these desires are specifically. Therefore, they often seek to fill the gap in their beings by looking towards others to determine their own lack. When they see in others what they lack, human beings will try to imitate the thoughts and behavior of their models. In addition, they believe that by obtaining the desires of their models, they will be able to resemble their models closely and be the type of person they aspire to (145-6). However, in this process of imitation, the two parties (the individual and his model) begin to compete with one another and turn into rivals. The resultant rivalry inevitably escalates to violence. The outbreaks of violence between rivals can jeopardize the well-being of human society.
Girard's surrogate victim mechanism explains how the human community resolves the crisis by projecting the violence onto a single victim. As in the case of mimetic desire, each member of the community imitates one another in their focus on channeling their hatred towards a single victim. Although they were previously engaged in individual conflicts with one another, they are now focused on a single targetùthe scapegoat. Typically, the victims who are chosen arbitrarily are individuals who are relegated to the periphery of society such that they are not considered important to the primary group. Therefore, they are the perfect targets for deflecting violence away from the general community (79).
With the killing of the chance or random victim, order and peace returns to the society (Girard 2-4). After the sacrificial killing, the human community considers the victim to be a sacred being because he or she has produced a miracle or a divine intervention to save the community. Ironically, instead of being regarded as the primary cause of the violenceùthe reason for their killing, the victim is now regarded as the principal agent for generating social harmony. Through this process of transference, the sacri...