Human nature, when seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack\u2014and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and takes away any immediate shame, guilt, or anxiety. In other words, it works\u2014at least for a while. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we read today\u2019s news, we realize the pattern hasn\u2019t changed much in all of history. Hating, fearing, or diminishing someone else holds us together for some reason. Scapegoating, or the creating of victims, is in our hard wiring. Philosopher Ren\u00e9 Girard called \u201cthe scapegoat mechanism\u201d the central pattern for the creation and maintenance of cultures worldwide since the beginning. [1] <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The sequence, without being too clever, goes something like this: we compare, we copy, we compete, we conflict, we conspire, we condemn, and we crucify. If we don\u2019t recognize some variation of this pattern within ourselves and put an end to it early on, it\u2019s almost inevitable. That\u2019s why spiritual teachers of any depth will always teach simplicity of lifestyle and freedom from the competitive power game, which is where it all begins. It is probably the only way out of the cycle of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard for us religious people to hear, but the most persistent violence in human history has been \u201csacralized violence\u201d\u2014violence that we treated as sacred, but which was, in fact, not. Human beings have found a most effective way to legitimate their instinct toward fear and hatred. They imagine they are fearing and hating on behalf of something holy and noble: God, religion, truth, morality, their children, or love of country. It takes away all guilt, and one can even think of oneself as representing the moral high ground or being responsible and prudent as a result. It never occurs to most people that they are becoming what they fear and hate. [2] <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human nature, when seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse, or attack\u2014and with impunity! It settles the dust quickly, and takes away any immediate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbootcamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}