Mimetic desire operates in the dark. Those who can see in the dark take full advantage.

The scapegoat mechanism, he found, turns a war of all against all into a war of all against one.

A hierarchy of values is especially critical when choices have to be made between good things. If values are all equally important, or if there isn’t a clear understanding of how they relate to one another, mimesis becomes the primary driver of decision-making.

Girard calls this striving not for any particular thing but for some new way of living or being metaphysical desire.

But even more is at stake. Each one of us has a responsibility to shape the desires of others, just as they shape ours. Each encounter we have with another person enables them, and us, to want more, to want less, or to want differently.

Mimetic desire causes people to fall in or out of love, or debt, or friendships, or business partnerships. Or it may subject them to the degrading slavery of being merely a product of their milieu.

Few scientists have done more to refute the myth of the asocial infant than Andrew Meltzoff, whose work in childhood development, psychology, and neuroscience over the past several decades has lent support to Girard’s discovery.

This is essentially the plot of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It is not merely the tragic story of two young lovers. It’s the tragedy of a warring city devolving into mimetic chaos. The opening line of the play is, “Two households, both alike in dignity.” Yet they hate each other.

The scapegoat mechanism, he found, turns a war of all against all into a war of all against one. It brings temporary peace as people forget their mimetic conflicts for a while, having just discharged all of their anger onto a scapegoat. This process, Girard believed, was the foundation of all culture. The institutions and cultural norms that we