René Girard, mimetic desire, and society's biggest rat race

According to Girard, the more differentiated a society, the more stable it is. But on the internet, everybody feels like an undifferentiated peer. Social media decreases the distance between people and their role models, so the pull to idolize false gods is greater than ever. Pair that with the blank slate theory that anybody can do whatever they w... See more

It’s revealing to think of mimetic desire along a continuum. Certain people and organizational cultures are more prone to mimesis than others. And one thing is clear, on a societal level: any society in which people are no longer struggling with scarcity but coping with abundance will undergo an explosion of mimetic desire. In this universe of desi... See more

Girard taught that all desire is fundamentally a desire for being. In other words, all desire is metaphysical—it seeks a kind of inner transformation, a transfiguration of identity, which we desperately seek but even more desperately deny.

The assumption that my desires are all my own—this story that I tell myself—is what the French social scientist René Girard calls “The Romantic Lie.” The Lie is that I want things independently, or that I choose all of the objects of my desire out of some secret desire chamber in my heart. I know a good thing when I see it; I know what’s desirable ... See more