifice that do the job that sacrifice did.
37:31
Speaker 3: Yeah.
37:32
Speaker 1: And Victor, what is that? I'll let you because it's
37:35
Speaker 1: your favorite thing.
37:36
Speaker 4: Oh, judicial, a judiciary.
37:39
Speaker 5: Like modern institutions. Like sacrifice is an institution. We'd have
37:44
Speaker 5: to see it as a social institution, but like a pre-modern.
37:47
Speaker 2: One, I guess.
37:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, even he calls it curative, or at least that's
37:50
Speaker 3: the attempt, right? And he's not saying it's not, like
37:54
Speaker 3: he does talk about how it can fall into crisis
37:57
Speaker 3: as well. Like it won't, but the intent is basically.
38:00
Speaker 4: To cure these cycles of violence.
38:01
Speaker 3: I guess it does that in a couple, it does
38:03
Speaker 3: it in a lot of ways. I mean, it does
38:04
Speaker 3: kind of transfer, like it kind of take, it kind
38:08
Speaker 3: of takes the violence out of society and like puts
38:11
Speaker 3: it into this sovereign institution. You also don't have an
38:14
Speaker 3: option to respond to the state, right? So once the
38:16
Speaker 3: state makes a decision, it's like, what are you going
38:19
Speaker 3: to get revenge on the state for carrying it?
38:21
Speaker 4: Like you can't.
38:21
Speaker 3: So it kind of like cuts off the violence there.
38:24
Speaker 3: I mean, people could try, but it's like, you know,
38:26
Speaker 3: and it also doesn't make sense.
38:27
Speaker 2: Proceduralize.
38:28
Speaker 4: It's proceduralized.
38:29
Speaker 3: It's kind of this independent thing. So it's like, how
38:31
Speaker 3: could you, Um, and, and it does also like go
38:35
Speaker 3: after the like right victim in a way, like it
38:39
Speaker 3: does try to find.
38:41
Speaker 4: The guilty party. Whereas like these other.
38:43
Speaker 3: Mechanisms are using often.
38:47
Speaker 4: Like the, the, the placeholder, right.
38:48
Speaker 3: The replacement, whereas the judicial system does try to be like, no,
38:53
Speaker 3: let's find the guilty party. No one can answer that.
38:56
Speaker 3: So it's like the, the, the problem in the older
38:59
Speaker 3: methods of finding the guilty party, is that once you
39:03
Speaker 3: find the guilty party, then that guilty party's family might, like,
39:06
Speaker 3: continue the cycle of violence, right, might come back and respond,
39:09
Speaker 3: and try to, like, keep the cycle going, but in
39:11
Speaker 3: this case, it's like, you can't respond, as I said before,
39:14
Speaker 3: because it's, it's the state, it's like, you can't, it's like,
39:16
Speaker 3: once that's done, it's done, um, and, uh, yeah, and
39:20
Speaker 3: it's also based on these kinds of more abstract functions, right, of, like, justice, guilt, right,
39:26
Speaker 3: kind of creates these concepts of guilt that in these
39:29
Speaker 3: older methods. don't, aren't exactly, you know, are kind of
39:33
Speaker 3: concealed behind these rituals. And obviously it requires this kind
39:37
Speaker 3: of political power, like, behind it to keep it stable,
39:42
Speaker 3: but it also, like, it makes that guilt visible and public.
39:48
Speaker 3: in the, in this, in this kind of impersonal, but
39:50
Speaker 3: like a visible sense. Yeah.
39:52
Speaker 1: And this is, this is how you get to choose
39:55
Speaker 1: which kind of liberal you're going to be. Are you
39:57
Speaker 1: an enchanted liberal or you're a disenchanted liberal? Cause as
40:01
Speaker 1: you say, his story is we are in a perpetual
40:04
Speaker 1: state of violence. Then Christ slash Hobbes, I guess, Christ,
40:10
Speaker 1: Christ and Hobbes come along and say, Hey, you guys,
40:14
Speaker 1: you're in a state of nature in a cycle. Let's
40:16
Speaker 1: ascend from the state of nature. And now we have
40:19
Speaker 1: a Leviathan. Leviathan does all the violence and we can
40:23
Speaker 1: be upset or happy about it. But at least the
40:27
Speaker 1: function of sacrifice is now deferred. He uses one other
40:31
Speaker 1: bit of evidence to defend this saying Greeks and Romans. Yeah,
40:36
Speaker 1: they still did their sacrifices to Zeus, but they didn't
40:39
Speaker 1: really believe in it anymore. They were just, they were
40:41
Speaker 1: doing it for tradition's sake, not because they needed to.
40:44
Speaker 1: Whereas I don't know the Hebrews in the desert. They
40:47
Speaker 1: really needed to, I'm not sure, but, um, I thought
40:51
Speaker 1: I'm always suspicious of the type of argument that says, well,
40:56
Speaker 1: we were in, we were in a logic and then
40:59
Speaker 1: the logic completely changed. Whereas there are, there are a
41:03
Speaker 1: lot of authors, um, on this topic, including maybe, maybe
41:09
Speaker 1: someone like Batai, even someone like Graber that says these, these,
41:14
Speaker 1: The logic still is the same. It's just that the
41:19
Speaker 1: form has changed. So I don't know why you would
41:23
Speaker 1: say like, oh, now the judicial system is in place
41:29
Speaker 1: of a different logical system, which is sacrifice, rather than
41:33
Speaker 1: saying the judicial system just abstracts, kind of like you said, Victor,
41:38
Speaker 1: it abstracts responsibility in such a way that that actually
41:43
Speaker 1: fighting back would be pointless. Like what, what are you
41:46
Speaker 1: going to do? Go throw a rock at the courthouse.
41:48
Speaker 1: It becomes a rash, a response becomes irrational because the
41:54
Speaker 1: thing is so abstract. So I think in that sense,
41:58
Speaker 1: the justice system becomes kind of this totemic or a God,
42:05
Speaker 1: even you can't answer. Yeah. You can't answer its gifts anymore.
42:09
Speaker 1: So it almost takes away the value of violence, but
42:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't take away the logic that, well, that animated sacrifice.
42:16
Speaker 5: Well, I think, I think that the ritual, the sacrificial ritual, right.
42:21
Speaker 5: It might be, it's still a kind of institution, like
42:24
Speaker 5: the judicial system. And if you think of like capital punishment,
42:28
Speaker 5: hanging guillotine, whatever, like they'll still have the same outcome
42:33
Speaker 5: of like a murder at the end of it, a killing.
42:38
Speaker 5: But in a very different way, there is a continuity
42:41
Speaker 5: of the logic there because they're both controlled, institutionalized applications
42:48
Speaker 5: of violence to achieve some kind of collective social benefit.
42:54
Speaker 5: But sacrifice also has all... I think this is Gerard's point,
42:59
Speaker 5: is that we tend to think of sacrifice as this
43:01
Speaker 5: very superstitious thing. You do this yearly sacrifice to... make
43:06
Speaker 5: sure that the gods are happy so that there's enough
43:08
Speaker 5: rain to.
43:09
Speaker 1: Feed your crops or that your battles.
43:12
Speaker 5: With your enemies go well or something like that, this
43:15
Speaker 5: religious component. But he's saying what's really still there is
43:19
Speaker 5: that social function of maintaining community coherence and not allowing
43:25
Speaker 5: violence to run rampant and destroy the community, right? And
43:31
Speaker 5: that changes i guess with the christian story and the
43:35
Speaker 5: innocence of the victim and suddenly you need this like
43:39
Speaker 5: process to establish the guilt of the victim it's not
43:43
Speaker 5: really just that the victim is a token anymore that
43:47
Speaker 5: can just be sort of instrumentalized to some other ends
43:50
Speaker 5: like the victim who now has to be hung i
43:54
Speaker 5: guess well there's the king's decision but then you start
43:56
Speaker 5: to get the more modern systems which still include capital
44:00
Speaker 5: punishment And there's like trial and not assuming guilt until
44:05
Speaker 5: it's proven, innocence until proven guilty, which seems like a
44:11
Speaker 5: very kind of Christian idea. So that there is a
44:14
Speaker 5: continuity there and they're both ritualized, they're both institutionalized things,
44:21
Speaker 5: sacrifice versus like punishment through the judicial system. One of
44:27
Speaker 5: them might be run by priests and different kinds of functionaries.
44:31
Speaker 1: Can you reflect, why do you think that innocent until
44:33
Speaker 1: proven guilty is Christian?
44:35
Speaker 5: Because that's the story of Christ on the cross. Christ
44:39
Speaker 5: is the innocent victim who was sacrificed for humanity. Whereas
44:44
Speaker 5: in these older stories, in the myths and the sort
44:47
Speaker 5: of pre-Christian stories, the innocence of the victim is not presumed.
44:53
Speaker 5: It's not even like a question. It's not super important
44:57
Speaker 5: whether or not the victim is innocent.
45:01
Speaker 1: Or guilty. For the listener, this isn't in the text though,
45:04
Speaker 1: but I'm asking, Eric, so is the citizen now like
45:09
Speaker 1: modeled on Christ? Because in the scapegoat mechanism, Christ can
45:14
Speaker 1: be sacrificed because he's not like the citizen. And the citizen,
45:17
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, because he's a good Catholic, the citizen is
45:21
Speaker 1: part of the whole original sin apparatus. So what does
45:24
Speaker 1: Christ's innocence now have to do with proving people guilty?
45:29
Speaker 5: I guess Christ's I'm just thinking, I'm just sort of
45:32
Speaker 5: trying to suss out whether Gerard thinks that Christ's innocence
45:36
Speaker 5: is sort of this model or becomes this turning point
45:42
Speaker 5: and this model for how violence, this controlled application of
45:48
Speaker 5: violence is going to be done in the future and
45:52
Speaker 5: the sort of waning importance of sacrificial violence in Western
45:58
Speaker 5: societies post post Christianity.
46:02
Speaker 4: Yeah.
46:02
Speaker 1: You know, I, I think I do see a shift
46:07
Speaker 1: there though. It's not exactly the shift that he's saying,
46:13
Speaker 1: like he wants to make a big deal about not
46:17
Speaker 1: the historical event of Christ, but like the narratology of
46:21
Speaker 1: Christ when Christ, when the innocent victim becomes the founding
46:27
Speaker 1: myth of your society, you know, the West, then it
46:30
Speaker 1: adopts this, a pro-victim, or a less barbaric response, maybe.
46:42
Speaker 1: But I want to say, it seems also like there's
46:45
Speaker 1: something superior in terms of imagination in the old way,
46:54
Speaker 1: in the animal sacrifice way of doing things. And I
46:57
Speaker 1: want to say, in terms of the symbolic economy, to
47:00
Speaker 1: allow things that are taken as simply objects, simply property,
47:06
Speaker 1: to allow them to attain a symbolic status seems, or
47:14
Speaker 1: could be interpreted, I'm going to say it is, it
47:17
Speaker 1: shows they have a superior power of imagination. Whereas if
47:21
Speaker 1: you compare it, or they're just better at metaphor for things.
47:25
Speaker 1: a litany of reasons, being an oral culture, namely. But
47:29
Speaker 1: they're better at metaphor that we're no longer capable of doing.
47:33
Speaker 1: So we've literalized the process. Because what do our accusations
47:37
Speaker 1: look like? And what do our judgments look like? The
47:41
Speaker 1: crimes are basically listed very clearly. There's an inordinate amount
47:46
Speaker 1: of time spent on defining what a crime is, what
47:49
Speaker 1: the particular punishment of the crime is. How long? What's
47:53
Speaker 1: the sentencing recommendations? But I'm not going to come, I'm
47:56
Speaker 1: not going to say, oh, our understanding of Christ is
47:58
Speaker 1: what changed everything. I'm going to say that it's the
48:01
Speaker 1: written word that changed everything. I'm going to say that
48:04
Speaker 1: it's technical writing that caused this shift, not Jesus appearing.
48:10
Speaker 3: Yeah.
48:11
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what's the case, but if
48:14
Speaker 1: we're throwing out hypothesis, I'm going to go with the
48:18
Speaker 1: more material explanation than the idea changed.
48:22
Speaker 3: I was going to say pills that I feel like
48:25
Speaker 3: Gerard on maybe 24 and 25 does kind of make
48:28
Speaker 3: this point about the legal system that you are making, um,
48:33
Speaker 3: that it needs this transcendent feature to be kind of,
48:38
Speaker 3: and it does have like a religious quality. Um, I
48:41
Speaker 3: just was reading it. Uh, yeah, he says only the
48:44
Speaker 3: transcendental quality of the system acknowledged by all can assure
48:48
Speaker 3: the prevention or cure of violence. This is the case
48:52
Speaker 3: no matter what the concerning institution may be. Only by
48:55
Speaker 3: opting for a sanctified, legitimate form of violence and preventing
48:59
Speaker 3: it from becoming an object of dispute or recrimination can
49:01
Speaker 3: a system save itself from the vicious circle of revenge.
49:05
Speaker 3: And like later he goes on to say that like
49:10
Speaker 3: when you start to undermine, when you start to like
49:15
Speaker 3: question the legitimacy of the system or like see, oh,
49:18
Speaker 3: that's just like a decision that we've made. all made.
49:20
Speaker 3: When it starts to lose its sort of like sacred quality,
49:25
Speaker 3: then it can go into crisis. And basically people will
49:30
Speaker 3: start saying, well, that's not really like a legitimate institution
49:33
Speaker 3: anymore because... So he kind of has this... I mean,
49:37
Speaker 3: maybe I was misreading it, but it almost read to
49:38
Speaker 3: me like he was making... like almost like a Straussian
49:42
Speaker 3: argument that it's like, we shouldn't question the lid. Like
49:46
Speaker 3: if we want these systems to work, these transcendental systems
49:48
Speaker 3: to work that prevent violence, we need people to like,
49:52
Speaker 3: believe the noble lie that they are like real coat,
49:56
Speaker 3: like real legitimate with like some kind of almost mystical force. And,
50:01
Speaker 3: but as soon as we start telling people that it's
50:03
Speaker 3: just a noble lie that we just arbitrarily decided to
50:05
Speaker 3: follow it, then you're going to start to risk the system.
50:10
Speaker 3: And I think that appears on 25. Yeah, I agree.
50:13
Speaker 1: I mean, he also says this earlier where we need...
50:16
Speaker 1: This whole thing is based on deception. And so we
50:21
Speaker 1: need to keep the deception alive. It has that Straussian
50:24
Speaker 1: surface versus depth.
50:26
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
50:27
Speaker 3: Like the esoteric versus the exoteric meaning of the text.
50:32
Speaker 1: I think maybe I would just then prefer it to say...
50:34
Speaker 1: Because I... I always get suspicious around, and then Christianity
50:38
Speaker 1: changed everything, and then modernity changed everything. I think where
50:42
Speaker 1: I'd like to keep it is the cycle of violence continues,
50:45
Speaker 1: but the violence is bureaucratized and abstracted to such a
50:50
Speaker 1: degree that there's nothing you can do. A legal written
50:57
Speaker 1: system in technical language is made so that normal people
51:01
Speaker 1: can't read it. So, yeah, you can walk down the
51:04
Speaker 1: street and go, oh, hey, look, we're in modernity now.
51:07
Speaker 1: All the blood feuds are gone. Oh, look, no one's
51:09
Speaker 1: shooting each other on the street. But Brian Johnson can
51:13
Speaker 1: use a chatbot to deny your kid chemotherapy and then
51:16
Speaker 1: she dies. Now what are you going to do?
51:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it does appear. I guess I would make
51:21
Speaker 3: the claim. You know, I realize when we've been talking
51:23
Speaker 3: about violence, I don't think I brought this up in
51:25
Speaker 3: any of the previous episodes on violence, but I feel.
51:30
Speaker 3: Like I am more and more kind of a, I
51:33
Speaker 3: don't know.
51:33
Speaker 4: I always get Hobbesian or Hobbesian.
51:35
Speaker 3: I feel like, at least in this sense of the
51:39
Speaker 3: advantage of having like legitimate, this is going to be
51:44
Speaker 3: no surprise, I guess, to a lot of people, but
51:46
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, number one, I think that
51:48
Speaker 3: Hobbes is often a bit misread, like misunderstood, like people
51:53
Speaker 3: over-exaggerate the extent to which he thinks that like having
51:56
Speaker 3: no laws and no like sovereign.
51:58
Speaker 4: Powers is like a literal state of chaos.
52:00
Speaker 3: Like, I think that's a misreading, like really what he means,
52:03
Speaker 3: like really what he means by the state of war
52:07
Speaker 3: is the unpredictability. It's that like, you have no reason to,
52:11
Speaker 3: to think that things are going to continue. Like, yeah,
52:14
Speaker 3: you can make agreements with people without any laws, like
52:17
Speaker 3: in anarchy or whatever, but there, but you have no
52:19
Speaker 3: guarantee that that'll go on because someone could just violate it.
52:23
Speaker 3: And if there's no force that can come in to
52:26
Speaker 3: control the situation, then you have no guarantee. So, The
52:29
Speaker 3: chaos is in the uncertainty, not in like a literal
52:32
Speaker 3: chaos day to day. It's just like the fact that
52:34
Speaker 3: there's nothing to guarantee it. So I feel that there's
52:40
Speaker 3: like the advantage now. Yeah, the cycle of violence continues,
52:44
Speaker 3: but it's more predictable in a certain sense. It's more
52:48
Speaker 3: like formalized. There's more like there's less uncertainty about like
52:54
Speaker 3: where it's going to come from and how it's.
52:56
Speaker 4: Going to appear.
52:57
Speaker 5: Isn't that why in Hobbes' version of the social contract,
53:00
Speaker 5: the Leviathan has to be the sole proprietor of violence?
53:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need something with all the power.
53:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, like in the state of nature, everyone is responsible
53:14
Speaker 5: for defending themselves. It's the war of all against all.
53:18
Speaker 3: You can also make agreements in the state of nature.
53:21
Speaker 3: And he even says himself where he's like, oh, like
53:24
Speaker 3: you could probably have communities that would work pretty well
53:26
Speaker 3: for a while and you can have peace for a while.
53:28
Speaker 3: The problem is you just, who's to say that that
53:31
Speaker 3: could just end at any second? Is there any guarantor
53:33
Speaker 3: above that that can ensure that?
53:36
Speaker 5: That's why Gessa Lindemann in our last reading emphasized that
53:40
Speaker 5: modern sociologists and anthropologists don't identify with this social contract
53:46
Speaker 5: theory anymore, just because the difference between the state of
53:50
Speaker 5: nature and the social contract is now more stereotypical. reframed
53:55
Speaker 5: as studying the evolution of like non-modern society into the
54:01
Speaker 5: emergence of like modern social institutions. So the difference between
54:05
Speaker 5: non-modern or pre-modern and modern society is more like the
54:10
Speaker 5: paradigm now. And so when we talk about non-modern society,
54:14
Speaker 5: like quote unquote, what we used to call the state
54:17
Speaker 5: of nature, I guess, or closer to it anyway, We
54:20
Speaker 5: start to say, okay, well, sacrifice was one of those
54:23
Speaker 5: sort of agreements where we could get together once a
54:27
Speaker 5: year or on different occasions for different purposes and perform
54:31
Speaker 5: this specific sacrifice. You know, like whenever the Greeks win
54:35
Speaker 5: a battle or whenever they have a good harvest, they
54:38
Speaker 5: take a goat and cut it up and, you know,
54:42
Speaker 5: put the bones on the altar and burn them. And
54:44
Speaker 5: that's the sacrifice to the gods. And then everyone sits
54:47
Speaker 5: around and has a meal. And that's like a ritualized
54:50
Speaker 5: feast involving an animal sacrifice that keeps the gods happy.
54:55
Speaker 5: Like a hundred different versions of like sacrifices for different
54:59
Speaker 5: purposes with that religious component. And then the modern versions
55:04
Speaker 5: don't have that religious component.
55:06
Speaker 1: They're about, yeah, like.
55:09
Speaker 5: Judicial institutions and legal procedures and things like that. But
55:14
Speaker 5: it still has that basic social function of, you know, reparations,
55:20
Speaker 5: like a murderer damages the bonds of community and they
55:25
Speaker 5: have to be restored. And the judicial system is doing
55:29
Speaker 5: that now instead of ritualized sacrifices and other sorts of things.
55:35
Speaker 1: That's the counter argument. The pro-Habizian argument, let's not debate
55:40
Speaker 1: how to say Habizian.
55:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
55:42
Speaker 1: I was right about Foucauldian, by the way. I didn't
55:45
Speaker 1: get to gloat about that.
55:47
Speaker 3: It still sounds stupid to me.
55:50
Speaker 1: But one way of saying it is they're trading insecurity
55:55
Speaker 1: for security, even if that security has negative effects. But
55:58
Speaker 1: another way of saying it is if the powerful decide
56:01
Speaker 1: we're having a judicial system to keep the plebs under control,
56:04
Speaker 1: the plebs just, there's nothing they can do about it.
56:07
Speaker 4: True. True.
56:08
Speaker 1: There's no reason. One of the points of the legal
56:11
Speaker 1: system with its layers of lawyers and clerks and how
56:14
Speaker 1: difficult it is to... And financial prohibition? The inability to
56:21
Speaker 1: access the legal system by regular people is also a
56:25
Speaker 1: means of making it kind of unusable.
56:29
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm not saying it's... So you can say it's working.
56:32
Speaker 1: It's working. Maybe it is working at making life more predictable,
56:37
Speaker 1: but it's who benefits... from making the justice system more
56:42
Speaker 1: predictable does everyone benefit the same or is the benefit
56:46
Speaker 1: you know stacked in favor of those that can afford
56:49
Speaker 1: lawyers oh.
56:51
Speaker 3: Yeah look there's there's all kinds of.
56:52
Speaker 2: Social control in a broad sense yeah.
56:55
Speaker 3: Well my my uh i am i am for social
56:57
Speaker 3: control i am for social control i think social control
57:00
Speaker 3: is better.
57:00
Speaker 1: Well glad to hear you say it out loud i
57:03
Speaker 1: thought it would be harder than that It's bad.
57:06
Speaker 3: For me, I think importantly, my judgments about these things
57:12
Speaker 3: is never at.
57:12
Speaker 4: The level of like, oh, this is great.
57:14
Speaker 3: It's more like, is this better than what could be?
57:18
Speaker 3: It's always comparative. To me, it's like comparing a bunch
57:21
Speaker 3: of bad things. It's like, but which one's a bit
57:25
Speaker 3: less bad? And I guess I think that institutions of
57:28
Speaker 3: social control are less bad than anarchy.
57:32
Speaker 1: I got to say... this kind of had the opposite
57:35
Speaker 1: of the intended effect on me. Cause I came out
57:37
Speaker 1: of this going like, we should get back to this
57:40
Speaker 1: fucking animal sacrifice.
57:42
Speaker 4: True.
57:43
Speaker 1: Speaking of looking at the same thing from different directions,
57:45
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up with Peter Thiel that this
57:48
Speaker 1: guy is a social pessimist. It's okay. I'm a social pessimist,
57:53
Speaker 1: but he was, um, going, going, uh, hand to hand
57:58
Speaker 1: with mouse and who bear about like what sacrifices for, uh,
58:02
Speaker 1: And they, we read this, I think in like episode,
58:05
Speaker 1: probably a hundred episodes ago, a hundred and 180 thereabouts.
58:10
Speaker 1: And they, no, we were reading Durkheim, I think. Durkheim
58:15
Speaker 1: writes this whole story about how the Aztec sun god,
58:18
Speaker 1: the Aztec sun is the sun because he sacrificed himself,
58:22
Speaker 1: which for the community to live, because the sun was
58:25
Speaker 1: going to burn out. So this is a very different
58:27
Speaker 1: self-sacrifice story. Like this is an example of if you
58:31
Speaker 1: choose your stories, one Bible story and one Greek story,
58:35
Speaker 1: then you miss the Aztec story. The Aztec story, the
58:38
Speaker 1: sun is so bright and life-giving because the guy chose
58:43
Speaker 1: to kill himself. And then the moon is a little
58:47
Speaker 1: less bright, but still up there and still helpful because
58:50
Speaker 1: the guy who is the moon hesitated to kill himself.
58:53
Speaker 1: So killing yourself right away for the community, good. Killing
58:58
Speaker 1: yourself a few seconds later, less good. But that's the
59:03
Speaker 1: aspect of self-sacrifice. It takes on... I guess you can
59:07
Speaker 1: still take on the social pessimist... like he has to
59:10
Speaker 1: die so that violence can stop. That's totally possible. But
59:16
Speaker 1: that kind of story makes sacrifice look better. Because for
59:21
Speaker 1: a mouse and who bear, the reason you give your
59:23
Speaker 1: best offering, like if you have a successful harvest, you
59:26
Speaker 1: go kill your best goat. It's because if you got
59:30
Speaker 1: a good offering from the sky, this isn't, this isn't
59:33
Speaker 1: like playing secret Santa with the gods. You don't even
59:37
Speaker 1: need the gods for this to make sense. It's like mechanical.
59:40
Speaker 1: It's almost like their science. If you got a good,
59:43
Speaker 1: if you got a good bunch of crops, that means
59:46
Speaker 1: that you've drained the sky of mana and mana is
59:49
Speaker 1: where the gods live, but it's more importantly where the
59:52
Speaker 1: sun is and where the rain comes from. So if
59:54
Speaker 1: you got a good gift, down here, you got to
59:57
Speaker 1: repay that gift with your best stuff so that they
1:00:00
Speaker 1: have enough mana up there for next season. And I,
1:00:04
Speaker 1: if I recall correctly, it's also the reason you can't
1:00:06
Speaker 1: sacrifice plants because plants have very low mana compared to animals.
1:00:11
Speaker 1: So you want to give not only animals, but your
1:00:14
Speaker 1: best animal, like the first born animals. Now in, in,
1:00:18
Speaker 1: I don't know if, uh, Gerard has an explanation at
1:00:22
Speaker 1: all for why It has to be the best, why
1:00:24
Speaker 1: you like save the best first to give to the gods.
1:00:29
Speaker 1: I would need an explanation because I know even like
1:00:32
Speaker 1: the Greeks did that, but that is the reason in,
1:00:35
Speaker 1: in their story and this story of justice, like you need,
1:00:39
Speaker 1: you need to repay everything that's been given to you,
1:00:42
Speaker 1: including your life, which is why you die at the
1:00:45
Speaker 1: end of your life. This is very common in ancient philosophy,
1:00:50
Speaker 1: theology stuff. We read Anaximander, the first Western philosopher, who
1:00:58
Speaker 1: said something like this, that the universe is based on
1:01:02
Speaker 1: cycles of justice, and justice is being paid back what
1:01:07
Speaker 1: you owe. So in that sense, the original debt is
1:01:12
Speaker 1: more than just violence. Violence can incur a debt. But
1:01:17
Speaker 1: I think if you look to maybe Durkheim and Mauss,
1:01:21
Speaker 1: who he rejects, they have a more broad symbolic economy
1:01:25
Speaker 1: that doesn't include just violence. In Girard's account, the sacrifice
1:01:33
Speaker 1: takes place of the violence so that violence can stop.
1:01:37
Speaker 1: But in the more general economy of maybe Durkheim, Mauss,
1:01:41
Speaker 1: and Bataille, Baudrillard, there's a more general economy that all
1:01:46
Speaker 1: this speaks to. And violence is only one form of
1:01:48
Speaker 1: payment in there. It's not the payment itself. par excellence.
1:01:52
Speaker 1: There's a more universal sort of debt measurement that ultimately
1:01:57
Speaker 1: earns you your status in society. So I don't know.
1:02:00
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be an anthropologist and say one's
1:02:03
Speaker 1: right and one's wrong because I wouldn't have any more
1:02:06
Speaker 1: evidence than Girard would do. But we don't need to
1:02:11
Speaker 1: accept immediately the social pessimist view. We can say something
1:02:16
Speaker 1: like there's a symbolic economy and all this other stuff
1:02:19
Speaker 1: is part of it. Because that's going to end up
1:02:21
Speaker 1: with someone like Peter Thiel. He does believe that violence
1:02:25
Speaker 1: is the most important thing.
1:02:26
Speaker 5: Well, I was going to say the right-wing reading of
1:02:30
Speaker 5: Girard that I think I saw, which people who study
1:02:36
Speaker 5: Girard seriously would disagree with, is about that scapegoating mechanism.
1:02:42
Speaker 5: That social order requires this sort of symbolic sacrifice of
1:02:46
Speaker 5: the scapegoat, right? Like blaming problems on immigrants or Islamophobia
1:02:53
Speaker 5: or something like that.
1:02:54
Speaker 4: Right.
1:02:54
Speaker 1: Or, or whatever.
1:02:57
Speaker 5: Right wing left, left, ultra left Stalinist conspiracies or whatever.
1:03:03
Speaker 5: We need some kind of scapegoat to blame things on. Whereas,
1:03:07
Speaker 5: whereas I guess what I thought was Gerard's point was
1:03:12
Speaker 5: that no, like the sacrificial victim is the innocent one, right? That, Like,
1:03:19
Speaker 5: this isn't to be done lightly. And when I read
1:03:24
Speaker 5: Girard saying something like, the function of sacrifice is to
1:03:29
Speaker 5: quell violence within the community and to prevent conflicts from erupting.
1:03:34
Speaker 5: And then he goes on to say, yet societies like
1:03:38
Speaker 5: our own, which do not, strictly speaking, practice sacrificial rites,
1:03:42
Speaker 5: seem to get along without them. Violence undoubtedly exists within
1:03:46
Speaker 5: our society, but not to such an extent that the
1:03:49
Speaker 5: society itself is threatened with extinction. And then he goes
1:03:56
Speaker 5: on to say that the sort of religious reading of
1:03:59
Speaker 5: sacrificial rituals also prevented ethnologists and anthropologists from seeing the
1:04:07
Speaker 5: social function of sacrifice, which again is this sort of
1:04:14
Speaker 5: judicious application of violence in order to prevent wider bouts
1:04:20
Speaker 5: of chaotic society-threatening violence from emerging. But the scapegoating, the idea,
1:04:28
Speaker 5: I guess you could read Girard, and if you were
1:04:32
Speaker 5: a cynical person saying people are easily whipped up into
1:04:37
Speaker 5: a violent frenzy, and then they're going to want an
1:04:41
Speaker 5: object onto which to focus that violent anger, then you
1:04:47
Speaker 5: can offer them some scapegoat immigrants or deep state leftists
1:04:56
Speaker 5: or whatever, and thereby exert a level of social control,
1:05:04
Speaker 5: which if you're a politician or if you are a
1:05:08
Speaker 5: tech giant who wants to achieve some self-interested goal, then
1:05:14
Speaker 5: that's a perfect way to distract from those goals and
1:05:20
Speaker 5: get people focused and angry and looking at something else.
1:05:24
Speaker 1: Peter Thiel did do another interview this week saying that
1:05:28
Speaker 1: Greta Thunberg, again, Antichrist. Yeah. If you're a cynical Girardian,
1:05:35
Speaker 1: you have to know that the person's innocent that you're accusing.
1:05:39
Speaker 3: The Antichrist.
1:05:41
Speaker 4: So weird.
1:05:42
Speaker 1: Well, let's not blame that on Girard. There's enough I
1:05:46
Speaker 1: think there's a, I'm going to summary judgment and say
1:05:49
Speaker 1: this is pretty good on the whole. Definitely passes the
1:05:51
Speaker 1: interesting test. Does it pass the methodology test if you're
1:05:55
Speaker 1: into that? A little less convincing. But what most people
1:06:01
Speaker 1: are going to be worried about this by digging into
1:06:04
Speaker 1: it is probably that aspect of social control, that violence
1:06:09
Speaker 1: is the basis of society. And if violence is the
1:06:11
Speaker 1: basis of society, if you're a social pessimist, then you
1:06:15
Speaker 1: need to get mechanisms in place to control the masses
1:06:21
Speaker 1: because the masses resort to violence because it's their only power.
1:06:24
Speaker 1: And that's what most people are going to probably object
1:06:28
Speaker 1: to what that lends itself towards.
1:06:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, a little bit. And, uh, I will say there is,
1:06:33
Speaker 3: as you said before, pills are kind of selective anthropological.
1:06:38
Speaker 3: Like I would looked into him. He talks about these,
1:06:40
Speaker 3: this like Siberian like tribe, the Chukchi about how they like, uh,
1:06:46
Speaker 3: Like when someone wrongs them, it's like you kill like
1:06:48
Speaker 3: a member of their family and then agree to just
1:06:51
Speaker 3: stop the violence. And apparently he got that from like
1:06:54
Speaker 3: one sentence from an anthropologist and just like built on
1:06:57
Speaker 3: it and like didn't actually do any.
1:06:58
Speaker 4: Of the research himself because I was curious. So I
1:07:01
Speaker 4: kind of like looked it up.
1:07:04
Speaker 3: So, you know.
1:07:04
Speaker 1: Is it true that they do that?
1:07:08
Speaker 3: I didn't. So I think. So I didn't actually. I
1:07:11
Speaker 3: just looked into like, where is he getting his source?
1:07:13
Speaker 3: I didn't actually look into the accuracy. but it was
1:07:15
Speaker 3: just interesting that he got it from just one sentence.
1:07:19
Speaker 3: I always feel a little bit skeptical when some theorist
1:07:22
Speaker 3: starts talking about some tribe.
1:07:23
Speaker 4: I'm just like, okay, I don't know.
1:07:25
Speaker 3: You're getting one reading from one person, and you're drawing
1:07:28
Speaker 3: all these conclusions.
1:07:29
Speaker 1: Unless it's Levi Strauss.
1:07:33
Speaker 4: Even Levi Strauss.
1:07:35
Speaker 1: Which he name drops one time in here.
1:07:39
Speaker 3: You can take some of what he says here with
1:07:41
Speaker 3: a grain of salt for sure, I think. Or the
1:07:43
Speaker 3: conclusions he draws.
1:07:45
Speaker 1: Well, you know what we always say, you got to
1:07:47
Speaker 1: be careful of two people, 20 year olds and recent converts.
1:07:51
Speaker 1: And this guy was a convert at about, I'm not
1:07:54
Speaker 1: sure when. He was an adult convert though to Catholicism.
1:07:59
Speaker 1: So you could definitely say he has an agenda. And
1:08:02
Speaker 1: as soon as you say his Christianity was some massive
1:08:07
Speaker 1: disruption of all the ideas that came before, then you
1:08:10
Speaker 1: got to put a bag of salt on that teeter totter.
1:08:16
Speaker 4: Praise the Lord.
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Hallelujah. All right. Well, good place.
1:08:22
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:08:22
Speaker 4: Great.
1:08:23
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll continue.
1:08:26
Speaker 1: I'm interested.
1:08:26
Speaker 4: I'm interested in seeing where this goes.
1:08:28
Speaker 2: See where it goes.
1:08:31
Speaker 4: All right.
1:08:31
Speaker 1: For sure.
1:08:32
Speaker 5: Until then.