We All Know This

Over at AstralCodexTen Scott just posted a lengthy book review of a book that claims essentially that jealousy (which he terms “memetic desire”) ultimately leads to mob punishment of an individual and that this is all related to both ancient mythology and to the Jewish books of both The Tanach and The Christian Bible.

Scott doesn't place much stock in the book under review but uses the opportunity to explore the downsides of religions such as Christianity and Wokeism which focus on empathy for “the sacred victim” above all.

Scott's quite a charitable fellow himself (in fact he recently donated a kidney to a stranger) so he's all for kindness and charity but also not shy about pointing out all of the anti-righteous suffering animated by adherents to such victim-based faiths.

Scott concludes:

Rene Girard said that the first age of victimization was solved by direct divine intervention. He can’t - and I can’t - figure out any merely human way to solve the current one. Someone with access to Heaven is going to have to give us a second divine Word.

I attempted to respond but after a few hours of work was informed by the machine that my comment was “too long”.

Perhaps for the machine it is! But it isn't for the machine that I am writing.

It is for you.

1.

"Someone with access to Heaven is going to have to give us a second divine Word."

I make no claim to being that person.

In fact I deny that such an individual is necessary.

The Torah (which I care enough about to have studied for sufficient decades to become an orthodox rabbi) says that God's Instruction is not in the heaven or across the sea but incredibly close to us - in our very mouths and hearts.

All that I am saying is what everybody already knows.

The Torah - and all righteous laws - demand that an individual who engages in some new form of socially dangerous activity be dealt with lest he infect others with "mimetic desires" who then go about doing likewise and in so doing, harm themselves and others.

Lacking human-instituted consequences The Torah isn't any kind of law at all but just a set of suggestions.

2.

When a single individual was found working on the Sabbath gathering sticks, nobody, including Moses had any idea what to do about it.

From Moses' perspective the whole thing was ridiculous. The weekend break from economic activity is *obviously* a good idea. And besides, hadn't he already shared God's Instruction not to covet your neighbor's life? Why would anyone violate the Sabbath just because this single moron did so? The Sabbath is *awesome*!

To you and I the social danger is obvious.

If this fellow were allowed to go on violating The Sacred Sabbath Rest then he would get richer, others *would* covet, and within a year "poof!" there goes the very concept of the weekend as all of mankind is once again reduced to inhumane, thoughtless slavery - just rats on a hamster wheel.

But Moses and Aaron were baffled. They had only recently delivered God’s Law and were at a loss about how to proceed when some fellow had idiotically violated it.

There's a paragraph break in Torah Scrolls at this point, likely intending to indicate the passage of time as Moses, Aaron and the congregation at large debate how to deal with The First Criminal.

After the break God arrives and tells Moses what to do.

Take him outside the camp and have the entire congregation stone him to death.

3.

Fast Forward 1,530 years.

Yehoshua of Natzeret (henceforth "Jesus") is making waves.