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Tag: Scapegoat

Engagement Balance Decision

Engagement Balance Decision

No disguise can long conceal love where it is, nor feign it where it is not. ~ François de La Rochefoucauld I’m passionate about certain topics. Some themes in politics and religion and life in general are not matters of disinterested observation but of deep commitment. In the last year, I’ve become very frustrated – angry even – about how malleable people can sometimes be, about how fearful, paranoid and even hateful the manipulated populations can become. Inchoate, thick with…

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Fear, Contagion, and Scapegoating – Oh my

Fear, Contagion, and Scapegoating – Oh my

The figure of the “evil other” is a pre-ethical fixation for the religiously-minded paranoid. Everything that one most dislikes or finds threatening can be projected upon others and (usually symbolically) murdered in the age-old tradition of the scapegoat. Such projection engenders – and feeds upon – symbolic (and real) violence. Predatory on the people who cannot bear to examine themselves, leaders of such movements play on fears of contagion, defilement and stain from without – from the evil others –…

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