The Foundational Myth All human culture and most religions are based on a collective murder. This idea, and the corollary extension that "the peace" is maintained with violence, is the central subject for what is variously called the Mimetic or Girardian theory. Rene Girard, a French literary critic and professor, who recently retired from Stanford University formulated the theory after noting that most foundational myths, epics, and great stories from the oral and written traditions throughout time contain the same underlying reality: peace and order are maintained by the use of a mechanism that must remain unconscious in order to work. That mechanism is Mimesis. MIMESIS "Our deeply-rooted unconscious tendency is to imitate one another." "All human culture" is an interplay of modeling; and specifically the modeling of desire. We don't just look around and see things we want, we look at what others want and want those things too. But the most startling realization of all is that we don't just want what we see, or what others have, we want other peoples desires. Not just the objects of their desires, we want other people's wants. Why did my friends fight so vehemently over a place on the team, only to loose interest in the game as some as they had gained the positions? Why do children fight over toys and then set them aside when the have them? Why do men fight over a woman, or women over a man? Desire itself is addictive. Girard does not actually explain the biological or psychological cause of this, simply that it happens and that the objects of desire and the resolution of that desire have little to do with the behavior. A good place to start reading Girard is his article on the web called: The Gospels reveal THE way to interpret Myth. Girard explains Satan as the arch modeler, as the one who draws us into longing for the wrong things. Satan is also the provider of a way out of the cycle of violence spawned by such longings. Satan gives the "Scapegoat", the person to blame. Blame, heaped on an "other" deflects mimetic rivalry and gives people a sense that their own desires are valid. Some evil other is causing our problems and if we get rid of it, we get rid of the problem. This is the most active and noticeable side of Mimesis. By Killing or expelling the "bad guy" peace is restored. Girard points out that unlike most myths (which retell the scapegoat story), Christianity insists on the innocence of the scapegoat, insists that we resist the mimetic power of the hero, insists that we remove ourselves from the power of the crowd. Christianity brings into consciousness that the scapegoat is something else: a victim. Christianity is, in certain ways, the stumbling block for mimesis. The birth, life, and death of Jesus seem to follow a familiar pattern, the dying and rising God. But the stumbling block is that Jesus is not the hero, he is the victim. Jesus does not vanquish the bad guy, He does not provide a cathartic release for the collective rage of the civilization, because all the while he is pointing to the process. He is saying, "THIS IS NOT A MYTH, THIS IS REAL" and the amazing thing is that the writers GET IT. The Bible seems self aware of the fact that it is breaking the mold. It is deliberately trying to point out the Mimesis and saying, "Warning, Avoid this!!!" And at the same time Jesus is saying, "Copy me, Desire what I Desire." The message seems to be: "Become aware that this Mimesis exists and can work in your midst to make you stumble. It is an unconscious force that must be brought into consciousness. Grab hold of it and use it by mimicking me, not each other, not the father of lies." In some real and powerful ways, this idea offers a "peace-loving-phlegmatic" like me some real hope. The good news, interpreted this way says, "humanity must give up its old, partial peace founded on victimization, and push on for the great peace that comes from the demythologizing work of Jesus." This is "hidden in plain site" stuff. It is about Seeing the stuff we have learned to miss. It is about becoming aware of how we "are the way we are" not by choice, but by accident, almost. John Ralston Saul, Canada's most important living philosopher, puts forward the premise that there are two forces in the world. One runs towards unconsciousness and the other runs towards consciousness. ( I'm not sure he would word it this way, or that he would approve of the over simplification this assessment brings.) The idea of the two forces is not expressed directly by Saul. I conceptualized it after reading the ultra conservative critic and writer Thomas Molnar. Molnar did not label the two forces either, he simple hammered away at a view of the one force he called, "The Pagan Temptation." Molnar tried with all his might to show that illuminated Christians are under a constant temptation to give in to paganism, the power of the unconscious. The reason Molnar put forward is that Paganism seems to "answers the questions better" at a deeper level. But Girard illuminates the possibility that at least half of the reason is that Paganism is the easy road to Mimesis. Pagan Myths are one powerful and pervasive way to deal with Mimetic Violence. This is very tempting indeed. It is the Good Guy/ Bad Guy temptation. But Girard is expert in pointing out that it is a hollow solution. The problem, like Arnold Swartzenager's Character, will be back. In The Unconscious Civilization, Saul shows that these two competing forces have been around since Socrates challenged the Homeric explanation of what it is to be human. The Myths of Homer are about the God's and destiny. Basically they say that our destiny is in the hands of the Gods. We are subjected to them and have no freedom to change our future. It is written in the stars. Key thinkers in the movement against the Homeric or Pagan tradition are what Saul calls, "Conscious Thinkers." You can spot them by their tell-tale ways. They ask a lot of questions. They resist the group. They challenge the status quo. They are obsessed with ethics. They are always searching for the truth. They believe in the individual. They avoid the written word (because it can so easily be misunderstood) and instead choose to act. They are democratic. Think of Socrates, Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Mother Theresa. And who are the Unconscious Thinker? The Republicans, like Plato, who value the written because it solidifies and codifies, they value power and devalue the individual. They like laws, not for justice but for power and fear. They are utopian. They are anti-democratic, even if they fain a love for democracy. They esteem ideology, abstraction, rationality. They promote the old answers, the easy answers. They tempt with myth, simplification and emotional appeal. They control and placate. They disdain the citizen and establish class systems. They are corporate, managerial and contractual. They promote Mimesis, violence, and competition. Saul writes about Jung and Freud and suggests that they made the too common blunder that is made when we attempt to examine the human life. They uncovered things about the self that had been hidden. They brought into the light things we didn't know about ourselves. It seemed like a great chance to know more about us. But the opposite happened. That seething mass of unconscious irrationality scared us to death. It was so HOMERIC! It painted a picture of us pushed about by our sexual and unconscious selves unable to change or find control. But as so often happens the medium became the message. Instead of understanding ourselves we just had more vocabulary. It is all about communication. Unconsciousness is a lack of communication with ourselves. Awareness is framed by understanding. Jung and Freud have not really helped us understand ourselves much, Socrates and Jesus hold better keys. And so do Quakers, who have championed conscious awareness of victims and others for many years. For More information on this topic see the links at: |
Girardian Theory - Mimesis |
A brief introduction to the theories of Rene Girard |
The Foundational Myth All human culture and most religions are based on a collective murder. This idea, and the corollary extension that "the peace" is maintained with violence, is the central subject for what is variously called the Mimetic or Girardian theory. Rene Girard, a French literary critic and professor, who recently retired from Stanford University formulated the theory after noting that most foundational myths, epics, and great stories from the oral and written traditions throughout time contain the same underlying reality: peace and order are maintained by the use of a mechanism that must remain unconscious in order to work. That mechanism is Mimesis. MIMESIS "Our deeply-rooted unconscious tendency is to imitate one another." "All human culture" is an interplay of modeling; and specifically the modeling of desire. We don't just look around and see things we want, we look at what others want and want those things too. But the most startling realization of all is that we don't just want what we see, or what others have, we want other peoples desires. Not just the objects of their desires, we want other people's wants. Why did my friends fight so vehemently over a place on the team, only to loose interest in the game as some as they had gained the positions? Why do children fight over toys and then set them aside when the have them? Why do men fight over a woman, or women over a man? Desire itself is addictive. Girard does not actually explain the biological or psychological cause of this, simply that it happens and that the objects of desire and the resolution of that desire have little to do with the behavior. A good place to start reading Girard is his article on the web called: The Gospels reveal THE way to interpret Myth. Girard explains Satan as the arch modeler, as the one who draws us into longing for the wrong things. Satan is also the provider of a way out of the cycle of violence spawned by such longings. Satan gives the "Scapegoat", the person to blame. Blame, heaped on an "other" deflects mimetic rivalry and gives people a sense that their own desires are valid. Some evil other is causing our problems and if we get rid of it, we get rid of the problem. This is the most active and noticeable side of Mimesis. By Killing or expelling the "bad guy" peace is restored. Girard points out that unlike most myths (which retell the scapegoat story), Christianity insists on the innocence of the scapegoat, insists that we resist the mimetic power of the hero, insists that we remove ourselves from the power of the crowd. Christianity brings into consciousness that the scapegoat is something else: a victim. Christianity is, in certain ways, the stumbling block for mimesis. The birth, life, and death of Jesus seem to follow a familiar pattern, the dying and rising God. But the stumbling block is that Jesus is not the hero, he is the victim. Jesus does not vanquish the bad guy, He does not provide a cathartic release for the collective rage of the civilization, because all the while he is pointing to the process. He is saying, "THIS IS NOT A MYTH, THIS IS REAL" and the amazing thing is that the writers GET IT. The Bible seems self aware of the fact that it is breaking the mold. It is deliberately trying to point out the Mimesis and saying, "Warning, Avoid this!!!" And at the same time Jesus is saying, "Copy me, Desire what I Desire." The message seems to be: "Become aware that this Mimesis exists and can work in your midst to make you stumble. It is an unconscious force that must be brought into consciousness. Grab hold of it and use it by mimicking me, not each other, not the father of lies." In some real and powerful ways, this idea offers a "peace-loving-phlegmatic" like me some real hope. The good news, interpreted this way says, "humanity must give up its old, partial peace founded on victimization, and push on for the great peace that comes from the demythologizing work of Jesus." This is "hidden in plain site" stuff. It is about Seeing the stuff we have learned to miss. It is about becoming aware of how we "are the way we are" not by choice, but by accident, almost. John Ralston Saul, Canada's most important living philosopher, puts forward the premise that there are two forces in the world. One runs towards unconsciousness and the other runs towards consciousness. ( I'm not sure he would word it this way, or that he would approve of the over simplification this assessment brings.) The idea of the two forces is not expressed directly by Saul. I conceptualized it after reading the ultra conservative critic and writer Thomas Molnar. Molnar did not label the two forces either, he simple hammered away at a view of the one force he called, "The Pagan Temptation." Molnar tried with all his might to show that illuminated Christians are under a constant temptation to give in to paganism, the power of the unconscious. The reason Molnar put forward is that Paganism seems to "answers the questions better" at a deeper level. But Girard illuminates the possibility that at least half of the reason is that Paganism is the easy road to Mimesis. Pagan Myths are one powerful and pervasive way to deal with Mimetic Violence. This is very tempting indeed. It is the Good Guy/ Bad Guy temptation. But Girard is expert in pointing out that it is a hollow solution. The problem, like Arnold Swartzenager's Character, will be back. In The Unconscious Civilization, Saul shows that these two competing forces have been around since Socrates challenged the Homeric explanation of what it is to be human. The Myths of Homer are about the God's and destiny. Basically they say that our destiny is in the hands of the Gods. We are subjected to them and have no freedom to change our future. It is written in the stars. Key thinkers in the movement against the Homeric or Pagan tradition are what Saul calls, "Conscious Thinkers." You can spot them by their tell-tale ways. They ask a lot of questions. They resist the group. They challenge the status quo. They are obsessed with ethics. They are always searching for the truth. They believe in the individual. They avoid the written word (because it can so easily be misunderstood) and instead choose to act. They are democratic. Think of Socrates, Jesus, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Mother Theresa. And who are the Unconscious Thinker? The Republicans, like Plato, who value the written because it solidifies and codifies, they value power and devalue the individual. They like laws, not for justice but for power and fear. They are utopian. They are anti-democratic, even if they fain a love for democracy. They esteem ideology, abstraction, rationality. They promote the old answers, the easy answers. They tempt with myth, simplification and emotional appeal. They control and placate. They disdain the citizen and establish class systems. They are corporate, managerial and contractual. They promote Mimesis, violence, and competition. Saul writes about Jung and Freud and suggests that they made the too common blunder that is made when we attempt to examine the human life. They uncovered things about the self that had been hidden. They brought into the light things we didn't know about ourselves. It seemed like a great chance to know more about us. But the opposite happened. That seething mass of unconscious irrationality scared us to death. It was so HOMERIC! It painted a picture of us pushed about by our sexual and unconscious selves unable to change or find control. But as so often happens the medium became the message. Instead of understanding ourselves we just had more vocabulary. It is all about communication. Unconsciousness is a lack of communication with ourselves. Awareness is framed by understanding. Jung and Freud have not really helped us understand ourselves much, Socrates and Jesus hold better keys. And so do Quakers, who have championed conscious awareness of victims and others for many years. For More information on this topic see the links at: |
