Perceived Inequality Helps To Keep the Peace

I continue to get more insights into this Girardian view of human behavior as I continue to read. Today I was looking through an article I already read and in fact, I had highlighted and commented on several of the paragraphs. The article I just looked through is called Girardian Anthropology in a Nutshell by Paul Nuechterlein. He is the owner of the Girardian Lectionary site. The following paragraph stood out to me in one of those duh moments. Sometimes I am a bit unclear about how these principles applying in our day to day life. The following paragraph caught my eye.

Understanding human desire as mimetic leads to a deeper understanding of human conflict, suffering, and violence. Since we catch our desires from each other, we are bound to desire the same objects, bringing us into conflict over those objects unless there is a process of deferral in place, i.e., that one of the two people in the situation of contagious desire lets the other have it. Perceived equality among the contenders for the objects of desire actually tends to have a negative effect on this process since we are less inclined to defer to someone we see as our equal. It is the situation of "sibling rivalry," the realm of envy and soap opera intrigue. But if we perceive someone as being of higher station, or as outside our more immediate sphere of relations, we are more inclined to defer, to let that person acquire the object. Perceived inequality helps to keep the peace -- though it may well be at the cost of unjustly perceiving inequality among those who should actually be equals.So the triangular structure of desire leads to human suffering in this way: when we perceive ourselves as equals -- which, as children of God, we generally should -- we also fall into envy and conflict over our mutually desired objects. When we perceive inequality among ourselves, most often unjustly, we gain order and a relative amount of peace at the expense of the oppression of one group over another that has described our human history.

Duh....so that is part of the reason for our social system of classes.....upper class, middle class, upper and lower middle class, the filthy rich, the poor. (and systems which are even more profound and restrictive like the caste system of India who have the castes and then the untouchables....in some stricter communities the shadow of an untouchable is not allowed to touch one in an upper caste) And in Bible times, the gentiles, the samaritans etc. And in more modern times, blacks, women, American and Canadian Indians. "Perceived inequality helps to keep the peace." Perhaps in some kind of intuitive way, much like African cultures that kill twins (who would be the ultimate equals) this social pecking order came into being as a makeshift way to keep the peace. Duh....