Symbolism

It is well known that humans are obsessed about symbols. In fact, they appear to be more interested in the symbolic value of an act than its actual practical value. Still, it is one thing to know stuff at an intellectual level, and really quite another to see it happen in reality.

I find it disturbing that, when something goes wrong, many people seem more inclined to symbolically solve it and thus salve their discontent than to remove the cause of that wrongness. Perhaps this is part of the origin of superstition, whereby something symbolic is blamed for the streak of "bad luck" that strikes the said person.

The known propensity for self-deception only worsens this problem, convincing the hapless person that luck has changed due to the symbolic act. A rabbit's foot takes center stage alongside mean regression. Likewise, when something goes horribly wrong, the knee jerk call is for a leader to accept blame instead of the perpetrator of that act.

I think this is disturbing because it smacks of the irrational fears that fueled the witch hunts not too long ago. It smacks of the genocide that is perpetrated on the grounds that a particular race is to blame for the "evils" of a country. Someone takes the fall for another's faults.

Worse yet, this is all a way of coping with the unknowable. The scope of social problems is so vast, its roots so obscure, that most people have no hope of fully comprehending its origin. On a small scale, it is about why the dice never favoured the gambler to begin with. On a large scale, it is why the country is messed up in the first place.

All this also becomes fertile grounds for lashing out against the one who is unpopular.
Almost invariably, some bigshot in a corporation steps down as a result of the company entering dire straits. It is done to placate the murmuring shareholders. But internally? How was the scapegoat selected to begin with?