Moralists advise us all to avoid violence, of course, but only insofar as this is possible. They authorize us, at least tacitly, to reply to obvious … - René Girard

If the patriarchal system, when compared to primitive systems, seems to represent a “lesser” degree of structuralization, then Western civilization since the decline of the patriarchal system can be said to have been governed by a principle of decreasing structuralization or destructuralization during the whole of its historical course — a tendency that can almost be seen as an ultimate aim. A dynamic force seems to be drawing first Western society, then the rest of the world, toward a state of relative indifferentiation never before known on earth, a strange kind of nonculture or anticulture we call modern.

Human culture is fundamentally and originally religious, rather than secondarily and supplementally.

The world’s myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.