RELG 3600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Antisemitism, Secular Variation, Amygdala
7 May 2018
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Class 4: February 12, 2018
Gladwell, Malcolm, “Sacred and Profane,” New Yorker article on Waco, Texas
• How to negotiate with believers
• We were taught that if someone comes with a message based on the Bible, instead of
trying to fight it, instead of trying to put it down or trying to prove it wrong, we should
study the Bible to perceive whether the message is true
• Clive Doyle “A Journey to Waco” detailed what it means to be a religious radical
worshipping on the fringes of contemporary Christianity (Mount Carmel)
o There was a conflict between ATF agents and the Davidian community where 10
people were killed → negotiators were brought in
o Led by Koresh (teacher not deity)
o the F.B.I.’s approach was doomed from the outset
▪ techniques that work on bank robbers don’t work on committed believers
Sacks, Jonathan, Not in God’s Name, Chapters 3-4 (pp. 44-86)
• Chapter 3: Dualism
o 1947: Dead Sea Scrolls are found in Qumran, Israel (oldest version of bible)
o Jewish and Christian scrolls were hidden in Qumran because they were
monotheistic religions which conflicted with the dualistic religions that dominated
the region during the time (45)
o Violence may be possible wherever these is an Us and a Them. But radical
violence emerges only when we see the Us as all-good and the Them as all-evil,
heralding a war between the children of light and dark forces (48)
o Dualism entered Judaism and Christianity when it became easier to attribute the
sufferings of the world to an evil force rather than a work of god (49)
o Pathological dualism makes you dehumanize and demonize your enemies, leads
you to see yourself as a victim, and allows you to commit altruistic evil, killing in
the name of the God of life, hating the name of the God of love and practising
cruelty in the name of the God of compassion (54)
▪ Altruistic evil recruits good people to a bad cause. It turns ordinary human
beings into murderers in the name of high ideals.
o Once you identify an enemy, reactivate a chosen trauma, and unite all factions in
fear and hate of a common threat, you activate the most primitive part of the
brain, the amygdala with its instant and overwhelming defensive reactions, and
render a culture susceptible to pure and powerful dualism in which you are the
innocent party and violence becomes both a justified revenge and necessary
protection of your group. (56)
▪ Dehumanization: The paradox of “crimes against humanity” is that the
great crimes are committed against those you do not see as sharing your
humanity. (57)
▪ Establishing victimhood: You have to find a way of relinquishing
responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. If you are merely acting
in self defense, it’s the victim who is responsible (59)
▪ The commission of evil as an altruistic cause: Hitler tied genocide to
being a profoundly moral movement designed to purify the nation from
alien elements poisoning its bloodstream (62)
• Chapter 4: The Scapegoat
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