Scapegoat

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

• 5cott0 · Jun 16, 2021 · Recommends

  …Silicon Valley and Speaking Out Against Injustice - Susan Fowler Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley - Adrian Daub The Scapegoat - René Girard

  on “Ask HN: Books on the inside stories of big tech?” ↗
• leoh · Feb 7, 2022 · Recommends

  “The Scapegoat” by Rene Girard, which suggests that we are deeply vulnerable to imitating others; and that when we imitate, this tends to lead to deep conflict, for we often imitate desire for scarce objects (e.g. a…

  on “Ask HN: What is one book you would recommend everyone to read?” ↗
• fwlr · Mar 19, 2023 · Recommends

  …definitely on that list are Weaponised Sacredness by Sarah Perry, specifically the section on egregores (https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/05/07/weaponized-sacredness/ ctrl-f “The Egregore”), Rene Girard’s Scapegoat, and as antagonistic reading (threatening ideas you must engage with) Spandrell’s IQ Shredder, and Nick Land’s Hell-Baked. In general the list is about coming to understand little-recognized forces that…

  on “Meditations on Moloch” ↗
• anotherarray · Jan 2, 2017 · Recommends

  The Scapegoat, René Girard.

  on “Ask HN: What was the best book you read in 2016?” ↗
• lukifer · Apr 3, 2019 · Mentions

  …that coin is shaming a violator of norms (whether guilty or innocent) is also a group bonding experience, and potentially a selfish means for signaling one's moral high ground to the tribe. Rene Girard's Scapegoat Theory presents an interesting model of the phenomenon: https://www.iep.utm.edu/girard/#H3

  on “Editing in an age of outrage” ↗
• AnimalMuppet · Aug 18, 2020 · Critical

  Someone here gave a link to a masterful takedown of Girard's claims in The Scapegoat. Basically, in order to make his claims, he's just making stuff up - about Christianity, and about Oedipus, and about almost everything else he cites as historical evidence for his position. If you…

  on “The Last of the Hedgehogs: René Girard” ↗
• wrapupandkeepit · Nov 8, 2021 · Mentions

  Start with some online summaries. Girard's theories span multiple essays and books. Instead of jumping straight into one of his books, it will help to get some overall context. I personally read "The Scapegoat" but Girard is doing literary critique which, like philosophy, can be dense and difficult to read if one isn't used to such texts. Personally, I would like to read "Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self…

  on “I read a book that blew my mind a little” ↗
• segfaultbuserr · Aug 20, 2019 · Mentions

  …Good imitators copy a transcendent goal or figure, and linear time helps forming the image of the transcendent goal. Linear time drives progress and long-term thinking. Rene Girard also believes the Scapegoat Mechanism is the center of human civilization. Due to the destructiveness of Mimetic Competition, all tribes would be plagued by serious conflicts and violence, eventually, the communitiy will find someone/something…

  on “Peter Thiel's Religion” ↗
• la_joconde · Jul 31, 2025 · Mentions

  …culture! innovation!—are weak. Study after study showed remote work didn’t hurt performance. So why the crackdown? The Girardian Unmasking French philosopher René Girard’s theories on mimetic desire and scapegoating explain this better than any MBA analysis. Here’s how: 1. Mimetic Desire: The Office as a Shared Delusion Girard argued that humans don’t desire things directly—we desire through others. For decades,…

  on “How Remote Work Died: A Girardian Tragedy in Corporate America” ↗