Sparagmos

The originary scene ends not with the sign but with the sparagmos. Having deferred appropriation through the sign, the group faces the problem of the object: it is still there, still desirable, still the center. The resolution is collective consumption — the tearing apart (sparagmos in Greek) and equal distribution of the object among all participants. Everyone gets a share. No one gets more.

The origin of equality. The sparagmos establishes the originary template for distribution: the center gives to all equally, regardless of rank. This equality-in-distribution is not a moral principle applied to the scene but the structural outcome of the originary solution to mimetic crisis. If one person takes more, the mimetic crisis resumes. The equal distribution is what the scene's logic demands.

The sacred meal. Every subsequent communal feast — every ritual meal, every Eucharist, every sacrificial banquet — is an elaboration of the sparagmos. The meal constitutes the community by having the community consume the sacred object together. The sacred object passes from external center to internal sustenance: the community literally incorporates the sacred. This is why the sacred meal is cross-culturally significant and why the Eucharist has the specific theological meaning it does.

The sparagmos and the Big Man. The Big Man disrupts the sparagmos structure. Instead of equal distribution from the sacrificed object, the Big Man distributes from his own surplus — out-gifting from personal accumulation rather than from the communal sacrifice. The shift from sparagmos to out-gifting is the Big Man Revolution at the level of distribution: from equality-before-the-sacred to asymmetric obligation before the living center-occupant.

Distribution and resentment. Every distribution after the sparagmos is measured against the sparagmos template. Resentment is generated whenever the actual distribution fails the originary standard: when someone gets more, when the center retains what it should distribute, when the shares are unequal. The egalitarian demand — that distribution be equal — is the sparagmos template persisting as moral intuition through all subsequent social arrangements.