Victimhood as a form of scapegoating

Kirby Center
Hillsdale College

"in a society that retains its Judeo-Christian moral reflexes but has abandoned the corresponding metaphysics, . . . claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one's sense of fundamental moral innocence. . . .
". . . When one is a certifiable victim, one is released from moral responsibility, since a victim is someone who is, by definition, not responsible for his condition, but can point to another who is responsible.
     "But victimhood at its most potent promises not only release from responsibility, but an ability to displace that responsibility onto others.  As a victim, one can project onto another person, the victimizer or oppressor, any feelings of guilt he might harbor, and in projecting that guilt lift it from his own shoulders.  The result is an astonishing reversal, in which the designated victimizer plays the role of the scapegoat, upon whose head the sin comes to rest, and who pays the price for it.  By contrast, in appropriating the status of victim, or identifying oneself with victims, the victimized can experience a profound sense of moral release, of recovered innocence.  It is no wonder that this has become so common a gambit in our time, so effectively does it deal with the problem of guilt—at least individually, and in the short run, though at the price of social pathologies in the larger society that will likely prove unsustainable."

     Wilfred M. McClay, "The strange persistence of guilt," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 19, no. 1 (Spring 2017):  47-48 (40-54).

Bosworth on "the sociopathic collective" of right and left

Department of English,
University of Washington

"Whereas in the seventeenth century the challenge confronting the West was how to both license and tame the new social and intellectual atomism spurred by the printed book, the crisis today is how to express and restrain the messy, multifarious togetherness of the digitally interconnected field. . . .  Today, it is not the rogue individualist who threatens the social order but the sociopathic collective, whether the new gang of cyber-thieves or vandals, the virally vicious digital mob, or, more profoundly given its ever-increasing global power, the post-modern corporation, which has been adopting all the technological tools of togetherness while applying them for purely self-serving ends—which, like the Machiavellian plotter of old, has been usurping the authority of public governance while shirking that authority's traditional responsibilities."

     David Bosworth, "Knowing together:  the emergence of the hive mind," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 19, no. 1 (Spring 2017):  30 (18-31).

Pierre Ceresole

"Pray the Eternal to keep your weather-vane in good trim so that it readily responds to the true winds of the spirit and doesn’t get jammed by the rust of tradition in a position unrelated to the truth or to the true currents of the spirit."

     Pierre Ceresole (much less often in the catalogues, Cérésole), For peace and truth:  from the note-books of Pierre Ceresole, ed. and trans. John W. Harvey and Christina Yates  (London:  Bannisdale Press, 1954), 84 (in the section dated 1920-1933; "In 1936 Ceresole formally joined the Society of Friends" (100), though his "pacifist position differed . . . from that of perhaps most members of the Society of Friends in Great Britain" (102)).  Friends journal 2, no. 11 (March 17, 1956):  cover (161):

Pray the Eternal to keep your weathervane in good trim so that it readily responds to the true winds of the spirit, and does not get jammed by the rust of tradition in a position unrelated to the truth or to the true currents of the spirit.

I was introduced to these words by my colleague Carrie Fry.  The original French runs as follows:

"Priez l’Eternel de graisser votre girouette afin qu’elle s’oriente bien au vrai vent de l’Esprit, et ne reste pas calée par la rouille des traditions dans une position sans rapport aucun avec la vérité, ou avec un courant spiritual reel."

     Pierre Ceresole (much less often, though not in this book, Cérésole), Vivre sa vérité:  carnets de route,  Deuxième edition corrigée et augmentée (Neuchatel:  Editions de la Baconnière, 1950), 146-147 (in the section dated 1919-1926).

"what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his sacraments"

"Quod itaque Redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit; et ut fides excellentior esset ac firmior, visioni doctrina successit, cujus auctoritatem supernis illuminata radiis credentium corda sequerentur."

     St. Leo the Great, Sermo 74.2 (Sermon no. 2 on the Ascension), as quoted at CCC 1115, but with "sacraments" substituted for "mysteries".  CCSL 138; PL 54, col. 398A.  NPNF, ser. 2, vol. 12, trans. Feltoe:

In order, therefore, dearly-beloved, that we may be capable of this blessedness [promised to those 'who have not seen and yet have believed'], when all things were fulfilled which concerned the Gospel preaching and the mysteries of the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the fortieth day after the Resurrection in the presence of the disciples, was raised into heaven, and terminated His presence with us in the body, to abide on the Father’s right hand until the times Divinely fore-ordained for multiplying the sons of the Church are accomplished, and He comes to judge the living and the dead in the same flesh in which He ascended.  And so that which till then was visible of our Redeemer was changed into a sacramental presence, and that faith might be more excellent and stronger, sight gave way to doctrine, the authority of which was to be accepted by believing hearts enlightened with rays from above.

"What we need is not a depoliticized science but a more political science—that is, a science unembarrassed about the legitimate role of politics in resolving what we now call scientific disputes."

     Ari N. Schulman, "Science anxiety," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 18, no. 3 (Fall 2016):  74 (64-78).  "call" being the operative term, for it is an error "to expect science to adjudicate [what are often actually] normative questions" (71), given that even the various sciences disagree among themselves on many of those.  For "what are commonly regarded as scientific questions, resolvable by some singular methodology of science per se, in fact arise from conflicts among different scientific disciplines, with their rival methodologies, outlooks, and interests (70, citing Daniel Sarewitz), "their conflicting ethical priorities, political valences, and even metaphysics" (71).  So "If supposedly scientific disputes are in fact normative [rather than scientific] even when carried out among scientists, then surely the same will be true of debates in the public sphere" (72).

Love, even intermediated love, will carry you

     "Whence the power of love to conquer even the worst terrors?  In its purest form, it is the love of God.  But just as Dante could not look directly at God, imperfect mortals are hard pressed to love him directly, for which, presumably, having created the possibility of many forms of intermediation, he forgives us.  So one loves those made 'in his image,' image not to be taken literally but more deeply.  Thus, Dante says, 'Beatrice in suso, ed Io in lei guardava.'  'Beatrice gazed upward, and I gazed at her.'  As Beatrice looks upward, the light of God makes her face apprehensible, and in reflecting off her into Dante's eyes allows him to love God by loving her.
     "Love will carry you, if you know it, if you let it, through all tests, through suffering and death.  In suffering, it is as if an angel folds his wings to protect you.  I know this not because I am a philosopher—you can plainly see that I am not—but only because I have been there.  And I report back with no expectation except mockery from those who haven't, which is perfectly all right if one has learned in life to trust one's own eyes and listen to one's own heart."

     Mark Helprin, "Falling into eternity," First things no. 271 (March 2017):  24 (19-24).  "Beatrice in suso, e io in lei guardava" (Paradiso II.22) in the “Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana” dated 1921.  Winter's tale (Orlando:  Harcourt, Inc., 1983), pp. 194-195 (Alcedama):

'That’s only love,' Beverly answered.  'You don’t have to believe me.  It’s all right if you don’t.  The beauty of the truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed.  It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.'

Harry Penn to Virginia Gamely Hardesty, in Winter's tale (San Diego:  Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1983), 389:

'Most people,' he told her, 'arrive at tortured conclusions via blind and painful routes.  They don't like it when someone like you shows up in a balloon.  You can't expect anyone to trust revelation if he hasn't experienced it himself.  Those who haven't, know only reason.  And since revelation is a thing apart, and cannot be accounted for reasonably, they will never believe you.  This is the great division of the world, and always has been.  When reason and revelation run together, why, then you have something, a great age.  But, in the city, now, reason is predominant.  To argue from any other point of view or by any other means, as you do, is subversive.  You will be attacked.'

 

"Toleration . . . is required only for the intolerable."

     Bernard Williams, "Toleration:  an impossible virtue?" (1992), in Toleration:  an elusive virtue, ed. David Heyd (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1996), 18 (18-27).  I was put onto this by John Inazu, "Law, religion, and the purpose of the university" (February 2017), Legal studies research paper series paper no. 17-02-07, p. 5, scheduled for a forthcoming issue of the Washington University law review.