Rene Girard, Ending Violence, and Jean Valjean

Pain always pushes us to look for a scapegoat. Until our pain is healed, we will need a sacrifice to appease our own anger.

Is it possible to end violence in the world?

In our day and age, violence is legitimized and sacralized – as it’s always been. Nations rise and declare war on each other on the grounds that seem perfectly justifiable.

Since times immemorial, people have believed in sacred violence because there seems to be no other way to set things right when you have be…