Leading a Scapegoat to the Altar

Human history is one of ebbs and flows. Most of us are short-sighted enough to see today’s flows as the lowest point in our history. What we see around us is a world in crisis, and our instinctive response is to find someone on whom to place the blame. On the surface, it seems like 21st-century polarization rearing its ugly head again, but the truth is that we, humans, have been pointing accusatory fingers at each other since before we even had language. Just as a drunk turns to the bottle in times of crisis, blame is our liquor of choice. We always feel that someone or something must be the source of our suffering. We take comfort in having a scapegoat because it gives us something tangible and comprehensible to hold onto in an otherwise incomprehensible maelstrom.

We can trace the word scapegoat to the 16th-century protestant scholar William Tyndale. Its roots, however, can be found in Jewish tradition in the rituals of Yom Kippur. This is when a pair of goats were to be slaughtered, one for the Lord, and the other ‘for Azazel’. The latter goat would have the sins of the community symbolically placed upon it and the slaughter of both animals was said to cleanse the community. We can find two prominent examples of a similar kind of scapegoating in the Christian tradition, examples that have undoubtedly had a significant influence on our collective consciousness. The first kind is where all of society’s ills are blamed on a single entity. One easily recognizable example of that is of the Biblical Satan. He is the progenitor of evil, the OG corrupter, the master manipulator who continues to lead mankind astray. To most people, to be good is to resist Satan’s influence, hence the famous devil on the shoulder motif. In this version of reality, humans are inherently good but occasionally succumb to the powers of a great, manipulative force. As this malevolent force is the source of all that is bad and unholy in our world, to defeat it would be to set the world right. On the other hand, our propensity towards zero-sum thinking tells us that we must give something up to get something in return. Hence, the second kind involves placing all our sins on one entity and presenting it as a sacrifice. There is no greater sacrificial lamb than Jesus Christ who died to wash away our sins. He bore, upon that cross, the sins of mankind like the scapegoat of yore, and, in exchange, we got salvation. In both cases, being neither the source nor the ones who must suffer for all sin, humanity is left purified and cleansed. We are left, then, with the notion that there is always some external entity onto which we can always wipe the grime off our own hands.

History, being long and dark as a winter night, presents us with no shortage of examples of mass scapegoating. From the witch trials of Salem to the modern era’s obsession with secret societies, there’s always someone to blame for the problems that we see around us. The most well-known example may be that of the Jewish race. Anti-Semitism has a long history, from the early days of Christianity, through the middle-ages, and it persists today. Jewish people have been accused of seeking world domination for millennia and have often found themselves at the pointy end of the stick when it came time to assign blame for society’s ills. This, as we all know, took a nasty turn in the early to mid-20th century, culminating in their attempted eradication by the Third Reich. There are many reasons why Hitler’s government was able to do what it did; chief among them was their extensive use of anti-Semitic propaganda. They leaned into the people’s desire to have someone to blame, and the Jewish people were an easy target given that, in many places, they were already seen as being guilty of “robbing the German people”. It should go without saying that one cannot compare anything today with the atrocities of the Holocaust, but the tactics for turning one group against the other remain the same. Those who hope to amplify, for example, racial and gender tension do so by feeding us a constant stream of evidence of one group’s irredeemability, and we lap it up because it provides an easy-to-swallow pill to cure a visibly ailing society.

Despite its spotty track record, scapegoating maintains its appeal. Why is it so easy to point a finger at the other? Whether it’s in our relationships, where we imagine that we are right and the other person is wrong, or societally when we tell ourselves that the groups that we identify with can never be wrong, we are prone to seeing flaws in everything and everyone but ourselves. Benjamin Franklin once said, “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” We cannot recognize our flaws if we do not know ourselves, yet, to do so requires us to commit to the kind of genuine introspection that has become all but impossible in today’s increasingly distracted world. The time that could have been spent self-evaluating and contemplating is spent scrolling through social media. There, the flames of bias are stoked as intelligent algorithms arrange us into echo chambers where our preconceptions are never challenged. The goal, here, is not to scapegoat social media — self-evaluation is hard enough as it is, especially when it comes to seeing the darker angels of our nature. Carl Jung addressed this with his idea of Shadow Integration. “To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real,” he said of the Shadow. It seems easier to imagine that the world can be split easily into darkness and light, good and evil, yet reality hardly ever presents us with such easy dichotomies. Getting to the source of society’s problems may demand that we ask difficult questions that bring us face to face with our complicity. We may have to look into reality’s dark mirror and recognize that we, along with everyone else around us, could be, in some way, both victim and perpetrator.

It seems, then, that the appeal of scapegoating can be attributed, at least in part, to how it makes it easier for us to draw conclusions about the world around us. We can even go as far as to present scapegoating as an antidote to chaos. Complex and confusing as the world is, being able to draw wholesale conclusions about one group or another certainly gives us what feels like a better grip on reality. When reason tells us that there is only one logical conclusion for someone to come to given a certain state of facts, we can explain away our disagreements by seeing the other side as irrational or just plain evil. Yet, it must be recognized that, given the nature of confirmation bias, what we may think of as all the facts, may just be the subset that our brains have chosen to amplify. We use this undoubtedly small dataset to extrapolate for the rest of the members of a group in a way that suits whatever narrative we wish to affirm. However, as real as those bad apples often are, and as much as we have been raised to believe that where there is smoke, there is fire, we must also recognize that just because we see smoke pouring out of the chimney, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole house is ablaze.

A lot has been written about polarization in today’s world. We live in a world that is more divided than ever, where we have separated ourselves into distinct us vs. them groups. In this version of reality, we are the good guys or the victims, and the others are bad, plain and simple, hell-bent on making our lives miserable. How, then, can we even begin to heal these divisions when we are convinced that the other group is inherently evil? One cannot reason with a mad dog. It must be put down or locked away. When so much of what we watch and read is centered on battles between good and evil, often with very poorly justified motives, it’s unsurprising that these ideas have begun to manifest in reality. All that needs to be done, we believe, is to identify the person or group that is to blame for a certain problem, vanquish our foes in battle, then watch the sunset on a grateful universe. It’s unsurprising, then, that many have adopted the position that any action is justifiable so long as it will facilitate the realization of this paradise. Who wouldn’t do whatever it takes to make the world perfect? But, is it not incredibly naïve to imagine that the world can be so easily perfected by ridding it of these undesirables, leaving only the good and just. Contrary to what some (hopefully, a minority) radical feminists might think, killing all men will not bring about heaven on Earth.

“You should worry just as much about the tyrant as you do about the man who is willing to soil his hands by killing the tyrant for the greater good.”

One consequence of this increased inter-group animosity is that those who were unfortunate enough to be born on the wrong side of the debate (and history) because of their sex or skin color have felt pressured to prove themselves as allies through self-deprecating jokes and public displays of self-hatred. There’s no shortage of white-guilt or white-shame tweets online from people who have seemingly only just become cognizant of their legacy and connection to some of the darker parts of human history. In the same way, a man must prove his loyalty to so-called progressive values because his position cannot just be assumed — he must criticize masculinity in all shapes and forms (preferably online where his wokeness will be recognized). This stems from ideas such as that of toxic masculinity whose existence is only to perpetuate the notion that there are traits present in one group or another that makes them inherently bad. And, to be a member of one of these groups who doesn’t recognize this for whatever reason is to be, as they say, part of the problem. Without even addressing the questionable sincerity of these public displays (a subject that I have touched on before), there are other worthwhile issues to consider.

In psychological circles, guilt is often viewed as a transitional emotion, a halfway house on the road to some destination, preferably where wrongs are righted. If, however, it persists, the victims can be crippled by paralysis that prevents action as they begin to feel powerless to face the situation. When this pit of guilt becomes one’s final resting place, the emotional wound is only likely to fester and evolve into something much worse — genuine self-hatred. “Neither guilt,” Myriam Francois writes in her article, “White guilt” won’t save us, “nor anger — however righteous — provide a framework for moral or political transformation.” While others find solace in feelings of guilt and regret, others dig in and become more entrenched in their identities — neither situation being, it must be said, conducive to proper healing and growth or a solution to the problems of the oppressed. And, in the worst-case scenarios, this self-hatred can be reflected via acts of terror directed at a world that seems to hate one simply because of who they are.

This brings me back to something on which I touched earlier; our tendency to see flaws in everyone but ourselves. I have always found myself somewhat suspicious of situations where I see myself as being right while everyone else is wrong. I am equally suspicious of situations where all of society’s problems are laid at the feet of one group, while the so-called victims claim blamelessness. However, before accusations of victim-blaming are hurled at me, I will point out that such situations where the victims are blameless do exist. In most real-world situations involving multiple subjects, however, there is more than one side to any story and, even then, they are not neatly divided by the lines we draw across genders or race. For example, there have been great female thinkers such as Christina Hoff Sommers who have levied genuine criticism against the feminist movement (especially its modern manifestation). Some will conclude that anyone willing to go against their identity group must have been brainwashed or manipulated in some way. I view this as a genuine attempt to understand the complex dynamics of social interactions, complexities that most people just aren’t willing or have the time to pursue. What remains, then, is a pseudo good vs. evil battle in which both sides declare themselves to be the good whose actions, no matter how extreme, are justified in combatting evil.

“No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. Even — perhaps even especially — those who are the worst of us. Some of the cruelest tyrants in history were motivated by noble ideals, or made choices that they would call ‘hard but necessary steps’ for the good of their nation. We’re all the hero in our own story.” — Jim Butcher, Turn Coat (The Dresden Files #11).

This division between good and evil lies at the core of why reconciliation seems like a far-off dream. Those who have been deemed as the rot in our society, the malignant tumor spreading throughout the body of humanity that must be cut out by any means necessary, have adopted a defensive stance and many have even begun to push back. It’s unsurprising that, as movements that seem to be against them grow in strength, many men and white people have turned to the so-called Red Pill and white supremacists movements, respectively, because only there can they find recognition and acceptance as well as some evidence of the other side’s villainy. Many people, particularly those on the right see flaws in a left that seems intent on taking up a position of moral superiority. Especially in situations where there are legitimate questions to be asked, questions that are quickly brushed off as being borne of bigotry or backward thinking, the debate cannot be settled. And, so long as neither side is willing to consider that their analysis of the opposition may have been too flippant or dismissive, there can be no real discourse. Without a genuine attempt to understand each other, there can be no progress.

All of this is topped off by technologies that have made it so easy to coalesce into these scattered groups that stand oppositional to each other and have facilitated our downward spiral into single-minded thinking. Whether it’s the news or platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the focus on brevity deprives us of important, contextual information when hearing about relevant issues. Social media platforms use algorithms that study our patterns only to supply us with a steady stream of what they think we have a higher probability of interacting with. This way, we only see certain kinds of content, not because nothing else exists, but because anything that conflicts with our preconceived notions may drive us away. And, in response to this, content creators have moved towards pandering to one side or the other of some divide. Whether or not this is a good thing is unclear as human beings are, in most cases, prone to picking sides. The only problem, then, is that, despite clearly making their minds up about which side they want to advocate for, many of these people still waddle through the swamp of public discourse claiming impartiality and objectivity, like all they care about is the facts when they can be so easily cherry-picked to suit one narrative or the other. The result is that most people never have to challenge their assumptions. Our social media feeds provide a constant stream of reinforcing content and we walk around thinking that our version of reality is the objective reality.

Even for those who have convinced themselves that the question of who is to blame for society’s problems is a simple one, the question of how to deal with these troublemakers presents an equally problematic conundrum. The extensive networks of prisons and mental asylums around the world have proven themselves to be ineffective deterrents. Yet, criminal justice is still, in some way, just as much geared towards scaring people into falling in line as it was back when hangings and beheadings were carried out in the city squares. For those with less faith in the criminal justice system’s ability to bring criminals, especially powerful ones, to justice, they have taken to public shaming and outrage, culminating in the great beast that is cancel culture. Cancel culture represents many things, depending on who you ask. Some see it as mob justice run amok, while others see it as a necessary tool to bring to justice those that slip through the cracks of the justice system. Either way, public figures have been canceled for all manner of things, from bad jokes, divergent opinions, and allegations, proven or otherwise, of sexual or racial misconduct. All this has done, however, is to strengthen the resolve of those who have come to see themselves as renegades against a society that is hell-bent on intimidating or shaming them into conforming. When the masses rally against one group, declaring them all guilty of some crime simply because of who they are, all that serves to do is alienate them. That alienation can breed resentment such that even those that may have sympathized with the cause become less inclined to help. Beyond that, I hardly believe that the ideal way to deal with one group’s blanket assumptions about some group is to make blanket assumptions in return. As the old sayings go, you can’t fight fire with fire, an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind, and so on.

After all this, one would be forgiven for expecting some plan to get us out of the hole into which we have dug ourselves. One might think it’s as easy as saying, “stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eye, and ask yourself the simple question: could I be wrong?” But, this assumes that one is acting with sincerity, and is brave enough to follow that rabbit hole to its destination. Another could throw around words like love and compassion. These words, however, only refer to emotions and if not coupled with actions are worthless. The rabbit hole, I imagine, would lead us to some realization of the flaws that we all share. It might lead us to a place where we become more aware of the mistakes that we have made and will continue to make, and our shared mission to find a way to peacefully coexist. There, we might be forced to accept that there are very few blameless people in the world and that our actions shape the world around us, directly or indirectly. Only then might we have any hope of turning our emotions into actions, of regaining the compassion that modern life has seemingly stripped us of, and of making a sincere attempt to see the world from another person’s point of view. Most importantly, however, once we have looked within, we may discover that the world cannot be fixed by simply drawing a line with good and evil on opposite sides, forcing people to one side or the other based on arbitrary physical characteristics, and trying to rid the world of everyone who happens to end up on the wrong side.