Sacrificial Violence

Violence operates as dimensional collapse technology

Johan Galtung's structural violence theory reveals violence as "avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs"—a force that systematically prevents people from achieving their potential even without physical perpetrators. 

Walter Wink's analysis of the "Domination System" shows how violence operates through the myth of redemptive violence, making domination appear necessary and natural while creating dimensional collapse by reducing complex situations to binary win/lose scenarios. 

René Girard's mimetic theory exposes the scapegoat mechanism as fundamental dimensional reduction: multiple conflicts collapse into blame of a single victim, complex problems simplify into good/evil binaries, and diverse perspectives unite in agreement against the scapegoat. This represents ontological violence—violence against being itself that limits what kinds of reality are permitted to exist.

Research on domination hierarchies reveals literal cognitive effects: reduced creative thinking, conformity pressure, cognitive load from navigating hierarchies, and learned helplessness. At collective levels, hierarchies suppress dissenting voices, distort information flows, reduce diversity, and discourage innovation. Feminist scholars identify how patriarchal systems enforce linear rather than cyclical thinking, hierarchical rather than network relationships, and binary rather than spectrum awareness—literally shaping the geometry of possible thought. 

Legal systems fundamentally depend on violence for their existence and continuation, as Walter Benjamin's groundbreaking "Critique of Violence" reveals. Benjamin distinguishes between law-making violence that establishes legal orders through force, and law-preserving violence that maintains them through ongoing enforcement. These two forms collapse into each other in practice—police ostensibly preserve law but constantly create it through discretionary decisions, trapping society in what Benjamin calls "mythic violence:" and that we call "Sacrificial Violence."

René Girard's anthropological insights deepen this understanding through the Scapegoat mechanism. Legal systems function as institutionalized scapegoating, channeling society's violent impulses toward designated victims through ritualized procedures. Courts provide the ceremonial framework for selecting "legitimate" targets of violence, with legal punishment satisfying collective desires for violence while appearing rational and procedural. Modern criminal justice essentially operates as a religious ritual for controlling reciprocal violence through sacred sacrifice.

This violence extends beyond direct physical force into what Johan Galtung termed structural violence—the systematic denial of human potential through legal arrangements.  Property laws legitimize extreme inequality, criminal law disproportionately targets marginalized populations, and legal procedures create barriers preventing equal access to justice. Yet this structural violence appears neutral, hidden behind the facade of "rule of law."

How certainty fragments natural wholeness

Law's drive for certainty systematically fragments ecosystems into manageable regulatory units that betray nature's interconnected wholeness. The Endangered Species Act exemplifies this approach, protecting species individually while ignoring ecosystem relationships. Research shows the ESA "emphasizes restoring habitat for single species, often to the exclusion of other species," pursuing "unrealistic policies to return ecosystems to their 'historical' natural conditions" in already-transformed systems. 

Violence crystallized in legal precedent

Specific cases reveal how legal precedent crystallizes violence against commons and community systems. The Scottish Highland Clearances (1750-1860) used feudal property law to destroy clan territorial systems, reducing Highland population from one-third of Scotland to under 4%. Legal frameworks prioritized sheep farming profits over traditional collective land management, with the Act of Proscription even outlawing Highland culture itself.

Monsanto's litigation campaign demonstrates intellectual property's violence against farming commons. Since the 1990s, Monsanto filed lawsuits against 145 farmers for patent infringement. Bowman v. Monsanto (2013) prohibited farmers from saving and replanting patented seeds. Monsanto v. Schmeiser (2004) ruled farmers infringe patents even when seeds arrive through wind dispersal.  Patents on life itself criminalize practices farmers have used for 10,000 years.

Water commons face similar destruction. The Colorado River Compact divides the river between states with fixed allocations assuming 18 million acre-feet annually—a legal fiction climate change exposes. Prior appropriation creates "first in time, first in right" hierarchies where senior users maintain full consumption while ecosystems and junior users suffer. Rivers must conform to property boundaries drawn by 1920s lawyers.

Each precedent builds upon previous violence, creating path dependencies that make restoration nearly impossible. Economic efficiency arguments consistently trump community management, despite evidence that commons often outperform private property in resource conservation. Legal education trains practitioners to see violent precedents as neutral authorities rather than accumulated dispossession. The architecture of precedent ensures that past violence constrains future possibility.