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A book that brings together some of the world’s leading scientists and philosophers who are investigating the enormous role of imitation in human life? It seems like a dream come true for me. Scott R. Garrels edited Mimesis and Science – Empirical Research on Imitation and the Mimetic Theory of Culture and Religion (Studies in Violence, Mimesis and Culture Series, Michigan State University Press, 2011), which definitely initiates a process of cross-fertilization between scholars concerned with René Girard’s mimetic theory and empirical researchers whose work is devoted to the question of imitation in human development.

I assembled some excerpts from the first part of the book – click to read:

EXCERPTS FROM PART 1: IMITATION IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT AND ADULT PSYCHOLOGY (PDF)

READ A REVIEW AT METANEXUS: CLICK HERE

Here are some acknowledgements from the back cover:

“The most exciting and generative new ideas arrive over bridges built between previously isolated fields. Mimesis and Science brings together Girard’s paradigm-changing mimetic theory with a very large literature on human imitation from fields of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cultural anthropology. The result is a stimulating set of essays that will advance current perspectives on human nature and human culture.”

– Warren S. Brown, Director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Clinical Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary.

“René Girard has provided us with an incredibly rich theory of human culture: Mimetic Theory. We must look at human nature as it really is, and not as we would like it to be. Girard’s Mimetic Theory is illuminating because it shows that mimesis has the intrinsic potentiality of driving humans to violence. Any serious neuroscientific attempt to shed light on the truest and deepest nature of the human condition cannot neglect this.”

– Vittorio Gallese, Professor of Physiology in the Department of Neuroscience of the School of Medicine at the University of Parma.

“In the past decade, we witnessed an overturning of the myth of the asocial infant. René Girard is among the thinkers who refused to portray the human from an isolationist perspective. To adapt Girard: Babies hold a secret about the human mind that has been hidden for millenia. They are our double. They have a primordial drive to understand us that advances their development; we have a desire to understand them that propels social science and philosophy.”

– Andrew Meltzoff, Co-Director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.

“In brilliantly original works such as Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, René Girard confronts a possibility that most modern social scientists have shied away from: that bloodshed may be at or close to the heart of all human social life. Only a few thinkers have addressed the problem of violence fully and deeply; yet the threat of it pervades our lives as a species, and we cannot learn to deal with it by drawing back.”

– Melvin Konner, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University.

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I came across a recording of an interview with Julian Paul Keenan, one of biopsychologist Gordon Gallup’s better known students. Keenan explains his mentor’s famous mirror test. I combined his explanation with scenes from The Human Ape, a documentary by National Geographic.

CLICK TO WATCH:

What this test demonstrates concerning the questions of self-awareness, consciousness and what it means to be human, is highly debated. It is clear, however, that increased mimetic abilities allow for higher levels of self-recognition, self-consciousness and empathy with others. The ability to duplicate myself (duplication is a kind of mimesis) allows me to imagine myself (being somewhere else, e.g. in the mirror) – this is the creation of a distance towards myself which allows me to reflect upon myself (increased self-awareness) and to put myself in someone else’s shoes (important for developing empathy – of course empathy has positive and negative consequences; read more on this by clicking here).

These articles are worth exploring:

– Can Animals Empathize? Yes (Gordon Gallup) – pdf

– Empathy and Consciousness (Evan Thompson) – pdf

– The Thief in the Mirror (Frans de Waal) – pdf

– Reflections of Consciousness – The Mirror Test (Pentti Haikonen) – pdf

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Even to this day human culture is drenched with archetypal images of magic mirrors and evil twins. It is clear that both mirrors and twins traditionally evoke mysterium tremendum et fascinans – the common object of all religious or numinous experience as described by Rudolf Otto (1869-1937).

We could ask ourselves why such phenomena are often surrounded by a mysterious, religious aura. Why have human beings been fascinated and frightened by them, at the same time? According to mimetic theory, in ancient times everything associated with mimetic rivalry and violence had the potential to become sacred. To get some understanding of how mirrors and twins (and the ‘twin’ in the mirror) are connected with rivalry and violence, I compiled the following short movie.

CLICK TO WATCH:

I hope this movie shows how classic tales of horror imaginatively portray a profound anthropological truth: in trying to master and hide the bad side of yourself – the parts you don’t want to acknowledge, the parts you don’t want others to see; your evil twin -, you create the monster you are trying to control. Eventually you lose yourself in the process. Moreover, in trying to protect the secret of your so-called bad side, others will have to be destroyed as well – because they could potentially betray your secret. Hypocrisy generates paranoia. Rockers The Smashing Pumpkins are spot on with the line the killer in me is the killer in you, in their song Disarm. I guess we all have two sides. Are we able to acknowledge them? The life of Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), one of the main organizers of the Nazi Holocaust, reads as the story of Dr. Jekyll becoming Mr. Hyde – but his was not a merely fictitious tale of horror, it was real history becoming sheer terror. A warning.

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It’s all there in this classic piece of British humour – all the basic elements of René Girard’s mimetic theory: mimetic desire, mimetic competition or rivalry and the haunting nightmare of the mimetic double. Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean really is the master of ceremonies here.

Enjoy this clever excerpt from Mr Bean in Room 426 (first broadcast 17th Feb 1993) – click to watch:

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“It seems profoundly damaging to the dignity of the human being, and for this reason morally illicit, to support a prevention of AIDS that is based on a recourse to means and remedies that violate an authentically human sense of sexuality, and which are a palliative to the deeper suffering which involve the responsibility of individuals and of society.” (John Paul II, November 15, 1989 – addressing the 4th International Conference of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers).

1. WORLD AIDS DAY

The United Nations’ (UN) World AIDS Day is held on December 1 each year to honor the victims of the AIDS pandemic and focus attention on the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS related conditions. The Catholic Church is often depicted as an obstacle in the struggle against this terrifying disease. In reality, however, the Church’s assessment of the pandemic makes more sense than we might expect. The Christian season of Advent seems a suitable time to reflect on these issues a little more, especially one week after World Aids Day. Those familiar with mimetic theory will once again notice how the insights of René Girard shine through, and how MT once again proves to be a poignant framework for analysing our ongoing ‘human affairs’.

2. MORE COMPLEX SOCIAL TRUTHS COVERED UP BY MEDIATIZED SCAPEGOAT MECHANISMS

Edward C. Green (senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health) and Michael Cook (editor of BioEdge and MercatorNet) both wrote interesting articles on the massive problem of HIV and AIDS in Africa, questioning the assumption of some media that the Catholic Church and John Paul II in particular are responsible for millions of African AIDS victims. Cook’s article is aptly entitled In search of a scapegoat. He asks whether John Paul II was indeed the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. To answer this question, he presents some data which ought to make us westerners reflect on the way we usually construct our perception of different African problems.

Recent empirical evidence seems to support the Church’s claim that the problem of AIDS in Africa won’t be solved by a one-sided promotion of condom-use. Edward C. Green’s contribution in the Washington Post (March 29, 2009), Condoms, HIV-AIDS and Africa – The Pope Was Right, points to a very paternalistic, even patronizing tendency in the way we present solutions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. We all too often seem to project the social context wherein we make use of condoms, onto radically different African situations. In the words of Green: “The condom has become a symbol of freedom and – along with contraception – female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes.” The reality, of course, is that the use of condoms in Africa – and the Third World in general – is often promoted to protect more or less suppressed young women and sex workers against imprudent and excessive sexual demands. This reality itself often remains ‘untouched’ by the promotion of condom-use. Green again, from the same article: “… liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.”

So, instead of becoming a symbol of emancipation and freedom, the condom in the Third World seems well on its way to transform into a fig leaf behind which systems of social inequality are hidden. In some instances, the success of condom-use suggests a relapse in the urgency to fundamentally tackle social issues. The promotion of condom-use to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic did work in some Asian countries. However, perhaps not surprisingly, this happened in the context of an exploitative sex-industry, which is supported in large by western sex tourists and (therefore?) remains insufficiently criticized. Green, once more: “Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them).”

Should this kind of ‘success’ become the example of how to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa? Apart from revealing some sort of perverse cynicism towards the abilities of developing countries to really take matters into their own hands and change the ways of their ‘corrupted worlds’ (and the West’s share in that corruption), this idea of ‘choosing the lesser evil’ is doomed to fail in African countries, as is shown by recent history. Edward C. Green points out two important reasons for this failure: “One reason is ‘risk compensation.’ That is, when people think they’re made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex. Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it’s possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it’s those ongoing relationships that drive Africa’s worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world’s highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year. These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.”

To put it more bluntly, in developing countries condoms seem consistently used by professional (often exploited) sex workers, but fail to have any lasting impact on people’s promiscuous behavior outside the context of commercial sex. It is noteworthy that in both instances the use of condoms doesn’t affect the way in which people, especially women, are treated. Michael Cook remains ‘grounded’ as he refers to the seemingly far more fundamental social causes of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa: “The… assumption is that condoms are essential for preventing AIDS in Africa. In the words of researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, ‘The condom is a life-saving device: it is highly effective in preventing HIV transmission if used correctly and consistently, and is the best current method of HIV prevention for those who are sexually active and at risk’. However, notice that this dogma is limited by two significant qualifications: ‘if used correctly and consistently’. How often can we expect this to happen in southern Africa? If the experts haven’t been able to end AIDS in San Francisco and Sydney by promoting condoms, what makes them think that they will succeed in Africa? […] In the chaotic social environment of many African countries, where poverty is endemic, women are regularly abused and polygamy is widespread, men are unlikely to use condoms consistently. As President Museveni of Uganda has observed, ‘In countries like ours, where a mother often has to walk 20 miles to get an aspirin for her sick child or five miles to get any water at all, the question of getting a constant supply of condoms may never be resolved’. A recent study of condom use in the developing world in the journal Studies in Family Planning summed up the situation with these damning words: ‘no clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalised epidemic primarily by means of condom promotion’. This is most clearly seen in southern Africa. High HIV transmission rates have continued despite high rates of condom use. In Botswana, says Professor Norman Hearst, of the University of California at San Francisco, condom sales rose from one million in 1993 to 3 million in 2001 while HIV prevalence amongst urban pregnant women rose from 27 per cent to 45 percent. In Cameroon condom sales rose from 6 million to 15 million while HIV prevalence rose from 3 per cent to 9 per cent.”

3. THE POPE WAS/IS RIGHT?

The Church, and John Paul II in particular, has always – consistently and stubbornly – focused on the social realities behind the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. That’s why, besides also sometimes distributing condoms as a ‘last resort’, Catholic field workers keep on engaging in educational programs to empower women and to humanize sexual relationships. Michael Cook: “About 27 per cent of health care for HIV/AIDS victims is provided by Church organisations and Catholic NGOs… They form a vast network of clinics which reach the poorest, most remote and most neglected people in Africa.” More and more, and contrary to popular opinion in the so-called First World, the assumptions and strategies of these Church organizations are – though somewhat stealthily – adopted by experts, especially following some recent studies concerning the effectiveness of condom-use promotion. Edward C. Green: “In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations’ AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called ‘Reassessing HIV Prevention’ 10 AIDS experts concluded that ‘consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.'”

We should carefully pay attention to what’s actually being said here. Condom-use is not condemned, it’s just presented – in accordance to ‘the facts on the ground’ – as not being the real and morally desirable solution to the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. At the end of his article, Green once again stresses what experts nowadays perceive as ‘the first priority’ to assess the epidemic – and indeed seems to show that ‘The Pope Was Right’: “Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 ‘consensus statement’ published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives of the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity.”

In a 2010 interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, pope Benedict XVI responded to the statement that “It is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms” by the following reflection (which is very much in line with the recent conclusions of experts in the field): “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality. [The Church] of course does not regard [the use of condoms] as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”

The promotion of relationships based on mutual respect and, if possible, mutual fidelity, indeed has proven to be more effective than a one-sided promotion of condoms without addressing social issues. This is shown by the example of Uganda. Edward C. Green: “So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up… multiple and concurrent sexual networks – or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. ‘Closed’ or faithful polygamy can work as well. In Uganda’s early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on ‘Sticking to One Partner’ or ‘Zero Grazing’ (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and ‘Loving Faithfully.’ These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.” Michael Cook, on the same example of Uganda, which deserves to be imitated and improved upon: “In fact, the history of AIDS in Uganda supports the Church’s belief that abstinence and fidelity within marriage are actually the best ways to fight AIDS. In 1991, the infection rate in Uganda was 21 per cent. Now, after years of a simple, low-cost program called ABC, it has dropped to about 6 per cent. ABC stands for Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms if A and B are not practiced. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni preaches the ABC of AIDS with the fervour of an evangelist. ‘I am not in favour of condoms in primary and even secondary schools… Let condoms be a last resort,’ he said recently at an international AIDS conference in his capital, Kampala. ‘I have grown-up children and my policy was to frighten them out of undisciplined sex. I started talking to them from the age of 13, telling them to concentrate on their studies, that the time would come for sex’. Ms Toynbee contended in [a] diatribe in the Guardian that ‘abstinence and celibacy are not the human condition’. But Museveni – no innocent about the human condition – thinks that they are. ‘We made it our highest priority to convince our people to return to their traditional values of chastity and faithfulness or, failing that, to use condoms,’ he told American pharmaceutical executives a couple of years ago. ‘The alternative was decimation’.”

4. MASS MEDIA: THE HOWLING CROWD

Considering all these facts, I cannot escape the impression that the outrage of our western mass media over the millions of AIDS victims in Africa, is often but a pretext to scorn the Catholic Church. It has become one more outlet for the hollow and howling crowds of ‘Pharisees’ in the West who vainly try to boast of some moral superiority. In other words, some media exploit the way in which the Church addresses the HIV/AIDS epidemic (especially in Africa) to serve their own ends, adding absolutely nothing to the solution of this scourge (as John Paul II called it). Moreover, these media actually keep on perceiving African people in a patronizing way. Africans are – at least implicitly – said to be incapable of educating themselves and to be highly dependent of our western ways of life as models we present them to live by. In a sense, popular opinion in the West concerning Africa only mimics a spirit of earlier ‘Catholic’ colonialism it desperately seeks to differ itself from.

We often fail to raise the question whether our ways of life are actually worth imitating, and at the same time we exaggerate our (and, for that matter, the pope’s) influence on the minds and the behavior of ‘the African people’. Michael Cook reveals the underlying paternalism, simplistic reasoning and contradictions in the way some of our media abuse the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa to demonize the late John Paul II and the Catholic Church in general: “… there is something absurdly medieval about making the Pope a scapegoat, as if the clouds would break and the sun shine if we thrust enough pins through a JP2 voodoo doll. Pinning the blame for the tragedy of African AIDS on one man is one of those ideas that are, in the words of George Orwell, ‘so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.’ Two such ideas run through all these criticisms. The first is basically this: African Catholics are so devout that if they have sex outside of marriage, dally with prostitutes or take a third wife, they will piously refrain from using condoms because the Great White Father told them not to. Ms Toynbee [in an already mentioned article in the Guardian] darkly invokes ‘the Vatican’s deeper power… its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers, which is strongest over the poorest, most helpless devotees.’ But she can’t have it both ways: these benighted dark-skinned Catholics can’t be both too goody-two-shoes to use condoms and too wicked to resist temptation. Journalist Brendan O’Neill – who describes himself as an ex-Catholic who has jettisoned Catholic teaching on sexual morality – sums up this patronising argument in the on-line journal Spiked: ‘The only reason you could believe the fantastically simplistic idea that Vatican edict = AIDS in Africa is if you consider Africans to be little more than automatons… who do as they are told’. Superimposing maps of prevalence of AIDS on prevalence of Catholicism is enough to sink the link between the Catholic Church and AIDS. In the hospice which is Swaziland nowadays, only about 5 per cent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 per cent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 per cent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 per cent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 per cent is Catholic. But in Uganda, with 43 per cent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 per cent.”

5. FOR UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN…

We should learn from what happens in Uganda. We should be aware of the precarious and fragile situation countries like these find themselves in. But we should also be aware of the living hope in the hearts of their inhabitants. What message are we directing to the world if we convince ourselves that we ‘should be realistic’, and that the promotion of condom-use is often but the only thing we can do to ‘educate’ the ‘socially deprived’? Are we, once again, promoting our own ‘freedom’ at the cost of impoverished sex workers – victims we can exploit to answer the demands for a despicable kind of ‘tourism’? Who are we to impose our (self-)destructive ways?

What message are we directing to the world if we convince ourselves – looking at the misery of millions around the globe from our cosy and luxurious homes – that ‘there are lots of worse things than never being born’? Are we actually implying that we ‘need’ the suffering of the world to make death a hero?! A world wherein death is welcomed as a ‘hero’ is a morally perverse world. Throughout history human beings have found the strength to transform the struggle for survival into a token of life and dignity, refusing to slavishly undergo the whims of fate. The Hebrew Bible is one of those testimonies of hope against despair, of dignity in the midst of suffering, of life against death, written by a people of ‘losers’ or ‘victims’. Maybe its message will never be fully understood by the so-called influential and powerful – they might abuse it to suppress others even more – , while it is being lived by the so-called fragile and powerless people…

The ‘First World’ is experiencing a deep crisis, hiding its spiritual wasteland behind an unavoidable economic depression of a materialist, empty and self-consuming culture of death. It’s in this world, our world, that the AIDS orphan is born. This child seems to have ‘no home’, but his coming is the real, often uninvited and unaccepted ‘Advent’ and Promise of Life, despite everything. For God’s sake, who could not notice his splendor, glory and might? His birth is a reminder that our world can be healed, as he blesses our sick cynicism before we even realize we threaten to contaminate the physically sick and dying with our messages of desperation. For, unto us a Child is born… and maybe, in order to receive Him properly, we should alter ‘the world we created…’

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Christ comes to the world as the example, constantly enjoining: Imitate me. We humans prefer to adore him instead. – Quote by Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

To adore Christ means, in the sense that Kierkegaard uses the verb, to idolize him. When you idolize someone else, it often means that you secretly want to become this other person, that you want to take his ‘royal’ place, sometimes even by ‘murdering’ him. In other words, to idolize someone means that you’re not satisfied with yourself, that you’re not accepting yourself, that you don’t experience love for who you are. This explains why we tend to look for what others designate as desirable, and why we want to obtain a desirable position ourselves – i.e. why we want to become ‘perfect’ and ‘divine’ idols ourselves. For obtaining a desirable position seems to fulfill our need to feel loved. However, in the process of surrendering to an imitation of the desires of others we simply lose ourselves. Guided by what René Girard calls ‘mimetic’ (i.e. ‘imitative’) desire, we often want things for ourselves which alienate us from our ‘true’ nature and from our own, unique vocation. So, near the end of this process we’re not loved for who we are but because of the ‘status’ we seem to have gained. Jesus magnificently points out this tragic paradox: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it… What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?” (Luke 9:24a-25).

Sometimes the devil wants you to think that until you’re perfect don’t go talking to God. – Quote by C.C. DeVille.

As you can see in the film below, C.C. DeVille – what’s in an artist’s name? –, guitarist of ‘hair metal, glam rock’ band Poison, clearly understands how his early life relied heavily on the principles I just described. He admits giving in to an unhealthy sense of pride, to a desire for ‘status’. He quite literally says he wanted others to be envious of him. Indeed, envy is the negative side of mimetic desire, the flipside of admiration, and for a person who desires to be desirable it is a big achievement to feel envied. Yet C.C. DeVille felt his life was not fulfilled. He was not happy until he experienced, in his own words, ‘God’s grace’. He discovered the ‘unconditional love’ by which he was finally able to accept himself. The paradox is that, by obeying God’s call through Christ, he became free. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me will save it,” Christ claims (in the completed Luke 9:24). That’s exactly what C.C. DeVille discovered, for truly imitating Christ means to accept yourself and others, not to be ashamed of oneself, and to be enabled to grow towards one’s ‘real’ and ‘honest’ vocation. It’s only when we’re accepting ourselves that we are able to approach others, not as means to fulfill our need to feel loved, but as the true ‘goals’ of our lives in the realm of Love, in the realm of a giving Grace that wants to be ‘imitated’ – and to imitate giving means to become ‘givers’ ourselves. That’s why St. Francis (1181-1226) prays: “O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be loved, as to love…”

Being free means ‘being free for the other,’ because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free. – Quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We are relational beings. We don’t develop relationships ‘out of the blue’, from a primal ‘individual freedom’. On the contrary, it’s the quality of our relationships which decides whether we become free or not – are we led by fear, envy and pride or by trust, grace and truthful honesty?

This post might seem a little weird. I realize that. Few of my friends in the world of music understand why I like ‘hair metal’ so much. This particular brand of rock music has never been a favorite among established pop criticism. I discovered it as a kid, and I was attracted first by the colorful extravaganza of the bands, the big choruses of the songs and the sheer joy displayed in live shows. ‘Hair metal’ felt like summer to me. Later on I discovered that behind this joyful image there often lurked an empty world of drug abuse, superficial relationships without real intimacy and just plain decadence. Yet, at the same time, some of the songs had a melancholic feel which betrayed a longing for more sustainable experiences in life.

Guitarist C.C. DeVille articulates this longing of ‘the soul’ in the following interview. I combined it with quotes by famous thinkers, mostly Christian. One of my pupils, who commences studies in philosophy next year, convinced me to try working with quotes. So, here you have it. I hope I’m able to show in this way that C.C. DeVille really understands what Christianity is all about. Because, let’s face it, especially in the academic world we all too often look down on the so-called ‘superficial’ world of popular culture. Well, at the margins of that world, at what seems to be the pinnacle of superficiality, we have a band like Poison. I dare you, dear reader, to look beyond everything you think to know about bands like these, and to move beyond certain ‘mimetic’ processes which convinced you to dismiss the members of ‘glam metal’ bands. True, Poison might not have written the best songs ever, but I do believe their music is honest – ‘what you hear is what you get’. And if you’re still looking for unexpected complexity and sophistication in this music genre, try a band like Winger – great musicianship combined with the compositional talents of lead singer Kip Winger (as is evidenced by his solo efforts).

Now, watch the interview with C.C. – what you see is what you get –, and click here

– CLICK TO WATCH:

Klik hier voor een Nederlandstalige weergave van de gebruikte

CITATEN VAN (VOORAL CHRISTELIJKE) DENKERS (PDF).

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We celebrate Pentecost. It’s a celebration of community. Of Spirit. The ‘Holy Spirit’. When we look at the history of humanity, we’re all too often confronted with a history of violence, bloodshed, sacrifice, disease, disaster and despair. Yet it’s there, in the midst of all the ‘mud’ and the ‘dirt’, that the transformational Spirit of Love is at work.

The website with Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary (see the ‘Links’ section for more) comments on Acts 2:1-21, one of the principal texts from the New Testament on the coming of the Holy Spirit. The text in Acts is used during year A of the roman-catholic liturgical calender (as is the year 2011; click for more: Pentecost 2012 belongs to liturgical year B – Pentecost 2013 belongs to liturgical year C – Pentecost 2014 belongs to liturgical year A – and so on…), and tries to express what happens when people are gathered by the Spirit of Love. Here’s what the Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary has to say, guided by the work of James Alison:

If we were to raise the question ‘Why is the Church necessary for salvation?’, the Pentecost text and Alison’s treatment of it could provide a good start on an answer. In the interpretation of original sin guided by mimetic theory, personal fallenness is related to living in a fallen state of human community. The mimetic rivalry that grips each person’s life feeds off of the scapegoating mechanisms that grip human community, and vice versa. Thus, for a person to experience salvation there must also be a re-socialization that transforms the powers of the scapegoating mechanisms into the power of life received through self-sacrifice. As part of Alison’s brilliant laying out of original sin in light of mimetic theory, he devotes Chapter 6 [of The Joy of Being Wrong] to what he calls ‘ecclesial hypostasis,’ a living under the power of community formed around the forgiving victim, Jesus Christ, as opposed to living under the power of the ‘an-ecclesial hypostasis,’ or life under the Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism, as Robert Hamerton-Kelly calls it.

Alison makes use of the Pentecost story, as remedy to the Tower of Babel story, as a gathering of what has been scattered. In this vein, he also cites Luke 11:23: ‘He who does not gather with me scatters.’ (Note: Gil Bailie in his taped lectures on Luke uses the gathering-scattering motif a great deal in his interpretation of Luke’s gospel, especially over the last several tapes in the series.) Alison concludes:

In the account of Babel … God is still a continuation of the ‘envious’ God of Genesis 3:22. In Jesus’ phrase, however, the essential evangelical work of anthropological de-mythification has been carried out: it is God who founds, and men who scatter. Thus the representation of Pentecost as the undoing of Babel is not only a fulfilment of the prophecies that God would gather his scattered people together. It is a decisive recasting in anthropological terms of human foundational order: The real foundation is God’s foundation of the new people of Israel in Christ. It was not that God had scattered the people of Babel, but their foundational order, one grasped at avidly so as to avoid being scattered (Gen 11:4) was in fact cast in the mode of human scattering. All human societal foundations are futile exercises in the production of a fragile order. The only real foundation is the one given in Christ’s gathering. Behind the New Testament reworking of biblical images there is a quite specific understanding of the universal futility of human social order that is being overcome by the revelation of the true foundation. (p. 167)

I couldn’t resist to share some thoughts with you by an avid reader of James Alison’s work, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. In the following video he comments on the feast of Pentecost. Click to watch:

For more meditation I thought of music by John Dunstable (c.1380-1453), on the poem Veni Sancte Spiritus, in a performance by The Hilliard Ensemble. The poem with translation and some more background information can be read below. It shows how rich the Christian tradition really is. As human beings we belong to a place, a time, history, traditions … We belong to the ‘mud’ as well as to the unexpected beauty that comes out of it, a beauty which is our ‘future’. It’s from this future we belong to, our ‘vocation’ which is there to be loved, that our will receives direction. That’s why Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) says “Dilige et quod vis fac” – “Love and then what you will, do” (In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos; Tractatus VII,8). We are relational beings, and therefore our freedom lies in the maintenance of loving relationships. So much is already given to us before we are able to give ourselves. The beautiful music of John Dunstable is but one of those gifts.

Click to watch and to listen:

From the Thesaurus Precum Latinarum:

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, known as the Golden Sequence, is the sequence for the Mass for Pentecost. It is commonly regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of sacred Latin poetry ever written. Its beauty and depth have been praised by many. The hymn has been attributed to three different authors, King Robert II the Pious of France (970-1031), Pope Innocent III (1161-1216), and Stephen Langton (d 1228), Archbishop of Canterbury, of which the last is most likely the author.

This text is taken from the Roman Missal, translation by John Austin (1613-1669):

VENI, Sancte Spiritus,
et emitte caelitus
lucis tuae radium.		 COME, Holy Ghost,
send down those beams,
which sweetly flow in silent streams
from Thy bright throne above.
Veni, pater pauperum,
veni, dator munerum
veni, lumen cordium.		 O come, Thou Father of the poor;
O come, Thou source of all our store,
come, fill our hearts with love.
Consolator optime,
dulcis hospes animae,
dulce refrigerium.		 O Thou, of comforters the best,
O Thou, the soul’s delightful guest,
the pilgrim’s sweet relief.
In labore requies,
in aestu temperies
in fletu solatium.		 Rest art Thou in our toil, most sweet
refreshment in the noonday heat;
and solace in our grief.
O lux beatissima,
reple cordis intima
tuorum fidelium.		 O blessed Light of life Thou art;
fill with Thy light the inmost heart
of those who hope in Thee.
Sine tuo numine,
nihil est in homine,
nihil est innoxium.		 Without Thy Godhead nothing can,
have any price or worth in man,
nothing can harmless be.
Lava quod est sordidum,
riga quod est aridum,
sana quod est saucium.		 Lord, wash our sinful stains away,
refresh from heaven our barren clay,
our wounds and bruises heal.
Flecte quod est rigidum,
fove quod est frigidum,
rege quod est devium.		 To Thy sweet yoke our stiff necks bow,
warm with Thy fire our hearts of snow,
our wandering feet recall.
Da tuis fidelibus,
in te confidentibus,
sacrum septenarium.		 Grant to Thy faithful, dearest Lord,
whose only hope is Thy sure word,
the sevenfold gifts of grace.
Da virtutis meritum,
da salutis exitum,
da perenne gaudium,
Amen, Alleluia.		 Grant us in life Thy grace that we,
in peace may die and ever be,
in joy before Thy face.
Amen. Alleluia.

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I’ve put the word ‘religulous’ in this post’s title after a documentary, or should I say ‘mockumentary’ of the same name by director Larry Charles. In it, Bill Maher goes around the US primarily to investigate certain people’s religious beliefs and comes to the conclusion these beliefs are ‘ridiculous’ – hence the title: Religulous.

Bill Maher is right to point out some absurdities in certain people’s convictions, although stylistically spoken he could have done it a little less ad hominem. It’s a pity, however, that he limits his investigation to people who say they believe in ‘God’. I think it would have been much more interesting if he had shown how the psychological and sociological mechanisms that produce certain convictions are also hugely conditioning people who claim they don’t believe in ‘God’. Maybe he would have called his documentary Anthropologulous then. Whether we do or do not believe in God, we’re susceptible, as human beings, to some very strange convictions and behavior.

In fact, what I’ve learned from René Girard (among others) is that ‘belief in God’ is not ‘the real problem’. Atheists are no less capable of the kind of ‘religious’ behavior Bill Maher calls ‘ridiculous’. Similar to the rituals surrounding the deities of traditional religion are, for example, pop festivals or the ceremonies honoring dictatorial leaders of atheistic regimes (such as some of the annual festivities held in North Korea). So the question should not be ‘do you believe in God’? Maybe we should rather reflect on the social and psychological mechanisms, the desires and deeper motivations which shape our life.

To me, German philosopher Max Scheler (1874-1928) seems to summarize the ‘real’ dilemma when he claims “Man has either a God or an idol”. Or, to put it differently, the question isn’t so much ‘do you believe in God’ as it is ‘what (kind of) God do you believe in?’ So it’s not only a pity that Bill Maher doesn’t reveal the parallels between potentially ridiculous behavior of both ‘theists’ and ‘atheists’, it’s also a shame he doesn’t interview more people who try to develop their faith in a constant and frank dialogue with the natural and social sciences. Too bad he doesn’t get into the rich philosophical and theological traditions of Christianity. Actually, the way he reads the Bible is none other than the way his adversaries read it – he just comes to a different conclusion. In this sense he imitates his adversaries and becomes somewhat of a ‘mimetic rival’. Bill Maher is oblivious to the basic hermeneutical principles that were used by educated theologians throughout the ages (and from the get-go, meaning these principles were also used by the biblical writers themselves!).

Nevertheless, all these remarks on content and style aside, it must be said I did enjoy quite a few hilarious moments in this documentary. I thought about it when I recently visited Barcelona together with my wife to celebrate her birthday [Was she happy? Yes, she was!]. We were there when Barca, the unmatched and world-famous soccer team that is, had to play the Champions League final at Wembley against Manchester United. So we were confronted with exuberant Barcelona soccer fans the night their team won this important match. At the same time we witnessed a leftist manifestation that went on for a few days at the Plaça de Catalunya. Mostly young people were gathered there to demand governmental and economic reform that should result, among other things, in job creation, since unemployment is on the rise in Spain. In both instances we witnessed what Bill Maher would call ‘religulous’ behavior.

I don’t want to imply that supporting a soccer team is ridiculous as such. It is, however, a social phenomenon that is susceptible to extreme and bizarre behavior, as it tends to produce processes of idolatry. The picture on the left indeed shows that Lionel Messi is treated like a god by some of his fans. I neither want to imply that the unemployment claims made by the Spanish youth at the large square in central Barcelona should not be taken seriously. I just wanted to record how people sometimes ‘strangely’ behave when they’re united against a ‘common enemy’ (in this case ‘the system’).

Amidst all of this social upheaval and turmoil both my wife and I were driven by yet another herd of people towards the work of famous architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), especially his Basilica Church La Sagrada Família. Never to be completed during the architect’s lifetime, this amazing monument is now finished on the inside and, perhaps needless to say, visiting it opened my senses and heart to another kind of religious, even ‘spiritual’ experience. It was like walking into the spatial mind of a genius who devoted his life to the creation of a sphere where people could ‘reconnect’ with themselves, each other, nature and, ultimately ‘God’. As is known, Gaudí was a devoted Catholic who put all of his talents as a scientist, mathematician and artist at the service of ‘The Holy Family’. His work displays a deep awareness of the interconnectedness, indeed ‘familiarity’ of all that is. Moreover, Gaudí was convinced people could only ‘find’ them‘selves’ if they discovered there was no ‘self’ apart from a ‘being’ that ‘is’ always already ‘in relationships’. What and who we are is first and foremost ‘given’ – it is not something we autonomously create. To deny this, is to surrender to what René Girard would call a ‘romantic deception’.

The following quotes of Gaudí show how he considered any artist’s creativity as something that doesn’t spring from a purely ‘original’ mind. Rather, his view on ‘originality’ is closely connected to the discovery of a creation that always precedes the work of the artist:

“Originality consists in returning to the origin.”

“Man does not create… he discovers.”

Artists like Gaudí consider themselves ‘co-creators’ or ‘collaborators’, only relatively ‘free’ as ‘imitators’ of Nature:

“The creation continues incessantly through the media of man.”

“Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support for their new works collaborate with the creator.”

Gaudí seems to distinguish between two kinds of imitation, ‘blindly copying’ and ‘creatively mimicking’:

“Copiers do not collaborate.”

From the point of view of Girard’s theory on imitation (his ‘mimetic’ theory) blindly copying exactly occurs when people feel they are not imitating at all. On the other hand, people who realize they are dependent on others will develop a creative kind of imitation, allowing ‘originality’. By consciously imitating something or someone other you’re indeed saying two things: that there is a likeness between yourself and that other and that there’s also a ‘distance’ (otherwise imitation would not be possible). One could even say that imitation somehow creates this distance, a kind of ‘space’ where men each become ‘others’ towards… others.

As said, the Sagrada Família, as a building that so closely resembles the ‘mathematical’ mystique of natural forms, precisely produces a realm wherein people are not swallowed by the unifying yet destructive powers of ‘wild’ crowd mechanisms, but a ‘breathing’ sphere where people really become aware of each other in the ‘space’ surrounding them. To Christians like Gaudí and Girard this kind of awareness allows for the experience of a divine Love which creates us. From the contrasting situations in Barcelona I start to see what they’re getting at…

Lorenzi Marcella Giulia and Francaviglia Mauro wrote a very interesting article on Gaudí’s La Sagrada Família in the Journal of Applied Mathematics (click on the title to read it): Art & Mathematics in Antoni Gaudí’s architecture: “La Sagrada Família”. I especially recommend it to those mathematicians who want to taste something of Gaudí’s peculiar spiritual take on science.

Of course there are other ways to enjoy the swarming life in God’s grace – “His ways are manifold”.

Try for example the Hard Rock Cafe in Barcelona, and discover “God is my Co-Pilot”, celebrating that good old rock ‘n’ roll music!

Cheers!

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I just finished reading the thought-provoking little book Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History, by William H. McNeill. The author experienced the effects of drill exercise and marching together himself during military training in September 1941:

“Marching aimlessly about on the drill field, swaggering in conformity with prescribed military postures, conscious only of keeping in step so as to make the next move correctly and in time somehow felt good. Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual.” (p.2).

This experience of ‘keeping together in time’ relies heavily on ‘mimetic’ ability, i.e. the ability to ‘imitate’ the movements of others. At the same time, individual rhythm is created by imitating the same movement over and over, as a ‘repetition’. ‘Losing’ your own individuality by bonding with others during a drill exercise seems closely connected to an ecstatic dance experience, as this is described by the late Michael Jackson:

“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing… then it is the eternal dance of creation. The creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing… and dancing… and dancing. Until there is only… the Dance.”

There is a sacrificial element in dancing that is important for the formation of ritual. Dancing prepares individuals to lose their day-to-day consciousness in order to become part of a bigger whole. Dancing creates unity and peace. McNeill refers to the description of a ritual by the African Swazi people:

“The warriors dance and sing at the Incwala [an annual festival] so that they do not fight, although they are many and from all parts of the country and proud. When they dance they feel they are one and they can praise each other.” (p.8).

Sometimes the mimetic (i.e. ‘imitative’) process of dance and drill connects individuals so tightly to each other that they are willing, not only to lose themselves in an ecstatic experience, but also to actually and physically sacrifice their lives. McNeill illustrates this by citing a soldier’s ruminations about what he experienced during war:

“Many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit, I believe, that the experience of communal effort in battle, even under the altered conditions of modern war, has been the high point of their lives… Their ‘I’ passes insensibly into a ‘we’, ‘my’ becomes ‘our’, and individual fate loses its central importance… I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy… I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life.” (p.10).

McNeill then points to the close connections between the unity and bonds created by dance, ritual and drill on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the unity enhanced by directing these bonds towards a common enemy in violent and warlike situations:

“Obviously, this sort of merger between self and the surrounding group, attained in the heat of battle, is analogous to the ‘boundary loss’ attributed to dancers. It is also induced by close-order drill, though only in attenuated measure. If so, drill, dance, and battle belong together. All three create and sustain group cohesion; and the creation and maintenance of social groups – together with resulting rivalries among groups – constitute the warp and weft of human history.” (p.10).

In the following chapters McNeill suggests dancing rituals must have played a tremendous role in human evolution, regulating important aspects of community life. It is remarkable, especially if you’re familiar with René Girard’s mimetic theory, how dancing rituals seem to emerge around objects individuals of the same group could fight about – women, territory, food. McNeill describes how hunting could have become more efficient, structured by what Girard would call the pattern of ritual sacrifice – in which participants first lose themselves in the ‘chaotic’ yet community enhancing ecstasy of dance, followed by the commonly approved killing of a certain victim:

“… it seems best to settle for the observation that if Homo erectus bands learned to consolidate sentiments of social solidarity by dancing together, their hunting would have become more efficient. Hunters could, like modern pygmies, rehearse their past successes through dance, mimicking how they ambushed prey, drove it into a trap, or merely prodded it out of its burrow. Such re-enactments, combined with enhanced emotional solidarity provoked by the rhythms of dance, would – like military drill in Old Regime armies – make actual performances in the field more predictable. And, as was also true of such armies, the emotional bonding induced by dance would allow each individual hunter to play his part more bravely, standing firm when an encircled animal tried to break out, and using his stick in time-tested ways to turn it back or head it towards a trap prepared in advance.” (p.30).

McNeill goes so far as to propose the idea that ritualistic patterns, as ‘imitations’, indeed ‘re-enactments’, most likely preceded articulate language and structured future forms of communication. Ritual dance must have sustained communities during times of crisis:

“Dancing… could scarcely be so general if it did not have a positive effect on collective survival by consolidating common effort in crisis situations. The connection is most obvious in war dances, which prepared fighting men for the risks of ambush and battle; but the more general consolidation of sentiment among all members of the community, male and female, old and young, that community-wide dancing induced may well have been more important in maintaining everyday routines and all the forms of cooperative behavior needed for the effective conduct of community affairs.” (p.38).

In other words, dancing must have managed potentially violent situations among members of the same group. One such potentially violent situation concerns everything connected to sexuality, as ‘in the wild’ males tend to fight each other for females. The late Jim Morrison, singer of rock band The Doors, describes how the violent, death (‘thanatos’) oriented side of sexual energy (‘eros’) is somewhat controlled by the ‘cathartic’ power of ritual. The following quote is taken from the book by Stephen Davis, Jim Morrison – Life, Death, Legend (Ebury Press, London, 2005, p.182-183):

“As soon as quote factory Jim Morrison began giving interviews, ‘think pieces’ about the Doors and Rock Theater began appearing in the press, garlanded with poetic epigrams that were carefully strung together by Jim like love beads. ‘We’re really politicians. You could call us erotic politicians.’

‘We’re primarily a rock and roll band, a blues band, just a band – but that’s not all. A Doors concert is a public meeting called by us for a special kind of dramatic discussion and entertainment. When we perform, we’re participating in the creation of a world, and we celebrate that creation with the audience. It becomes the sculpture of bodies in action. That’s the political part, but our power is sexual. We make concerts sexual politics. The sex starts with me, then moves out to include the charmed circle of musicians onstage. The music we make goes out to the audience and interacts with them. They go home and interact with their reality, then I get it all back by interacting with that reality. So the whole sex thing works out to be one big ball of fire.’

‘I offer images. I conjure memories of… freedom. But we can only open doors; we can’t drag people through.’

‘Our work, our performing, is a striving for metamorphosis. It’s like a purification ritual, in the alchemical sense. First, you have to have the period of disorder, chaos; returning to a primeval disaster region. Out of that, you purify the elements, and find new seed of life, which transforms all life, all matter, all personality – until, finally, hopefully, you emerge and marry all those dualisms and opposites. Then you’re not talking about good and evil anymore, but about something unified and pure.’

Jim could even make sense when he was dead drunk. Thoroughly loaded, Jim slurred his words in what was supposed to be a major interview with a nervous, intimidated Richard Goldstein. ‘See, the shaman… he was a man who would intoxicate himself. See, he was probably already an… ah… unusual individual. And, he would put himself into trance by dancing, whirling around, drinking, taking drugs – however. Then he would go on a mental trip and… ah… describe his journey for the rest of the tribe.’

Everyone who read this understood what Jim was saying: that the Doors were more than just an act, more than just a rock band. Jim was calling signals, and the wide receivers of the nascent rock culture definitely caught the ball.”

Morrison’s reasoning reflects the strong connection between ‘violence’ and ‘the sacred’, a connection which René Girard worked out extensively in Violence and the Sacred. The Christian Story, Girard argues, unveils the violent mechanisms which produce the sacred, and criticizes the absolute necessity of sacrifice suggested by ‘traditional’ religion.

It is remarkable how William H. McNeill writes a book with insights so similar to those of mimetic theory, yet he never mentions René Girard. For me, this once again confirms the validity of essential claims made by Girard.

To end this post, I invite you to watch yet another compilation I made. This time I combined images of Leni Riefenstahl‘s Nazi propaganda film Triumph des Willens and a video of Michael Jackson. It shows the close connections, discussed by McNeill, between dance, drill and war, or, as Girard would say, between violence and the sacred – idolatry being one of the most important effects of the mechanisms which produce that ‘sacred’.

Please don’t get me wrong. By compiling these images I’m not implying Michael Jackson ever sympathized with Nazi Germany. On the contrary, Michael Jackson seems to absorb the mechanisms which are potentially violent and dangerous to produce some ‘ecstatic’ celebration in the realm of entertainment. After all, he was one of the biggest entertainers of all time. Sadly and tragically he paid the price for that, as he couldn’t escape the sacrificial mechanisms of mass adoration (for more on this, read my post The Church of David LaChapelle).

CLICK TO WATCH the compilation:

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In the book Evolution and Conversion – Dialogues on the Origins of Culture (Continuum, London, New York, 2007), René Girard talks about popular culture and discusses the power of mass media. His approach is very nuanced, as he distinguishes between positive and negative aspects of these phenomena. He even dares to compare television series Seinfeld to the works of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). Girard develops his thoughts in a conversation with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha. The seventh chapter, Modernity, Postmodernity and Beyond, reads the following (p.249-250):

“Guy Debord wrote that ‘the spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion’ brought down to earth. Could we consider the expansion of the mass-media system, and the ideological use of it, as a ‘kathechetic’ instrument as well?

Of course, because it is based on a false form of transcendence, and therefore it has a containing power, but it is an unstable one. The conformism and the ethical agnosticism induced by media such as television could also produce forms of mimetic polarization at the mass level, making people more prone to be swayed by mimetic dynamics, inducing the much-feared populism in Western democracies.

Do you agree, however, that movies, TV and advertising draw heavily on mimetic principle, therefore increasing our awareness on this score?

Yes and no, because the majority of Hollywood or TV productions are very much based on the false romantic notion of the autonomy of the individual and the authenticity of his/her own desire. Of course there are exceptions, like the popular sit-com Seinfeld, which uses mimetic mechanisms constantly and depicts its characters as puppets of mimetic desire. I do not like the fact that Seinfeld constantly makes fun of high culture, which is nothing but mimetic snobbery, but it is a very clever and powerful show. It is also the only show which can afford to make fun of political correctness and can talk about important current phenomena such as the anorexia and bulimia epidemic, which clearly have strong mimetic components. From a moral point of view, it is a hellish description of our contemporary world, but at the same time, it shows a tremendous amount of talent and there are powerful insights regarding our mimetic situations.

Seinfeld is a show that gets closer to the mimetic mechanism than most, and indeed is also hugely successful. How do you explain that?

In order to be successful an artist must come as close as he can to some important social truth without inciting painful self-criticism in the spectators. This is what this show did. People do not have to understand fully in order to appreciate. They must not understand. They identify themselves with what these characters do because they do it too. They recognize something that is very common and very true, but they cannot define it. Probably the contemporaries of Shakespeare appreciated his portrayal of human relations in the same way we enjoy Seinfeld, without really understanding his perspicaciousness regarding mimetic interaction. I must say that there is more social reality in Seinfeld than in most academic sociology.”

Maybe a small example can lift a tip of the veil. I chose a short excerpt from Seinfeld’s episode 88 (season 6, episode 2, The Big Salad). Jerry Seinfeld is dating a nice lady. However, when he finds out his annoying neighbor Newman is her former lover, his face darkens… One doesn’t have to watch the whole episode to know what will happen next. Indeed, Jerry eventually breaks up with his date, imitating what Newman did and ‘ending it’. The reason Jerry’s desire for his girlfriend diminishes precisely lies in the often imitative or, as Girard would call it, ‘mimetic’ nature of desire. Jerry just doesn’t desire his date directly all the way, but he is – like all of us – sometimes heavily influenced by certain models who point out what he should or should not desire. In this case, Newman turns out to be a model who negatively influences Jerry’s desire…

This scene is fun, because it’s all too recognizable and it mirrors some aspects of our tragic comic behavior – good, refined humor as it should be!

Click to watch: