Scapegoating

A good scapegoat is almost as good as a solution. - Anonymous

We need not go to fiction or history to find tragedies caused by scapegoating, we just have to look around - scapegoaters with an unconscious need to get rid of their own grievances and negativity are still after suitable scapegoats. Blaming the scapegoat scapegoaters then discharge destructiveness embedded in their own psyches.

Rene Girard maintains that society attends many of its conflicts by creating scapegoats, for instance witches, Jews, heretics, outsiders may be identified as the source of our problems. The chosen victims are then blamed for almost anything, they are punished, isolated, expelled, ostracized, which creates cohesion and unanimity in the community, we are all relieved from our problems and have a common aim and enemy.


SCAPEGOATS EVERYWHERE

The specific identities of the scapegoats are legion: lepers, witches, women, Jews, Negroes, the mentally ill... - Thomas S. Szasz

Nowadays we may not always use as obviously cruel practices as the ancients did, at least we no longer stone our scapegoats, but our more sophisticated methods may be no less cruel. In practical life scapegoating is to be found everywhere, we may, for instance, use simple enemy-creation to create cohesion or to unite groups. Or to inspire individuals into action. According to Rene Girard the scapegoating mechanism is simply essential in modern society.

Those who are not able to see that there are some true scapegoats around, are having very large blinders, one might even say that they are almost emotionally dead. Not all scapegoats belong to minority groups, individuals use individuals as scapegoats, often their own friends and family members. "Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them", wrote Samuel Butler (Aquarius, Saturn-Neptune square).

Scapegoaters everywhere justify their cruelty by claiming that the scapegoat is responsible for the problems of scapegoaters. To succeed in this scapegoaters must in some way obscure the innocence of their victims. The so-called 'projection theory' in modern psychological astrology may even give scapegoaters excellent weapons because then almost anything can be interpreted as an aspect of the native's own psyche. Scapegoats are then said to be encountering their own projections and thus responsible for what happens to them. The projection theory often amounts to a very unhelpful and even cruel blaming of victims. Luckily it is just one theory, there is more to astrology than that.


PUBLIC SCAPEGOATING

Today everyone takes part in public executions through the newspapers. - Elias Canetti

The scapegoating mechanism is a common feature in today's media. Various minority groups or public figures have been chosen for scapegoats that unite us all as we eagerly read sensational stories of them or watch them on TV. We are all so much bombarded by emotionally evocative presentations of sensational scapegoating tragedies that it has a numbing effect on our sensitivities, it kills our sympathies.

It is not surprising that this often outrageous public voyeurism makes us blind to many real - albeit perhaps less visible - scapegoat tragedies going on around us or happening in our personal lives. Being numbed we may no longer see the fact that originally scapegoating was a collective murder. And it still is, if not physically then in every other way that counts.

Ancient practices of sacrificing a scapegoat can be found in most religions. Because the killing of the scapegoat created peace and harmony in the group, the scapegoat was in many religions seen as a divine figure or as a savior relieving the society from its own destructiveness. Sometimes even the scapegoat assumed the savior's role becoming thus a willing victim.

Jesus was of course mankind's best-known scapegoat - he redeemed all men through his suffering. The New Testament story gives many excellent insights into mob psychology and into victimization process and scapegoating in general. And The New Testament even - as Gil Bailie says - gives a voice to the victim: the story is told from the point of view of the victim. The scapegoating mechanism is unveiled for all of us to see. And we should see it in order to be able to reject it.

I believe, indeed, that in the rejection, or transcending, of the scapegoat principle lies the greatest moral challenge for modern man. On its resolution may hinge the fate of our species. - Thomas S. Szasz

Read more: | Scapegoating > Scapegoating Defined > Origins of Scapegoating > Scapegoats - Archetypal Transference Figures > Driven into isolation > Scapegoating Groups > Scapegoaters > A Collective Daimon > Never Blame the Victim > The Dreyfus Case > Scapegoating in Astrology > Creating Scapegoats > Astrological Rethinking Needed > Neptunians - Astrology's Victims ? > Persecution > Surviving Scapegoating > Transcending scapegoating - A Life in Grace

NEPTUNIA, 2003

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