The scapegoat

The role of "scapegoat" in a group works unconsciously, one seeks to be "sacrificed" and others 'sacrifice'.

In our D.R.A.E. (1), the term "scapegoat" means: "1. m. Goat which the high priest sacrificed for the sins of the Israelites."

This idea is too absurd to be understood without explanation:

Humans intelligent, wise, prestigious, killed a goat for a fearsome god quench his thirst for revenge against the sins of humans.

I repeat: the intellectually fittest human thought, not only in the existence of at least one god, but also assumed that God would punish them if someone did not pay for the sins. In this logic were certain that a pet killing all humans threatened by the spiteful rage of the fearsome deity would be exempt from punishment.

Once recovered from the surprise, we could assume that this happened with humans from cultures ancient, primitive, uneducated.

Not so: there are now people who unwittingly offered as 'scapegoat', offered to be sacrificed, sacrificed for, in full unconscious fantasy, feel pleasure imagining that group saviors "offering".

This situation is discussed in "group psychology" and how could it be otherwise, it is very interesting to know.

The hardest thing to understand in this phenomenon is, as always, how our brain works.

Indeed, neither the "martyr" or "priests" that they sacrifice, more specifically, or the employee who always seems to blame all on him or those who download full responsibility for what goes wrong, they realize that they are fulfilling a rite primitive sacrificed a goat to appease the anger of a deity: the manager, the client calls the inspector that sanctions.

Note: Original in Spanish (without translation by Google): El chivo expiatorio.

(1) Definición del D.R.A.E. de la expresión «chivo expiatorio»

(Este es el Artículo Nº 1.673)

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