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To set the scene for the present essay here is a pertinent quotation from Rene Girard: “The process of getting not only the dominating animal but the whole culture to give up that grabbing attitude and give everything to the other in order to receive from the other – this is totally counterintuitive. One cannot explain taboos, prohibition and the complexity of symbolic exchange systems simply via biological explanations of the emergence of unselfish behavior. There must be that upheaval there, which forced the change in behavior. This upheaval is absolutely indispensable. The same reasoning can be applied to language. The only thing that can produce such a relational structure is fear, fear of death… Fear is essentially fear of mimetic violence; prohibition is protection from mimetic escalation. All these incredibly complex phenomena were triggered by the founding murder, by the scapegoat mechanism… one needs a catastrophic moment in the evolutionary process, which isn't solely tied to encephalization. This catastrophe is the mimetic crisis, the deadly struggle of all against all, in the Hobbesian sense, which isn't a fanciful hypothesis but a dreadful reality.” (Rene Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture)
Yet there is now much hardly disputable evidence that there never was a “state of nature” as envisioned by the likes of Hobbes – or Rene Girard, for that matter. Additionally, which is pertinent to the latter’s thought, hominization would not have been about random originary murder but rather about egalitarian cooperation that made possible the subsistence of small human bands of hunter-gatherers once they turned to large-game hunting (cf. Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame). Another difficulty with Girard’s hypothesis of the one-shot random innocent-victim murder that resulted in the foundation of culture or civilization is that it would have happened much later than the universally attested forager stage of human development – but then it cannot have been the initial spark for hominization, as posited by Girard: its onset all versions of the theory of evolution situate much earlier (and that includes language acquisition, too).
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But obviously what Girard claimed that was made possible by the founding murder was “culture” or “civilization,” best denoted with a capital “C,” replete with myths and rituals reflecting and disguising that murder, and which rituals were able to effect social peace and cohesiveness (to be restored by an outbreak of fresh murderous scapegoating if the rituals wore off and all else failed). Those rituals would be officiated by an emerging priestly caste that would have taken the place of shamans; kings, replacing tribal chieftains, and a warrior class would follow suit, solidifying patriarchy in the process, etc.: that is what “culture” entails – the creation of social stratification or hierarchy. (It has been theorized that the earliest form of human social hierarchy was gerontocracy; shamans, emerging to navigate the symbolic universe, would rely on elders’ support, as would chieftains later on.) Now mimetic theory sees the development of social hierarchy favorably, advancing the notion of its conduciveness to the maintenance of societal peace: it is posited as stemming the tide of a societally harmful forms of acquisitive mimesis based on internal mediation of desire – allegedly increasingly prevalent with rising egalitarian mores, and tending to tear societies apart – with its apparently unstoppable culmination in rivalry and conflictual violence. What is thus also seemingly implied is that the stronger the social stratification, the less the need to resort to murderous scapegoating: hierarchical societal order would have largely taken the place of rituals in their role of assuring the peace. All that apparent valorization seems independent of whether culture had a founding murder, let alone whether or not it was random.
Now in terms of mimetic theory’s valorization of social hierarchy as a restrainer of potentially murderous acquisitive mimesis, LPA (late Pleistocene appropriate) foragers of today are especially pertinent – unless one were to outrageously dismiss them as not fully human. Scores of such “uncontaminated” bands are still in existence today, and Boehm’s and others’ work refer to them extensively: they all have language, morality – and an egalitarian societal order that does not practice human sacrifice to maintain the peace. But there is more. The notion that the existence of social hierarchy somehow contributes or has contributed to containing outbreaks of violent scapegoating can be challenged based on recent anthropological research, as reported, e.g., in an April 2016 Nature article, “Ritual human sacrifice promoted and sustained the evolution of stratified societies,” on ninety three traditional Austronesian cultures, ranging from egalitarian to highly stratified: human sacrifice legitimizes political authority and social class systems, functioning to stabilize social stratification once it has arisen, and promotes a shift to strictly inherited class systems (from the Abstract).
In view of the above, valorizing social stratification (as mimetic theory in effect does) entails that sacrificial violence employed by the power structures of social hierarchy, ruthlessly deploying and/or controlling a plethora of sacrificial mechanisms, targeting the underprivileged and marginalized as such violence overwhelmingly does, be disingenuously glossed over as at least less pernicious than potentially violent spontaneous scapegoating that occurs when acquisitive mimesis grounded on internal mediation of desire is given free rein in the absence thereof. Incidentally, on account of this connotation of the ostensibly descriptive mimetic theory progressives may be justified in viewing it as reactionary.
In evolutionary terms the above two-stage sequence could be described as follows: during the long Pleistocene period the gene expression of man’s predisposition to dominance, inherited from the apes, was largely suppressed at the level of phenotype, resulting in social egalitarianism of internally collaborating small human bands; then, during the relatively short Holocene period to date, the ongoing complexification of human society, enabled earlier on by increases in brain size and function (having to do, inter alia, with the need to successfully cope with challenging environmental changes) in due course led to the creation of culture (“murder-founded,” per Girard) that then has superimposed itself on human nature as solidified during thousands of generations, eventually beginning to modify gene expression at the level of phenotype, possibly in an epigenetic manner, and resulting in the present social stratification, as well as in increasing societal centralization, as epitomized in the nation state.
But the egalitarian and – significantly – highly decentralized LPA foragers, making do within a usufructuary economy as they did for extended periods of time, are a memento that perhaps that need not be so, or that the scenario could be reversed or at least modified – due to relatively little time elapsed, genetically speaking. And, contra Girard, such a development would be welcomed by progressives, troubled as they are by some of the very same societal problems that he was.
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Now equality obviously has many various facets, especially in societies much more complex and centralized than hunter-gatherer bands; the material one is only one of them. Yet it is the material plane of desire mediation and rivalry that is preeminent in Girard’s thought. That is where his all-important acquisitive mimesis has its origin – even as it can morph into other forms of desirous competition, including that pivoting around recognition (on his view it tends to devolve into the desire to “acquire” the rival’s being). And though social taboos and hierarchy are often able to militate against its conflictual forms even in the face of considerable inequality, the fact is that runaway economic inequality can threaten societal peace even in hierarchical societies while also having a dampening effect on economic progress in the long run – thus creating a vicious circle that can end up in violence, as history demonstrates has often been the case.
On account of the above, liberal democracy’s attempts to somehow combine its constitutive brand of egalitarianism – in terms of political liberties, of human rights, etc. – with a rampant economic inequality that comes on the back of an entrenched, self-perpetuating hierarchy must be viewed as at least disingenuous, if not worse. That is also where mimetic theory seemingly prefers to err on the safe side. But where Girard would see the danger of an escalation to extremes with apocalyptic implications that on his view inevitably results from a crumbling of hierarchies, a progressive worldview would rather build optimistically on that dynamic and encourage its gradual unfolding.
The latter would have to include reflecting on the shape of a political order of society that for the sake of equality would not so much do away with hierarchy altogether as arrive at a dynamic and easily modifiable equilibrium of equality and hierarchy. Modes of flexibility of societal structures would have to be elaborated, then attempted to be provided for in legislation, in order to facilitate progress and change. There are anecdotal contributions to showcase what is at issue, e.g. in the form of practical implementation of distributist ideals in cooperative enterprises, where not only thought is being given to the issue of acceptable relative income inequality, but there is also on-the-ground voting to decide on its levels (vide Mondragon in Spain).
Still broader considerations would have to include the constitution of society, including its current development – the nation state. Decentralization and egalitarian communitarianism should be the name of the game, as well as direct democracy, subsidiarity and confederalism, including an “affinity-based” one for those unwilling to be part of a legacy society that would endure around those new structures and whose norms would certainly remain prevalent for quite some time. That is how hunter-gatherer cues, grounded in their – and our – genetic makeup that the most recent cultural/civilizational developments have not been able to significantly modify, might be adapted to a much more complex world than their simple egalitarian communalism ever was. The late political philosopher Murray Bookchin’s oeuvre might be a good guide forward, even as some of his conceptions are being deployed against all odds in a war-ravaged Rojava in Syria, bringing about there also a major transformation of the social mores of a traditional Islamic society.
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Today we are nearing the other end of the arc of a history that is vividly marked by a dialectic of egalitarianism and hierarchical order. Arguably, and in line with mimetic theory, the recent return to valorization of equality in the West, as relative and disingenuous at times as it appears to be, has been largely driven by a Christianity that has been true to its ideals, viz., anti-sacrificial and radically opposed to victimization. But its present ultra-progressive versions for Girard might just as well be “Christianity à rebours,” seemingly seen by him as akin to or perhaps just another form of what he dismissively called “super-Christianity,” a basically secular movement preoccupied with rooting out all victimization, including the symbolic. There is no denying that this has led to deplorable excesses, but such a blanket view on the part of Girard goes to corroborate for some the reactionary character of his own use of mimetic theory, a theory that additionally is basically negative in its outlook as practically equating its basic concept of mimetic desire with its conflictual side.
Quite the opposite stance is called for now: in trying to defuse potentially conflictual resentment-riven mimesis, true Christianity has to be valiantly self-sacrificial – instead of defending or condoning the existence of vestiges of sacrifice and pockets of victimization inherent in domination and exploitation that result from a hierarchical order that is trying to hold on to its positions even as they come under attack. Girard himself would actually have hard time denying that the arc of truly anti-sacrificial Christianity, such as is the ideal of mimetic theory, points to its disappearance – if that were the only way to preserve its true spiritual thrust: “anti-sacrificial” can only mean “self-sacrificial” when the chips are down. That is the prerequisite of loving mimesis.
Now Girard was initially averse to see Jesus’ intervention as a (last) sacrifice, one meant to do away with all sacrificial violence, via its revelation of the ultimate fruitlessness of the latter; he also held back for a time from accepting the term “self-sacrifice:” as redolent of primitive religion and sacrificial atonement, the notion of (self-)sacrifice was apparently repugnant to him. Yet for a committed Christian there is no obviating the strict need to be ever ready for self-sacrifice – Jesus-wise, in an imitatio Christi manner. And if the ostensibly merely descriptive mimetic theory is to shed its reactionary overtones it should see to it that self-sacrifice in a normative sense (not merely axiological), in a true imitatio Christi manner, viz., on behalf of others, be meaningfully incorporated. That would be entirely compatible with what inspired Girard’s theory in the first place, and as a practical call to action could help bring down enduring sacrificial power structures and thus make the world a better place.
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From the standpoint of mimetic theory positive societal developments could only be effected if we were able to sidestep acquisitive mimesis and move towards a positive one. That certainly is a tall order: it would take a saintly, non-egotistical individual, someone modeled after Jesus, to be him- or herself immune to acquisitive mimesis and able to model loving mimesis for others. In more down-to-earth terms, one would have to practice self-sacrifice as far as his/her own acquisitive mimesis was concerned, actively going against the grain of his/her acquisitive proclivities, and instead projecting onto others a desire for those others’ good and personal growth – for this desire to be imitated by them. Rebecca Adams, who developed the concept of “loving mimesis,” admirably calls this the desire of the subjectivity of the proto-subject: instead of the other’s being, to be appropriated as that of one’s rival, it is his/her subjectivity that is the object of one’s desire – thus conducing to that other’s personal growth.
This view also holds for political leadership, but if it sounds like political fiction today, it unfortunately is: instead of self-sacrificing in a loving service of others, politicians seem hell-bent on aggrandizing themselves, while we tend to be sucked into feeding their egos, especially of those who are charismatic among them. Girard also chose to disregard the positive facet of desire mediation/ modeling. Perhaps it seemed only natural to him within the context of an entrenched hierarchical society he apparently endorsed – though its “advantage,” viz., its reputed ability to hold down violent forms of acquisitive mimesis, be bolstered on the part of the haves by self-righteousness and contempt for ne’er-do-wells, which attitudes normally are constitutive elements of such a society. Certainly there is no room for loving mimesis here, one that would as a consequence make for personal growth and/or transformation of those who otherwise might be giving in to resentment so characteristic of those desiring to emulate their betters.
To tide us over as a society to a time when liberty, equality and solidarity cohere in a workable equilibrium what is needed is charismatic leaders projecting loving mimesis, such as does not shy away from self-sacrifice if need be – and a clearly egalitarian and solidaristic vision of society they would be working towards. No other vision of society is compatible with loving mimesis. Of course practical ramifications of such a vision are massive, and their elaboration a monumental task, not to mention its effective implementation. For starters, in choosing our leaders we should try to move away from being seduced by demagogues intent on aggrandizing themselves, manipulatively directing us to scapegoat our equals while ostensibly leading the fight against “the elites” that they themselves in fact are part of – thus deflecting our potential resentment away from them. The result, as is more and more evident today, is an ever deepening societal polarization that splits society almost exactly in half when the chips are down. This unstable equilibrium is a new katechon, where the elites adroitly leading both sides of any issue – many a time manipulatively foisted on us by demagogues emanating from their ranks – are able to preserve if not solidify their privileged positions via a mimetic game of smoke and mirrors. But not only does it all diminish us, it also prevents our personal growth as well as a transformation of society that would be compatible with the best aspirations of humanity, be they spiritual or otherwise. We can do better than that!
