[readflaggedcomm]

>Every human being knows, if only unconsciously, that we are not the roles and personae we occupy in the cultural drama of life.

Reminds me of Catcher in the Rye, only older and more cynical.

The author should reconsider "connection to a reality that is non-conventional": the physical activity he lists is only non-conventional to a select few, especially in the past. His evidence feels like an argument for festivals as a ward against idleness, not as a relief valve of simulated violence, which is poorly-justified.

Perhaps Girard put too much faith in what "genuine artists" sense out of something like a harvest festival, which is the leisure of hard-working laborers. The author might consider that daily labor could be more violent than playful festivals, and what Girard sensed may have been relief from that, not from a crisis averted.