CHAPTER 1

Mimesis and Desire

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from?Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?You desire something and do not have it; so you commit murder.And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage indisputes and conflicts. (James 4:1-2)

Oh, Hell! To choose love by another's eyes.Hermia (Midsummer Night's Dream)

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Mimesis

Rubberbands used to be handy things to have around the houseand office, very practical little gadgets, and very cheap – until theday my six year old son came home from school wearing somearound his wrist. They weren't typical rubberbands, however, theywere "Silly Bandz" – strangely shaped, neon-colored, rubberband-likethings. When he took one off his wrist and threw it onto thetable it instantly resolved into the shape of a guitar. I found outsoon enough that Silly Bandz were not cheap. Nate wanted me tobuy him a pack of twenty-four that cost almost five dollars!Mercifully, we discovered that the local dollar store sold a varietythat cost only two dollars. (Why then did they call it a "dollar"store? Another of life's many conundrums.) Within a couple ofweeks, Nate had become the owner of several dozen Silly Bandz,which he wore proudly displayed in a thick conglomerate aroundhis wrist. At school the kids would show each other their bands andtrade them, while parents across America forked out millions ofdollars to satisfy their children's demands, and manufacturerslaughed, as they say, all the way to the bank.

It's an old story, isn't it, and one we all know well. But nobodyknows it better than the marketers, the promoters, and theadvertising agencies. They are the experts who can work the magicthat turns a rubberband into a national craze. Some readers mightremember the 1970's craze called Pet Rocks. Mere stones sold incardboard boxes cut with "breathing holes" so the "pet" couldbreath, these guys sold for almost four dollars back in 1975, andmade their creator, Gary Dahl, a millionaire. There is no need tolabor the point, because anyone living in our consumer culture isnot only familiar with it, but has no doubt been taken in by suchschemes many times over. None of us is immune. No matter howstupid or silly, sooner or later we all fall victim to the power ofinfluence and live to laugh about it, or cry over it, as the case maybe.

Although I said that no one knows this story better than theadvertisers and promoters who know how to package these itemsin ways that will sell, advertisers do not truly understand thenature of the force they manipulate with sometimes amazingefficacy. There is someone, however, who does understand the forceinvolved in such matters. His name is René Girard, and the force inquestion is what Girard calls mimetic desire. The term "mimeticdesire" means desire shaped by mimesis (which, it turns out, is theonly kind of desire there is). But what is mimesis? Before we get tothe issue of desire itself, we need to understand a bit aboutmimesis.

"Mimesis" means imitation (think mime). Everybody is aware tosome extent of the power of imitation in human life, and Girard isnot the first great thinker to make it a major theme in theunderstanding of human nature. Imitation is at the very heart ofAristotle's Poetics, for example, where Aristotle uses imitation as thedefinition of what is common to all art, and what makes us human.Nor is imitation for Aristotle mere superficial mimicry, as in thecopying of external shapes and sounds, but also involves thereproduction through art of human intentions and purposes, thestuff of which drama is made.

Another thinker who had much to say about imitation wasRudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education. Steiner was clearthat children learn by imitation: "At this age nothing isaccomplished through admonition; commands and prohibitionshave no effect at all. But the examples are most significant. Whatchildren see, what happens in their surroundings, they feel must beimitated.... Exhortations have no effect, but the way a person actsin the child's presence matters greatly. It is far more important torefrain from doing what the child is not permitted to do than toforbid the child to imitate it." I was able to observe this process inmy own child as I watched him picking up one habit after another,one interest after another, one mannerism after another – all byimitating elements in his environment. Everything that Nate is mostpassionate about, from Spiderman to karate to Taiko drum lessons,and everything that Nate has learned about how to be in the world,from tying shoelaces to brushing teeth to burping inappropriately(the way they do in the school cafeteria) to the desire for SillyBandz – everything has been by way of imitation.

Researcher Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington inSeattle did experiments in 1977 with infants only a few hours old.When Meltzoff stuck out his tongue, the babies would imitate thegesture and stick out theirs. One infant who did this was only ahalf-hour old and had not yet even seen its mother's face.Sometimes the imitation would happen immediately, but theinfants also had the capacity for delay, so that the gesture would beremembered and imitated only at a later time. It is because of thechild's incredible capacity to appropriate everything around herthrough imitation that Waldorf education is especially careful aboutprotecting the child from the...