Negative Imitation
When a person tries to establish difference from the rival and takes the rival as a model but in a way in which imitation is inverted and becomes the mirror image of the model. For instance, if the rival wears black shirts, the imitator will wear white shirts. Most people think of imitation as doing the same thing as a model. In mimetic theory, imitation seems means that one’s behavior is based off the choices of a model—whether that imitation comes in a positive form (leading to the same things) or a negative form (leading to difference things). In both forms, the imitator’s choices are directly shaped by the model. Negative imitation usually happens because the imitator wants the same things as the model but doesn’t want to admit it; therefore, he differentiates himself on a superficial basis through negative imitation of external things: different clothes, different preferences, or maybe a different manner of speaking. Negative imitation often happens between rival political factions. If one of them uses a certain term to describe something, the other will refuse to use the same word due to negative imitation. (Consider the debate in the United States about whether to refer to the same terrorist organization as ISIS or ISIL, each side disguising its negative imitation behind intellectual-sounding rhetoric.)
Mimesis
A sophisticated form of adult imitation in adults that is usually hidden. In mimetic theory, mimesis has a negative connotation because it usually leads to rivalry and conflict—that’s one of the main reasons why Girard referred to the phenomenon with the word mimesis (from the Greek, μίμησις mīmēsis, from μιμεῖσθαι mīmeisthai, “to imitate”) and not the more common word imitation. People are more conscious of imitation than they are of mimesis.
Romantic Lie
The idea that our choices are completely autonomous, independent, and self-directed. Someone under the power of the Romantic Lie never thinks of their behavior as mimetic.
Model (of Desire)
A person, thing, or group that shapes and orients the desire of another. Because desire is not object-oriented but model-oriented, models perform the important role of generating and directing desire in human life. Models are dangerous because they easily become obstacles or rivals to a person who becomes fixated on a particular model, which often happens sub-consciously.
Hierarchy of Values
A system in which values are understood as interrelated and seen as part of a logical hierarchal relationship in which some values are derivative or less important than others in a given context.
Meme (Memetic) Theory
The field of mimetics studies how information and cultures develop based on principles of Darwinian evolution. The term meme was coined by ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It was meant to evoke the word gene (from biology) because a meme is the cultural equivalent—words, accents, ideas, tunes, and more that spread from brain to brain through some process of replication or imitation. Despite the importance of imitation in meme theory, it is a completely distinct field of study.
Mimetic Theory
An explanation of social and cultural phenomena based on the role of imitation in human behavior—particularly, the imitation of desire (mimetic desire) and its consequences. The foundations of mimetic theory were laid by the French polymath René Girard in 1961 in his book Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, which described mimetic desire (what he usually referred to as “triangular” desire at the time). Girard’s initial insight into the structure of desire developed over the next several decades to include a unified set of ideas that came to be known as mimetic theory. The theory is built around a core set of interrelated ideas: mimetic desire, the mimetic nature of rivalry, mimetic desire as the origin of violence, the scapegoat mechanism, and the religious and cultural rituals, taboos, and prohibitions (the development of law) designed to prevent mimetic crises and resulting violence.
Desire
A complex phenomenon of human life involving emotions and actions which are part of the process of wanting something or someone
Memetic Theory versus Mimetic Theory
Anthropologists have spent decades trying to explain the enormous diversity between different groups of people. How did tipping twenty percent become the norm in the U.S. but not in Europe? Why do Japanese business people greet one another with bows instead of handshakes? Why do some organizations have cultural “lingo” and others don’t? (And why is there so much lingo in the business world, period?) One of the few things they agree on is this: imitation is the primary transmitter of culture. Two separate theories purport to explain the role of imitation in the development of culture. Meme theory (or memetic theory—with an “e”) explains the development of culture through the imitation of things: ideas, behaviors, and styles that are encoded as memes so they can be easily imitated. A meme is the cultural counterpart to a biological gene. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first coined the term meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He wrote that meme is a noun that “conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” It’s worth pausing for a moment to explore the difference between memetic theory and mimetic theory because they represent two different approaches to thinking about how non-material things—like ideas and desire—spread in groups. Dawkins intentionally named it meme to sound like gene. A meme is an element of a culture that gets passed on by non-genetic means—by way of something broadly called imitation. “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs,” wrote Dawkins, “so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” Musical tunes (Happy Birthday), catch-phrases (“studmuffin”), fashion (men wearing ties), and even religious dogmas (eternal life) are memes in Dawkins’ view. Memes spread because people imitate them as closely as possible. According to Dawkins, there’s no human creativity in the spread of a meme. It has a life of its own. If a meme undergoes slight changes, that happens like the mutation of a gene—part of a mysterious and hidden natural process—and not by human choice. Likewise memes seek their own survival as if they were a living organism. The people who transmit them are merely their vehicles, no more important than a particular body is to a virus. But experience shows the opposite is true: people are models that endow random objects with value and make them worthy of imitation. Would people have been belting out the song “Shallow” in bars in 2019 if they’d first heard it from some busker in Santa Monica instead of as a duet between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in the film A Star Is Born? The film’s premise revolves around the idea that Lady Gaga’s character isn’t a star until Bradley Cooper models her desirability as a singer. A more immediate example is this: why do some people wear MAGA hats and why would others not wear a MAGA hat if their lives depended on it? This is an example of negative imitation. The determination never to wear a hat that says “Make American Great Again” has nothing to do with the color red, nor a political critique of the idea of American greatness. It has to do with the person modeling the hat: Donald Trump. By ignoring negative imitation, Dawkins makes no account of the harmful effects of rivalrous, destructive imitative behaviors. In meme theory, imitation is a positive force: the best memes are propagated through imitation. In mimetic theory, imitation can have—and usually does have— negative consequences. Because the imitation of desire causes people to compete for the same things, it eventually leads to conflict and sometimes collisions.
The Meme Machine — by Susan Blackmore
The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore is one of the best recent books on Richard Dawkin’s famous meme theory, which describes how culture is transmitted from person to person and down through history. Memes purport to explain the development of culture through the imitation of things. Memes are like genes: they are replicators, competing for space in our minds and in our culture. This book investigates the consequences. The famed Richard Dawkins, in his foreword to the book, writes: “The fact that we unconsciously imitate others, especially our parents, those in quasi-parental roles, or those we admire, is familiar enough. But is it really credible that imitation could become the basis of a major theory of the evolution of the human mind and the explosive inflation of the human brain, even of what it means to be a conscious self? Could imitation have been the key to what set our ancestors apart from all other animals? I would never have thought so, but Susan Blackmore in this book makes a tantalisingly strong case.”