"this insight regarding scapegoats and scapegoating is a real superiority of our society over all previous societies, but like all progress in knowledge it also offers occasions to make evil worse. [...] Scapegoating phenomenon cannot survive in many instances except by becoming more subtle, by resorting to more and more complex casuistry in order to elude the self-criticism that follows scapegoaters like their shadow. [...] In a world deprived of sacrificial safeguards, mimetic rivalries are often physically less violent, but they insinuate themselves into the most intimate relationships... they become relationships of doubles, of enemy twins. This text enables us to identify the true origin of modern 'psychology.' [...] yes, we have changed a little since the time of archaic rituals but less than we would like to believe."
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, trans. James G. Williams (New York: Orbis, 2001), pp. 159-160.
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