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The first automotive sacrifice

The first car belonging to a boy racer has been crushed today. "Crusher" Collins has been well and truly blooded with the title, which is no longer be in name only.

Though Anne Tolley oversaw it, I doubt she will really share in the glory. "Crusher" Tolley? Nahh.

It's a disturbing turn of events in New Zealand, heralding a return to the scapegoat sacrifice. At this point it's only a car that is being crushed, but in the future, who knows?

In my post on the Hunger Games and Human Sacrifice, Fr Barron talks about the Scape-Goating Mechanism, which is so prevalent in human history as a way of discharging our anxieties onto someone (or something, the car being a proxy for the boy-racer at this point):

Why is it, that this dynamic of human sacrifice is so prominent in our culture ... from ancient times to today ... Rene Girard uncovered this dynamic ... discovered what he called the scape-goating mechanism ... tensions arise within human communities ... how do we solve the problem ... by this mechanism we choose someone to blame, someone to isolate, someone to ostracise, at the limit, someone to kill. We discharge our anxiety, our tension, our fear onto that person or that group. In that process ... we come to a kind of peace. Which is precisely why this kind of activity is sanctioned so often by the state, and by religion.

And here we have the State in NZ sanctioning car-crushing. Disturbing.

Related link: First boy racer car crushed ~ Stuff