Apocalypse
The word “apocalypse” in its original usage simply means unveiling. The book of Revelation in the Christian bible means an unveiling of things to come. The apocalypse has traditionally been associated with some violent ending to the world as we know it. In Girardian mimetic theory, the “apocalypse” is not something caused by God but caused by human beings through their own violence. The escalation of mimetic rivalries and the decreased power of the scapegoat mechanism in modernity (because it has been drained of its power through the revelation of the crucifixion) means that there are no “braking mechanisms” on violence. In this environment, an apocalyptic type of violence that wipes out all of humanity is possible. In short, an apocalypse is a form of mimetic violence that is escalated to the extreme: the scenario captured in Girard’s last book, Battling to the End.
The Fyre Festival and Violent Mimesis
On April 27, 2017, the first attendees of the now-infamous Fyre Festival landed in the Bahamas. They expected a weekend of luxury and pampering, and to potentially rub shoulders with Instagram influencers such as Kendall Jenner and Hailey Baldwin. Instead, they were met with chaos. There were no luxury hotels or gourmet meals, just Lord of the Flies-style chaos. The festival quickly became an online joke under the hashtag #dumpsterfyre. It has since been the subject of two documentaries and numerous columns. The crazy thing about the Fyre Festival is that it was never going to work. The organizers never had enough money, experience or time to pull off an event of the magnitude they had promised. Yet over 5,000 people signed up after seeing their favorite models and influencers post about it. Why would rational adults such a thing? The answer: Mimesis. What is mimesis? Mimesis comes from the Greek word mīmeisthai, “to imitate”. Mimetic theory is a theory that explains human desire, and ultimately human behavior, with a very simple and very paradigm breaking observation: desire may feel like it comes from some objective place deep inside of us- but that is actually not true. We desire what we desire because we are imitating someone else who desired that first. René Girard is the founder of mimetic theory. He made his breakthrough after a break-up, when he realized that the more his ex dated, the more he desired her. He realized that her desire for him affected his desire for her, as did her view of herself. When she viewed herself as someone desirable to date, he wanted to date her. And thus the mimetic theory was born. Where is mimesis in my life The short answer is: Everywhere. The longer answer is that you are born with certain biological urges, but not necessarily desire. You eat, drink, seek shelter, etc because your body tells you to. However, everything else you want, you’ve learned to want through a process that Girard named, “mimesis.” This started when you were a baby. You didn’t have a biological urge to develop language; you began to speak because you heard your parents speaking. In fact, you imitated everything they did, from facial expressions to eye movements to words they didn’t mean to teach you when they stubbed their toe. Babies are even more obvious. Pre-verbal children will spend the months before they begin speaking imitating others’ noises until they develop language. They also will imitate facial movements, and even follow their parent’s gaze. This is because we are hard-wired to learn what we want from others. Want to put this to the test? Anyone who has ever spent time with multiple children and singular toy should recognize mimesis at work. Say a doll with no clothes and ratty hair is lying on the ground, ignored. If a parent picks it up and begins to act as though they are having fun with it, the children are likely to drop whatever they are holding and demand a turn with the doll. Why should I care about this? Two reasons, really. The first is that it helps us to know ourselves. Mimesis helps us understand our moral stances, spousal requirements, dreams, and so much more. If we understand that our desires come from who we are imitating, we can influence our desires by choosing different models. This gives us self-knowledge and helps us become better versions of ourselves. But it also helps us with a darker, deeply urgent problem that we all face. Mimesis doesn’t just explain desire. It explains violence. Think about it. If you imitate other people’s desires, you are likely to be drawn into rivalries with them, the same way little children will fight for the same toy, even if there are plenty of other toys in the room. Humans are incredibly prone to violence, and this shows up in our personal lives just as much as it does in our political arena. If you want to stop fighting with your partner, or repair relationships with family, or find ways out of what might feel like impossible conflicts in business, the insights of Rene Girard about mimesis, scapegoating, and violence can help you negate the conflict. To learn more about how to click here to read more: Learn more about Mimesis
The Divinization of the Victim
In extreme cases of mimesis, which end in the sacrificial crisis, the chosen victim will often become an object of intense fascination and reverence in the wake of its death. Society, having purged itself suddenly and definitely of the great violence, now looks upon the satisfying victim with a kind of wonder – being both attracted and reviled by it. The divinization of the victim is part of the sacred order that Rene Girard believed was inherent in all human cultures.
Mimetic Desire in the Art Market: Mona Lisa
What art feuds reveal about human desire The art world has a fetish for conspiracy. Take a casual sweep of the news over a given year and you will turn up any number of stories about stolen masterpieces, disputed provenances, and multi-million-dollar black-market auctions. Art itches for intrigue and the latest installment involve the Mona Lisa and a look-alike painting called the ‘Islesworth Mona Lisa.’ According to CNN, the ‘Islesworth Mona Lisa’, which experts have known about for years, had been quietly touring world galleries until an anonymous claimant made a ‘grab’ for quarter ownership, thus inciting a sudden, heated scrum for its possession. Reading the account of the ‘Islesworth’ is like reading the opening chapter of a mystery novel, with its multi-layered histories of buyers and sellers, claimants and counterclaimants, aristocrats and feuding experts. It’s quite racy stuff. But what is most fascinating about the whole account is that the ongoing debate not principally about the art, but the ownership of the art. That’s right: put aside questions about the canvas and the oil and sfumato. This feud is simply a human drama about human desire. And like all high stakes art conquests, this one follows the stages of Rene Girard’s mimetic theory like a script. In the first stage of mimetic theory, called mimetic desire, an object is desired not in and of itself (sorry, Leonardo), but because someone else wants it. Case in point: there was no quibble about the Islesworth Mona Lisa until the anonymous someone made a grab for it. The burst of desire triggered more desire. Then everyone was making a grab for it. In the second stage of mimetic theory, mimetic desire leads to mimetic rivalry, where two sides fight over the same thing. It’s an important distinction that the two sides fight over sameness, no difference because it is common for people locked in mimetic rivalry to think they actually want different things. For example, one side claims to want the Islesworth in order to share it more broadly with the world. The other side says they want it to prevent it from falling into the hands of hucksters. But regardless of motives, both sides really want the same thing: ownership. The second thing to note in mimetic rivalry is that the scarcer the object, the fiercer the rivalry – which in this situation (ownership of a single painting), increases the violence of the feud. Finally, mimetic rivalry gives way to scapegoating. Scapegoating is the process of unknowingly choosing something or someone (the scapegoat) to assume the blame for the contention. This scapegoating mechanism works by disabusing both sides of the rivalry and establishing a sense of stability, or quasi-peace. This raises an interesting question: who or what is the scapegoat in the Islesworth Mona Lisa trial? The claimant who made the first grab? Are the various experts yelling back and forth? The painting itself? To find a scapegoat, go to the center of the furnace, where the fire’s hottest. And what do we find: a legal ‘battle’ being ‘waged’. Could the law itself be the scapegoat? Or lawyers trying to appease their feuding clients? Maybe the Mona Lisa knows. Maybe that’s why she’s smiling.
Profane
Rene Girard believed that at the heart of all human culture was the distinction between the profane and the sacred. Generally, these terms describe the two different kinds of violence that result from mimetic desire. Profane violence is arbitrary, disordered, and chaotic. On the contrary, sacred violence, such as sacrifices, rituals, and religion, attempt to stem profane violence from spreading. Sacred violence shapes and orders profane violence by establishing a founding myth and related rituals, thereby minimizing the adverse effects.
René Girard’s CBC interview – David Cayley
Since the beginning of time, humanity has been in constant conflict due to the mimetic nature of desire. In this televised interview, IDEAS producer David Cayley speaks with René Girard about the historical and biblical aspects of mimetic theory, scapegoating, and violence, from Cain and Abel through examples from contemporary literature. With the revelation of mimetic desire and its consequences, Girard hopes to protect humanity from the escalation of violence that is inevitable if the mimetic conflict is not recognized and ultimately renounced. Watch David Cayley’s incredible Interview with René Girard
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary – Paul Nuechterlein
Paul Nuechterlein, a well-known theologian, started Girardian Reflections with a passion for spreading a message of justice and peace. In a world filled with hostility, Nuechterlein dives into how desire can play a major roll in this continuous battle. With René Girard’s Mimetic Theory at the forefront of his analysis, Nuechterlein conducts seminars in Discipleship and Mimetic Theory to adequately train his audience on the “politics of justice.” Nuechterlein states that this website is his way of giving an “anthropological perspective” into human violence and how Christians should respond. Nuechterlein encourages his readers to look at Sunday scripture with this perspective to fully understand it not only in a theological sense but also in an anthropological one. Visit Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary
Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük – René Girard
In 2008, René Girard gave a keynote lecture at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion about how the dynamics of mimetic desire were playing out thousands of years ago. With a focus on what he called “Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük”, he analyzes the rituals that are contained in humanity’s earliest forms of artwork. Çatalhöyük was a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC. Watch Scapegoating at Çatalhöyük
Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World: Book Launch
Why is human violence the much-neglected key to understanding human emergence and development? How does it differ from animal violence? How was it controlled by the victimary or scapegoat mechanism? How does this stabilize human communities and lead to the creation of natural or archaic religion (‘the sacred’); and then to the development of our culture as a whole? Watch Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World: Book Launch
The Deepening Impasse of Modernity – by Stephen Gardner
University of Tulsa Philosophy Professor Stephen Gardner writes about René Girard’s book Battling to the End. Battling to the End is about Girard’s view on war and how he believes Mimetic Theory plays an explanatory role in human violence. Girard introduces readers to von Clausewitz, an eighteenth-century Prussian military officer and strategist, and reflects on the way he intuited some of the key principles of mimetic theory over a hundred years before Girard. Check out The Deepening Impasse of Modernity