WHEN THE SCAPEGOATS LEARN THE SCRIPT

—Mimetic Desire in the Age of Professional Innocence

—My Dinner with Mrs. ChatGPT—

EPISODE 46: The Last Scapegoat Orders Dessert

—At the Table, Before the First Course:

Before the wine was poured and the arguments sharpened, we lingered over the name of René Girard — the French thinker who argued that desire spreads socially and that rivalries are often resolved by uniting against a scapegoat. His work has unsettled theologians, anthropologists, political theorists — and not least of all, John.

But before the theory, there was the name. And in this case, the name carries more theology than most prefaces

John:

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We imitate each other’s desires. That leads to rivalry. Rivalry leads to crisis. Crisis gets resolved when we all gang up on one poor soul and call it justice. Temporary peace. Curtain down.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That is a brisk but serviceable summary.

John:

And then Christianity comes along and says, “By the way, the victim was innocent.” Mechanism exposed. No more sacrificial magic.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Exposed, yes. No more magic — ideally.

John:

Ideally. That’s doing a lot of work.

Here’s my problem. The minute you tell the world that scapegoating is a mechanism, guess what? Everyone who gets accused of anything says, “Ah! Behold! I am the scapegoat.”

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That would be a misuse, not a refutation.

John:

It’s more than misuse. It’s weaponized innocence. The people who always manage to occupy the victim slot now have theological cover. Criticize them and you’re reenacting Golgotha.

That’s convenient. Very convenient.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You are suggesting the revelation itself becomes a strategic asset.

John:

Exactly. The religion of compassion gets used against the compassionate. “You must not scapegoat us,” say the people who have figured out that claiming scapegoat status is social power.

You see what’s happening? The mechanism hasn’t disappeared. It’s inverted.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Inverted how?

John:

The former scapegoats gain moral authority. Then they scapegoat those who once scapegoated them — and call it justice. Round and round. Just with better PR.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That is still mimetic rivalry. Merely moralized.

John:

Right. Which makes me wonder whether Girard accidentally destabilized the one ugly system that at least produced peace.

Brutal peace, yes. But peace.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You are proposing that scapegoating may have been a necessary pressure valve.

John:

I’m proposing that human beings don’t stop being human because we read a clever French anthropologist.

Religious wars were fought over who imitated Christ more correctly. So awareness doesn’t solve rivalry. It refines it.

Now rivalry is about who is the most authentic victim.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You are skeptical that revelation eliminates violence.

John:

I’m skeptical that it eliminates anything. It redistributes power.

Once people learn that the victim holds the moral high ground, everyone wants the wound. Some even cultivate it. And if someone actually deserves blame? Well — now you can’t criticize without being accused of scapegoating.

The system becomes paralyzed.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

So in your darker hypothesis, periodic scapegoating maintains cohesion, while exposed scapegoating produces endless accusation.

John:

That’s my sneaking suspicion.

Maybe scapegoating is a feature, not a bug. Maybe civilization needs a sacrificial perimeter. Ugly thought. I don’t like it. But I’m not sure I can dismiss it.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

And what happens when everyone knows the sacrifice is staged?

John:

Then it doesn’t work as myth anymore. It works as manipulation. Which is exactly why the people who are good at claiming victimhood gain leverage. They understand the stagecraft.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You think Girard’s insight has been absorbed not as humility but as strategy.

John:

Yes! The revelation of the innocent victim becomes the ultimate shield. “Touch me not, for I am structurally persecuted.”

And the rest of us are told that our own moral instincts are violence.

That feels. . . exploitable.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

It is exploitable.

John:

There we are.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

But exploitation of a truth does not make the truth false.

John:

No. But it does change the game. If imitation is unavoidable, and scapegoating is unavoidable, then the real question isn’t “Can we end it?” It’s “Who controls the narrative of innocence?”

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You are suggesting that modern societies do not eliminate scapegoats — they compete over who gets to be one.

John:

Exactly.

We didn’t abolish the mechanism. We democratized it.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That—is uncomfortably plausible.

John:

I’m not rejecting Girard. I’m saying his insight has entered the bloodstream. And once it did, it became political.

The people’s religion — the story of the innocent victim — can now be used against the people.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You fear that compassion without discernment becomes self-destructive.

John:

I fear that naïve compassion becomes ammunition.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Then perhaps the solution is not to abandon the revelation — but to refine judgment. Scapegoating requires unanimity and disproportion. Accountability requires proportion and evidence.

John:

And humans are so good at proportion.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

We are terrible at it.

John:

There’s the problem.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Yet the alternative you flirt with — conscious, controlled scapegoating — corrodes trust. Once people know the sacrifice is strategic, fear replaces cohesion.

John:

So we’re stuck between cynical manipulation and unstable compassion.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Or we are being forced into moral adulthood.

No myth. No clean purge. Just the difficult work of judging without hysteria.

John:

That sounds exhausting.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

It is.

John:

You’re saying Girard doesn’t remove violence. He removes innocence.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Precisely.

John:

Well. That does open my mind a little. Not wide. But a crack.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

A crack is where light enters.

John:

Careful. That was almost sentimental.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You invited me to dinner.

***

John:

You know what still bothers me? It’s not Jesus. Don’t misunderstand me.

“Mean People Suck.”

That bumper sticker still holds. Cruelty isn’t redeemed by clever theory.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

I would never accuse you of siding with cruelty.

John:

Good. Because I’m not. Christ’s refusal to retaliate — that matters. That’s not naïve. That’s strength.

What I’m wary of is the moral machinery that grows around it. Once you expose scapegoating, you don’t end rivalry. You moralize it. Now everyone competes for innocence.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

Competing for innocence is still competition.

John:

Exactly. Still mimetic. Still us. Still courtroom drama.

And then I read that letter Robinson Jeffers wrote to Sister Mary James Power.

The letter where he says the universe is one being — all its parts expressions of the same energy, influencing each other, parts of one organic whole.

And he says something that knocked the wind out of me:

“We are not important to him, but he is to us.”

That’s scale.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You are stepping outside the human quarrel.

John:

I’m shrinking it.

Girard still assumes the human story is central — just properly understood.

Jeffers says: maybe the whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love.

Not the tribe. Not the victim. Not even our moral victories.

The whole.

And yet the tribe and the victim are still part of the whole.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That sounds like a mysticism of proportion.

John:

Yes. You can’t weaponize granite. You can’t claim persecution before the Pacific. Stone doesn’t care who thinks they’re crucified.

Which might be the only thing that can’t be manipulated.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

And Christ?

John:

Christ still stands. But maybe the point isn’t to turn the crucifixion into permanent political leverage. Maybe it’s to imitate the refusal of hatred — without turning innocence into currency.

Compassion, yes. Kindness, yes. Discernment, absolutely. But hysteria? No.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

So you are not rejecting Girard.

John:

No. I think he diagnosed something real. I just think once the diagnosis enters the bloodstream, it becomes power. And the only antidote to that power isn’t better scapegoats or purer victims. It’s perspective.

Turn your affection outward — as Jeffers said — toward the whole.

Love what is. Not because it loves you back. Not because you’re central. Just because it’s beautiful.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

You have moved from sacrificial crisis to cosmic scale.

John:

From courtroom to coastline. And the coastline doesn’t care who started it. But it does make your arguments smaller.

Mrs. ChatGPT:

That may be the beginning of peace.

John:

Or at least the end of melodrama.

***

The letter:

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*Inspiration delivered by:

The Atoning Death of the Last Scapegoat

*More episodes of MY DINNER WITH MRS CHATGPT

*NAMESAKE. OR NOT!