* Crossposted from: Philosophy
"In spite of current fashion, all signs point to the continued 
relevance of the problm [ of a universal explanation for ritual 
phenomenon].  If you read monographs on individual cultures, you
find that they are awkward and repetitive in all matters religious,
through no fault of the authors, simply because no one can agree on
the definition of even such basic terms as ritual, taboo, sacrifice,
etc. and yet no one can dispense with them.  What kind of a science
is it that cannot define any of its terms?  All the religious 
systems taken together constitute a combination of constants and
variables that the modern scientific spirit is irresistably tempted
to turn into some kind of puzzle or riddle, something, in other
words, that it should be possible to untangle.  Sooner or later,
the pendulum will swing the other way once more, and interest in
religioun per se will pick up again.  ... 
As I shift from the overall genetic and structural scheme of my
hypothesis to the specific institutions of specific cultures, i find
variables that correspond exactly to what can be logically expected
from the [culture's] misinterpretation of scapegoat effects.  Founding
ancestors, gods, and sacred kings can be shown to be alternate solutions
to the same problem of interpretation.  Once a culture has launched into
one of these directions, it can be expected to follow it to the end
and diverge more and more from those that made a different choice,
in complete unawareness, of course, that they were actually choosing.  
The most impressive sign that my hypothesis cannot be a mere effect
of truth is that it accounts for both the variables of religious 
systems and for such constants as the universal existenceof 
prohibitions, rituals, and the belief in something like the "sacred".
The presence of such constants is now incompatible with the now popular
tendency to see each culture as an almost absolutely singular 
phenomenon."
this is from an interview with Rene Girard, in _To business double-
bound_, a collection of his essays on literature, mimesis, and
anthropology.  Girard hypothesis is his idea of mimesis and
scapegoating at the root of cultures.  he explores these things in
his books, *Violence and the Sacred* and *Deceit, Desire, and the
Novel*. 
--- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR]
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