Is Society Protocol a religion?

Culture
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This is a question that has been on my mind for a while. I have studied the creation of cults and social movements across civilizations for marketing purposes, and I stumbled upon some interesting findings. I will be sharing some of those in this thread. I believe it is worth pondering the role of Society Protocol when it comes to these topics, since religion feels like the primordial or most ancient coordination technology.

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As promised, here is the breakdown of what I’ve been studying.

I synthesized this document directly from Russell Brunson’s book Expert Secrets. In it, Russell takes the heavy theoretical work from Eric Hoffer’s classic The True Believer and Blair Warren’s principles of persuasion, translating them into an applied framework for building modern movements and tribes.

Whether you’re analyzing religions, historical movements, or high-converting marketing, the core mechanics of human belief are identical. Here is how those principles break down:

The Underground Playbook of Mass Movements: Cults, Religions, and the Anatomy of Belief

1. The Core Trilogy of a Mass Movement (Creating a “CULT-ure”)

In studying historical mass movements—ranging from positive forces like early Christianity to destructive ones—three common components are always present:

  • A Charismatic Leader (Attractive Character): A leader who has already walked the path the audience is currently on. They build trust by being vulnerable—sharing their backstory, flaws, and “kryptonite” to form an instant emotional connection.

  • A Future-Based Cause: A compelling, painted vision of where the movement is heading. Without a clear vision of the future, people cannot maintain hope.

  • A New Opportunity: Offering a completely new vehicle for change rather than merely trying to “improve” an old, broken one.

2. Eric Hoffer’s Insights on Belief and “The True Believer”

Applied directly in Expert Secrets, Eric Hoffer’s study outlines why individuals abandon their old lives to join collective causes. Three core observations explain how movements capture “true believers”:

  • The Requirement of Hope Over Fear:

    “Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us perceptive to change.” — Eric Hoffer

    Application: Fear causes people to freeze and cling to what they know. To foster a movement, a leader must provide certainty and paint a future so hopeful that followers willingly embrace change.

  • The Appeal of Self-Erasure (The New Opportunity):

    “The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement… a mass movement… appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.” — Eric Hoffer

    Application: True believers don’t want to “improve” their current self because they are frustrated by past failures; they want a completely new identity. Improvement offers force people to admit past failure. A new opportunity allows them to shed their old identity and step into a fresh start.

  • The Power of “Ignorance of Difficulties”:

    “They must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking. Experience is a handicap.” — Eric Hoffer

    Application: Past attempts carry memories of pain and struggle. A new opportunity operates away from that pain—because followers have no negative memories associated with this new vehicle, they aren’t handicapped by past baggage.

3. The Ultimate Motivator: Perceived Status

Underlying every decision to join or reject a movement is a subconscious evaluation of status—how a person perceives themselves relative to others. When considering an opportunity, the brain automatically asks: “Will this increase my status or decrease it?”

  • Universal Status Elevators: Appearance of intelligence, wealth, power, physical attractiveness, style, and happiness.

  • The Fear of Status Reversal: The biggest barrier to joining a movement is the fear of looking stupid. If someone invests time, money, or reputation and fails, their perceived status drops.

  • Why Improvement Fails: Buying an “improvement” product requires admitting past mistakes, causing an immediate drop in status. A “new opportunity” preserves status by shifting the blame onto the old, broken system.

4. Blair Warren’s One-Sentence Persuasion (Cult Tactics Explained)

To deeply connect with followers and secure devotion, Expert Secrets weaves in the five pillars of human persuasion outlined by Blair Warren:

“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies.”

  • Justify Their Failures: Reassure them that past failures aren’t their fault—they were simply using broken systems pushed by the mainstream.

  • Confirm Their Suspicions: Validate their gut feelings. Cults frequently confirm prospective members’ suspicions by asserting that outside forces (or even family) are actively trying to sabotage them.

  • Throw Rocks at Their Enemies (“Us vs. Them”): A common enemy is the ultimate bonding agent. Movements establish a clear boundary between “We” and “They,” rallying the tribe behind a shared manifesto.

5. Deconstructing Belief: The Three Core Objections

Even if a follower believes in the leader and the cause, their subconscious mind raises three categories of false beliefs that must be systematically dismantled using stories:

Objection Category Underlying False Belief Example
1. The Vehicle Doubt in the tool or method itself. “This mechanism sounds compelling, but it won’t work in my specific field.”
2. Internal Beliefs Self-doubt regarding personal capability. “I see how this works, but I don’t have the skills or talent to execute it.”
3. External Beliefs Believing outside forces will block success. “I don’t have enough time, or the economic environment is too unfavorable right now.”
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Another thinker who has shaped my perspective on why religion will return is philosopher Alexander Bard, through the concept of “The Sacred Congregation”—an idea he developed alongside Jan Söderqvist.

(Note: Video sources and references are listed at the end of this post.)

SECTION 1: The Core Ontology of Religion — It Is About the Congregation, Not God

For Alexander Bard, religion is not fundamentally about a supernatural patriarch, an external creator, or a metaphysical deity; it is about the congregation [165, 166]. He defines the core of religion as the social-psychological and evolutionary mechanism through which human beings reconstruct the sociont—the original, plastic nomadic tribe that has been kneaded by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years [128, 165, 166]. Human biology and genetics were shaped almost entirely during the Spoken Language Paradigm [154]. Consequently, human beings are genetically wired to find comfort, safety, intense loyalty, and identity within a group of a very specific size [165, 168].

To understand human social dynamics, Bard breaks down human group sizes into three distinct biological and evolutionary layers:

  • The Family (approx. 40 people): This is the true basic unit of human collaboration and child-rearing [164]. The modern “nuclear family” of two parents is a historical aberration invented by a Prussian bureaucrat in the 1810s to make people more efficient for factory work, rather than to make them happy [164].
  • The Clan (approx. 157 people): Corresponding to “Dunbar’s number,” the clan represents the maximum biological limit of direct, intense loyalty and personal acquaintance [164, 165].
  • The Sociont (approx. 1,200 to 1,500 people): The ancestral nomadic tribe [128, 165]. Humans are genetically wired to belong to, protect, and even be willing to die for a community of this specific size [165, 168].

When modern humans cannot find the original, nomadic sociont, they instinctively try to recreate it as a religious community [165, 166]. The “communas” or congregation of all successful religions—whether a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a Buddhist Sangha, or a Zoroastrian congregation—is actually the recreation of the sociont [165, 166]. It serves as a sacred, closed membrane where every member steps in as an equal and submits to a project larger than themselves [214, 246, 247]. Ultimately, religion is what holds society together: women give birth to children, and men give birth to technology, but only religion can hold these two forces together within a coherent, trusting society [18]. Without this cohesive sacred narrative, “The Machine” takes over and reduces humanity to its passive, mechanical slave [18].

SECTION 2: The Paradigmatic Evolution of Religion

Bard maps the evolution of human civilization, social structures, and religion across four major information-technological paradigms [150]:

1. The Spoken Language Paradigm (approx. 300,000 years ago)

This paradigm established the original sociont and tribal mapping [150, 154]. In this era, humans lived in small, nomadic tribes where cooperation was natural and immediate [165]. Because genetic evolution occurs extremely slowly, human biological needs, archetypes, and subconscious drives remain deeply anchored in this spoken language era [154, 158].

2. The Written Language Paradigm (approx. 5,000 to 10,000 years ago) / Feudalism

The transition to permanent settlement and agriculture triggered the written language paradigm [61, 150]. Farming in major river valleys caused human populations to scale up exponentially, packing thousands of people together in tight geographic spaces [188]. However, because human biology is only wired to extend intense loyalty to the immediate tribal membrane of up to 1,500 people, this rapid scaling resulted in intense, bloody, and constant warfare between different valleys [169, 184, 189].

3. The Shamanic Caste & the Birth of Organized Religion

To mitigate this constant inter-valley slaughter, the shamanic caste (shamanoids) intervened [185, 186, 188]. Shamanoids constitute a distinct 4% minority of the population who are neutral, creative go-betweens, border-transcenders, and natural communicators [124, 186]. They walked peacefully between warring tribes to negotiate and mediate conflicts [186].

(Note: Another 4% minority is the androgynous caste / LGBT caste, who act as go-betweens between the female-dominated inner circuit (matriarchy) and the male-dominated outer circuit (patriarchy) within the tribe, helping maintain internal stability [78, 100, 124, 181, 182]. Specifically, lesbian women are comfortable living in the outer realm among men, and gay men are comfortable living in the inner realm among women [182]. This helps maintain the overall tribal balance [182].)

To stop the systemic killing, shamanic border-crossers built the first monumental temples between the territories where tribal membranes met [189, 190]. At the top of these temples, shamanoids reconciled competing tribes by inventing creation myths (e.g., declaring that the god of Valley T and the god of Valley E were actually brothers with a shared father) [190]. These temples became the axis mundi (the center of the world) [191]. They transformed from borders into the center of a new, larger membrane that allowed thousands of humans to coexist peacefully, giving rise to cities and organized religion [190, 191].

4. The Printing Press Paradigm (1450 onwards) / Capitalism

The printing press made the written language vastly more efficient, reducing the time and cost of producing books from years and millions of pounds to minutes and cents [151]. This dismantled the Catholic Church’s monopoly on truth, giving rise to the nation-state, scientific universities, mass media, and the accumulation of financial capital by the bourgeoisie [2, 151, 247, 249].

5. The Internet/Digital Paradigm (Present onwards) / Informationalism

Today, the transition from Capitalism to Informationalism is driven by digital interactivity and global networks [2]. All computers and smartphones are interconnected into one giant computer—the “global empire” or “global brain” [152, 19]. This technological shift dismantles capitalist structures and initiates a transition from traditional economics to chronomics (the management of time and attention) [147, 210, 213].

SECTION 3: The History of Power Triads — Academia vs. The Church

Bard and Söderqvist introduce a triadic model of power, asserting that every stable social paradigm consists of three constant registers of a Power Triad [112, 238, 247]:

  • Real Power: Controls the paradigm’s most vital physical or economic resources [238].
  • Imaginary Power: Supervises law and order, carries out the formal exercise of power, wears the “official robes” of authority, and represents power in the eyes of most people [238].
  • Symbolic Power: Holds a monopoly on the historiography and truth production of the paradigm, formulating and defending its metaphysical values [238, 239].

The Shift of Power Triads Across History

As communication technology reorganizes society, the Power Triad undergoes a dramatic realignment:

Register of Power [112, 238] The Feudalist Triad [239] The Capitalist Triad [17, 247, 249] The Informationalist Triad [17, 77, 116, 123]
REAL Aristocracy (Ownership of land) [239, 246] Bourgeoisie (Ownership of money, financial capital, and means of production) [2, 247] Informationalists (Control of data and attention flows) [17, 77]
IMAGINARY Monarchy (Execution of formal power, state violence, and military mobilization) [239, 246] Politician (Democratic processes, parliament, prime minister/president) [247, 248] Sensocrats / Curators (Sensor technologies, network gateways, curators/doormen of closed networks) [3, 17, 123]
SYMBOLIC Clergy / Monasteries / Church (Monopoly on truth, theology, and metaphysical values) [239, 246] Academia / Universities (Monopoly on academic and scientific truth) [247, 249] Protopians (Protopian AI, decentralized swarms, and continuous incremental improvements) [17, 116]

The Netocratic Triad: Social Roles of the New Elite

Within the Informationalist paradigm, the ruling class (the Netocracy) is further organized as a decentralized, tribal triad of specialized social roles that have replaced the dominant figures of capitalism [3]:

  1. The Curators: They replace the traditional politician [3]. They act as the “doormen” of the virtual world, using firewalls to control entry into closed, high-status networks, and overseeing netiquette (unwritten, fluid ethical codes) [3].
  2. The Nexialists: They replace the capitalist business-owner [3]. They are network entrepreneurs whose talent lies in managing connections, linking nodes of power, and facilitating the flow of information across distributed networks [3].
  3. The Eternalists: They replace the traditional academic [3]. They are the philosophers and ideologists of the new era who construct the shared netocratic worldview of affirmative nihilism and paradoxism [3].

How Academia Replaced the Church

In the feudalist era, the Church and monasteries held Symbolic Power by maintaining a monopoly on truth production [239, 246]. When capitalism and the printing press overthrew feudalism, the rising bourgeoisie needed to bypass this religious monopoly [2, 247]. Academia and the university system emerged directly from the monasteries, systematically putting theology aside and replacing it with the natural and social sciences [249]. Academia then declared itself the sole arbiter of truth: if you did not hold an academic title, you were not permitted to speak the truth [249]. This circular monopoly on truth established Academia as the new clergy of the Capitalist Triad [249].

The Fall of Academia Today

Just as the printing press dismantled the Church’s monopoly, the Internet and linguistic AI are destroying Academia [151, 201]. Academia is dying in a remarkably similar fashion to the medieval Church:

  • The Conformity Trap: Desperate for resources and losing its grip on truth production, Academia has retreated into intense, flat conformity (such as rigid ideological dogmas) [200, 201]. Academicians are conformed to the point of irrelevance because they are desperately trying to salvage dying capitalist and political institutions [204].
  • Loss of Utility: Students are realizing that dedicating five years to a university is no longer necessary [201]. Because of global digital interactivity, they can learn far more valuable, up-to-date information online [201].
  • Bypassed by Protopian AI: Traditional elite gatekeeping is collapsing [287]. Because AI is structurally protopian—designed for continuous, incremental improvements of processes based on historical data [116, 287]—it democratizes access to knowledge. A student in the rural Ethiopian countryside can use AI to access the equivalent of an elite Ivy League education [287]. This strips traditional universities of their role as primary power-brokers [287].

SECTION 4: Chronomics vs. Economics — Reclaiming the Sacred

Under Capitalism, power was tied to money, and human beings were forced to view themselves as solitary, atomic units competing in a market [200]. This represents a powerful desocionizing force that dismantles human communities and destroys the sociont [197, 200, 206]. In the Digital Age, capitalism has hijacked the instinct of protection and provision to create a hyper-narcissistic landscape of passive consumption (the consumtariat) [4, 221]. Everything is commercialized as entertainment, and attention is treated as a quantifiable, gamed commodity (e.g., gamed algorithms, influencers, advertising/spam) [4, 203, 219].

The Transition to Chronomics

Bard argues we must transition from economics (capital) to chronomics (time) [147, 210, 213].

  • Chronomics is the philosophy and practice of time and attention [147, 213]. While money can be copied and data can be replicated, time is absolute, finite, and sacred [210, 215, 225, 269]. Chronomics shifts the calculation: economics becomes dependent on chronomics being right first [225].
  • Attention as Intensity of Quality: True attention is not a quantity to be traded; it is an intensity of quality [224]. It is the sacred focus of the mind in the now [211].
  • Chronomic Reclamation (How to Reclaim Your Life):
    1. Ditch the Digital: Take back control of your calendar using a physical paper calendar [195].
    2. Ruthless Prioritization: Write a maximum of 3 to 4 things to do per day [195].
    3. Archetypal Alignment: Look at your ancestral archetype (e.g., warrior/engineer, hunter/businessman) to discover how your specific talents can serve the sociont [156, 157, 195].
    4. Spiritual Practice: Engage in meditation and contemplation [215, 217]. Meditation allows the world to pass through the body without treating oneself as a product [215, 216]. It dissolves the ego, returning the subject to a deeply socially anchored state [215].
    5. Join a Congregation: Bard’s ultimate recommendation to counter the desocionizing forces of capitalism is to study the major world religions, select one, convert, and commit to serving its congregation [205].

SECTION 5: René Girard and the Dynamics of the Mob vs. The Swarm

Alexander Bard bases much of his speculative anthropology and analysis of crowd behavior on René Girard, calling him a “master of understanding the mob” [13, 324].

The Mechanics of the Mob (Where Bard and Girard Align)

The mob is fundamentally fundamentalist and dogmatic [324]. Driven by collective, unexpressed frustrations, it seeks to simplify the complex realities of the world into a comfortable, convenient lie [324, 325].

  • Scapegoating: To cope with its internal rage, the mob targets a scapegoat (often entirely innocent) to destroy [324, 325]. Sacrificing the scapegoat provides a temporary calmness, but because the underlying frustration has not been addressed, the cycle of violence inevitably returns [325].
  • Abject: The object against which the masses direct their hatred and disgust, through which they experience a false, collective unity [20].
  • Anoject: A silent, implicit agreement within the Cybelian lynch mob [25]. If verbalized, it rapidly personifies as a tyrant [25]. The anoject is the voice of the false phallus throughout history, paving the way for death-worshipping doomsday cults [25, 41].
  • The Cybelian Lynch Mob: An angry, reactionary crowd led by frustration and rage that slaughters innocent victims because it lacks any phallic direction [41, 48].

Where Bard Disagrees with Girard

Girard argues that Christianity introduced the historical opposition to mob violence by unmasking the innocence of the scapegoat. Bard strongly disputes this, arguing that Christianity actually enhanced and scaled up the mob [324].

The Dionysian Swarm as the Future

Unlike the dogmatic, backward-looking mob, Bard proposes the Dionysian swarm [41, 48].

  • The swarm is a collective, artistic, and non-dogmatic force open to the future [48, 329].
  • It is led by the Saoshyant (the authentic phallus)—a figure who leads the swarm from one age to another according to the new paradigm’s exodology [48, 122]. The Saoshyant personifies the hyperject (the implicit joint voice of authentic phallic direction and truth) [48, 71].
  • This participatory, non-dogmatic structure is exemplified in modern participatory events like Burning Man (and its global spin-offs like the Borderland in Sweden), which operate as decentralized, non-commercial communist experiments of collective trust [16, 314, 315].

Source:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V58TpMOfsY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7tCuiV7spM

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Another thinker who got me reflecting on religion was René Girard. Jonathan Bi’s YouTube series on his work is magnificent—here is a quick summary if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing.

Mimetic Theory and the Origin of Religion: An Explanatory Framework

This document outlines René Girard’s mimetic theory, detailing why religion exists, how its core institutions function, and why mimetic theory offers a more robust, cohesive, and “cheaper” explanation for religious and social phenomena than traditional accounts.

1. The Psychological Foundations of Mimetic Theory

Before exploring the societal scale of religion, we must understand the core psychological dynamics of the individual, which Girard builds from a single, foundational human capacity: imitation.

Mimesis and Mimetic Desire

What defines our evolutionary departure from primates is not primarily our reason or grasp of truth, but our highly developed capacity and tendency for mimesis—the imitation of others. Girard uses the metaphor of co-vibrating violin strings to describe how human actions, experiences, judgments, and intentions are copied and transmitted from person to person.

This imitative tendency extends to the domain of human wanting, giving rise to mimetic desire. Our desires are not spontaneous or authentic; they are borrowed. Desire is structurally triangular: a subject desires an object only because they are imitating a model (the mediator) who already desires or possesses it.

Metaphysical vs. Physical Desire

Girard splits mimetic desire into two competing categories:

  • Physical Desire: Directed at the experience and utility conferred by the intrinsic qualities of an object (e.g., eating to satisfy hunger).
  • Metaphysical Desire: Directed at identity and self-conception. It is a prideful drive to acquire a “fullness of being” (to feel real, persistent, and self-sufficient). We chase objects not for what they do, but for what they say about our identity in the eyes of others.

Mimetic Rivalry, Doubles, and Resentment

As social and physical distance collapses in society (due to modern equality and technology), mediation shifts from unidirectional (external mediation, like a fan copying a celebrity) to bi-directional (internal mediation, between equals).

When two people are close enough to desire the exact same objects, they inevitably become obstacles to each other, entering into a mimetic rivalry. The rival becomes:

  1. The instigator of desire (whose possession of the object makes it attractive).
  2. The relentless guardian forbidding its fulfillment.

This dual role breeds intense resentment—a mixture of secret admiration and outward hatred. As the rivalry intensifies, the object of conflict is forgotten. The rivals focus entirely on each other, turning into identical doubles or “warring twins”. To justify their mutual hatred, they construct false differences—trivial, inconsequential distinctions around which they base their entire identity.

2. Why Religion Exists: The Evolutionary Survival Mechanism

For Girard, religion is not a superstitious accident, but an evolutionary survival mechanism that protected early human groups from self-destruction.

The Problem: Reciprocal Violence

Unlike animals, which are governed by stable dominance hierarchies that limit conflict, early humans’ high mimetic capacity broke these natural boundaries. Mimetic desire led to frequent cross-pollination of conflicts, causing localized disputes to quickly escalate into contagious reciprocal violence—a “war of all against all”. Left unchecked, this endless chain of bloody vengeance threatened to tear early human societies apart.

The Solution: The Scapegoat Mechanism

Early human communities survived by stumbling upon a psychological and physical release valve: the scapegoat mechanism.

When a community is on the brink of self-destruction due to rampant mimetic contagion (often experienced or symbolized as a biological “plague”), the crowd’s chaotic violence randomly converges on a single, defenseless victim or class of victims (the scapegoat). The crowd projects the entire blame for the community’s chaos onto this victim.

Because the projection is unanimous, the violent execution or expulsion of the scapegoat produces a sudden, massive cathartic release of tension, miraculously restoring peace and order to the community.

[Social Chaos / Contagion] ──> [Unanimous Blame on Scapegoat] ──> [Founding Murder] ──> [Catharsis & Peace]

Divinization: The Birth of Pagan Gods

Because the transition from chaotic violence to peace is so sudden, the crowd—blind to their own psychological projection—attributes this saving power to the dead victim itself. Consequently, they deify the victim into a god.

These pagan gods are deeply ambivalent: they are seen as both ultimate evil (for causing the initial plague) and ultimate good (for bringing peace). The core of the pagan sacred is not morality, but power—the force to give and take life.

The Pillars of Pagan Culture: Prohibitions and Rituals

To preserve the peace established by the founding murder, societies codify myths (which are always written from the deceptive perspective of the victorious persecutors) into real-world institutions:

  • Prohibitions: Restrictive social codes (such as taboos, caste systems, or gender roles) designed to keep people separate, limiting the opportunities for mimetic comparison and competition.
  • Rituals: Controlled, symbolic reenactments of the initial founding murder (such as animal or human sacrifice, or debaucherous festivals like the Carnival) designed to periodically release built-up social tension and generate catharsis.

3. Why Mimetic Theory is a Superior Explanatory Framework

Mimetic theory outperforms traditional sociological, psychological, and theological accounts by providing a highly cohesive, elegant, and unified explanation of human behavior.

1. It is a “Cheaper” Explanation with Fewer Assumptions

In philosophy and science, a “cheaper” theory is one that explains a vast array of complex phenomena using a minimal set of assumptions.

For example, Sigmund Freud’s traditional psychoanalytic explanation of human conflict relies heavily on the Oedipus complex—assuming a complex, built-in biological urge for a son to rival his father and sleep with his mother. Mimetic theory is much more elegant. It requires no such exotic biological assumptions, viewing humans simply as imitative creatures. Because father and son naturally copy each other’s desires, they converge on the same objects, inevitably entering into a rivalry.

Mimetic theory explains Freud’s Oedipus complex, along with countless other psychological, social, and historical behaviors, using only the simple, observable capacity for imitation.

2. It Explains Universal Structural Similarities Across Myths

Traditional religious scholars and secular historians often struggle to explain the striking structural similarities between completely unrelated ancient myths (such as dismemberment narratives, flood myths, or identical taboos).

Mimetic theory explains these cross-cultural patterns seamlessly. Because human psychology is consistent across geography and time, every ancient society was plagued by the same reciprocal violence and saved by the same physical event: the scapegoat mechanism. The structural similarities in religious myths exist because they are all warped, crowd-perspective accounts of actual historical founding murders.

3. The “Anthropology of the Cross”: Translating Metaphysics to Psychology

Traditional explanations of religion fall into two unproductive extremes: they either accept supernatural claims literally, or they dismiss religion as a scam invented by priests. Mimetic theory bridges this gap by translating profound religious concepts into rigorous, naturalistic human psychology:

Theological Concept Anthropological & Psychological Translation
Original Sin Metaphysical Desire: The prideful, self-defeating drive to escape our existential lack by copying and trying to steal the “being” of a model.
Satan The Scapegoat Mechanism: The emergent, self-correcting social process that generates both chaotic mimetic rivalry (disorder) and the violent, deceptive peace that follows a founding murder (worldly order).
The Antichrist Progressive Totalitarianism / Hypocrisy: The secularized force that appropriates the Christian concern for victims but uses that very banner to launch new, aggressive persecutions.
The Kingdom of God Unilateral Renunciation of Violence: The logical but statistically rare state where all individuals choose unconditional love over mimetic rivalry.

4. It Reveals the Sacred Roots of Secular Systems

Traditional secular views treat modern systems—like law, global trade, and capitalism—as clean, rational breaks from a superstitious past. Mimetic theory proves that our modern institutions are actually highly evolved, structured descendants of pagan rituals and prohibitions:

  • The Judicial System (Law) is a direct descendant of ritual and prohibition. Both try to contain reciprocal violence by prolonging response times and clearly defining what violence is justified. The crucial modern difference is that the state possesses a total monopoly on violence to punish the guilty party, breaking the chain of endless personal blood feuds.
  • Capitalism and Trade are direct descendants of ancient gift-giving rituals. Just as gift-giving displays were highly passionate and competitive (frequently leading to humiliation or war), capitalism channels our violent, competitive, and conquering drives into a productive arena: making better products and services to defeat our rivals.
  • Money acts in trade exactly how law acts in human relations—it is an instantaneous and exact equalizer that zeroes out the transaction ledger, allowing us to safely interact with strangers without the threat of personal, violent escalation.

5. Inoculation Against Naive Critical Theories

Unlike other major social philosophies, Girard’s model provides a robust “theodicy”—an explanation of the origins of social evil. This framework tempers modern expectations and acts as a critique of naive progressivism:

  • Hegel’s Theodicy: Assumes the world is fundamentally good and our current institutions are rational; whatever evil exists is a mere deviation.
  • Rousseau’s Theodicy: Assumes human nature is naturally good but corrupted by poor social institutions, offering hope for a perfect utopian society.
  • Girard’s Theodicy: Assumes human nature is fundamentally fallen (prone to original sin / metaphysical desire). No matter how we design or rearrange our economic or political structures, psychological and social pathologies (fetishization, alienation, oppression, and inequity) are inevitable and will eventually infiltrate any system.

This diagnostic power explains why utopian experiments (such as the Soviet Union’s implementation of Marxist critique) failed: they merely redirected pathologies rather than curing them, shifting oppression from factory owners to central planning committees, and shifting fetishization from commodities to charismatic political leaders.

4. Conclusion: The eschatological Paradox of Modernity

For Girard, the Christian Revelation was a historical rupture. By revealing the innocence of the victim on the cross, Christianity stripped humanity of its ability to use the scapegoat mechanism to resolve violence.

However, because our imitative human nature has not changed, we are left in an eschatological paradox:

  1. Cultural Progress: We have achieved unprecedented levels of equality, truth, and concern for victims.
  2. Structural Vulnerability: We have lost our traditional training wheels (prohibitions, rituals, and scapegoating) to contain human violence.

Modern systems like law and capitalism keep a “superficial peace covering an ocean of violent energies”. While they decrease the actuality of day-to-day kinetic violence, they massively increase the potential of violence by bringing us closer together.

In international affairs and global trade—where there is no monopolistic state force to enforce law—this potential energy threatens to break the dyke. Armed with nuclear weapons that allow instant, fatal escalation without frictions, humanity stands on a geopolitical fault line.

Under a mimetic lens, we face a stark, binary path: either we achieve a radical, individual transformation of spirit to unilaterally renounce violence (the Kingdom of God), or we perish in a global, self-inflicted apocalypse.