If you didn’t know, I’m a homeschooled boy – and I told my father I was interested in philosophy. He advised me to start of with Girard and his theory of mimesis. I searched it up on YouTube – and found a lecture by Jonathan B. I was instantly captivated by his podcast – his way of speaking all the way to the ambience. I was also intrigued by Girard’s philosophy and his ideas – and I was hooked onto the video. I decided to note each one down so that I can understand the topic better – and that’s how I wrote this blog. If you would like to check out the lecture then here’s the link:

Mimesis

According to René Girard, the characteristic that differentiates us from our great ape ancestors is not reason – not truth – but “mimesis”. Mimesis can be shortly defined as our capacity for imitation. An example given by Jonathan B. is to imagine violin strings close together. You pluck one – and the other vibrates along with it. In the same way, we humans are also inclined to “vibrate:” when our nearby peers “vibrate”.

The theory of Mimesis also explains our human tendency to look for glory and prestige – after all, we are social creatures.

Physical and Metaphysical Desire

René Girard groups our desires into two boxes. The desire to be – the metaphysical desire. And the the desire to experience – the physical desire. These two can be further simplified into simply identity and utility.

These two desires seem the same externally – but are in fact completely different in the interior. Take for example – eating out at a fancy restaurant. A person motivated by physical desire will eat at a fancy restaurant because he wants to taste tasty food. A person motivated my metaphysical desire, however, will eat there to look rich and fancy,

Therefore, two actions, although they are the same – can be motivated by wholly different desires.

The Negative and Positive Phase of Mimesis

There are two “phases” of Mimesis – one is the obvious, when your action is an imitation of another’s. However there’s a second phase –an action that is based on the opposite of imitation. Or rather, ding something just because it’s the opposite of imitation.

This usually happens when people become aware of the fact that they are constantly imitating. To counteract that they purposefully choose the path that makes you different.

However, this too stems from our will to imitate –but instead of pulling us to a decision, it pushes us away from it. Hence, it still stems from Mimesis and therefore, still considered mimesis.

This is because we all for the “romantic lie” where we confuse different for autonomy, distance for independence and originality for freedom.

Of course, we might have good reasons for it – I don’t like entrepreneurship because capitalism is ugly and vulgar, or I like entrepreneurship because I want to change the world. At first glance, these reasons seem justified – However our “reasoning” is in fact just a ruse to justify our actions
. We call this confirmation bias.

The Scapegoat Mechanism

As the humans slowly diverged away from their ape-ancestors, they evolved to be more memetic. The hierarchy that contained animal groups started breaking down in the human society. In the hierarchy, there’s a clear chain – from Alphas to Betas to Gamma all the way to Omega.

This hierarchy works fine when there is little mimesis, however the more there is, the more it falls apart. Now when everybody wants enters into rivalry for their metaphysical desires, their converging and competing metaphysical desires would rip the social groups apart. The only societies that survived – survived because of an unique cultural technology to stop this chaos. This is what René Girard calls the Scapegoat mechanism.

When their is war and utter chaos in societies, they converge upon a single victim or a small set of victims and put on them all their blame and frustrations. This might seem hard to believe –but reality and history show us the truth. Take Socrates and his death at the hands of the Athenian jury, or the Black Death which was blamed on random women as witchcraft, take the Nazis who blamed the Jews for the German decline.

There’s a very ironic thing in this as well. This is phenomenon is most vividly seen in pagan religions, where the scapegoat apparently becomes a god. When the victim/scapegoat is executed or banished, the people suddenly feel peaceful. After all, the society that’s as broken and fragmented – united in condemnation against the victim and so they feel a sense of unity.

They have no way to explain this sudden wave of peace except that the scapegoat must have been a god. This is easily seen the story of Oedipus. Oedipus was – as the myth goes – a young prince who’s crimes were patricide (The killing of one’s father) and incest (marrying his own mother.) Unfortunately, as he became king, a plague ravages the land and the people banded together accusing him of being the cause of the plague. He is driven out of the city –and his removal somehow brought peace and he end of the plague.

And here’s where the irony starts – his body is in fact coveted by many lands as there’s a new prophecy – that whichever land Oedipus is buried in, will be granted eternal peace.

Christianity

This explanation of pagan religions also begs another question – Why is Girard a Christian? The story of Christianity still mirrors the story of the pagan religions. There’s civil unrest in Jerusalem, there’s also Christ’s unjust crucifixion ad then there’s the resurrection and divinization and also the mythologization of the Bible and also the individualization of the Catholic Church. So the question is this – How can the pagan religions be false or Girard but Christianity be true?

Girard says that – Of course the structure is going to be the same, after all, because Christ is going to be scapegoated. However, the key difference lies in the perspective of the narrator. Instead of the story being told in the perspective of the persecutor – it is instead told in the perspective of the victim -Jesus Christ.

Take the mythology of Romulus and Remus – and how his murder of Remus is justified (however, regrettable.) The Bible too talks about scapegoating – but from the other perspective.

Girard’s insight on Christianity is simply this – that it’s the demystifying force to end all religions. Christianity’s core principle takes away the foundational bedrock of all early human societies. Christianity takes humanity out of this cycle and accelerates us towards a linear trajectory – but in which direction? The direction is defined by 4 forces that Christianity has released into our world. Love, truth, innovation – and surprisingly – violence. Girard’s views on Christianity itself is ambivalent. There’s good released from Christianity, but also bad.

Funnily enough, even in these force, Girard’s analysis is deeply ambivalent. Love often manifests as hypocrisy, truth becomes dogma and innovation simply becomes fashion – and even in violence, Girard sees a truth that produces the most enviable living conditions in modern times through capitalism. Let’s go deeper into each of these forces.

Love

Love is the force that made all the laws and institutions so much more humane. It’s the force that freed us from bloody rituals and human sacrifice – it is what makes nations fight for the prestige of helping a weaker nation. Love was Jesus’ main message – Love your neighbor as you love yourself, renounce violence, etc.

Love has made such an impact in our lives – that we now naturally side with the victims as the pagans in those days would have sided with the strong. However, as humans – have we really changed that much. According to Girard, the answer is no. We still have the instinct to persecute, but now we can only persecute in the name of the victims, in the name of stopping persecution. Perhaps we never even changed at all, we simply jut switched who we persecute. Now we feel warranted and even compelled to persecute all types of privilege – white privilege, ableist privilege, class privilege, male prevelar, etc.

And the same ambivalent story can also be told about the second force:

Truth

Us, in our modern civilizations, value truth more than anything compared to the ancient societies. Look at the result of truth, we’re far away from believing simple mythologies and mysticism – we don’t believe in witches or superstitions. The surprising thing is that the crowning achievement of truth – science does in fact share the same problem with Love. We love science so much, that we fetishized it into an unquestionable religion. You might of course ask, what’s the problem with it? When atrocities and terrors are justified by science, it becomes unquestionable and anyone who argues against it is deemed as “illogical”. Take the Nazis, who justified the massacres they committed by the science of that time – Eugenics.

Just like how the bloody European conquests were justified as spreading the gospel, we too see justification through science when atrocities and terrors are created. Ironically, when science is defied, it actually becomes a blocker of truth.

Innovation

We saw the effect that Truth had – by setting aside the myths and focusing on the truths, we humans have come a long way with our innovations and technologies. The modern world prides itself in it’s ability to change and innovate and to grow. However, just like love and truth, we have fetishized innovation and therefore we stick to originality at all costs.

We have forgotten that to innovate, we must first imitate. We must first gain mastery before we step foot into the world of innovations. According to Girard, by fetishizing innovation and completely rejecting imitation, we make no meaningful innovations at all. Because innovation is dependent on Imitation.

Violence

It is surprising to hear – as it was for me – that one of the forces that was released by Christianity was in fact violence. Girard argues that, – if the scapegoat mechanism is ultimately evil for worldly good then Christ is ultimately good for worldly destruction. To put it simply, instead of sacrificing one person for peace for a whole society, Christ reverses that and saves that one person for chaos among this society. Ultimately releasing violence into the world.

However, if that was the case, then why does the world seem awfully peaceful right now? Girard says – Do not confuse the lack of actuality of violence for the lack of potential of violence. Violent energies has been building up – but they have been contained through new modern institutions. These are:

• Capitalism: Now the violence in capitalism isn’t that of sword, sweat and blood but rather the same competitive energy for glory, prestige and honor. What Girard means is that, behind the motivations of business, we shouldn’t expect to find materialistic greed or even a desire to help others. Instead there’s the same motivation of social goods: Honor, Prestige and Glory.
• Law: Law is the second important institution of modernity that contains violence. For Girard, law only works when an entity with greater power, holds monopoly over violence can arbitrate between disputing parties. Law simply keeps peace by threatening with even more violence. If you, the injured party, is not satisfied with the verdict and seek personal revenge, then the institution of law will still come after you with even more violence. Law only functions when there is a greater power that holds more potential of violence. Take the UN Treaty or the Geneva Convention. If there was no threat of retribution, then the countries are free to do as they wish and these agreements become null.

However, Girard’s view is simple, Christ’s removal of the scapegoat mechanism is simply like that of a father who removes his son’s training wheels. But that does not change the fact that the apocalypse is imminent. Perhaps the kingdom of god cannot be established here on earth, but perhaps we can nurture our soul and preserve it so that we may be worthy of heaven.