---
slug: scapegoat_discharge
name: Scapegoat Discharge
one_liner: "A collective's unattributable diffuse strain is relieved by concentrating blame and sanction onto a substitute low-power target rather than the true, costly-to-address cause."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [social, cognitive]
origin_domain: social_psychology
alternate_origin_domains: [anthropology, organizational_behavior, political_theory, religious_studies]
aliases: [displaced_blame_discharge, substitute_target_blaming, blame_displacement, diffuse_strain_offloading, sacrificial_target_selection]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `scapegoating` (lift: strip the *out-group/social-persecution* frame, leaving a content-neutral discharge of diffuse strain onto a low-cost substitute target). Discovered in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep 2026-07-03. Tier B candidate. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut. Coinage/weak flag: `scapegoat_discharge` is a proposer label; the underlying displacement mechanism is Girardian (mimetic scapegoat) and Freudian (displacement) — verify it is a genuine genus over these, not a restatement of the input `scapegoating`."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `scapegoating` (the input) and any displacement / blame-attribution / externalization prime; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers social scapegoating AND individual displaced aggression AND corporate fall-guy firing AND ritual sacrifice) and not a restatement of the input or an alias of a general attribution-error prime; draw a subsumption edge scapegoating→scapegoat_discharge + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 3
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 3
  transfer_evidence: 3
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — a system carrying diffuse, unattributable strain resolves it not by addressing the true (diffuse or costly) cause but by concentrating the strain''s discharge onto a selected substitute target chosen for low resistance rather than for culpability — is a clean relational form (mis-targeted release of accumulated tension) that recurs from individual psychology to ritual to organizations. Domain breadth scores 4 because the siblings are structurally unlike and span psychology, corporate life, and religion. Structural abstraction and transfer sit at 3 because the pattern still presupposes agents, blame, and something like distress or strain to be discharged — it is not medium-neutral the way a pure load-shedding or displacement relation in a physical network would be, though it is close. Lifting the persecution frame off `scapegoating` raises substrate-independence above the framed input.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: scapegoating
  similarity: 0.68
structural_framed:
  label: framed
  aggregate: 0.6
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.6, evaluative_weight: 0.6, institutional_origin: 0.5, human_practice_bound: 0.6, import_vs_recognize: 0.6}
  rationale: 'Less framed than the input `scapegoating` (which carries the loaded social-persecution and moral-condemnation content), but still bound to agent-and-blame practice: the discharged quantity is *strain/guilt/blame*, and target selection is by *low power*, both of which read as human-social rather than as a pure structural relation. The displacement skeleton travels into psychology, organizations, and ritual, pulling several criteria to the middle, but it is recognized as a phenomenon of blaming agents rather than a substrate-neutral structure, so it lands moderately framed.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Scapegoat Discharge

## Core Idea

Scapegoat discharge is, as a bare structure, a *mis-targeted release of accumulated collective strain*: a system carrying diffuse, unattributable tension resolves it not by acting on the true cause — which is diffuse, systemic, or too costly to confront — but by concentrating blame and sanction onto a selected substitute target, whose punishment or exclusion is treated as discharging the strain even though that target is not the actual cause. It is reached from `scapegoating` by stripping one constraint: the *out-group persecution* frame. Remove the assumption that the target is a stigmatized social group and the mechanism itself remains — a substitution in the causal ledger, in which a low-resistance target absorbs a discharge it did not generate.

The load-bearing anatomy has three parts. First, *diffuse or unattributable strain*: the collective (or agent) carries accumulated tension — blame, guilt, anxiety, failure — whose real source is either genuinely distributed across many causes or genuinely costly to address. Second, *substitute-target selection by low resistance*: a single target is chosen not because it is the cause but because it is available and low-power, so that concentrating the discharge onto it meets little counter-pressure. Third, *discharge-as-resolution*: sanctioning the target is experienced as relieving the strain, which is why the pattern is stable and self-repeating rather than self-correcting. The characteristic payoff is *tension relief and restored cohesion at low immediate cost*: the collective converts an intractable diffuse problem into a tractable concentrated one and reunites around the sanction. The characteristic cost is the defining failure: because the discharge is *mis-targeted*, the true cause is left untouched — so the strain regenerates and the cycle recurs — while an unc
ulpable target bears a cost it did not earn.

Read structurally, the same substitution recurs across domains that share nothing socially. In *individual psychology*, displaced aggression — "kicking the dog" — is one-agent scapegoat discharge: frustration generated by an inaccessible or costly source is offloaded onto a safe, low-power target. In *organizations*, the fall-guy firing after a systemic failure concentrates blame for a distributed institutional cause onto a single dismissible individual, discharging the organization's strain while leaving the system unchanged. In *religion and ritual*, the sacrificial victim — the literal Levitical scapegoat, or Girard's sacrificial mechanism — carries away the community's diffuse guilt through a substitute whose destruction is treated as atonement. `scapegoating` in its social-persecution sense is one species; the siblings show the genus is a content-neutral mis-targeting of discharge, not a fact about out-groups.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `scapegoating` (input one-liner: "Channeling collective blame onto a substitute target"), by stripping the out-group persecution frame to leave a content-neutral discharge of diffuse strain onto a low-power substitute. Surfaced in the op-05 framed-stratum sweep on 2026-07-03. Claimed siblings: displaced aggression in individual psychology (kicking the dog), corporate fall-guy firing after systemic failure, ritual sacrifice as displaced atonement. Manifest tier: B (flagged weak). Girardian mimetic-scapegoat and Freudian displacement theory supply the established mechanism.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: the displacement-of-discharge structure is genuine and cross-domain — it covers social scapegoating as one species alongside structurally-unlike individual, organizational, and ritual instances, and lifting the persecution frame gives it more reach than the framed input. The RISKS Kurt should weigh, honestly: (1) **This is a Tier-B, flagged-weak proposer coinage.** The keep case must show the lifted genus does more than restate `scapegoating` with the stigma removed. (2) **Restatement risk vs the input** — similarity to `scapegoating` is high (~0.68); the discriminating question is whether the *low-power-substitute-for-diffuse-cause* structure is worth a node distinct from the already-present social phenomenon, or whether it should simply be recorded as the mechanism *inside* `scapegoating`. (3) **Alias risk vs a general attribution/externalization prime** — if the corpus has or adds a blame-displacement, externalization, or fundamental-attribution prime, this may collapse into it. Sharp keep/cut question for Kurt: *is "mis-targeted discharge of diffuse strain onto a low-resistance substitute" a distinct prime, or is it just the internal mechanism of `scapegoating` re-labeled?* If cut, fold the Girard/Freud displacement mechanic into the `scapegoating` body as a body-prose note.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `scapegoating` (input) and any displacement / blame-attribution / externalization / fall-guy prime to confirm no collapse. If kept: draw a subsumption edge `scapegoating` → `scapegoat_discharge`, sibling edges to the displaced-aggression / fall-guy / ritual-sacrifice instances (or to whatever primes carry them), and a proposed parent edge up to a displacement / mis-targeting genus if one exists. Add a missing-edge note if a general attribution prime is present. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
