The evil spirit laughs at the heroes, who show the fatal human curiosity about demons, and listen to the spirit, and engage in dialogue.  The evil spirit drones, "All men are mortal and men vain, and pride dies in the grave.  Nothing in this world will save or measure up man's actions here, nor in the next, for there is none.  This life must end in fear.  Only evil can maintain an afterlife.  Those who will, who love this world and have a son, to whom ambition calls, even so this false fame falls.  Death will reign, man is vain.  You mortals, your behavior is mystifying, you want something and act as if you do not want it."

This is the witness of Holy Scripture, Shakespeare, and is restated in our times by the French cultural anthropologist Renée Girard.  We are socially and culturally constituted by mimetic desire.  We seek to imitate others "better off," and acquire the accoutrements of station which they have.  When this competition intensifies, and cultural or social prohibitions cease to reign in the destabilizing competition, and a crisis of order develops, then war erupts, diverting all energy away from the hard drama of human loving, into the melodrama of cultural competition.  One wins, the other loses, and war re-establishes order.  War is violence, and above all, spilling of blood  The massive blood-letting strips some open to the blood, and an incomplete triumph is had by the victors in that they do not die, they have sacrificed humans to dark and evil powers to "win" their favor, which amounts to insuring the true structure of human life is hidden from view/.  The New Testament says, "Be sober, be watchful, for your enemy the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour."  So Satan casts out the old Satan and a new, stable order is created which holds in check for a time the ever renewing mimetic rivalry, and all human energy is diverted by this melodrama, so that the realities of mortal life and faith are thrust from sight beneath the violence.  Love of power battles to silence the power of self-sacrificing love.  Simone Weil wrote that the false god turns suffering into violence, and the true god turns violence into suffering.

Fr. Gregory Elmer O.S.B. lives at  St. Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, CA
Discussion following, featuring panelists David Abramowitz, Joe Park, and Dr. Marie Anne Mayeski.