Get behind me, Satan, for you are a scandal to me.
Jesus Christ (Mt 16.23)

French philosopher Rene Girard has a fascinating theory of mimetic desire and the single victim mechanism (scapegoating).

All desire is inherently mimetic. We want what other people want. This is most evident in today’s society, when we are barraged with advertisements for things and lifestyles that will supposedly make us the shiny happy people smiling that at us from the TV screen. However, as anyone who’s pursued this way of life knows, this approach is not sustainable. As newer better things come into production, the old lose their value, and given enough time, what once made you the most popular person on the block, can turn you into an object of ridicule. What’s worse, though, is that chasing these material dreams locks us in mimetic rivalry with each other. We compete with our neighbor in perpetual one-upmanship, trying to have the better house, car, computer, as if having better things than the next guy will make us happier. Further, studies reflect that relative income is more important to happiness than absolute income. This is the mimetic cycle, the work of Satan the Seducer.

Because our neighbor is the model of our desire, he is also our rival. We try to protect ourselves with laws and prohibitions, but in time they are inevitably transgressed. This leads to mimetic crisis and scandal ensues in a community. There is all this tension and frustration between people, since they are competing with each other in a never-ending race. Befuddled, they look for someone to blame. This is the time, when someone casts the first stone, the role of Satan the Accuser. A victim is chosen and blamed for all the problems plaguing the community. Once he’s isolated and defenseless, the anger of the many converges on the scapegoat, without the least fear of reprisal. Effectively, the community focuses the blame for thousands of scandals scattered throughout it on a single victim substitute. This ganging up of all-against-one unites a previously divided group, as they hunt, torture and destroy the accused individual. Since the group really believes the scapegoat to be the source of their problems, once he is eliminated, the community experiences a sudden harmony, purified of its tensions, divisions united. So, the single victim mechanism has a dark but logically explicable ability of restoring peace to groups ravaged by internal conflict. In the words of high priest Caiaphas, “It is better that one man die and that the whole nation not perish.”

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Rene Girard

4 Classical Human Virtues: Health, beauty, strength and wealth

4 Classical Divine Virtues: Prudence, moderation, justice and courage

3 Medieval Theological Virtues: Faith, hope and charity

2 Scholastic Virtues: Patience and fortitude

7 Christian Virtues: The three theological virtues and the four divine or in this case “moral” virtues, i.e. faith, hope, charity, prudence, moderation, justice and courage (sometimes called strength)

7 Medieval Liberal Arts: artes sermocinale: Philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, artes reales or physicae: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music

Sartre once remarked that "smoking is the symbolic equivalent of destructively appropriating the entire world." But that did not stop France’s National Library from airbrushing Jean-Paul Sartre’s Gauloise cigarette out of a poster of the chain-smoking philosopher (who smoked two packs + several pipes a day) to avoid prosecution under the 1991 loi Evin, a law banning tobacco advertising. Fittingly, the doctoring of the photo was first detected by Liberation, the left-wing newspaper founded by Sartre. The poster is for an exhibition marking the centennial of Sartre’s birth. It features previously unseen letters and manuscript, on display through August 21.

Hell is other people removing your cigarette, Telegraph.co.uk

A logical fallacy is an argument based on a false or invalid inference, an incorrectness of reasoning or belief, or just plain old bad logic. Some of the more popular fallacies include ad hominem attacks against the source of an argument ("What do you know, you suck!"), ad misericordiam appeals to pity ("Won’t someone please think of the children!"), red herring, irrelevant arguments to distract from the one at hand ("I’m right because… look, a giant rouge herring!") and petitio principii or begging the question ("There is truth"). By knowing what the different fallacies are, one can take steps to prevent themselves from making them. So, as I only have your best interests in mind, here’s a site on fallacies and rhetoric.

Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate.

The Cognitive Science Society has voted on a list of the top 100 most influential works in cogsci of the 20th century. This was part of the Millenium Project supported by the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Cognitive Science is an interdisciplinary study of cognition (the processes of awareness, though, and mental organization) that intergrates cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, cognitive neuroscience and philosophy of mind.

The List.
Cognitive Science, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.