Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“If ethics is centered upon some good to be obtained, morality defers another kind of centering—the violent centering involved in sacrificial practices. A sacrifice is an attempt to influence a deity by offering some exchange; we don’t think we engage in such practices anymore, but we do. Some sacrificial practices seem innocuous enough, maybe even elevating—promising God, for example, that if he gets you out of this jam, that you’ll treat your kids better, or stop drinking, or whatever (something God presumably wants you to do)—as long as you keep the promise, of course. But if you think such exchanges can make things good with God, you will see your practices as accumulating such objects of potential exchange. Everything and everyone is a potential object of exchange. When there is a crisis, which is to say when “everything” seems to be at stake, your inclination will be to seek out the most valuable object of exchange, so as to ensure the crisis is relieved. Along with your fellow sacrificial participants you will choose whomever seems most misaligned with the system as the most likely cause of the crisis and therefore the most suitable sacrifice, and you will project onto that sacrificial victim the actions and motivations needed to justify his expulsion.”

— Adam Katz, Crowding Out the Political · Nov 2018 · GABlog