Saved by Sixian
The Twitter Ban: Handshakes and Emails
What happened that night is something I now recognize as disruptive empathy.1 The cycle of conflict that stems from unchecked mimesis—like that of a debt collector and a debtor, each responding mimetically to the aggression of the other—was derailed. There was an unexpected breaking in of empathy, something that transcended the moment.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
We imitate not for the sake of imitation itself but for the sake of differentiating ourselves—to try to forge an identity relative to other people.
Luke Burgis • Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
When the accumulated aggression of these rivalries became intolerable, the community would select a scapegoat for ritual sacrifice—not the sort of person we were but the one we definitely were not . On the right, this manifested itself as various forms of xenophobia and a wholesale mistrust of institutional figures; on the left, as much of what cam... See more