Obsama: Sacrifice/Deification/Unification

[lupercal]

for hava with love and squalor

[dbcooper41]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382778/Obama-dead-BBC-said-basic-error-reporting-bin-Ladens-death.html

'Obama is dead': BBC and U.S. networks make embarrassing error reporting Bin Laden's death

By Daniel Bates

Last updated at 2:20 AM on 3rd May 2011

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BBC News accidentally reported that Barack Obama had been killed in its coverage of Osama Bin Laden's death.

On the corporation's website a ticker along the top of the screen was accidentally labelled: 'Obama dead' before being hastily corrected.

The error happened at 11.19pm as the news was just breaking - and minutes before the U.S. President gave a live speech confirming the kill.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1LoVFefSx

and isn't 11.19 simply 911_1 backwards?

[8bitagent]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382778/Obama-dead-BBC-said-basic-error-reporting-bin-Ladens-death.html

'Obama is dead': BBC and U.S. networks make embarrassing error reporting Bin Laden's death

By Daniel Bates

Last updated at 2:20 AM on 3rd May 2011

* Comments (3)
* Add to My Stories
* Share

BBC News accidentally reported that Barack Obama had been killed in its coverage of Osama Bin Laden's death.

On the corporation's website a ticker along the top of the screen was accidentally labelled: 'Obama dead' before being hastily corrected.

The error happened at 11.19pm as the news was just breaking - and minutes before the U.S. President gave a live speech confirming the kill.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1LoVFefSx

and isn't 11.19 simply 911_1 backwards?

It seems the confusing conflation is part of the programming.
I'm still wondering if that Twitter post from April 28 about OBL being dead is a hoax.

[wintler2]

..That game ['mafia'] could subvert the apocalypse. Could make a good documentary film. Take that game into a community that is scapegoating and see what happens.

Its a great game if most players have at least some sense of humour and no more than 1 or 2 take it too seriously. Often the more high minded people (eg. me) will initially sniff and disdain it as random/silly/social terrorism, all true, all markers on the road.

-

On the ritualistic scapegoat (if i understand, eg. christ, wicker man), i can see good pragmatic reasons for reinstating it but it isn't a sufficient response to the human tendency for mimetic violence. MV needs a catchier name and some good PR. I wonder how similar are same-time-and-place and heard-about-and-copied MV, my vague guess is that they would attract different sorts of people, .. but i need to read more before i proffer such opinions.


Obsama does seem to fit the schema you describe in OP, but i can't myself see how this psychological trick will change much. Maybe its different in the US, or most powerful in reinvigorating true believers, or maybe i'm unconcious of my unconcious. What effects do you think we might see from the reincarnation of obama - high poll ratings? a guaranteed second term? Forgiveness across the majority world?

[hava1]

tazmic, norton and luperc...thanks, well, not quite the threesom from "the good the bad and the ugly", but quite heart moving (lupercal, OUCH ! well...sorta, you should consider changing your nik to Lupus).

[8bitagent]

During one slip of the tongue
there is big bang and total entropy
from red giants to white dwarfs
the whole scale
of cosmic dimensions are falling
from my mouth
in the description of a kiss
of the interimlovers

of the interimlovers
in the interim

between microphone and macrocosm
between genesis und sixsixsix
inbetween and on the bottom of the sea
between plankton und philosophy
between semtex and utopia

there they are
the interimlovers

in their communal mouth
lives a hummingbird
with each beat of its wings
too swift for the eye to see
cultures flourish and perish
whole continents vanish
I wade through the filth of mighty
metaphors
meta, meta, meta by metre
with gestures far too wide
for the interimlovers

the interimlovers
are lovers in the
INTERIM

between temporary and tempura
between tightrope and sabre dance
between chaos and with no course at all
between semtex and utopia
there they are

the interimlovers
right there in each others arms

in the course of just one winking beat of an eye
thirstily devour
the last drop of light
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
the lovers
the interimlovers
they are not there yesterday
and tomorrow not yet
the interimlovers

- einsturzende neubauten, "The Interim Lovers"

[Plutonia]

*pulls self away from misogyny thread*

Fantastic thread, Plutonia!

Where has this Rene Girard been all of my life?

Thanks Bruce. I felt the same way when I first encountered him. Took me right out.

Christianity is the myth that reads all myths: …to read mythology right and to have a true anthropology are one and the same thing.

This perfectly sums up a concept that I've been clumsily trying to digest and communicate for a really long time.

Incredible isn’t it? It’s seems so obvious when it’s written out like that. Blunt as birth.

Attempting to understand our situation here in this reality without synthesizing science, religion and myth is a useless endeavor, but unfortunately, I feel that the majority of us have paid far too much attention to the barbed wire fences that have been erected between the three.

The big answers, I'm afraid, will always be puzzles assembled from pieces gathered from those three disciplines that we've forever been taught to keep separate.

Interdisciplines tut tut! DO NOT GO THERE. He started out an historian, did literature then anthropology. Now he's a mutant post-modernist theologian. He says that the bible represents an intellectual achievement and the Nietzsche was the first Westerner to get Christianity. Nietzsche!

I've got lots to add to this thread and I'm hoping I'll get a chance to either tomorrow or the day after but here's a snippet with some relevant ideas:

Our social sciences should give due consideration to a phenomenon that must be considered normal, but they persist in seeing conflict as something accidental, and consequently so unforeseeable that researchers cannot and must not take it into account in their study of culture. Not only are we blind to the mimetic rivalries in our world, but each time that we celebrate the power of our desire we glorify it.

We congratulate ourselves on having within us a desire that "will last forever," as Baudelaire put it ("l'expansion des choses infinies"), but we do not see what this "forever" conceals: the idolization of the neighbor. This idolatry is necessarily associated with the idolization of ourselves. The more desperately we seek to worship ourselves and to be good "individualists," the more compelled we are to worship our rivals in a cult that turns to hatred.

Girard

[aferrismoon]

@ Stephen Morgan


Thanks for linking to my post , and to those who read it.

'Little Dynamo' noted that the operation was titled NEPTUNE SPEAR, which is a 'trident'.

If u have time check out the image of the Triple Underpass at Dallas couple with the Trident-design of the WTC Twin Towers' cladding.

{No more attachments allowed }

cheers

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^


sometimes this place is down right spooky.... or maybe it's just me?

Thanks for coming by aferrismoon

seemslikeadream
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Obsama: Sacrifice/Deification/Unification

_________________
A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people”
- Will Rogers

Thu May 12, 2011 6:24 am

[2012 Countdown]

cheers

Thanks for posting/stopping by.

[8bitagent]

@ Stephen Morgan


Thanks for linking to my post , and to those who read it.

'Little Dynamo' noted that the operation was titled NEPTUNE SPEAR, which is a 'trident'.

If u have time check out the image of the Triple Underpass at Dallas couple with the Trident-design of the WTC Twin Towers' cladding.

{No more attachments allowed }

cheers

Yeah good stuff, it had been awhile since I read a good blog post like that. Though I was surprised there was no mention of the Crowleyan numbers connection to 9/11:)
Princess Diana's death, also connected to an underpass and various esoterica.

Btw, interesting article on the construction of the WTC towers and the reasons for the WTC exterior design. Before I read this, I had no idea the Saudi Bin Laden family construction
was tied to the WTC. Rockefeller, bin Laden family...such a small incestuous world

http://www.slate.com/id/2060207/

[Plutonia]

It's a two-fold mechanism, fundamentally religious, in the sense of the archaic religions. What is required is both the many uniting against one (Osama) and the many being sacrificed for the One (Obama). The scapegoat is seen as unquestionably guilty and there deems to be a godly requirement for his death. The many who are sacrificed, they are seen as innocent, but there is still a godly requirement for them to die.

It just makes too much bloody sense. Sorry pun. Bad taste.

The Soldier as Sacrificial Victim:
Awakening from the Nightmare of History
by Richard Koenigsberg, August 10, 2005
http://www.napf.org/articles/0000/0000_ ... victim.htm

"BLOOD SACRIFICE PRESERVES THE NATION"

In Violence and the Sacred and other books, Rene Girard theorizes that sacrificial scapegoating is the fundamental mechanism supporting and sustaining religion and civilized communities. The maintenance of group unity, according to Girard—prevention of discord between members of the community—requires that violence be deflected outward. Society identifies a “scapegoat”—toward which members of the group safely may displace violence. By virtue of the scapegoat mechanism, divisions in the community are reduced to but one division: the division of all against one common victim or minority group.

Prime candidates for scapegoating, Girard says, are the “marginal and the weak,” a minority group, or those isolated by their very prominence. In this paper, building on my own research and that of Carolyn Marvin, I wish to extend and expand upon Girard’s analysis by focusing on what Marvin calls “insider violence:” the desire to sacrifice members of one’s own group. Specifically, I shall focus on the institution of warfare and to show how the soldier functions as a sacrificial victim.

Summarizing Girard’s theory in an online article entitled “Visible Victim,” S. Mark Heim states that the scapegoating process does not just accept innocent victims, but prefers them—outsiders who are not closely linked to established groups in society. “The sad good thing that happens as a result of this bad thing,” Heim states, “is that scapegoating actually works.” In the wake of murdering the victim or victims, communities find that the “sudden war of all against one has delivered them from the war of each against all.”

Girardian scholar Duncan Ragsdale states that “All the kingdoms of the world are based on the scapegoat mechanism.” This mechanism, Ragsdale says, depends on a “collective unknowing” for it to work. The title of one of Girard’s books, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, alludes to this idea of a concealed dynamic that has worked to maintain civilizations from their beginnings. People perform scapegoating, but are not aware of what they are doing, or why. Girard suggests there is profound resistance—in the psychoanalytic sense of the term—toward becoming aware of the victimage mechanism; what amounts to a taboo against knowing.

In her groundbreaking Blood Sacrifice and the Nation, Carolyn Marvin states that we “misunderstand the genuinely religious character of patriotism.” The power to compel believers to die in the West, she says, has passed from Christianity to the nation-state. Willingness to sacrifice oneself for the community, according to Marvin, constitutes the “ultimate sign of faith in social existence.” Whereas Girard theorizes that preserving the unity of the community requires violence toward an outsider or marginal group, Marvin proposes a more radical hypothesis: that preservation of the nation-state requires sacrificing members of one’s own group.

The sacrifice of members of one’s own group, Marvin proposes, is the fundamental purpose of the institution of warfare. In our conventional way of thinking, nations go to war to defend the homeland, defeat the enemy, achieve “victory,” etc. Marvin suggests that beneath these declared motives lies the real purpose of warfare, namely the desire or need to sacrifice members of one’s own community. “Blood sacrifice,” Marvin declares, “Preserves the nation.”

It is the task of the soldier to perform acts of self-sacrifice in the name of the nation. General Douglas MacArthur told graduating West Pointers in 1962 that they as soldiers “above all other men” were required to practice “the greatest act of religious training—sacrifice.” Marvin calls soldiers the “sacrificial class.” Soldiers are that group of people within a nation who are required to “die for their country” when asked to do so. They are the designated sacrificial victims.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AS A SACRIFICIAL RITUAL

My understanding of the sacrificial dynamic of warfare grows out of research on the First World War. This war (1914-1918) is famous for the way in which battles were fought. Soldiers hunkered down in trenches on opposing sides on the Western front: France and Great Britain on one side; Germany on the other. Battles or attacks occurred when a line of soldiers got out of a trench— often several miles in length—and advanced en masse toward the enemy line, where there was a probability that the soldier would be hit by an artillery shell or mowed down by machine-gun fire as he moved forward.

Historian Modris Eksteins describes the typical pattern of “battle” that characterized the First World War:

The victimized crowd of attackers in no man’s land has become one of the supreme images of this war. Attackers moved forward usually without seeking cover and were mowed down in rows, with the mechanical efficiency of a scythe, like so many blades of grass. “We were very surprised to see them walking,” wrote a German machine gunner of his experience of a British attack at the Somme. “The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in the hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.”

In spite of the absurdity, futility and massive casualties that resulted from this strategy, this way of fighting continued throughout the war’s duration. Most historians agree that the endless battles produced insignificant results, apart from the monumental wastage of lives. Writing about the first two years of the war, Eksteins says that the belligerents on the Western front “hammered at each other in battles that cost millions of men their lives but moved the front line at most a mile or so in either direction.”

At the Battle of the Somme that began on July 1, 1916, 60,000 men were killed or injured on the first day of the 110,000 on the British front who got out of trenches and began to walk forward along a thirteen-mile front. One would imagine that the British would have received the message and abandoned this disastrous strategy shortly thereafter, but they did not. Day after day, week after week, month after month, soldiers got out of trenches, advanced toward the German line, and were slaughtered. Over 416,000 Britons were killed at the Somme, but the battle lines did not change.

Even the best historians are mystified, struggling to explain what was going on—the perpetual, senseless carnage. The problem is that their thinking is too conventional. They continue to assume that nations were trying to “win” the war; that it was a question of “victory or defeat.” When pressed to explain the suicidal battle-strategies, commentators say that Generals were held in thrall by an antiquated battle strategy or that they underestimated the power of the machine-gun. Frequently, people throw up their hands in despair and declare that the Generals simply were “stupid.”

In our conventional way of thinking, we say that a soldier has died because the enemy has killed him. When French and British soldiers got out of trenches to attack and were mowed down by machine gun fire, we say that they were killed by Germans. Likewise, when German soldiers moved forward en masse and were slaughtered by the opposing forces, we say that the French or British killed them. Wouldn’t it be more parsimonious to say that nations and leaders—by putting their soldiers into such an impossible situation—were killing their own men?

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that France was killing Frenchmen, that Germany was killing Germans, and that Great Britain killed British soldiers? We disguise the sacrificial meaning of war by delegating their execution to the other nation. The nation, Marvin says, sends its soldiers to die, but is not their visible executioner: “The enemy executes the members of the sacrificial class.”

Significant political figures of the time seem to have been edified by the spectacle of mass slaughter that occurred during the First World War. Here is what P. H. Pearse, founder of the Irish revolutionary movement, had said upon observing the daily carnage in France:

The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.

Pearse describes the First World War in the language of mythic sacrifice, proclaiming that the heart of the earth needed to be “warmed with the red wine of the battlefield.” He declares that the war is “glorious” and is pleased to observe that “heroism” has come back to the earth. He characterizes slaughter as an offering to God, a form of august homage taking the form of “millions of lives given gladly for love of country.”

Observing the war as it took its course, French nationalist Maurice Barres wrote that nothing was “more beautiful yet more difficult to understand than these boys, today cold in their graves, who gave themselves for France.” Barres called the early years of war—during which thousands of French soldiers were slaughtered on a daily basis—“marvelous times, in which one may again find himself, times in which the splendor of our profound unity is revealed.” While the young soldiers had been learning the lessons of war through sledgehammer blows and in the furnace of fire, Barres said, the “differences and the divisions, which yesterday seemed insurmountable have today completely disappeared.”

Like Pearse, it would appear that Barres was thrilled and exhilarated by the death of young men. Barres links the achievement of unity within the French nation—disappearance of “differences and divisions”—directly to the fact that soldiers have been willing to sacrifice their lives. How does the soldier’s death function to produce national unity? Perhaps sacrificial death in warfare is the means by which a people demonstrate that it is devoted to and united behind its sacred ideals. Willingness to send young men to die is the way a nation “puts its money where its mouth is.”

According to Marvin, “The community celebrates and reveres its insiders turned outsiders. From within the boundaries, the community fears and worships these outsiders it consumes to preserve its life.” Soldiers are celebrated, revered and worshipped because they (like Christ) take the sacrificial burden upon themselves. They are the designated victims who are required to suffer—and perhaps to die—for other members of the group. The soldier is an “insider turned outsider,” member of the community who has been thrust outward from within the nation’s boundaries in order to do battle over there—on foreign soil.

The task of political and military leaders is to persuade young men of the virtue of sacrifice. This is accomplished by appealing to their narcissism and idealism through the use of words like “honor,” “glory” and “heroism.” In a lecture that formed an important part of the training of British Officers in the First World War, Colonel Shirley stated that his objective was to convince the soldier who had entered the service of his Country to proceed to serve her “with all your heart and with all your soul.” If you have done your best and yet must fall, Colonel Shirley explained to his Officers, you may take comfort in the thought that you will have “suffered for a cause greater and more noble than that for which any man has ever yet sacrificed his all.”

One million volunteers joined the British army the first year of World War I, 1914. War Office recruiting stands were inundated with men persuaded of their duty to fight. On September 9, 1915 Basil Hart asked his parents not to wear mourning clothes in the event he died. “I do not wish you to regard my death as an occasion for grief,” he said, “but of one for thanksgiving. For no man could desire a nobler end than to die for his country and the cause of civilization.” Frenchman Robert Dubarle wrote similarly, shortly before his death, of the “glorious privilege of sacrificing oneself, voluntarily. Let us try, without complaining too much, to offer our sacrifice to our country and to place the love of fatherland above our own grief.”

HIDING THE VICTIM

We’ve noted that Girard believes that in order for it to be effective, the sacrificial mechanism must be disguised or hidden; we avoid knowing what is going on by averting our eyes from the victim. S. Mark Heims states that the working of mythical sacrifice in society requires that people “know not what they do.” He says that the scapegoating mechanism is “most virulent when it is most invisible” and that the effectiveness of the mechanism of sacrificial killing depends on “blindness to its workings.” To “avert one’s eyes from the sight of the real victims,” Heims says, is that “characteristically human act” that lies at the essence of scapegoating.

Perhaps a similar dynamic is operative in the case of warfare. War as a unifier of the national community works best when people are able to avert their eyes from the sight of the victims; when they don’t have to look closely at what happens to the bodies of soldiers. People enjoy the idea of war, but would prefer to participate at a distance. They would rather not see the maimed bodies. Sight of a soldier’s mutilated body drains warfare of its glory.

The son of Douglas Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief responsible for the disastrous Battle of the Somme, reports that the General “felt that it was his duty to refrain from visiting the casualty stations because these visits made him physically ill.” The French Commander Joffre, after pinning a military decoration on a blinded soldier, said to his Staff: “I mustn’t be shown any more such spectacles. I would no longer have the courage to give the order to attack.” In war, the body of the soldier is given over to slaughter in the name of the sacred ideal. We want the “beautiful” ideal, but don’t want to look too closely at what happens to the body of the soldier.

Hypocrisy lies at the heart of the institution of warfare. People plug into the spectacle and relish the fantasy of their nation's power and glory. They embrace war as a righteous struggle between good and evil. However, most people themselves do not wish to be put in harm's way. War is enjoyable to the extent that killing, suffering and dying are delegated to someone else. Further, people would rather that the carnage take place somewhere else, at a distance from the homeland.

George M. Cohan was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his World War I song, Over There. Even now it is difficult to resist this fervent appeal to our idealism and sense of moral responsibility.

Johnnie, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun,
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run,
Hear them calling you and me, ev’ry son of liberty
Hurry right away, no delay, go today
Over there, over there!
Send the word; send the word, over there!
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
And we won’t come back ‘til it’s over, Over There!

What actually was occurring “over there?” John Ellis writes about the sights that stretcher-bearers had to endure as they attempted to recover the bodies lying in “no man’s land.” Some soldiers might be found alive, even semi-conscious, with the lower half of their face sliced off or the top of their head and their brains clearly visible. Men arrived still breathing at the regimental aid posts with holes the size of a football between their shoulder blades. Doctors might gently prise apart the hands of a man clutching his midriff and recoil, sickened, as his intestines spilled out over his trousers. Horrific events such as this occurred a million times over during the First World War.

Insofar as approximately 53,000 Americans were killed and 204,000 wounded in the First World War, we may assume that tens-of-thousands of American soldiers experienced horrors precisely like the ones described above. What astonishing incongruity between the joyful, optimistic song that emboldened men to become soldiers and the nauseating results of battle. How sad to realize that societies play upon the idealism and good will of young men in order to send them “over there,” where they may become sacrificial victims.

"BODY-BAGS" AND THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTER-SACRIFICIAL CULTURE

Is there no escape from the victimage mechanism; the need to sacrifice human beings in the name of maintaining the sacred community? Girard suggests that just as societies have created the scapegoat mechanism, so powerful forces have evolved that operate in opposition to perpetuating this mechanism. Girard’s writings focus specifically upon historical events and trends acting to generate greater awareness of the victim, and of the victim’s innocence. To the extent that attention is brought to bear upon the victim and his innocence, Girard believes, so does the efficacy of the scapegoating mechanism diminish.

I theorize that precisely such a mechanism working to bring about greater awareness of the victimage mechanism arose in the United States in relationship to the institution of warfare. I’m referring to the custom (let us use this term for the time being) that developed during the past thirty-five years showing body-bags containing dead American soldiers returning from the field of battle. Televised reports of the body-bags functioned to make it more difficult for people to “avert their eyes.”

The return of dead soldiers in body bags correlated with the development of a profoundly counter-sacrificial culture in American society. For a long period of time after the Viet Nam war (up until September 11, 2001), there was virtually no international situation that was considered to be worthy of American intervention if it meant that even a single soldier might die in battle. Americans had developed a zero tolerance for casualties. In an October, 1994 article in Newsweek written while the invasion of Haiti was being considered, Jacob Weisberg noted that only about 400 U. S. soldiers had been killed in action in the twenty years since the end of the Vietnam war. This meant that serving in the armed forces was a relatively safe job. Driving a truck was three times riskier than being in the military, driving a taxi six times riskier.

On the eve of an invasion that did not happen, Richard Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and stated that Haiti was “not worth American lives.” Senator John Glenn suggested that the case for intervention could not pass the “Dover Test,” the televised return of body bags from Port-au-Prince to the Air Force base in Dover, Delaware. Writing in the New York Times on July 16, 1995, Roger Cohen suggested that unwillingness to intervene in Bosnia spelled the “death of Western honor.” Eric Gans noted on June 26, 1999 that the “model of heroism constituted by the sacrifice of the individual life for the sake of the collectivity is rapidly losing its viability.”

Another milestone in the American experience of war was the movie Saving Private Ryan, depicting the landing of American soldiers on Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944. This was the first time in fifty-four years, according to military authority David M. Hart, that the viciousness and brutality of this amphibious assault had been shown in such graphic detail. For me—and I’m sure for many others—this was the first time that I’d seen battle portrayed as a form of unrelenting slaughter.

While most movies about the Second World War depict the soldier as an individual possessing a substantial degree of agency—capable of shaping the course of battle—what we see in the famous first half-hour of Saving Private Ryan is how helpless soldiers were; how narrow was their capacity for choice or agency. What occurred essentially was that soldiers jumped off boats into the ocean, where they faced a barrage of machine-guns and artillery shelling. Many soldiers drowned, while others immediately were massacred.

Luckier soldiers made it to the beach intact, although at this point they continued to be subject to attack and often were killed. Among other horrors, the movie shows body parts floating in the ocean and strewn upon the beach. Carolyn Marvin states that many who participated in the D-Day invasion sensed that they were being sacrificed. "We knew that we were considered to be expendable," recalled a participant who survived the D-Day invasion. “That was the price of doing it.”

AWAKENING

What would it mean to “awaken from the nightmare of history?” In the first place, the ability to awaken means recognizing that we already exist as if in the midst of a bad dream, one however that is occurring within the space of reality or waking life. Many aspects of political history possess the characteristics of a nightmare. One need only turn on the television set or read today's newspaper to apprehend the “waking nightmare” to which I refer.

The fact that one is present within “reality” or awake does not mean, however, that one is not dreaming. It is a mistake to equate “reality” with that which is real. War, I suggest, may be conceived as a shared or collective fantasy, like a bad dream that many people are having at the same time. What is the nature of the shared fantasy that is the source of the ideology of war?

The ideology of war is generated based on the fantasy that nations are real entities— bodies politics—that substantially exist. This fantasy of the nation as an actual body politic is complemented by another one, namely the fantasy that these bodies will continue to exist to the extent that we feed them with sacrificial victims. It is this grotesque fantasy—of sacrificing human bodies for the body politic—that is the source of collective acts of mass-murder manifesting as war and genocide.

Awakening from the nightmare of history means that we become aware of this sacrificial fantasy and how it functions. Becoming aware of the sacrificial fantasy means perceiving how the “victimage mechanism” operates within human communities (Girard); involves revealing the “totem secret” (Marvin); and implies “making conscious the unconscious on the stage of social reality” (N. O. Brown).

If the ideology of sacrificial violence depends on “collective unknowing” in order to be effective, perhaps our capacity to know—to become aware of how human beings act to generate this violence—will lead to abandoning this ideology. On the other hand, perhaps it will not. Perhaps the human attachment to the fantasy of society or nation or body politic is so profound that we are unable to live in separation from the idea of these entities.

[82_28]

Absolutely BRILLIANT Plutonia. I will be sending this around. Thank you so much for sharing!

[82_28]

Kevin at Cryptogon linked to this damned fine essay as well today:

http://librat2003.blogspot.com/2011/05/ ... laces.html

It is time for you to hear this, whether it be dangerous knowledge or not. Understanding the methods and motives of the worship of the God of High Places is very important for the future viability of the human race. I am just a squirrel, eating an acorn in the boughs of the tree of life, but the knowledge of the God of High Places has been transmitted, and must be shared across the entire tree, from root to tip. The first thing that you should know is that the God of High Places is a belly God. The second thing you should know is that that belly is never full. The third thing you should know is that unless you're the elect, you've got a good chance of being dinner. Why are you on the plate, you might ask? Because the God of High Places demands sacrifice.

This is his way, and I say "he" consciously, because the God of High Places is very much aligned with the masculine force of the universe. This God is currently fucking the Earth for his own pleasure, with the help of many servants across the globe. You can call this God a metaphor, if it makes you sleep better, and indeed, this God works as a metaphor, a shape-shifter across the planes. But whatever name he might be called, the hungry belly God has always been the same God. All through human history, there have been times and cultures where this God has risen to the top of the hierarchy. He is the God of High Places, and the heights are where he is most comfortable. To occupy those high places in order to best serve him is the gift he offers to those that are willing to play their part.

Let me go back into my akashic records to tell you of the first time I met this God. It was on the outskirts of the burgeoning Aztec empire, and I was a farmer. It was my first field sown as a man, and my seeds were well-planted and were coming up well. My corn was coming up strong, and I was almost certain that such a yield would attract my chosen woman to become my partner for life. I looked forward to the harvest with great joy. It was a month from the harvest when the Aztecs visited us. It was not a social visit, as they burned our crops and let us know that we were dependent on them to survive over the coming year. We had become their slaves, and our land was now theirs.

Being a young and healthy man at the time, the fires of vengeance burned brightly in my heart, and I rallied several of my tribesman to fight back against the Aztecs. We were few, so we used the tactics that the few should always use when confronting the many. Stealth attacks, making use of the knowledge of the land to retreat, quick raids to keep ourselves fed. But we were too few, and the Aztecs eventually found us, and led us by the neck to their city. It was built in the center of a great lake, with long bridges leading in. We had never seen so many people in one place, as we had always lived within our boundaries.

But the knowledge of what was to come made it hard to enjoy our experience in the metropolis. We were to be the sacrifice for the harvest. Our blood would be fed to Huitzilopochtli, which was the name of the God of High Places in that time and place. The belly God was hungry, and we were to be dinner. I wish that I could say that this story ended well, but it didn't. I was led up the stairs of the central pyramid, the blood from the hundreds of sacrifices before me staining the steps a pattern of dull and bright red. I was laid down on the altar, and my heart was cut from my chest by a priest in amazing finery. As I died, I understood who I had been sacrificed to, and I also got to see the view of the entire city below. It was a beautiful and terrible moment.

The God of High Places had taken me, but my soul wasn't his, and I was able to see the reward of the priests that served him. In life, the priests got the view, and all the trappings of wealth and power that the God of High Places bestows. But in death... There are no words for that, and the price paid is much too high. Understand that I don't expect you to believe any of this story, if it helps, just think of it as a metaphor. I have been the sacrifice to the God of High Places before. I have been held to the table, and had my will and person violated at the core to serve the hungry belly that's never full. I recognize this God now, and I don't hate him. I just think he sucks, and is a terrible being to worship.

Perhaps you are wondering how to recognize this God at work in the world right now. The truth is that he always hides in plain sight. Who has the view? Where is the pyramid? The thing to remember is that those with the view have the power to run the programs. Those with the view are always talking about sacrifice, but never sacrificing themselves. We have arrived at the point where the priests are global, which is one of the reasons why this time in history is so full of crisis and change. Are you catching what I'm throwing yet? Do you know who the priests are?

Well, if you're not catching it yet, I'll give you some more time to think about it while I break down the reasons that the priests are able to hide in plain sight. Think of the pyramid on a human scale, the way you get to the top is by crawling over the backs of everyone else. At the top of the pyramid, where the best view is, you are standing on the metaphorical shoulders of nearly everyone else in your structure. The real power of the priests is to build the consent of those that carry the burden as a matter of course. In the Aztec empire, the blood sacrifice was just a part of life, demanded by the Gods. The only way the priests could get to that position was by using the fear of the Gods to keep the rest of the pyramid in line. People of good moral and ethical conscience will simply say "That's just the way things are, we can't change the way things are."

This is the main reason that the God of High Places can rule a culture. Those who want the view will fight to get it, and even those that don't want the view will enforce the structure that allows it because they believe it's just a fact of nature. So, now it's time to expose the God of High Places. The God of the empty belly rules the market system at this point in time. His priests occupy the rooms in the skyscrapers across the world that the common folk can't get to. We serve at the leisure of the priests and their strange God, because we believe that the market is "just the way things are." Our sacrifice is just beginning in the Developed nations, but has been ongoing in the "developing" nations.

This global priesthood of elite worshipers has catapulted many to the highest view so far attainable in human culture. As the world struggles with economic downturn, the priest class consumes and attains a greater and greater share of the world's resources. We allow this to happen, because unconsciously we've been programmed to believe that the invisible hand of the market is a fact of nature. The truth is that the invisible hand belongs to the God of High Places and it is becoming more visible day by day. This is the hand that takes from the social safety net, and gives to the bank executives, it takes from the hungry children and gives to the commodity traders, it takes the shared resources of the Earth and gives in the form of ballooning bank statements to the elect. To the priesthood.

It's important to note that all of the elite are not of the priesthood, some get to the view through true force of character and world shaking ideas, but these people are the minority and do not call most of the shots. At the top of the pyramid, it is mostly blood and corruption, no matter how beautifully tailored the costumes are. The decisions that are made from that vantage point are geared towards two main directions. To keep the bottom of the pyramid from realizing how they're serving the top, while the bottom aspires for the same position, and to amass the resources of the world into the hands of the servants of the empty belly God. We are still his food, and will continue to be as long as the priests are successful in their main endeavors.

But the game is not over yet, and those that made the rules for the game fear greatly that we just decide as a people to stop playing. Let us figure out new ways to use the resources of the planet for the good of all, not just the few. Let us understand that we must work in balance with natural systems rather than at the expense of them. Let us understand that as the base of the pyramid, it is our own actions that support it. Let us look in the eye of the God of High Places and say, "I SEE YOU."

I am but a squirrel on the tree of life, but I have seen the God of High Places. Looking into my heart I have realized that I have been the food of the empty belly God in other lives. What I cannot do is stand silent in fear as the power of this God threatens to eat us as sacrifices to a never-ending, never lessening thirst for more. I am not afraid of the God of High Places, I have been on his altar before. I may be again, but it is tragedy not to stand strong when you see him standing in the power gained from the greed of the few. Fuck the view.

I SEE YOU

[Plutonia]

Synch!

But Kevin's got it wrong. It's not god, it's us that demands the sacrifice, though we don't recognize it. It's hardwired in us through mimesis; a collective mechanism that is explicable as a remedy for unavoidable mimetic violence; the dark secret of social order, without which we would have killed each other long before we learned to bake a loaf of bread.

If we blame any agency other than ourselves, it gets to continue.