An Introduction to René Girard | Hacker News Reader

An Introduction to René Girard

danco.substack.com

73 pointsjger1517 comments

It's worth mentioning that Girard worked as an anthropologist and philosopher, but in his later work primarily as a Christian theologian. When Dr. King said "the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice" he describes Girard's understanding of the process of developing civilization by rejecting mimetic violence.

Can demonizing and sacrificing a scapegoat somehow short-circuit our human need to use mimetic violence against each other and restore harmony? For example, can ending Kevin Spacey's career because of his history of mistreating female co-workers somehow make our culture better? Girard declares "no!" At least not for very long.

Could crucifying Jesus of Nazareth somehow short-circuit the fury of the Jewish population under the thumbs of the Romans and restore harmony? The Romans and the Jewish temple bigshots hoped it would. Still, Girard declares "no!" (I'm not equating Jesus with Spacey in any way other than pointing out they're both scapegoats.)

The point of understanding mimetic desire and mimetic violence, according to Girard, is to get past it: to understand it as part of human nature, and make it our nature to resist it.

Unfortunately, Facebook is, explicitly, founded on the idea of focusing and exploiting mimetic desire. That's why Thiel invested. That's why it's going to be very difficult for Facebook to carry out any meaningful change.

"Instagram’s real product isn’t photos; it’s likes."

This is a powerful view. I haven't read Girard yet, but this understanding just bumped up the urgency.

I do disagree with the statement that the role model of narcissists is themselves, mainly because I think it's necessarily an external figure who inculcates a belief in a perfect self, which the narcisist must then either feel reflected in his relationships, or defend that external image of self with unreasonable ferocity. The role isn't "themselves," in this case it's an idealized reflection they expect from others. Subtle, but key.

It's like the baby or child seeking out a source of pure maternal adoration and then a belief in that lost perfection characterizing them as an adult. When you meet someone in a narcisistic rage, it's because they have had their self-belief wounded by an imperfect reflection, coupled with how hard they have "worked," to deserve that reflection from a person with their sacrifices and accomplishments. This is why they call it, "narcissistic supply," as they will work pathologically to get the external approval of their Self that they cannot produce for themselves. It's almost certainly contagious as well, since parents who use their children as a source of supply love bomb them, creating that reflected adoration high they crave, while leaving the kid with the same sense of perfection and consequent need.

Arguably, coming of age rituals were designed to destroy that image and create self acceptance, and why there is such a renewed cultural interest in "ego death," from hallucinogens.

Trouble is, we know how useful people with narcisistic tendencies are, because they will literally kill themselves for a bit of external approval, and as a society we exacerbate it under guise of creating "pro-social," behavior. It's like sugar, fine in small doses, but you probably don't want to carry around a pump, and yet this is what we do with sources of external approval.

It will be interesting to reconcile this interpretation with Girard's idea of role models and the narcisist's role being self referential. Unexpectedly interesting post.

Girard's writings are quite impenetrable, unfortunately.

Girard is the greatest philosopher since Nietzsche. His analysis on mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism is deeply disturbing and convincing. The #metoo movement is full of scapegoats.

It's very useful to read Girard, not least to steel yourself against the influences of directly Girard-inspired social networks. But I'm increasingly seeing this idea that any time someone powerful or influential is held accountable for something they're being made a Girardian scapegoat, and it's ridiculous. It's becoming a myth people tell themselves when they don't want to take ownership of the ways they've messed up. "Oh I haven't really done anything wrong, I'm just being made a scapegoat to resolve the mimetic violence of an unthinking mob. Really, I'm the victim here."

The point is to see innocence in the scapegoat. They are the victim in some sense of the mad justice of the mobs. Mexicans are scapegoats. Muslims are scapegoats. Rich jews are scapegoats.

Let's take the "grabbing by the pussy" Trump. Why is that shocking ? Do you think Justin Bieber can't grab the pussy of one of his fan girls ?

If you don't see innocence in the scapegoat, we go back to our old ways of literally crucifying people. Once you see the innocence you can think of alternative ways of dealing with the problem, instead of killing and shunning people.

This. It's a simple yet eloquent description about human culture since the foundation of the world. Everyone who reads the Bible should read about scapegoats and mimetic theory.

The #metoo movement was largely borne out on social media, Twitter specifically. Twitter has really started to worry me for the reason you said. It seems like it is really effective at forming angry mobs. I remember reading an interview that Girard did somewhere where he talked about social media's influence and he said we should be working to prevent mobs, not form them.

The #MeToo movement became visible to many of us (particularly us pink-skinned American men) on Twitter. Was it born on social media? I guess not so much. It was born, I guess, in conversations between people who were the targets of Gamergate and other much older systems of oppression.

These oppression schemes have been around for ages upon ages. Witness the gospel accounts of the crowd chanting "Crucify him, crucify him" about a particular outsider troublemaker a couple of millenia ago.

Social media amplified the movement. And social media called the oppression to the carpet. Is #metoo a violent mob scene? Is it the same dealio as the stuff on Facebook about attacking the Rohinga in Myanmar/Burma? Or the stuff on radio about the Hutu-Tutsi violence in Rwanda? Those are hard questions to answer. I personally don't know.

I suppose it's up to us all to stop short of exacting revenge, while insisting on justice. That's probably the hardest task ever to confront humanity. We gotta try.

Social media has sadly exasperated the effects. Everyone is a target! Every time I see a person being lynched, I can't help but see the mechanism in action. This affects both the sexes, I would say Katie Bouman is the most recent scapegoat.

A counterpoint to Girard and his thought:

https://arcade.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/article_pdfs...

Really, comparing it with Scientology? Can't take the text seriously with claims like that.

Thank you for posting that article! It was really well written and thought provoking.

Kind of interesting, but it feels like Girard makes things more complicated than they need to be.

The observation that people want "to be things" not "own things", is very true.

People want status. Status has been important since we started collective action by throwing rocks at lions.

If you didn't throw rocks, then you were out cast and were probably eaten by lions. High status within human groups ensures reproductive success and security.

I found the rest of the article unnecessarily complex in describing humanity.

If you want a much more enlightening and much easier to read book, try "The Social Leap" by William van Hippel.

Not sure using fictional characters from Dostoyevsky as specimen of behavioural patterns is very convincing.

Have you read Dostoyevsky cause those characters are not fictional.

It was in my school curriculum, hard to escape. I hope you do not really imply it was a documentary work.

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