Civilization’s history is sacrifice turned inward as renunciation

Evidence

The memory of the old injury persists, though the physical pain and the immediate fear have been removed by civilization. Society constantly casts woman’s self-abandon back into the sacrificial situation from which it freed her. No man, cajoling some poor girl to go with him, can mistake, unless he be wholly insensitive, the faint moment of rightness in her resistance, the only prerogative left by patriarchal society to woman, who, once persuaded, after the brief triumph of refusal, must immediately pay the bill. She knows that, as the giver, she has from time immemorial also been the dupe. But if she begrudges herself, she is only duped the more. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 106 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Civilization’s bondage breeds longing that becomes worship of a transfigured nature; Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 106; European civilization rests on a hidden underground history of displaced instincts (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Civilization recreates the sacrificial situation it claims to abolish #expands (0.95) — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 106
• European civilization rests on a hidden underground history of displaced instincts #expands (0.70)