Every “culture” is founded on certain rituals, institutions, prohibitions, taboos—things that, according to Girard, are all predicated on a founding murder. Cultural rituals, institutions, prohibitions, and taboos are all thing devised to manage the spread of violence and, in essence, to re-enact the founding murder that was the foundation of culture through rituals rather than through actual blood sacrifice.
![The Spread of Violence](https://mimetictheory.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/26-2.jpg)
The founding murder, in Girard’s view, is the foundation of culture. Every culture, whether it be a company culture or a nation’s culture, comes from some act of ritual sacrifice or violence that the culture tries to hide and re-act in its traditions.