Ep 10: Adam Ericksen, Rene Girard & The Mechanisms of Violence

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

In this episode, Micah Redding talks to Adam Ericksen about Rene Girard, the mechanisms of violence, and how Jesus unravels the ancient cycle of myth and scapegoating.

• Adam Ericksen & The Raven Foundation
• Rene Girard, his recent death, and one of his most accessible books: I see Satan fall like Lightning
• Micah's Girardian reading of the scriptures
• Human identity is primarily social, relational. We are formed by each other. This is at the core of Girardian thought, and it's at the core of the biblical concept of human identity.
• We are not individuals, we are inter-dividuals: how individualism is an illusion that hides our social nature
• How our friends become our enemies
• The scapegoat mechanism, and why it doesn't work as well as it used to
• The Church of Christ
• Why the color of our carpet is often the biggest conflict we face
• Is the Bible a myth?
• The anti-Christian unity is to unite over and against a common enemy. Jesus brings something different.
• "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." - Jesus addresses the human unconscious
• The steps of Mimetic Theory

1. We imitate each other
2. We imitate each other's desires
3. Which brings us into rivalry with the people we admire most
4. Societies form around this dynamic of imitation and rivalry, leading to cycles of destruction
5. Societies learn a brilliant move to preserve themselves: scapegoating, uniting around a common enemy
6. Societies build complex ways of disguising this Satanic impulse through ritual and myth
7. The Jewish and Christian scriptures reveal this process for what it is, unveiling the evil dynamic society has been using to preserve itself

• The myth of Romulus & Remus vs the truth of Cain & Abel
• The Genesis creation story vs the Babylonian creation myth
• Abraham was chosen to bless the world. Thus the Abrahamic call is not to create an identity based around enemies, but to create an identity based around blessing others.
• How opposition to herd mentality can create a kind of herd mentality
• The scriptures suggest that God is going to work in the world, regardless of whether we choose to participate
• The sheep & the goats - ie, why your spirituality is what you do in the world
• The vision of Revelation & the open gates
• Perichoresis, or why God is a DJ