3 February

Witch burnings are a horrible example of how violence escalates when societies become more equal, when differences are erased. A combination of Black Plague, the Reformation and various other catastrophic events led to the erasure of hierarchical social differences that had stabilised societies for many centuries. As differences are erased and humans copy one another increasingly in everything they think and do, that exponential growth in similarity and sameness provokes intense rivalry, as people compete to try to restore status differences, to differentiate people from one another. This is called mimetic crisis, a term Rene Girard invented. The relief for this crisis is the finding of a scapegoat, to blame the intense rivalry and violence on. Women became that, in the burnings. Today cancel culture does the same, in a culture of prolific copying through social media. https://youtu.be/zrzMhU_4m-g?si=5oL4yGq88R4d6LuB