Creative Mythology

Conservative Roger Scruton has a lovely essay on the work of René Girard. Although he takes some fairly pointless and frankly stupid swipes at Hitchens and Dawkins et al. in order to make the essay seem more timely and relevant, it's really a fantastic overview of a fascinating topic. The power of myth:

Girard's theory, like Nietzsche's, is expressed as a genealogy, or a "creation myth": a fanciful description of the origins of human society from which to derive an account of its present structure. (It is significant that Girard came to the anthropology of religion from literary criticism.) And like Nietzsche, Girard sees the primeval condition of society as one of conflict. It is in the effort to resolve this conflict that the experience of the sacred is born. This experience comes to us in many forms—religious ritual, prayer, tragedy—but its true origin is in acts of communal violence. Primitive societies are invaded by "mimetic desire," as rivals struggle to match each other's social and material acquisitions, so heightening antagonism and precipitating the cycle of revenge. The solution is to identify a victim, one marked by fate as outside the community and therefore not entitled to vengeance against it, who can be the target of the accumulated bloodlust, and who can bring the chain of retribution to an end. Scapegoating is society's way of recreating "difference" and so restoring itself. By uniting against the scapegoat, people are released from their rivalries and reconciled. Through his death, the scapegoat purges society of its accumulated violence. The scapegoat's resulting sanctity is the long-term echo of the awe, relief and visceral re-attachment to the community that was experienced at his death.

It is indeed significant that Girard comes to anthropology by way of literary criticism, because the study of religion and mythology now properly belongs to the field of literature. As Joseph Campbell noted, since the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the modern era, secular literature has taken on the role of creating and continuing mythic traditions. These myths, freed by science from the burden of explaining the universe, now are able to explain humanity to itself and how the individual relates to society. These are psychological truths that do not require faith or proof but only steady reading, wisdom and understanding.