Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Gift of Self - Gil Bailie - tape 3 excerpt

Quote from Rene Girard:

“Desire (compulsive, preoccupation of the other) leads to madness and death if there is no victimage mechanism to guide it back to 'reason' and to engender this 'reason'. The mysterious link between madness and reason takes on a concrete form.”

Gil comments: The mysterious link between madness and reason is that “reason” is gemmed up out of the sacrificial (scapegoat) scenario. Reason always needs differences and the sacrificial crisis or the crisis of the contagion of desire destroys all differences and therefore makes reason impossible. There can be no reasoning going on in a world where there are no differences. Reason always needs distinction and the dissolution of all those distinctions is what occurs in crisis of undifferentiation – the crisis of desire – or what is brought about by an avalanche of mimetic desire.

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Gil continues

...desire (compulsive, preoccupation of the other) leads to madness and death if there is no victimage mechanism to restore reason; and now there is no victimage mechanism to restore reason; so the old logos – the old forms of knowledge (epistemology) is dying – it cannot function because the apparatus for generating its necessary distinctions out of the undifferentiated chaos of an avalanche of desire – it doesn’t work anymore. So less and less are we able to put-to-work the old epistemological strategies.

Read more excerpts from tape 3 here.

The following is a thought of Aramis: With the dying of the old logos - the waning of the old epistemological strategies, if you will, means that as we continue to argue and debate within this knowledge base the more and more we will be falling into mimetic doubles and scandal. There is only one way out and that is by abiding in prayer, being a reflection of Christ to and for the other - for without transcendence, knowledge, even knowledge that reveals the problems of desire is useless and it can only lead to rivalry and violence in an attempt to re-kindle the victimage mechanism.

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