Rene Girard’s most famous idea is mimetic desire: the idea that humans don’t come up with their own desires so much as we learn what to reach for watching others reach. It’s not always the case, but there’s more truth to it than we’d like to admit.
His follow-up claim is that mimesis leads to rivalry: we converge on the same desire, and that convergence escalates into conflict. Imitation, in his mind, is the seed of its own violence.
This is dark, and in my opinion false. Because if imitation always converges on conflict, then how do you explain this dance party?
The first follower wasn’t a rival; he was welcomed in as an equal, and from there it becomes the purest form of imitation there is, and the result isn’t rivalry, it’s joy. The more people who join, the better for everyone, including the guy who started it.
There are other examples of this as well, open source software is one. Elite academic institutions are not one: they manufacture rivalry. The fact that the theory came out of Stanford is fitting, but just because it’s true of Stanford doesn’t mean it’s true everywhere. It’s a choice, not a law of nature.
If we can build fewer leaderboards and more dance floors, we can make mimicry a force multiplier for good.
How do we do that? I do not know. But movements don’t start because of me. What do you think?