 Mimetic theory is a concept developed and advocated for by Rene Girard, a 20th century French anthropologist. Mimetic theory's key insight is that human desire is not an autonomous process, but a collective one. We want things because other people want them. This began as a natural phenomenon. Animals and humans learn by imitating other members of their groups. Neither humans nor animals are able to differentiate between good, non-acquisitive mimesis such as learning skills from others in your group, from bad, acquisitive mimesis such as desiring money, fame, power, someone else's mate. For example, let's take a deeper dive on this. Let's say that there is an object which a person desires. A second person sees a first person's desire and imitates it. Now the two are in conflict for that object. The conflict escalates when the two subjects begin to model each other in an ever-intensifying desire. This is called doubling, because the two are mirroring each other until all differentiation between them breaks down. This conflict then escalates until others are drawn into it. As Girard puts it, if two persons are fighting over the same object, then this object seems more valuable to bystanders. Finally, the object disappears, meaning that the participants in the conflict stop caring about the object itself and are only focused on their antagonism. Eventually this erupts into a memetic crisis, where the only effective form or reconciliation that would stop this crisis and save the community from total self-destruction is the convergence of all collective anger and rage towards a random victim, which is called an escape goat. Now let's take a closer look at the escape goat. As rivals become more and more fascinating to each other, friends and colleagues may be memetically drawn into the conflict as rival coalitions form. What began as a personal battle may escalate into a battle of all against all, threatening the cohesion and the peace of entire community. One way of solving this problem is to find someone to blame for the conflict that all the rival coalitions can unite against. This unfortunate person may or may not be guilty. All that's required for the scapegoating solution to work is that his guilt is universally agreed upon and that when he is punished or expelled from the community he will not be able to retaliate. The proof of his guilt is found in the peace that now returns to the community. Memetic theory allows us to see that peace thus produced is violent, comes at the expense of a victim and is built upon lies about the guilt of the victim and the innocence of the community. This mechanism functioned at the origins of human species. When this piece appeared as if by magic and as a tribute to a visitation from a god who came first at the terrible cause of the conflict but then was revealed to be its cure. Prohibition emerged to forbid the imitated behaviors which led to conflict. Rituals developed that consist of a well controlled meme of redemptive violence against the victim, originally human, later animal and so on. Emits were born as a story to tell of how we became a people as a result of a visitation from the gods. This method of controlling violence with violence can be found in the rites and myths spread all around our planet and give rise to the human culture. Now scapegoating also operates in individuals at the level of identity. We all construct identities over against someone or something else. I am a woman, not a man. I'm a liberal, not a conservative. I'm an atheist, not a believer. And most problematically, I am good, not bad. When we need some other person or group to be bad so we can maintain our sense of ourselves as good by comparison, we have engaged in scapegoating. We are using others to solidify our identity the same way a community uses a scapegoat to solve its internal conflict. So what is the solution for memetic behavior? The solution for memesis will be memesis. Gerard holds that human beings cannot escape their memetic nature and that romantic attempts to outflank memetic influences are ultimately scandalous and we just end up playing the same memetic games at a higher level. The cure for memetically produced violence will be a memetically transmitted desire for peace. The model slash cure will have to be someone who has transcended the lure of scapegoating violence. But who? Gerard was a devout Christian. An important part of Gerard's theory is how the gospel relates to his theory of myth. For Gerard, myth is a distortion, a lie that functions precisely to conceal the all important truth about scapegoating violence that is revealed in the Bible. Therefore, the gospel is anti-myth in which the lies of the scapegoat mechanisms are revealed through Christ's own self-sacrifice. The mechanism requires the mob to mis-know the victim and to believe that they are truly guilty and deserve death. However, by declaring himself an scapegoat Gerard believes Jesus breaks the cycle of desire, violence and lies by forcing people to see him as a perfect innocence that he is. Jesus then also presents himself as the only model which man can imitate without sin. This means that the only reason that scapegoats can now be identified is that modern culture has been influenced by the gospel. We are able to avoid the mis-knowledge because of Christ's illumination of the scapegoat effect. Now I won't dive too deep into on the religious aspects of Gerard, so I'll let you decide on that. I hope you enjoyed today's short video on memetic theory. If you enjoyed today's video, please hit the like button, subscribe and leave a comment below this video. Thanks for watching.