Man's Desire for Power

In reading history of cultures and civilizations, one cannot ignore the senseless desire for power that coexisted with the desire for peace in and between kingdoms, which today are called states. The desire to overrule others still exists in most nations and among them...
This is evident in very recent news:
1. Russia's President Vladimir Putin is not content with being a dictator for 3 terms and is planning to seize the presidency in the next term soon, but in his recent "State of the Nation Speech" reported by BBC on March 1, 2018, he unveiled military plans and spoke of using advanced high technology such as artificial intelligence and Big Data to implement them facing the U.S. Superpower and vowing to keep Western Europe in check regarding his adventures in Crimea, Georgia and beyond. A report on March 2 reasoned that Putin's nuclear slideshow echoes Cold War. See the reports here and here.
2. The U.S. President Donald Trump continues to impose tarrifs on industrial products imported in the U.S. as he vowed to deliver on his promise during the 2016 Presidential elections: "America First". The reactions from foreign countries and leaders of the European Union have been swift as they rejected his threats. See an updated report here.
3. Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, has invited Trump to meet in order to reduce the tension between America and North Korea as well as to denuclearize the Peninsula of Korea and ease tensions in East Asia. This is possibly a new tactic by Kim Jong Un since he needs to feed the aides of  his hungry people. Some analysis has emerged since this news became available on Thursday March 8, 2018 especially that both leaders of South Korea and China want to be there as each of their countries has a stake in any outcome. Trump accepted to meet with Kim Jong Un this year. Some analysis can be found here and here.
4. A profile of China's leader Xi Jinping was published in February 2018 which shows his imitation of the Culture Revolution of the 1940s - 1960s by his master Mao Zedong (here) while at the same time Xi Jinping reversed much of Mao's foreign policy and opened China to grasp as much as its business can in Africa, North America, and Europe with his new "Silk Road" initiative and high technology. China, no doubt, has become a leader in this information age.
4. While the above has been taking place, Turkey's Sunni Islamist Erdogan continues to challenge Syria's leadership as his troops invaded North Syria in an attempt to challenge Shiite Iran that supports Syria's Assad...He claims that his troops are after revolutionary Kurds and wants to finish them off although the White House warned him that the Kurds were instrumental in fighting ISIS or the IS which still operates in pockets within Europe. Turkey and Qatar are suspected to be behind the operations of today's Sunni radical Islam such as Daech while the Islamic Republic of Iran has its own Shiite militias such as Hizbulla in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq...

The above reminds us by René Girard's work on "Desire, Violence, and the Sacred" expressed in two of his theories:
1. Mimetic Rivalry - Desire for power leads a person to imitate his rival in what is called "Triangle of Subject, Object, and Model." A simple example: If a child sees a toy similar to his toy in the hands of another child happily enjoying it, the first child will imitate the second child and will want to obtain the second child's toy only because the second one enjoys it.  The Object is the toy; the Model is the second child; and the Subject is the first child. Imitation is the fundamental mechanism of human behavior...
2. The Scapegoat - This is the social collective violence that excludes and kills one that is different from the rest,  then feels the guilt and replay his victim as if he were a god; an exercise of Satanic measures in society found in primitive cultures.
After the 9/11, 2001 when planes were hijacked by Radical Islamists and crashed in the New York twin towers killing thousands in revenge against Western Christianity, Girard books became best-sellers. René Girard wrote in  First Things "Are the Gospels Mythical?" (here). The reader may wish to read the above article by René Girard in which he shows how the Gospels are real in history and that Jesus was crucified to reconcile humanity to the heavenly Father, with whom he is one in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

I knew about René Girard in the wake of the Regensburg Lecture given by the sharp mind of Pope Benedict XVI to his students at the University of Regensburg (read and print from here) and the reaction of Muslim authors notably this one (here) about René Girard's work on the centrality of the cross. From him I learned too about the Jesuit scholar Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J. whose work on the Church's relation to Islam is magnificent. Again this is also found in lectures and homilies by another Jesuit scholar, Fr. Henri Boulad, S.J.(see his homily here in French, France October 15, 2017).
In 2009 I lectured about the work of René Girard at Jesus the King Melkite Catholic parish in Toronto. Fr. Georges Farah, whose credentials include a doctorate in philosophy and another in theology from The Sorbonne in Paris, commented at length on Girard's "Scapegoat" at the same parish. 

In November 2015, Girard passed away after building a school of intellectual followers (See http://www.imitatio.org/). He was remembered by no less than Bishop Robert Barron whose credentials include a doctorate in sacred theology from l'institut catholique de Paris and years of teaching on the theology and philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas in a number of international universities. The reader may wish to read and print Bishop Barron's article here: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/ren-girard-church-father/4982/ in which he concludes "The recovery of Christianity as revelation, as an unmasking of what all the other religions are saying, is René Girard's permanent and unsettling contribution".

"Come Lord Jesus!" says the writer of Revelation (Revelation 22, 20) - Come Love Divine - Let us  have hope that in spite of every selfishness and evil we are tempted with, Christ will prevail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw5ZCZeS32M