Psychology Of Evil | Shadow Projection

By scapegoating, we choose one arbitrary object as the embodiment of everything wrong with the world and ourselves. We then ritually destroy that object and we feel we are destroying evil itself. For a time – our existential dread subsides.

But while once sacrificing a goat to the gods was enough to protect a small tribe from existential dread, today’s massive groupings of people require far greater sacrifices. The Nazi holocaust is one horrifying example of what happens when a whole nation projects its shadow on an ethnic minority.

This leaves us much food for thought. Not least of all, it reminds us that every time we point the finger at someone and say ‘You are the problem!’ we are effectively under the same spell that has motivated every genocide in human history. We are throwing all the incomprehensible danger of the world and all the inferiority we feel in ourselves onto another. A scapegoat.
This is where evil comes from.

Based on Ernest Becker's book Escape from Evil.

#philosophy #existential #psychology

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