Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads [Paperback]

Gil Bailie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

This is a Girardian-influenced, engagingly written classic on the nature of violence and the hope for overcoming it in our conflict-ridden world. It is also a literary work, an often miraculous interplay between cultural documents and historical periods.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While politicians, social workers, news commentators and TV evangelists are wringing the nation's collective hands in dismay over mounting social disintegration and violence, Bailie forthrightly sets himself the task of exposing the deep cultural roots of the problem. By synthesizing an astounding array of seemingly discordant perceptions ranging from Bob Dylan songs and the Aztec myth of Tezcatlipoca to Greek tragedy and the Hebrew prophets, he presents a grippingly unified analysis undergirded by rigorous Christian conviction. Writing this challenging book, Bailie explains in an epilogue, "has drawn me ever deeper into the power of Christian revelation." Bailie's vision of prophetic Christianity goes far beyond the conventionally comfortable one held by many churchgoers, some of whom may squirm in the face of Bailie's harsh assessment of how we've come to our culture's fraying and what's to be done about it. On the other hand, those with the patience to follow Bailie through the course of his argument may, as Rene Girard promises in a foreword, be "lifted to a level far superior to what most writers think the average reader is able to absorb."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

About a third of the way through his book, Bailie reports a story told by the nineteenth-century Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard witnessed a street fight in which three men set upon a fourth. The crowd watched with growing indignation; then three of the bystanders jumped on one of the attackers and beat him, applying, Kierkegaard noted, exactly the same rules as the offenders. Afterward, Kierkegaard tried to persuade one of the avengers of the illogic of this behavior. But the man would not be convinced, insisting that the attacker richly deserved to have three persons against him. Bailie, whose book is one of a growing number of popular applications of Rene{‚} Girard's theory of mimetic desire, takes a position much like Kierkegaard's, trying to convince the avengers of the illogic of their behavior. He manages a lucid, lively appreciation of Girard that will ring true on many levels (even if one remains unconvinced by Girard's--and Bailie's--claims of uniqueness). Whether it will prove more persuasive than Kierkegaard remains to be seen. Steve Schroeder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824516451
• ISBN-13: 978-0824516451
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #626,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HARD TRUTHS, June 6, 2003

By 

Henry W. Slangal "hankerooney" (McMinnville, oregon United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (Paperback)

HARD TRUTHS

In Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie makes a hard demand of the reader: put aside for this time your cherished preconceptions, and listen. That is not only a hard demand but a risky one for any writer to make, lest he be found foolish. In my judgment, Bailie is not foolish, but prophetic.

Bailie is founder and director of the Florilegia Institute, a kind of Catholic "think tank/apologist." In his analysis of the roots and results of violence, he scrutinizes disparate sources, ancient and modern, including the Bible and current events. He does so both as a Christian and as an anthropologist, peeling away layer by layer the myths and pieties often associated with "The Greatest Book Ever Written." Readers who regard the Bible primarily as a literal statement of God's word may be shocked at many of Bailie's assertions, but they need to remain open to the end of the book and beyond. As well, non- and nominal Christians will be put off by Bailie's unwavering focus on Jesus Christ's role in the unraveling of the power of "sacred violence", but they need to "put on" what Bailie considers to be the fundamental Christian message.

The seminal assertion of Bailie's book is best stated in his quotation from literary critic Northrup Frye: "Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself." All civilizations (according to Bailie) arose out of a sea of chaotic violence, and were in fact established by acts of such overwhelming and consummating violence (the apocalypse) that chaos was stilled and stability reigned. At least for a while, as in the Bolshevik Revolution. This "screen" of history (or myth) is a whitewash protecting the civilization from facing its own founding horrors, especially by shutting away the faces and voices of the countless innocent victims. "History" we admit, is written by those who win. The celebration and ritual re-enacting of this founding act of "sacred violence", now a sanitized myth, is the beginning of religion, with its bloody sacrifices (often human), and its prescriptions and taboos, all intended to placate fickle gods (ideologies) who alone, it is now exhorted and believed, have the power to keep the apocalypse from recurring.

The effectiveness of the founding myth (still according to Bailie) and its ritual re-enactments in maintaining stability has relied on two factors, the first being the ardent acceptance by the members of the civilization of the "sacred truths" of the founding myths, and the second being the non-recognition of the victims. To see and hear the human victim, Bailie points out many times, is to empathize and see through the screen, thereby nullifying its "good" effect.

Bailie argues that Western civilization, over the course of several millenia, has gradually and uniquely come to see the plight and humanity of the victim. It has done this through the Bible of Judeo-Christian culture:

". . . all of the world's religions urge their faithful to exercise compassion and mercy. . . . But the empathy for victims --as victims-- is specifically western, and quintessentially biblical." (p. 19)

The Jews, alone among the ancients, stubbornly wrote or referred to facts about victims in the mix of their writings, thereby creating in much of the Old Testament, including the Pentateuch, the Proto-History, instead of a "sacred history", or myth. The face of the victim may be seen not only in the Psalms and in Isaiah and the prophets, but also in the stories, including those of Abel, of Jonah the reluctant prophet, of Abraham and Isaac, of Moses' empathy with the Jewish slaves; and it reaches its fulfillment in the New Testament, told from the point-of-view of Jesus, the infinitely innocent victim. This is not to say that the Old Testament is a unified treatise condemning violence and defending violence. It is in fact an odd mixture of mythic sacred violence, historical fact, and advocacy of victims. The beauty of Bailie's book is his ability as an anthropologist to unearth the historical facts and extract them from the mythological debris.

There is no need today to document today's escalating cycles of violence. Palestine will more than suffice. The supreme irony in Bailie's thought is that Western civilization's maturing empathy with victims over the centuries has made "sacred" violence unpalatable, and ineffective. This fact is amply documented in the book, as in our refusal to use ground troops to oust Milosevic from Kosovo, and our reluctance to maintain the "peacekeeping force" in Somalia once American servicemen began to suffer significant casualties. The military presence was seen as not only victimized, but ineffective. We may today dwell with sad fascination on the present debacle in Iraq. So much for "shock and awe"! Sacred violence has lost its stabilizing ability to fend off chaotic violence.

The protective screen is fading, but unfortunately the human instinct towards violence remains. Bailie writes at length about the nature of this instinct, rooted in mimesis, the impulse to imitate, to want what another wants, to fall in with the scapegoating mob. It will seem to many readers that we are indeed out of time, out of money, and out of luck.

One need not believe in the resurrection of Christ, or in his divinity, or indeed to believe in his actual historical existence, to appreciate and follow his message: To achieve world peace (a step towards the Kingdom of God), we must all --as individuals, as societies and nations-- completely and irrevocably abjure violence. Bailie is no more sanguine about our prospects than you or I:

"Ultimately, there are only two alternative to apocalyptic violence: the sacred violence . . . and the renunciation of violence. That the former is now impossible, and that the latter seems hardly less so, doesn't change the facts." (p. 25)

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent history of the roots of social violence., December 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (Paperback)

This book presents an excellent analysis of the connection between non Judeo-Christian religious rituals and the need of societies to preserve social order. The author explores the implications of Rene Girard's "Violence and the Sacred", and uses that work as a foundation to explain the social purpose of human sacrifice. This book is startling in its dispassionate observation of cultures past and present, for the author gives much evidence of the role of sacred violence used as a warning not to fall into the chaos of anarchy. The author also gives us a warning of the limits of this tool of social control.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very challenging, opinionated, with a lingering effect., December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads (Paperback)

I have given copies to several friends and find this a book that I want to discuss with them. It is rather academic at times, but by the time he gets to the interpretation of Scripture he starts to soar. Ideas from this book have continually returned to enlighten and offer insight months after I read it.