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 […]
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 […]
Intersubjectivity
Closely related to the term interdividuality, intersubjectivity is used primarily in reference to mimetic theory and its dialogue with economics to differentiate classical economic agents—who normally have their economic preferences determined solely based on their individual decision-making—from mimetic economic agents who only make choices in a reciprocal (and mimetic) relationship with other economic agents and […]
Interdividual Psychology
Interdividual psychology is a form of understanding human psychology that is grounded in the mimetic relationship and mimetic reciprocity of a subject to a model. It is based on the notion that we are not individuals but interdividuals who are always in relation to other human beings. The implication is that one cannot understand the […]
Interdividuality
This concept, closely related to intersubjectivity, is a term coined by psychiatrist Jean-Michel Oughourlian (along with Guy Lefort and René Girard) in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World to express their conviction that a monadic, isolated subject does not exist and that the self can only be understood in relation to others. Therefore, […]
Texts of Persecution
Rene Girard identified what he called “texts of persecution,” or documents that recount phenomena of collective violence from the standpoint of persecutors—for instance, accounts of lynchings in the early twentieth century, or the medieval poet Guillaume de Machaut’s story Judgement of the King of Navarre, which blames the Jews for the Black Death and describes […]
Mimetic Desire
Mimetic desire is desire according to another, or desire according to a model. Imitation is the force that shapes human desire. People desire things because someone else—a model—did first. When he was in early twenties, René Girard got his first glimpse into the structure of desire. During his university studies in France, he fell in […]
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 […]
Mirror Neurons
Mirror neurons are neurons in the brain that “fire” when a person merely observes an action, mimicking the way that neurons would fire in the brain as if the person were actually performing that action. Mirror neurons were first discovered in maqaque monkeys in by Dr. Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma, Italy, during […]
Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel is one of the world’s most well-respected entrepreneurs and business investors. He is the founder and CEO of PayPal, and was one of the earliest investors in Facebook. He is highly regarded as a thought leader on the topics of business, leadership, and innovation. He is also an outspoken disciple of the late […]