Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not what I was expecting
Review: Bailie asserts that the Gospel has fundamentally changed the way humanity views what he calls sacrificial violence. Taken in the big scheme of history, the Bible is relatively new literature. And regardless of one's personal beliefs, it is hard to argue that the Bible hasn't been the dominant moral influence on the Western World. The argument Bailie makes in the first half of this book is that violence, along with many obvious negative effects, can positively affect a society's structure. Ancient cultures engaged in sacrificial violence, often in the form of ritual sacrifice. While to a Christian outsider this may seem immoral, it served a purpose within those cultures by unifying them. In it's simplest form, often as a scapegoating device, a religious leader would select a person to sacrifice before a tribe went to war, or to appease the gods so that the crops might grow. While it is tough to believe that these sacrifices had anything to do with the outcome of a war, Bailie suggests that they actually did. It wasn't that the gods were pleased and thus helped the tribe, but that the tribe was united by this ritual. It served as a kind of primitive pep rally. It was more a psychological advantage than a divine one. That was the nature of many cultures throughout the world. They were bound by ritual violence in one form or another. What the story of Jesus did, was flip that on its head. The Bible was the first religious literature to be told from the point of view of the victim. Jesus was by choice a victim of ritual, state-sanctioned violence. "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do." This, according to Bailie, threw back the curtain, or unveiled the machinery that was in place. Bailie uses several examples of groups engaged in a frenzy of impulsive violence, shocked to their senses by an outsider stepping in and questioning it. That, on a cultural level, is what Jesus did. He threw the world into a crisis because the Christian viewpoint can no longer accept this ritual violence (there's a section on the church and church-sanctioned violence, but that's something else), and thus one of the pillars that held civilization together has been removed. We are desperately searching for something to replace it.

I had hoped, from this point, that Bailie would go into HOW we are trying to replace it, what this means for modern culture, and how we can survive this crisis as a unified world. Instead, what follows is an in-depth analysis of the Gospels, where he dissects many of the stories to support his grander assertions. I wish he'd gone the other way. Rather than support his assertions, I was more interested in the implications of his assertions. What are some current forms of sacrificial violence? There are many, I believe. Our current wars. Our criminal justice system. Capital punishment. One does not need to look further than the spectacle of the Scott Peterson case to see that this is the current equivalent of tying someone to a tree and stoning them. This is not to comment on Peterson's guilt or innocence, merely on the effect this spectacle has on society. It has been said that nothing brings a country together like a war. I wish Bailie had explored these topics, but aside from a short bit on nationalism as the new religion and a brief examination of a few modern genocides, he turns inward to Biblical analysis.

Perhaps it's unfair to criticize this book for not doing something the author never intended to do in the first place. Bailie's breadth of source material (he draws from all facets of history, literature, poetry, and religious material) is incredible. But as someone uninterested in Biblical analysis, and as someone who was on board with Bailie's theory already, I would have found an application of his theory much more interesting than a support of it. Maybe that will be another book.

Rating:
Summary: HARD TRUTHS
Review: HARD TRUTHS

In Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie makes a hard demand of the reader: put aside for this time your cherished preconceptions, and listen. That is not only a hard demand but a risky one for any writer to make, lest he be found foolish. In my judgment, Bailie is not foolish, but prophetic.

Bailie is founder and director of the Florilegia Institute, a kind of Catholic "think tank/apologist." In his analysis of the roots and results of violence, he scrutinizes disparate sources, ancient and modern, including the Bible and current events. He does so both as a Christian and as an anthropologist, peeling away layer by layer the myths and pieties often associated with "The Greatest Book Ever Written." Readers who regard the Bible primarily as a literal statement of God's word may be shocked at many of Bailie's assertions, but they need to remain open to the end of the book and beyond. As well, non- and nominal Christians will be put off by Bailie's unwavering focus on Jesus Christ's role in the unraveling of the power of "sacred violence", but they need to "put on" what Bailie considers to be the fundamental Christian message.

The seminal assertion of Bailie's book is best stated in his quotation from literary critic Northrup Frye: "Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself." All civilizations (according to Bailie) arose out of a sea of chaotic violence, and were in fact established by acts of such overwhelming and consummating violence (the apocalypse) that chaos was stilled and stability reigned. At least for a while, as in the Bolshevik Revolution. This "screen" of history (or myth) is a whitewash protecting the civilization from facing its own founding horrors, especially by shutting away the faces and voices of the countless innocent victims. "History" we admit, is written by those who win. The celebration and ritual re-enacting of this founding act of "sacred violence", now a sanitized myth, is the beginning of religion, with its bloody sacrifices (often human), and its prescriptions and taboos, all intended to placate fickle gods (ideologies) who alone, it is now exhorted and believed, have the power to keep the apocalypse from recurring.

The effectiveness of the founding myth (still according to Bailie) and its ritual re-enactments in maintaining stability has relied on two factors, the first being the ardent acceptance by the members of the civilization of the "sacred truths" of the founding myths, and the second being the non-recognition of the victims. To see and hear the human victim, Bailie points out many times, is to empathize and see through the screen, thereby nullifying its "good" effect.

Bailie argues that Western civilization, over the course of several millenia, has gradually and uniquely come to see the plight and humanity of the victim. It has done this through the Bible of Judeo-Christian culture:

". . . all of the world's religions urge their faithful to exercise compassion and mercy. . . . But the empathy for victims --as victims-- is specifically western, and quintessentially biblical." (p. 19)

The Jews, alone among the ancients, stubbornly wrote or referred to facts about victims in the mix of their writings, thereby creating in much of the Old Testament, including the Pentateuch, the Proto-History, instead of a "sacred history", or myth. The face of the victim may be seen not only in the Psalms and in Isaiah and the prophets, but also in the stories, including those of Abel, of Jonah the reluctant prophet, of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses' empathy with the Jewish slaves; and it reaches its fulfillment in the New Testament, told from the point-of-view of Jesus, the infinitely innocent victim. This is not to say that the Old Testament is a unified treatise condemning violence and defending violence. It is in fact an odd mixture of mythic sacred violence, historical fact, and advocacy of victims. The beauty of Bailie's book is his ability as an anthropologist to unearth the historical facts and extract them from the mythological debris.

There is no need today to document today's escalating cycles of violence. Palestine will more than suffice. The supreme irony in Bailie's thought is that Western civilization's maturing empathy with victims over the centuries has made "sacred" violence unpalatable, and ineffective. This fact is amply documented in the book, as in our refusal to use ground troops to oust Milosevic from Kosovo, and our reluctance to maintain the "peacekeeping force" in Somalia once American servicemen began to suffer significant casualties. The military presence was seen as not only victimized, but ineffective. We may today dwell with sad fascination on the present debacle in Iraq. So much for "shock and awe"! Sacred violence has lost its stabilizing ability to fend off chaotic violence.

The protective screen is fading, but unfortunately the human instinct towards violence remains. Bailie writes at length about the nature of this instinct, rooted in mimesis, the impulse to imitate, to want what another wants, to fall in with the scapegoating mob. It will seem to many readers that we are indeed out of time, out of money, and out of luck.

One need not believe in the resurrection of Christ, or in his divinity, or indeed to believe in his actual historical existence, to appreciate and follow his message: To achieve world peace (a step towards the Kingdom of God), we must all --as individuals, as societies and nations-- completely and irrevocably abjure violence. Bailie is no more sanguine about our prospects than you or I:

"Ultimately, there are only two alternative to apocalyptic violence: the sacred violence . . . and the renunciation of violence. That the former is now impossible, and that the latter seems hardly less so, doesn't change the facts." (p. 25)

Rating:
Summary: Leave a little myth, please
Review: I will say first of all that this book is a very interesting read; Bailie wears his ideology on his sleeve, not pretending any kind of "objectivity." And for the most part, I agree with him. However, there were a couple problems that I had with the book.

Bailie, while well-intentioned, eventually strips biblical narratives of all the personhood of God. The portrayals of YHWH he does not like he chalks up to "violent myth," and the ones he does he calls "religious genius." Moreover, up to the point that I am in the book (about sixty pages to go), he has not yet allowed any miraculous event to stand miraculous; he wants to "demythologize" them all into social interactions. While he does not have to give them historical veracity, at least he could talk about what the miraculous as miraculous might mean.

Rating:
Summary: a profound look at violence in our culture
Review: Jesus' words "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" are the best way to summarize this extraordinary book. Bailie grabs on Rene Girard's work to carry on a profound journey through mankind and history. The West, and eventually the whole world, according to Bailie, is in a profound state of crisis that is yet to be overcome. The gospels' revelation is presented as a profoundly paradoxical phenomenom. The world is in a state of crisis as a result of the gospel's influence. The gospels have revealed to humaninty what myth had been unable to do for centuries: the sacrificial victim that lies at the foundation of cultural order is innocent. This revelation has completely unstructred the 'sacred', which up to then had kept societies at peace. After a culture receives the gospels' influence, scapgoating no longer works. The gospels tear away the distinction that culture had made regarding violence. This distinction consists in a 'bad' or profane violence, which will lead to chaos and self-destruction, and a 'good' or sacred violence (sacrifice) that is able to put an end to profane violence. The power of the gospels resides in the fact that these distinctions are no longer possible, sacred violence is done away. Through some clever magazine articles and book excerpts, Bailie makes us understand that the world is no longer able to restore peace through sacred violence. The root of the current crisis lies, then, in the fact that sacrificial options no longer work. Jesus warns in a dramatic fashion that he will not bring peace, but instead a sword. Jesus announces that after his death, scapegoating will no longer be possible, therefore, mankind is in danger of engaging in apocalytical violence that sacrifice simply can't solve. This, however, does not mean that Bailie argues that sacrifice is not a feauture of the modern world. The holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Rodney King beating are all tragic reminders of the presence of sacrifice in our world. But, amazingly enough, people have come to discover that scapegoating solves nothing and find it morally troublesome to perform such actions. Violence is unveiled, it is shown in its real nature

Rating:
Summary: a profound look at violence in our culture
Review: Jesus' words "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" are the best way to summarize this extraordinary book. Bailie grabs on Rene Girard's work to carry on a profound journey through mankind and history. The West, and eventually the whole world, according to Bailie, is in a profound state of crisis that is yet to be overcome. The gospels' revelation is presented as a profoundly paradoxical phenomenom. The world is in a state of crisis as a result of the gospel's influence. The gospels have revealed to humaninty what myth had been unable to do for centuries: the sacrificial victim that lies at the foundation of cultural order is innocent. This revelation has completely unstructred the 'sacred', which up to then had kept societies at peace. After a culture receives the gospels' influence, scapgoating no longer works. The gospels tear away the distinction that culture had made regarding violence. This distinction consists in a 'bad' or profane violence, which will lead to chaos and self-destruction, and a 'good' or sacred violence (sacrifice) that is able to put an end to profane violence. The power of the gospels resides in the fact that these distinctions are no longer possible, sacred violence is done away. Through some clever magazine articles and book excerpts, Bailie makes us understand that the world is no longer able to restore peace through sacred violence. The root of the current crisis lies, then, in the fact that sacrificial options no longer work. Jesus warns in a dramatic fashion that he will not bring peace, but instead a sword. Jesus announces that after his death, scapegoating will no longer be possible, therefore, mankind is in danger of engaging in apocalytical violence that sacrifice simply can't solve. This, however, does not mean that Bailie argues that sacrifice is not a feauture of the modern world. The holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Rodney King beating are all tragic reminders of the presence of sacrifice in our world. But, amazingly enough, people have come to discover that scapegoating solves nothing and find it morally troublesome to perform such actions. Violence is unveiled, it is shown in its real nature

Rating:
Summary: The book that changed my life
Review: Yes, that might appear to be a hyperbolic statement, but it's true. And I've read a lot of books. Since reading this book four years ago, I have never responded to violence as I did before I read it. I have become painfully aware of the seemingly endless cycle of violence that only escalates. Since September 11, I have thought of Baillie many times. Now that our part of the violence has begun, I find myself profoundly sad. The missiles on the ships had FDNY painted on them. It all seems so misdirected and ultimately futile. We must look for non-violent ways to stop this insanity.

Rating:
Summary: The book that changed my life
Review: Yes, that might appear to be a hyperbolic statement, but it's true. And I've read a lot of books. Since reading this book four years ago, I have never responded to violence as I did before I read it. I have become painfully aware of the seemingly endless cycle of violence that only escalates. Since September 11, I have thought of Baillie many times. Now that our part of the violence has begun, I find myself profoundly sad. The missiles on the ships had FDNY painted on them. It all seems so misdirected and ultimately futile. We must look for non-violent ways to stop this insanity.