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 their mass murder—and compares these texts to ancient myths (like Oedipus), where Girard finds striking similarities. Both myths and texts of persecution hide collective violence because they have been written from the point of view of the persecutors. History has been written by the victors, not the victims. Girard did his own form of deconstruction of these texts by deconstructing the mythological structures that obscured the hidden truth of violence underneath. To paraphrase Girard: if you arrive at a crime scene covered with bleach and clear attempts to cover one’s tracks, you can be sure that a crime happened—even if direct evidence of the crime itself can never be fully recovered.
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.
Compassion Or Apocalypse?: A Comprehensible Guide to the Thought of Rene Girard – by James Warren
Apocalyptic Future, Warren’s written a gem, a much-needed “comprehensive” guide to Girard’s thought. It does an excellent job of starting “in the beginning,” with Genesis, and moving all the way through what Girard worried would be a man-made apocalypse. The table of contents is sweeping: Part I: MIMESIS Chapter 1: Mimesis and DesireChapter 2: Mimesis in Genesis 2 and 3Chapter 3: Scandal and Desire in the Gospels Part II: THE SCAPEGOAT Chapter 4: Sacrifice, Founding Murder, and the Scapegoat MechanismChapter 5: Mimesis, Rivalry, and Rounding Murder in GenesisChapter 6: The Primitive Sacred and the Hebrew Scriptures in Travail Chapter 7: MythologyChapter 8: The Gospel Revelation of Myth and Murder Part III: Compassion of Apocalypse Chapter 9: The Gerasene DemoniacChapter 10: The Apostle PaulChapter 11: Paradigm for a New Humanity Chapter 12: Apocalyptic Future and the Contemporary Situation Check out Compassion or Apocalypse on Amazon.
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 Stanford sociologist, Rene Girard. During his time at Stanford, Thiel came under the influence of Rene Girard’s mimetic theory and discovery of cultural scapegoating, which fundamentally shaped Thiel’s understanding of human nature and business. After Stanford, these core insights gave Thiel an uncanny ability to spot business opportunities where others saw none. In fact, his Girardian outlook helped him become one of the earliest investors in Facebook. Throughout his career, he has maintained a close connection to his intellectual mentor. In his 2014 book on startups, Zero to One, Thiel describes a moment of mimetic enlightenment as he was building the company PayPal. He noticed how unclear job responsibilities were arousing internal rivalries and infighting among his employees. Therefore, using another Girardian insight, the power of distinctions and prohibitions, he made employees responsible for one thing, and one thing only. Result: the infighting ceased, which restored the company culture. Applying these principles across industries, Thiel continues to be one of the most effective investors and fluent practitioners of Girardian thought in the modern business world.
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
Mimetic Contagion
In mimetic theory, mimetic contagion refers to the rapid and spontaneous spread of mimetic desires through a society. Mimetic desires may begin small, but as they grow they gain momentum. Mimetic desire leads to mimetic rivalry, which leads to scandal, increasing levels of violence, then scapegoating, and later rationalization. As each stage progresses to the next, the force of desire becomes more contagious. In this way, mimetic desire is not only social: it is viral. A simple example will illustrate mimetic contagion: Say there are two high school boys, John and Robert, who are interested in asking the same girl out. At lunch, they confront each other in the cafeteria, and the conversation quickly turns south. One throws a fist. Then the other. A fight breaks out. Suddenly John’s friends come to his assistance and Robert’s friends come to his assistance, and now there are a dozen guys throwing punches in the middle. The fight gets bigger. The circle expands. As people gather closer to watch the fight, the cafeteria inevitably gets louder and rowdier from the commotion. And those who are standing closest to the fight inevitably get pulled in. Mimetic contagion is kind of like that. The initial desire and the effects of rivalrous desire escalate and ripple outward, increasing in violence until something or someone (a scapegoat) assumes the blame for the violence. As in the cafeteria example above, once the desire (or fight) has reached the contagion level, it is not always possible to trace it back to its root cause. Mimetic desire is constantly happening, and the point is not to be able to diagnose how or why it began but to be acutely aware of its power. Wherever there is an outbreak of social concern, look for a fresh case of mimetic contagion.
The weakening of the Sacrificial Mechanisms
In closed or insular societies, the sacrificial mechanism borne from scapegoating is meant to be a final act of justification for the society. The act of sacrifice becomes a powerful cathartic mechanism, meant to purge society of the violence created by mimetic conflict. However, this mechanism works most effectively when it occurs unconsciously, never been seen or considered as a ‘mechanism’. In modern, more diverse societies, the sacrificial mechanism is often weakened because the victim is exposed as a victim. This exposing, or unveiling, thereby dethrones the whole founding myth the sacrifice was to uphold, stripping it of its power.
Structural Innocence
Structural innocence refers to the reason why a victim is chosen in a scapegoating situation. There may be a superficial reason, and there may be a deeper, more substantial reason which is the real hinge of the scapegoating mechanism. For example, a young Latino student is expelled from school on grounds of sexual harassment. Although the student may be genuinely guilty for their misdemeanor, the expulsion may have little or nothing to do with the act itself, and much more to do with relieving interracial tension in the community. In that way the student could be understood as being ‘ Structural innocence’, a victim of a much larger, unseen, scapegoating conflict.
Ritual
Rituals, or rites, form part of what Rene Girard called the sacred order – the ways societies establish accord with the violence created by mimetic desire. As mimetic desire escalates into violence it spreads disturbance, uncertainty, and upheaval throughout the culture. This leads to scapegoating and eventually sacrifice. In order to commemorate these upheavals, and to prevent them from happening again, rites are instituted. Rites are actions imbued with meaning. They are highly symbolic and relate to an original myth that gives them meaning. Over time, rituals create a sense of stability for those who follow them. Through repetition and practice, they train society to face the violence, thus stripping the original even of its power or sacred order.
The Sacred Order
Rene Girard believed that scapegoating fulfilled a sacred role in society by establishing order and unity among the people. This order is both complex and delicate and depends on society’s “proximity” to the sacred – apparent in their rituals, myths, and taboos. Girard compared society’s relationship to the sacred with drawing close to a fire. Come too close and the fire can be dangerous. Too far, and the heat and light of the fire are diminished. So Girard believed that societies, both primitive and modern, needed the “tutelage” of the sacred to properly confront the violence they would encounter, without being destroyed by it.