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Compassion Or Apocalypse

A comprehensible guide to the thought of Ren Girard

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

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CHAPTER 1

Mimesis and Desire

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You desire something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. (James 4:1-2)

Oh, Hell! To choose love by another's eyes. Hermia (Midsummer Night's Dream)

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Mimesis

Rubberbands used to be handy things to have around the house and office, very practical little gadgets, and very cheap – until the day my six year old son came home from school wearing some around his wrist. They weren't typical rubberbands, however, they were "Silly Bandz" – strangely shaped, neon-colored, rubberband-like things. When he took one off his wrist and threw it onto the table it instantly resolved into the shape of a guitar. I found out soon enough that Silly Bandz were not cheap. Nate wanted me to buy him a pack of twenty-four that cost almost five dollars! Mercifully, we discovered that the local dollar store sold a variety that cost only two dollars. (Why then did they call it a "dollar" store? Another of life's many conundrums.) Within a couple of weeks, Nate had become the owner of several dozen Silly Bandz, which he wore proudly displayed in a thick conglomerate around his wrist. At school the kids would show each other their bands and trade them, while parents across America forked out millions of dollars to satisfy their children's demands, and manufacturers laughed, as they say, all the way to the bank.

It's an old story, isn't it, and one we all know well. But nobody knows it better than the marketers, the promoters, and the advertising agencies. They are the experts who can work the magic that turns a rubberband into a national craze. Some readers might remember the 1970's craze called Pet Rocks. Mere stones sold in cardboard boxes cut with "breathing holes" so the "pet" could breath, these guys sold for almost four dollars back in 1975, and made their creator, Gary Dahl, a millionaire. There is no need to labor the point, because anyone living in our consumer culture is not only familiar with it, but has no doubt been taken in by such schemes many times over. None of us is immune. No matter how stupid or silly, sooner or later we all fall victim to the power of influence and live to laugh about it, or cry over it, as the case may be.

Although I said that no one knows this story better than the advertisers and promoters who know how to package these items in ways that will sell, advertisers do not truly understand the nature of the force they manipulate with sometimes amazing efficacy. There is someone, however, who does understand the force involved in such matters. His name is René Girard, and the force in question is what Girard calls mimetic desire. The term "mimetic desire" means desire shaped by mimesis (which, it turns out, is the only kind of desire there is). But what is mimesis? Before we get to the issue of desire itself, we need to understand a bit about mimesis.

"Mimesis" means imitation (think mime). Everybody is aware to some extent of the power of imitation in human life, and Girard is not the first great thinker to make it a major theme in the understanding of human nature. Imitation is at the very heart of Aristotle's Poetics, for example, where Aristotle uses imitation as the definition of what is common to all art, and what makes us human. Nor is imitation for Aristotle mere superficial mimicry, as in the copying of external shapes and sounds, but also involves the reproduction through art of human intentions and purposes, the stuff of which drama is made.

Another thinker who had much to say about imitation was Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education. Steiner was clear that children learn by imitation: "At this age nothing is accomplished through admonition; commands and prohibitions have no effect at all. But the examples are most significant. What children see, what happens in their surroundings, they feel must be imitated.... Exhortations have no effect, but the way a person acts in the child's presence matters greatly. It is far more important to refrain from doing what the child is not permitted to do than to forbid the child to imitate it." I was able to observe this process in my own child as I watched him picking up one habit after another, one interest after another, one mannerism after another – all by imitating elements in his environment. Everything that Nate is most passionate about, from Spiderman to karate to Taiko drum lessons, and everything that Nate has learned about how to be in the world, from tying shoelaces to brushing teeth to burping inappropriately (the way they do in the school cafeteria) to the desire for Silly Bandz – everything has been by way of imitation.

Researcher Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington in Seattle did experiments in 1977 with infants only a few hours old. When Meltzoff stuck out his tongue, the babies would imitate the gesture and stick out theirs. One infant who did this was only a half-hour old and had not yet even seen its mother's face. Sometimes the imitation would happen immediately, but the infants also had the capacity for delay, so that the gesture would be remembered and imitated only at a later time. It is because of the child's incredible capacity to appropriate everything around her through imitation that Waldorf education is especially careful about protecting the child from the influences of television, motion pictures, computer images, and other such stimuli. It is too easy for the child to imitatively appropriate attitudes, behaviors, and images that are beyond the child's developmental level, leading to various difficulties and alienation from immediate experience.

René Girard developed the idea of imitation in directions undiscovered by any previous observers, and made it the lynchpin in a theory that goes far beyond child development. Girard calls it "mimesis" rather than imitation in order to avoid confusing his key idea with mere mimicry. Like Aristotle, Girard sees that mimesis runs much deeper than the mere copying of externalities such as repetition of sounds in language learning, or motor skills for mastering a sport -- although this kind of imitation is certainly ubiquitous in human experience. Mimicry of the other's gestures, sounds, movements, and so on, come as naturally to us as to chimpanzees. But our imitative gifts far exceed the chimp's, and as we begin to imitate, not just external gestures, but the other's unspoken intentions and unuttered desires, our very sense of self – how we experience ourselves and who we feel ourselves to be – comes to depend upon the "other." Girard saw that imitation of externals is a function of a much deeper imitation – the imitation of desire. When my son joins the Silly Bandz craze, he is not merely imitating the behaviors of wearing, trading, displaying, and so on, but, far more profoundly, he is imitating the desire for Silly Bandz that he senses in others; and at a deeper level still, he is imitating the desire to fit in, and the desire to stand out and be recognized (by having the coolest Silly Bandz). He sees that others desire these things, and then he wants them himself. Through mimesis, he develops the same desires, which leads him to pursue the same objects.

Mimetic Desire

The key to Girard's understanding of mimesis, therefore, and what gives his work its real depth and power, is his insight that human beings copy each other's desires. And we do this at levels of incredible subtlety, since desire is not something people always wear on their sleeve. We have a wonderfully sensitive ability to "sniff out" the other's desire, reading his or her intentions and feelings even before they become observable acts. This is because we are always quite anxious, if not downright desperate, to know what others desire. We come into this world naked not only of body, but naked also of any sense as to what should be valued, what should be desired.

Now, we must carefully distinguish this kind of cultural desire from what we might call "appetites," which are biologically already in place. We are programmed to seek and accept liquid when we are thirsty – we do not have to copy that appetite from anyone. But it is not long before the appetite to slack thirst becomes mingled with desire, which is for a particular kind of liquid, perhaps that specific cup of liquid which a child sees another enjoying. Perhaps the liquid is red, and it was its redness which first caught the child's eye; but now that it has her attention, she sees the other child drinking it and believes (rightly or wrongly) that the red liquid is something the other child desires. Then she experiences an incredibly powerful urge to have some for herself, even if other types of liquid refreshment are readily available. This urge is mimetic. Once she drinks it, if the red liquid turns out to be a highly sugared fruit punch, biology might kick in as the sugar stimulates further appetite without mimetic help. Even so, however, mimesis can modify and even overrule biology, as, for example, when a child throws a fit in a grocery store when mommy attempts to buy generic fruit punch that lacks the branding of the child's favorite cartoon character or superhero. Despite mommy's repeated attempts to explain that this punch is just as sweet and sugary, the child will have nothing to do with it. (No doubt if health food manufacturers made lucrative deals with Disney and George Lucas, children's food preferences – and their health – would be dramatically altered.)

A simple example often given to illustrate mimetic desire is the scenario every parent has witnessed (and had to deal with!) hundreds of times. A child is playing with a toy in a room full of toys. Your child enters the room, begins looking around, perhaps handles a few objects that seem interesting to him; but, eventually, the toy the other child is enjoying comes to look more and more desirable to your child. Sometimes gradually, sometimes immediately, your child edges his way closer to the object, and you already know what's coming. Without adult intervention there is likely to be trouble. You are going to have to intervene and talk with your child about boundaries and respecting other people's things; and the other parent will have to talk with her child about sharing.

Of course, the scenario I just sketched doesn't always materialize (thank God), because there may be other factors at work in the situation that steer the child into preferring a different toy. But even in this happy outcome, mimesis is probably at work. The child might defer her desire to possess the other kid's toy because she imitates her parent's admonition (heard a hundred times before) to wait until another child is finished playing with a toy before grabbing for it; or she might spot a different toy, which she recognizes as an even more powerful object of desire thanks to the influence of a television commercial, an older sibling, or a next-door neighbor.

Mimesis, therefore, is not a mechanical process. Mimesis is not the only force at work, since genetics and biology have their role to play in motivation as well, and there is a mutually modifying effect between mimesis and biological urges and needs. But mimesis does quite commonly distort and inhibit what would be the natural, biological response, leading people along even downright destructive paths. (An example that comes to mind would be ascetic practices involving mortification of the flesh, learned through imitation of the desires and practices of a religious order.) Various choices can be made about who and what to imitate, and Girard would affirm an element of freedom that allows us, to some extent at least, to choose what we will copy. Imitation of the desire of the other, however, is almost always an unconscious choice that we readily hide from ourselves. But more about that later.

Having brought up the issue of biology, some mention should be made here of the recent discovery of mirror neurons. Several decades after Girard had developed his theory of mimesis, a group of scientists experimenting with macaque monkeys in a laboratory in Parma, Italy, made the discovery of the decade in neuroscience – mirror neurons – thus providing what turns out to be a firm, experimental grounding for mimesis. When one performs any motor activity, what are called motor neurons fire in the brain; but these scientists made the amazing discovery that the brain also contains specialized neurons that fire when one merely observes an action being performed. This seems to be the physiological source of empathy, allowing me to feel sad when I see you cry, or get angry in response to your anger. It is the reason video games and movies can stimulate adrenaline rushes, as though I myself were performing the dangerous stunts I see on the screen. In all such activities, mirror neurons are firing away in response to my perception of the other's actions and feelings. Mirror neurons are now being accepted as the physiological mechanism underlying our capacity to imitate.

Mimesis is a force rather like gravity. Jean-Michel Oughourlian points out that gravity's law of inverse proportion applies analogously to mimesis. Once two desires are attuned, the force of attraction multiplies in power and it becomes easier to attract a third, in which case its power grows again, and so on as more "desirers" participate. I do not mean this as a strict mathematical function, only as a suggestive analogy; but it does seem to be the case that mimetic attraction grows with the size of a crowd. Eventually we have the phenomenon of a "mimetic wave" – the so-called herd mentality characteristic of mobs, which at its peak exercises upon individuals an almost irresistible fascination. The more desires are focused upon a particular object, the more irresistibly desirable the object appears to everyone. The rises and plunges of the stock market are examples of mimetic waves: investors follow the numbers, which represent the desires of others for certain stocks. The stock market demonstrates the "snowball effect" of mimesis when it becomes a large scale group phenomenon, growing in power and seductiveness in proportion to the number of participating traders.

I often perform for schools, doing assembly programs that address the issue of bullying, and I use magic as a means of communicating the concepts in an entertaining way. In this setting I have often noticed the power of mimetic waves. Once I was doing a show for seven hundred middle school students in a large auditorium. I bring students up to the stage as helpers for various routines, and with middle school kids this is very easy to do since they generally love to assist the magician. Usually I ask for volunteers, but sometimes I simply grab someone's hand, yank them out of their seat, and say "thanks for volunteering!" It gets a laugh. On this occasion, however, it turned out that the girl I tried to get to volunteer was petrified of appearing on stage before her classmates, and she balked. I attempted to cajole her out of her seat, because I already knew what was likely to happen if she persisted in her stubborn refusal to volunteer. And I was right. When I tried to get the girl sitting next to her to volunteer, she exhibited exactly the same behavior as the first girl: facial expression, body language, and verbal expletives were all the same. It was as though she were a photocopy of the first girl.

Now I knew I was in trouble, because I had seen this happen before, and I know mimetic theory. Once the second girl chose to imitate the first girl's desire not to participate, the "gravitational" effect of mimesis set in: with two girls exhibiting the same desire/behavior, it was almost a certain bet that the next student would participate in the same imitation. Desire to "resist-the-magician" spread almost palpably like a wave throughout the auditorium, even though this age group is usually quite extroverted and enthusiastic in their desire to participate. I finally had to address the entire audience, asking for someone – anyone! – to raise his or her hand to volunteer – and only two people out of seven hundred went against the "wave" and raised their hands! This is how powerfully and quickly mimesis can control collective group behavior.

We will examine the Gospels in detail later, but I might mention here, in connection with mimetic waves, how the Gospels portray the actions of the "crowd" in relation to Jesus. News about Jesus spread contagiously throughout Judea, so that Jesus became a celebrity by word-of-mouth. When he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, riding on a donkey, the crowds adored him and welcomed him as a king; but later those same crowds turned against him, shouting for his crucifixion. Both movements were mimetic waves. The reason it was so easy for the crowd to turn against Jesus (the famous "fickleness" of the crowd) is that the object of a crowd's desire can in principle be anything, because the crowd doesn't desire the object for its own sake; it looks desirable simply because everybody else is desiring it. Thus, like the child's toy in the playroom, the crowd will quickly discard its plaything when the mimetic fad changes – sometimes for the most trivial of reasons.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Compassion Or Apocalypse by James Warren. Copyright © 2012 by James Warren. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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