He will go down in history as a gimmick, if at all. How can anybody like Peter Thiel be so invested in his ideas? They're just interesting "plot devices", for the lack of a better word, at best. In Girard, there's no ethics, there's no metaphysics, and there isn't a sense of an argument as to why other competing drives are less influential.

I just don't get it. It's like pointing at railroads and saying "now THIS is what drove modern society." Kind of? Maybe it was really important for a bit, and still has important applications? Certainly not your highest draft pick though.

>>24514011 (OP)
I refuse to take anyone seriously who treats "scapegoating" like it's a real thing.

>>24514011 (OP)
I think he's prescient. just a personal opinion though. he was also more of an anthropologist than philosopher proper.

>>24514098
I can accept that. But how is scapegoating the most important aspect driving human behavior? It seems like anybody who puts all their eggs in that basket has a significant perspective problem.

>>24514011 (OP)
he wrote cool book titles, I'll give him that

The mechanism of memetic desire and rivalry in human behaviour is blatant and undeniable. The subsequent scapegoating isn't, but it makes logical sense, and it fits neatly with theology. The suggestion that people are just copying each other's desires is profound and disturbing enough to warrant serious consideration as more than just a gimmick philosopher.

>>24514508
aristotle wuz here

>>24514036
You enact it as you utter your distate. Granted it's not about throwing rocks at someone. It deals with a spiritualized version of this idea and how, in fact, this sweetened variant originates from the brutal one.

>>24514011 (OP)
>here isn't a sense of an argument as to why other competing drives are less influential.

He never said they were more influential than other drives (such as hunger or money). What Girard says is that for cultural facts, mimesis is a deeper foundation than what Freud proposes (the primordial murder of the father).

>>24514098
>he was also more of an anthropologist than philosopher proper.
It's just his way to cope with himself. Girard is a revealer. The skandalon is not just what his books are about, it's also what they are and how they are received.

>>24514510
Why care about titles when you're the most photogenic motherfucker ever. Holy fuck. I love Girard. I've posted ths picture so many times on 4chan.

>>24514508
A foundation doesn't nee to be the most important aspect. What's the more "important" aspect of your house, what's the thing that occupies your mind? If you have thermal isolation problems, it'd be the walls and the attic. And yet the foundation, the concrete slab it sits on top of, is the most critical part of the house.

>>24514530
The mechanism of mImetic desire is the thing we focus on not to see the subsequent scapegoating. Ironically, it acts as a a myth, that is, a structure of repression of the mimetic origin. When Girard says that there is no difference between the theory and the description of facts, he means it for these reasons.

>More than a tangled ball of string, the mimetic theory makes me think of those road maps so perfectly folded and refolded upon themselves that they fit into a tiny rectangle. To use them, you have to unfold them, and then fold them back again. Clumsy people like me never manage to follow the original folds, and very quickly the map tears. It’s those tears that allow skeptics to believe that there isn’t a single coherent map in my head, but merely fragments artificially assembled and glued together — the “Girard system” yet again, good only for amusing passersby for a brief moment before being tossed aside along with the postman Cheval...
Girard – When these things begin

He's facing the same problem Greimas (structural narrative theory) was facing:

>Jean Petitot-Cocorda goes further and concludes that “if (conversion) is insoluble within Greimasian theory, it is because the logical conception of the fundamental level implies the necessity of converting logical relations into syntactic events — and that is eidetically impossible.”\[31]
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algirdas_Julien_Greimas#Critique_du_mod%C3%A8le

It's indecidable/uncomputable/incomplete. This is something Girard correctly identified, cf. Oedipus Unbound in particular. However he wasn't able to recognize that the description of the theory would always match the kind of facts it purports to describe.

and saying like that scholasticism is the source of some of that thinking does not explain it away only gestures that scholastic metaphysics is a fulcrum with a moral weight in that thinking or something possibly maritain or something like that

korzybski

in book alpha of the mepahysica richard hope translation aristotle writes that all men naturally have an impulse to get knowledge

the guy is naming his companies after lord of the rings and this is the book influence you have a hard time reconciling? soon we will have gulags and they will be named weenie hut jr.

>>24514011 (OP)
>>24514631
>>24514636
This is what sculptors carving a "philosopher" piece would make.
10/10 physiognomy for the job.

>>24514530
Everybody’s desires are copied? Then what was the original desire? Checkmate.

It’s just such a dumb premise. Yes people copy each other. Then many mature into adulthood with what they know they want. Others remain in arrested development or suffer from some kind of mental illness. To make a sweeping philosophy off of this “insight” is nothing short of pedestrian thinking.

>>24514836
Are you stupid? Mimesis pervades nature, it has survival value and even a critical mind will find it difficult to establish a more authentic, discerned behavior.

>>24514868
no it doesn't. it's pseudo-science.

>>24514880
True. Same as physiognomy.

>>24514880
Open a biology book.

i thjnk the methodology from which nature is approached or conceptualized can be importantly especially whatever we think of mimesis to be kropotkin or schelling sort of provide maybe a few routes in that sort of form

>>24514868
What was the first behavior then? Or is it copies all the way down? Think about it for a second. Do you know how stupid it is to say that everything is a “copy” without there being an original template for said copy? Fucking imbecile. You got distracted by the latest shiny thing.

>>24514892
I'll that it over this pseudo-sciencific bs any day.

>>24515198
You're onto something (I say this as an avid Girard Reader)

>It was the custom in a certain community for the guests to bring their own wine to weddings, and all the wines were mixed before drinking. Then one guest thought that if all the other guests would bring wine, he would not notice when drinking if he brought water instead. Then the other guests did the same, and as the result they all drank water.

It's (in)distiguishability of imitation that matters. And theorizing is a performative act to. What matters is not so much imitation as indifferentiation, and, as pointed by Girard, for very practical reasons (to avoid the wine disaster above). From this perspective, the mimetic crisis would be primordial, and differentiation (that is, paradoxically, differentiation understood as revelation of the imitators) is the resolution. Girard's theory is not just a representation, it is necessarily performative. And to figure out Girard is a prophet you have to crucify his thesis.

Nietzsche was definitively onto something by considering that true designations are based not on competing designation but on their misuse. A sense of truth emerges first as the aversion for the effects of the lie, that is abusing the right designations for your own interest (presenting water as wine).

>>24515432
>Nietsche
Specifically on Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense

>>24514011 (OP)
I don't see why it's a problem that he didn't attempt some grand system of metaphysics and ethics. He outlined an interesting pattern that he found in literature, continued to find that same pattern in anthropology and theology, and otherwise tried not to step too far out of his niche. You can produce something of value without needing to create some grand theory of everything. Considering how many of his peers in 1960s France tried to build those sorts of grand systems, and often failed, Girard was probably smart not to embark on such a Qixotean (lol) enterprise.

>>24514836
You've clearly never read Girard, one of the first pages in his first book explicitly says that not every single instance of desiring is mimetic (the example he uses is Sancho Panza getting hungry). Yes, somebody had to be the first to desire something (therefore in a non-mimetic fashion), but that is a banal point compared to the incredible prevalence of mimetic desire and its implications for what we actually want when we desire an object. Your objection is a non-issue that only occurs from reading a strawman of Girard, not Girard himself.

>>24515490
You could also add that he limited his focus to violence within groups, not between groups. Of course, the two are articulated and when a group paints himself as an isolated scapegoat that gathers unanimity, he's readying himself for war.

>Russia, Israel, Trump's USA, Iran, Palestine
They all think of themselves as scapegoats

>>24515490
>You can produce something of value without needing to create some grand theory of everything.
I agree. I think Girard's reading of the Bible is incredibly useful in explaining the finality of the New Testament and why it is so important for theological debates. He's useful. It's other people treating him as some God-like figure or treating his work as a theory of everything which is utterly confusing for me.
>that not every single instance of desiring is mimetic
Which is like saying that not every number is divisible by 3.
>and its implications for what we actually want when we desire an object.
So what do we actually want?
>Your objection is a non-issue that only occurs from reading a strawman of Girard, not Girard himself.
My objection becomes a non-issue when we return Girard to what he is, which is an interesting anthropologist (psychoanalyst, even) with novel contributions of mechanism, but nothing terribly groundbreaking or fundamental. Yes, I agree.

>>24515198
Yes, you're stupid.

>>24515552
>yeah bro you can totally have copies without anything being copied
>you can also have round squares and colorless green ideas and that's like totally okay!
>you're the stupid one, pretending that words mean things
you have a room temperature IQ

>>24515626
You know zilch of biology and anthropology.

>>24515665
I don't know of any decent biologist or anthropologist who openly embraces violating the law of non-contradiction.

>>24515672
There would be no play of the LNC here. So apparently you don't know zilch of logic too! At least you're humble.

>>24515683
>copies without an original
>square circles
>colorless green ideas
>none of these are contradictions
You are genuinely braindead. I do not know how you manage to put on clothes without choking to death on your own saliva every morning.

>>24515510
>I agree. I think Girard's reading of the Bible is incredibly useful in explaining the finality of the New Testament and why it is so important for theological debates. He's useful. It's other people treating him as some God-like figure or treating his work as a theory of everything which is utterly confusing for me.
I agree. People shouldn't elevate Girard's useful analysis to some total universality. That seems to be your main contention in this thread, and I agree with you. I'd also like to add that I'm starting to think Girard's analysis could be useful for soteriology, but I still haven't fleshed out that idea enough to feel comfortable presenting it.
>Which is like saying that not every number is divisible by 3.
Agreed, but to take the analogy further, it would be a pretty tremendous discovery if someone was the first to discover that some numbers are divisible by 3.
>So what do we actually want?
This is where Girard really shines, and it's a shame that this aspect isn't emphasized as much as the more general mimetic theory. Girard argues that we live under a false promise: we want to believe we are autonomous and self-sufficient, but we constantly find this false promise undermined as we are reminded of our dependencies and limitations (it's also worth mentioning that this illusion of autonomy is only worsened by the individualist and atheist ideologies of modernity). Mankind is generally afflicted by the failure of this false promise, but because we fail to fully articulate this affliction to others, we imagine that this suffering is unique to us. Therefore, when we view others, we imagine that they experience a fullness that we do not possess. We then seek to emulate them in the hopes that we will experience that fullness for ourselves. Thus the triangle of desire begins, leading into the much more well-known mimetic theory of desire. You may not find this explanation particularly convincing, but it's certainly more of a solid foundation than those who think mimesis is some universal law of nature.
>My objection becomes a non-issue when we return Girard to what he is, which is an interesting anthropologist (psychoanalyst, even) with novel contributions of mechanism, but nothing terribly groundbreaking or fundamental. Yes, I agree.
I agree with you, I think we probably agree more than we disagree. I apologize if I came off as harsh in my original reply to you. To give credit to Girard, I think he'd agree with you, he'd probably disagree with those who view his work as the highest truth. His work, as much as I love it, is more of a supplement to Christian theology (and Freud) than something in-and-of-itself.

>>24514892
>let materialism!
You are unable to think in the abstract and are very retarded.

>>24515723
Copies are not necessarily predicated of an original, but of other copies and an infinite regress is not necessarily a contradiction per se. Of course I ignored completely your retarded failed attempt at analogy by actually comparing an epistemic problem to contradictory qualities. That you can't realize the retardation operated here proves my point about your knowing zilch of logic too. Anyway, can't keep wasting my time with you. Try reading books, I don't know.

>>24515510
>I think Girard's reading of the Bible is incredibly useful in explaining the finality of the New Testament and why it is so important for theological debates. He's useful. It's other people treating him as some God-like figure or treating his work as a theory of everything which is utterly confusing for me.
Girard also gestures at a "semiogony". He explicitly proposes a mimetic origin of language.

>The victim is the first 'symbol' in the sense of a sign that is held in common by the entire community and can be exchanged between its members. For the first time, there is a signifier that is distinct from its signified, and can be 'exchanged' among the members of the community, since the referent is absent, having been destroyed or driven out. This is why all the most archaic forms of exchange are ritual in form and why the offering or the victim is at the center of the exchange. For the first time, then, there is something like a message, a 'cultural' as opposed to a 'natural' object.
From Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World

>It is the originary scapegoating which prolongs itself in a process which can be infinitely long in moving from... instinctive ritualization, instinctive prohibition, instinctive separation of the antagonists, which you already find to a certain extent in animals, towards representation... What I like about the scapegoat genesis is precisely the fact that it avoids the philosophical dilemma of a sudden shift from non-representation to representation. For me, you have something which is neither-nor, and which is an oriented process. Therefore, the scapegoat theory, even in its most abstract form, contains the germ of a theory of the origin of language.
Interview with Anthropoetics

>The victim is loaded with all the sins of the community; it is the universal signifier for all the signifieds of appropriation and conflict. But at the same time it is the signifier of the peace that follows its expulsion. This is why the sacred is ambivalent, why it is both cursed and blessed, impure and holy. The first language is not a neutral tool for describing the world; it is a sacred language that speaks of the gods, that is, of the transfigured victims.

This is striking how well this correspond to a thermodynamic perspective on human cognition. The mimetic crisis is "the heat of the moment". The interactions between particles is as random as it is diverse, they become the universal signifier. Then as the temperature gets lower, relationships become structured and their range and diversity shrink. A phase transition happens and something crystalizes. This is the moment of cold clarity.

>>24514510
hes the only one to come close to NEETzsche in that regard
blatant biblical reference

>>24515198
>What was the first behavior then?

Track marks. Prey calls to lure game in. Predator calls to identify the threat present (or simulate something other than oneself for deterrence/evasion).

>>24516129
>but of other copies
Then what were those copies, copies of?

You do realize you're going to have to figure out what the "first" thing was, right? And it couldn't have been a copy, because a copy needs a template *by definition*. A copy with no originals, full stop, cannot exist. That's the contradiction.

Unfortunately, brainlets like you are incapable of thinking more than a step or two ahead, so you were unable to grasp this problem, and you thought that kicking the can down the road to "oh, the copies are copies of other copies" actually fixes the problem.

Sad to see. It's like watching an old Soviet car knock and sputter over and over again before ignition finally kicks in.

>>24515811
Honestly? This response was so well thought out that you could consider my problems in the OP answered. I appreciate it, thank you.
>Girard argues that we live under a false promise: we want to believe we are autonomous and self-sufficient, but we constantly find this false promise undermined as we are reminded of our dependencies and limitations (it's also worth mentioning that this illusion of autonomy is only worsened by the individualist and atheist ideologies of modernity)
I thought the explanation of what mimesis is like was interesting. But doesn't the paradigm change if you realize that everybody else is as "empty" as yourself? How does that change the calculus?

Also, it seems to me that autonomy and self-sufficiency aren't the goals but rather means to an end. Those ends being "full" and "satisfied" in a broad sense which are never permanent, and the accomplishment of manifested micro-goals which lead to those ends and are always being generated.

>>24516650
>I thought the explanation of what mimesis is like was interesting. But doesn't the paradigm change if you realize that everybody else is as "empty" as yourself? How does that change the calculus?

This is the crucial question because the answer reveals the insidious flexibility of the mimetic engine. It hijacks the realization of "emptiness" regardless of whether you perceive it as a horrifying void or a sublime spiritual goal. The paradigm doesn't break; it becomes more absolute.

On one hand, if you realize everyone is "empty" in a negative sense, you've stumbled directly into the crisis of indifferentiation. This is the wine disaster I mentioned . When every guest at the wedding has the same "realization" that they can get away with bringing water instead of wine, the result isn't a happy, enlightened community; it's a party where everyone knowingly drinks water. The shared secret of universal lack doesn't end the game; it ruins the party for everyone. This shared emptiness doesn't create serene autonomy; it creates a desperate, horizontal rivalry for any scrap of differentiation to escape the terror of sameness.


On the other hand, let's take "emptiness" in the more noble, Zen-style sense you suggest. This creates a new, more subtle trap. The serene, "empty" individual becomes the ultimate model of metaphysical autonomy. A new desire is born: the desire to possess their desirelessness. A fierce but quiet rivalry emerges over who is the most detached, the most enlightened, the most genuinely "empty," turning serenity itself into a competitive performance. The model of emptiness becomes the ultimate rival because they possess the one thing we now crave: a perceived freedom from the very mimetic desire that consumes us in our quest for that freedom.

So, how does the calculus change? In both scenarios, the conflict moves from the external to the internal and intensifies. Whether emptiness is a void to escape or a state to achieve, the rivalry is no longer for objects, but for being itself. The realization doesn't stop the mimetic engine; it just removes all external illusions and leaves everyone in a hall of mirrors, turning the very desire for a way out into the most inescapable trap of all.
TL;DR: Girard's theory is, as he puts it himself, a performative truth. The representations you assemble to tame mimesis by explaining it lend themselves to imitation on another level. Girard's necessarily partial theory commands a flat metaphysics where any act of transcendance falls down on the tiled floor of the community.

>>24516912
I asked Gemini to give an interpretation of the elements outside of the drawing the crocodiles are climbing on:

>The Book of Natural Science: The reptile's first step out of the 2D plane of imitation is onto a textbook, likely of biology or zoology. This represents the first stage of transcendence: scientific representation. It is humanity's attempt to classify, understand, and thus "tame" the world (and mimesis itself) through rational observation and objective knowledge. It is the very "map" that purports to explain the territory from which the reptile is trying to escape. This is the foundation of the escape attempt: the belief that knowledge can elevate you above the system.

>The Platonic Solid (Dodecahedron): After crossing the book, the reptile climbs the dodecahedron, a symbol of perfect, abstract, mathematical and metaphysical order. This represents the second, higher stage: metaphysical transcendence. If the book is science, this is philosophy or pure logic. It is the "system" itself, the abstract framework of ideas we create to achieve a sense of perfect, autonomous being, free from the messy contradictions of mimetic reality. Reaching the top of this solid is the peak of the individual's hubris, the moment it feels most like a god, a self-contained and rational being who has truly escaped the pattern.

>The Pail with JOB Rolling Papers: At the apex of its journey, after puffing a triumphant cloud of smoke, the reptile must descend. On its path down, it passes a small metal pail containing JOB rolling papers and tobacco. This represents the profane and mundane. After the grand attempts at scientific and metaphysical transcendence, the individual is confronted by simple, earthly, creature comforts. This is the world of non-mimetic, biological appetites that Girard separates from metaphysical desire. It is the grounding reality check. The journey through pure abstraction and rationalism cannot erase the simple, physical, and ultimately non-transcendent needs of the body.

>Together, these three objects chart the entire arc of the failed escape. The individual uses science and philosophy to climb towards a state of pure autonomy, only to be reminded of its own mundane, earthly nature before inevitably sliding back down into the "tiled floor of the community." They are the essential props in the "performative truth" you described.

>>24516912
I don't understand the problem. Why is differentiation now an issue? I don't think differentiation has anything to do with happiness, at least not implicitly.

The second issue could also be a real problem. But one could argue that nobody actually realized that they were empty, at least the people who are "competing" to be the "most" enlightened. It's just a pastiche that they were following.

>>24516964
at least not explicitly*

>>24516644
Dude, what came first, the chicken or the egg?

-mind blown-

>>24516644
Animals, you dumbfuck. But the point is that there could be no first original man, the first man was already a copy.

>>24517034
Bad analogy, since a chicken and an egg require each other for existence. No original ever required a copy. Your midwit IQ is showing.
>>24517047
>Animals, you dumbfuck.
And then what were animals a copy of? Hopefully you realize that we can continue this conversation until the very first thing.
>But the point is that there could be no first original man, the first man was already a copy.
If the first man was a copy, then it wouldn't be the first, would it? Because if the first man was a copy, then it would clearly be the second, or man would not be man or anything differentiated at all.

>>24517060
>what are animals copy of
Girard is an anthropologist, we are talking about anthropology. But yes, animals could be a mix of mimetic and impulsive behavior, or copies of lower animals with impulsive behavior, etc.
>if the first man was a copy
A copy of animals.

>>24516650
You're welcome man. Honestly, I can't even blame you for your initial skepticism in the OP, I think there are a lot of "Girardians" who massively overestimate the scope of mimetic theory without understanding its basic mechanics. It probably comes from people starting with Violence and the Sacred or Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World instead of starting with Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, where Girard gives the most basic foundations of his theory in a far more narrow scope.
>But doesn't the paradigm change if you realize that everybody else is as "empty" as yourself? How does that change the calculus?
This is a valid point to make, but I think Girard gives a compelling answer. He says that each of us experience this agony of the false promise, but we are unable to universalize this experience and communicate it. I personally believe that this comes down to two main factors.
Firstly, communicating this suffering to others in the utmost clarity would mean admitting that the promise is false, which is something that people are unwilling to do specifically due to their commitment to autonomy. Not many people like to admit their lack of autonomy, it's a horrifying thought to admit that the freedom that we cherish is really an illusion. As we do not wish to acknowledge the falsity of the promise, we cannot communicate it as a universality, and thus people cannot convey this experience to each other. Because of this, we struggle to know that others experience the same thing. Secondly, because of this false promise, we wish to believe that our suffering is our own. By interpreting our agony through the lens of that false promise, we sincerely hold that it is our unique agony that we have to struggle through. As an example, Girard cites the Underground Man, who believes that his suffering fundamentally separates him from "them". To admit that our agony is shared is a further blow to the false promise, causing further agony.
It's also worth noting that this problem is somewhat historical, as Girard explicitly says that people used to be able to universalize this experience through a shared religious understanding of the Fall, which helped turn people away from internal mediation and towards the external mediation of Christ. Now, as religiosity is far less common and liberal ideals of autonomy are prevalent, this shared understanding becomes much more difficult.

However, you do raise a valid point that I've dwelled on myself: why do we (pre-mimetically) desire the fullness of autonomy? I believe that's what you were asking in
>Also, it seems to me that autonomy and self-sufficiency aren't the goals but rather means to an end. Those ends being "full" and "satisfied" in a broad sense which are never permanent, and the accomplishment of manifested micro-goals which lead to those ends and are always being generated.

1/2

>>24516650
>>24517428
To answer your objection, I think we need to turn towards either theology or psychoanalysis, depending on one's persuasion. This makes sense, given that these are the two disciplines with which Girard sought the most dialogue. From a theological perspective, I believe that our desire for autonomy and fullness comes from our attempts to grapple with our fallen state. We are entirely incapable of freedom without grace, and I believe that we viscerally feel this bondage. We then crave autonomy out of the vain hope that we can act freely without God, a hope that is repeatedly thwarted through the reminders of our fallen nature. However, if you wish to look at this through the lens of psychoanalysis, you can probably interpret the desire for autonomy through the lens of Lacanian lack, especially if you treat autonomy itself as an object that we pursue, but can never even attain to the point of jouissance.

>>24514011 (OP)
He's a mediocre thinker. All his ideas are in Lacan in a more interesting and cohesive package.

Thiel just has a gay crush on him or some shit. They went to Stanford together and the queer probably fell under the frenchman's spell.

But it's as you say, he's an epigone.

>>24514654
>>24514836
I'm more partial to the Lacanian idea that desire is both nature and nurture: nature in the sense that language is connate with us, and nurture in the sense that the stamp language/discourse impresses on us will shape our desire.

Seems infinitely deeper and more true to life than the blanket assertion that we just imitate things

>>24517145
>Girard is an anthropologist, we are talking about anthropology.
This is a copout if humans are nothing special and mimesis is supposedly this omnipresent.
>A copy of animals.
But man does things that other animals don't.
>But yes, animals could be a mix of mimetic and impulsive behavior, or copies of lower animals with impulsive behavior, etc.
What was the first animal a copy of? Mimesis had to have been invented somewhere. Where was the original original?

>>24514011 (OP)
Ernest Becker buck broke this retarded frog.

>>24517428
>You're welcome man. Honestly, I can't even blame you for your initial skepticism in the OP, I think there are a lot of "Girardians" who massively overestimate the scope of mimetic theory without understanding its basic mechanics. It probably comes from people starting with Violence and the Sacred or Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World instead of starting with Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, where Girard gives the most basic foundations of his theory in a far more narrow scope.
For example, when I listen to what Thiel has to say about the problem of mimesis, he makes it seem like a simple economic problem. "Oh, people want the same thing? But there is only so much of the same thing. It's a scarcity problem. So you try to diversify..." And I think Thiel completely undersells the psychoanalytic aspect that Girard seems to hone in on.
>Autonomy
So, the problem I have with this perspective is I do not think that autonomy is the problem. We could be autonomous and still have the problem of being empty. Emptiness is a function of impotence at achieving our goals, not necessarily autonomy. We could be free and miserable, or unfree and miserable, and we would be miserable all the same because none of our choices bring us to what we want the most, which is to be complete for eternity. I think this is one of the primary engines for the increasing distancing from liberalism these days. People keep asking what is the importance of being free without knowing what the "freedom is for". We are free... for what? Is freedom the ultimate goal? Or is it a means to an end?

But I do appreciate the examples. I think about my own impulses if I were to be asked questions like these:
>As an example, Girard cites the Underground Man, who believes that his suffering fundamentally separates him from "them". To admit that our agony is shared is a further blow to the false promise, causing further agony.
I often think about whether my suffering is uniquely my own. I think it is easy to be conditioned to think that way, because people do not like to admit that they suffer in such and such ways, and they treat any dialogue of it as a kind of unseemly incontinence. I can't even blame them for it, because that is my go-to reaction as well.

>>24518056
>So, the problem I have with this perspective is I do not think that autonomy is the problem. We could be autonomous and still have the problem of being empty. Emptiness is a function of impotence at achieving our goals, not necessarily autonomy. We could be free and miserable, or unfree and miserable, and we would be miserable all the same because none of our choices bring us to what we want the most, which is to be complete for eternity. I think this is one of the primary engines for the increasing distancing from liberalism these days. People keep asking what is the importance of being free without knowing what the "freedom is for". We are free... for what? Is freedom the ultimate goal? Or is it a means to an end?
I agree with your everything you said about autonomy and the notion that it would make us happier. I think that Girard would also agree with you. However, what Girard is getting at isn't the idea that autonomy is good and that our lack of it is what causes agony, but rather, that we desire autonomy (for pre-mimetic reasons that we need to go beyond Girard to grasp, with several possible explanations ranging from theology to psychoanalysis to historical ideology), but we find that desire thwarted by our actual lack of autonomy. It's less of a prescriptive case for the value of autonomy and more of a description of the agony that occurs when one desires autonomy but finds that desire constantly thwarted by reality. Still, I really liked the point you said about the increasing rejection of liberalism, I agree that more and more people seem to realize that autonomy is not desirable in the first place. As a Christian and a Girardian, I personally hope that this ongoing movement can lead people away from liberalism and its internal mediation and towards the external mediation of Lord Jesus Christ (all of this occurring through grace, of course, I'm not a Pelagian).

>I often think about whether my suffering is uniquely my own. I think it is easy to be conditioned to think that way, because people do not like to admit that they suffer in such and such ways, and they treat any dialogue of it as a kind of unseemly incontinence. I can't even blame them for it, because that is my go-to reaction as well.
Exactly man, I've felt similarly as well. Between the fear that one may end up projecting one's own angst onto another and the social taboo against discussing these things at all, it's often difficult to believe that others feel the same way. That's yet another reason why I find such value in Girard: his analysis gives me a basis to think that others likely suffer from the same agony. Of course, it can be difficult to remember this, especially in our era where universality is doubted and particulars reign.

>>24518325
>but rather, that we desire autonomy (for pre-mimetic reasons that we need to go beyond Girard to grasp, with several possible explanations ranging from theology to psychoanalysis to historical ideology),
Would you mind sketching some of those pre-mimetic reasons that you have in mind as possible candidates?
>It's less of a prescriptive case for the value of autonomy and more of a description of the agony that occurs when one desires autonomy but finds that desire constantly thwarted by reality.
Honestly, it sounds like a bit of the whole "freedom from" and "freedom to" debate, and all you can think about is "freedom from" when you are oppressed, and any breath of fresh air is like taking in the whole Garden of Eden. But then when you actually have autonomy, it seems almost overrated. I think that most would rather pick our bondage than actually be free. And that is considering the people who *actually* know what they want (one of the most powerful aspects of mimesis, imho, is how it dials into the fact that most people don't really know what they want and thus copy others).

>>24517902
>What was the first animal a copy of? Mimesis had to have been invented somewhere. Where was the original original?
The answer to this is literally in the post: ''animals could be a mix of mimetic and impulsive behavior, or copies of lower animals with impulsive behavior, etc.''

>>24518389
>Would you mind sketching some of those pre-mimetic reasons that you have in mind as possible candidates?
Sure, I'll try to sketch out what I think are the three most likely causes of this false promise.

1. My personal theory is that this desire for autonomy is born out of the state of total depravity we are subject to after the Fall. In our state of total depravity, the divine image in which we are created has been obscured, removing, among other capabilities, both our freedom and our knowledge (including our self-knowledge). As such, we lack any sort of autonomy, but we do not know our lack of freedom, nor do we know our subsequent dependence on the grace of God. So, we falsely believe that we are free (after all, our loss of self-knowledge means we cannot know of our own depravity), but this illusion of freedom is constantly thwarted by the limitations of our depraved state. It is only through grace that we can come to know our own fallen state, but unfortunately, many do not synergistically cooperate with prevenient grace to the point of attaining this knowledge. Hence, the agony of the false promise is realized, and from there we proceed to internal mediation. It is worth noting that this theological explanation is framed within my own Wesleyan-Arminianism, but given Girard's popularity among Catholics, I speculate that Catholicism may also have its own theological understanding of Girard's first principles. I imagine that Calvinism might also be able to reconcile this idea, especially given the quasi-determinism within Reformed theology. Furthermore, if I made any theological errors in my explanation, my apologies, I'm still ironing out this theory.

2. From a historical lens, we could situate our desire for autonomy within the dominant ideologies of our time. Atheism, humanism, and liberalism all envision a human freedom that can exist without God (besides the hard-determinist fringe like Dennett). Everything from psychological behavioralism to neoclassical economic dogma falsely assumes freedom of action, and this ideology is internalized as the desire for autonomy among individuals. While this explanation seems the most simple, it does fall into a certain amount of circularity, given that one could argue that this desire is itself mimetic.

3. I think there is a psychoanalytic explanation, but frankly, I'm not too well versed in psychoanalysis beyond reading some Freud and Lacan. I imagine this desire for autonomy may come from our id desperately seeking to transcend the limits imposed by the ego and superego, not to mention the limits imposed by the linguistic structure of the unconscious (assuming Lacan is right). But again, I may be off base there, it's the field I'm least versed in out of the three. After all, it would be pretty ironic if I spent this thread talking about the limitations of Girard, then didn't recognize the limitations of my own knowledge lol

>>24518994
How is "lower animal" an answer to "animal"? That sounds like shillspeak to me, sorry. I'll bite though. What was the lower animal a copy of.

>>24519065
This is all good stuff, thank you for humoring me. But I think mimesis might be best improved as a theme if we can find ways of looking at it beyond a desire for freedom. The part that I have been referring to, the fact that people don't actually seem to want to be free for its own sake, is like the dark side of the moon in this field IMO.

>>24520008
Do you have any mental issue? The lower an animal the more impulsive his behavior. Do your homework and make the obvious inference.

>>24520470
So animals are copies of lower animals. So what are the lower animals copying?
>Do your homework and make the obvious inference.
I've already made the inference. I am leading you to the inference that you have failed to make step-by-step. And I'm surprised that you have the courage to go this far, because you're about to embarrass yourself.

>>24514631
>Why care about titles when you're the most photogenic motherfucker ever.
He just looks like evil Derrida. Wario Derrida, if you will.

>>24520476
Do you understand what impulsive behavior is? They don’t need copies.

>>24520489
>Satan casts out Satan

This guy has been getting pushed on 4chan as part of some propaganda effort. I am fairly sure Thiel and Blake Masters are behind him.

>>24520507
Ah, so there is a beginning to mimesis. So the original template is just impulsivity. So everything just boils down to impulse and copying impulse? That's the nucleus of Girardian thought?

>>24520531
Girard is an anthropologist, he will obviously focus on human social behavior and organization. But regarding the biological field, yeah, mutation, impulse, environment, that’s the basics.

>>24520566
Honestly, I think our conversation could turn in a fruitful and positive direction. So, in a way, mimesis is an original development upon impulse. Three things are worth thinking about. One, what are these impulses directed towards? Two, how/why did mimesis emerge? Third, even though mimesis is about copying, why does mimesis seem to be associated with originality as well? After all, we witness a development from lower animals to animals to humans. These cannot be mere mimesis, because something new has occurred with each development.

>>24520618
Mimesis has biological explanation. And all you’re asking concerns biology. Are we settled on Girard? Do you understand now?

>>24520489
it's Waderrida you pleb

>>24520519
you mean Blythe?
Also yeah, they were behind the Walkable Cities campagin on /pol/.

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/search/subject/walkable%20cities/

>>24520531
>That's the nucleus of Girardian thought?
NTA but Girard's thought is largely a product (or source?) of his Theology. Mimesis is not the sole source of desire but rather a major source of it and one that can be observed in literature.

>>24520636
Only the answer to 2) is strictly biological. And whatever is biological about 1) and 3) has direct implications for its manifestation in humans, so it is a relevant anthropological question.

>>24520654
>what are impulses directed toward
You are saying, in earnest, that this is not strictly biological? Your justification that “has direct implications for its manifeststion in humans” would apply to any thing, whether strictly or not, biological since humans are… uh, biological beings.

>>24520682
Yes. And it's worth making clear in how this manifests in humans. Humans are biological creatures. Biology always has a role to play in anthropology. I am not sure why you are hesitating to state what implications we can draw from biology to better inform what mimesis is like in humans.

>>24520726
Sociology and anthropology are specific areas of knowledge because they have their own methods and goals. The fact is that none writes about everything, for why not then demand on biologists reports on the sociological, cultural influence on human behavior with the same depth and extension that anthropologists and sociologists show in their works as well? I’m no hesitant about anything. You are the one who has been looking for a gotcha in the past 2 days. Mimesis has evolutionary explanation in survival value, as I’ve said already, it is a natural behavior in many species and due to many mechanisms that make a species recognize and reproduce specific survival techniques. You’re moving the goalposts to another area of knowledge.
I’m not a Girardian and I’m not trying to defend his theories, I just find it ridiculous to demand things on him that lie outside his knowledge area.

>>24520786
Come on. So, you can't say that people do mimesis because they want to reproduce or anything like that? Is that beyond your capacity to explain? I already know I have you in a bind because simple questions have you tongue-tied and looking for a way out.

>>24520796
This is my first relatively lengthy post. I’ve so far given direct answers to every failed gotcha attempts of yours. And I’m supposing you know the minimum about biology and get the point that when I say survival value, survival adaptation, etc., that implies reproduction. Yes, people mimick a model because they see the model as model, the model is coded by a paradigm of winning, success, etc. What else do you want me to lecture you on? Do you want to learn how to feed yourself without the help of others, good boy?

>>24520836
>everything is a mere copy!!!
>no, actually I guess there's some originality in there as well
>everything is and is not a copy
Wow, fantastic system you got there. Very insightful!

>>24520897
Bad boy, not paying attention to the explanations!

>>24520965
That is your explanation. It's all a copy. Different kinds of copies though. Yeah yeah I guess some copies are a little different. Don't you like it when your copy isn't exactly a copy of what you tried to copy? After all, humans are exactly like lower animals, since it's copies all the way down to the beginning!

>>24521009
Bad boy, can't read, can't pay attention to the explanation about the influence of impulses and drives on behavior and the difference in species of the intensity of impulses and drives. I'll have to give you a F. Try again next time, bye!

>>24521048
>uhhhh stop pointing out problems in my thinking, I don't want to be held accountable to them

>>24519065
>>24520060
bump

>>24520060
>But I think mimesis might be best improved as a theme if we can find ways of looking at it beyond a desire for freedom.
I personally don't really see the need for that, I think a lot of people do tend to crave autonomy, even if solely for the sake of their own self-image (I guess that might be a fourth possible explanation besides the three I tried to write out). While perhaps less people may want it now (as less people wanted it in the pre-modern era), it still seems pervasive enough to provide a solid, if perhaps not universal, basis for the mimetic theory imho. Still, if you could come up with an alternate explanation for mimetic desire besides a pre-mimetic desire for autonomy, I'd love to hear it.
>The part that I have been referring to, the fact that people don't actually seem to want to be free for its own sake, is like the dark side of the moon in this field IMO.
That's fair but I'd also add that, as you said earlier in this conversation, that may also be a beneficial historical movement we are currently living through. As liberalism dies, the will for autonomy loses a lot of its propaganda and institutional reinforcement. I think you, me, and Girard would all agree that it's a step in the right direction.

>>24520060
free from what ?

>>24522041
>I personally don't really see the need for that, I think a lot of people do tend to crave autonomy,
The problem is that the craving for autonomy is mostly superficial. We crave air when we are drowning. But when we finally are rescued out of the water and have time to get our bearings again.. what do we crave instead? Something far deeper, richer, and complicated. It turns out that, now we know we are alive, we want our life to be for something. This is what I mean by the dark side of the moon. Autonomy is merely the most visible half of the moon, the one that is associated with liberalism the most. And unfortunately, mimesis without robust psychoanalysis is... rather empty. It becomes a mechanistic theory that offers no deeper explanations.
>Still, if you could come up with an alternate explanation for mimetic desire besides a pre-mimetic desire for autonomy, I'd love to hear it.
Well, I have only the inklings of an idea. But it is a desire for perfection in perpetuity. You reach an end, the highest of all conceivable ends, but it somehow remains with you, and it nurtures you rather than exhausting you or being exhausted. This seems to be the ultimate cause of all action, if action is allowed to continue and isn't interrupted by "lower", more earthly concerns (like immediate survival).

>>24522879
free from freedom :O

>>24514011 (OP)
because Catholic Christianity has already supplied all the ethics necessary to philosophy, all that's left is a mechanical analysis of how things work, which is his project and is metaphysics btw.

>>24514036
now this is a crazy take and I must ask if you have ever had friends

>>24523910
that's it. you nailed it. I mean it, seriously.

>>24523910
>>24524020
Real talk though. I think the problem is that people have a strong sense of what they do not want, but they have a limited knowledge of what they actually want and how to get there. In fact, this knowledge is so limited that their sense may not properly line up with this ultimate want (e.g. most people want to be healthy, but many have a strong resentment if forced to eat healthy things regularly, especially as kids).

Wanting freedom just turns out to be an easily-applied panacea to removing unwanted burdens so that some hypothetical ideal want can take its place. But when we receive the freedom, when the dog catches the proverbial car, we're at a loss as to what we actually wanted. Not many people actually want radical freedom because they have a more limited sense of what makes them happy (maybe a radical novelty-seeker might like freedom as an end in itself). If people knew what they already wanted from the get go, they would skip the intermediate state of freedom and shoot straight from the undesired yoke to the desired yoke, if that makes sense.

bump

>>24524044
Literally this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IRPgzPZQl8

>>24523036
>>24524044
bump
>>24525235
beautiful, thanks for sharing, needed more French music in my life

>>24526035
I dropped my fagname but I posted the french song. Not just a song. ZE song. I'm not that much into variété française, however it's unanimomusly cherished. It hit that string.

I see you want someone engages with your vision. Free from freedom is a bit mysterious but I haven't found anything with this compressive power and that satisfies the purpose of a slogan as well.
A slogan is like a keyring. It can be a bit impenetrable, its purpose is not to shed light on everything but have this geometrical simplicity that allows you to navigate your keys with ease

Here are some keys hanging on mine:
- The first step is to find a bridge between René Girard and Jean-Yves Girard (famous logician, different family afaik). One solide bridge is Nietzsche's On Truth and Lies.
- One of Jean-Yves Girard's contribution is Linear Logic where propositions behave like resources. You can't use one in a proof without burning it up. This brings hygiene around formal system incompleteness and make it godelproof unless you step explicitrly out of these bonds.
- The mimetic crisis is not that different. Usually whenever a resource is consumed, a desire is fulfilled. Via spiritualization (both the disease and the cure, as always) a mismatch between the object graph and the subject graph, resources and desires, can be introduced. This graph arises from the topology of the processes or transformations where these resources and desires interact. They are said to be consumed or fulfilled because there is no cycle in this the topology of the transformations. See Lacan (won't read him though). From this formal perspective there is no difference between what we call resources and desires: they both fit the definition of a formal resource. And I think we can say that problems arise when desires stop behaving like resources, stop being fulfilled. Conversely the "resources" we desires (material things for instances), can also bring peace when they stop being consumed (the book you borrow from your library vs the internet archive).

Voilà.

>>24526184
What do you mean by graphs, and what do you mean by resources in connection to desires?

bump

>>24528809
working on it buddy

>>24514508
The mimetic process is driven by imitation of desire, not scapegoating. The latter is just the only way to terminate those conflicts, since they have no singular cause that one can identify. It's really just incidental

>>24515198
Desiring something that has never been expressed before is like trying to imagine a new color and this first-mover nonsense you're pulling is intellectually bankrupt. There is no such thing as a "first desire", desires are an emergent property of sentience with no definite beginning

>>24514011 (OP)
>Girard, there's no ethics, there's no metaphysics, and there isn't a sense of an argument as to why other competing drives are less influential.
Picrel was written by Girard's last grad student as well as his God-son. Girard's ethics and metaphysics are Catholic through and through; his entire system culminates in the true sacrifice of Jesus for mankind and his analysis is how the Christian stories from the Old and New Testament align with scapegoats whereas pagan models did not. To deny him ethics or metaphysics is merely to not understand that he is free of needing to invent or define them as the Church does so on his behalf. Mostly, he takes the idea the desire and imitation are linked and then just follows those logical consequences to contagion, scapegoating, and mimetic crisis. These ideas are not only all correct but played out repeatedly. Ultimately, I recommend Bataille's Accursed Share I and Eroticism to pair with Girard but this is strictly because it explains how excess defines us more than scarcity. Part of the issue is people read Gurard as a philosopher that didn't revert to the Faith after his studies--he did and it was central to his own intellectual worldview.

>>24527936
Gemini-slop below because I can't synthesize it yet. It's fucking shit. I'm fucking angry.


The discussion here about being "free from freedom" seems to circle a core anxiety. It's captured perfectly in this parable:

You give him your phone, you give him your money

Not enough

You give him your car keys, you let him in your house

Not enough

You give him your wife, you give him your life

Not enough

You let him stab you for the 123rd time

Not enough

You've been dead for 11 days, he has killed you 32 times

Still not enough

Your sacred ghost now floats above his head

"Enough enough, make it stop!" he says

This is a vision of hell. It's a loop where resources are given but never consumed, and a desire is expressed but never fulfilled. To understand this loop, we need to look at the shape of things.

Think about any process, like baking a pie. It has a structure, a flow. You start with eggs and sugar, you transform them into meringue, and so on. We can draw this. The drawing is a graph: the ingredients are points, the actions are arrows.

The surprising thing is this: the very idea of "using something up" is a property of this drawing's shape. The arrows only go one way. An egg, once used, is gone. The path doesn't loop back to let you use it again. This one-way structure is what it means to be a consumable resource. Its consumability is its topology.

Now, think of desire. Desire is the mirror image of this graph. It's the mold to the cast, the shadow to the object. The desire for a pie is a kind of "negative space" that has the exact shape of the recipe required to make it. To want the pie is to implicitly want the meringue and the crust. A desire is fulfilled when its corresponding resource is created, plugging the hole, satisfying the shape.

This is the "desired yoke" some of you have mentioned. It isn't the absence of structure, but a perfect alignment of two structures: the graph of our actions (the recipe) and the co-graph of our intentions (the desire). To be "free from freedom" is to escape the anxiety of a misaligned, empty structure and find this one, where what we do perfectly fulfills what we want.

But this alignment can break. It breaks in two astonishing ways.

First, there's the wedding feast where every guest is supposed to bring wine to fill a common barrel. One guest thinks, "If I bring water, and everyone else brings wine, no one will notice." The problem is, this thought is an attractor. Every guest has it. They all bring water. They all drink water. Here, the desire (a festive wine) was clear and the plan was sound. But the execution was corrupted. Each person, following their own local logic of optimization, contributed to a collective catastrophe. This is the world of min/max, a world without nuance.

>>24528960
Everything has a beginning. You are trying to violate the laws of causality. If the beginning of desire comes with the beginning of sentience, then that’s where we need to begin our inquiry. I don’t know what makes you think that this kind of hand-wavy thinking excuses you from having to provide a sufficient account of what a desire is, where it comes from, what it looks for, and why does sentience come with desire. It’s like leaving your work half-finished.

>>24529336
The second, deeper break is the one from the opening parable. Here, the desire itself is pathological. The system is fed resources—a phone, a car, a life—but the desire is not satisfied. The feedback loop is broken. The astonishing result of this quantitative madness (killing 32 times) is a qualitative leap: the victim is no longer a resource but a sacred ghost. The system escapes its hellish loop by creating a new, transcendent category. This is the engine of myth. It is the logic of René Girard's scapegoat, born from a mimetic crisis that has spiraled out of control.

What if this entire dynamic applies to the self? A life can be seen as a graph of actions and desires. A neurosis, then, is a topological knot. It's a loop where the graph of our actions endlessly fails to align with the graph of our desire, repeating the same patterns, the same failures. The person does not have a neurosis; the person is the knot. The self is the shape of this tangled graph.

To be "free from freedom"—the false freedom of endlessly repeating one's own loops—is to want to untie this knot. It is the desire to reshape one's own topology until our actions and our intentions finally click into place.
Holy shit I'm pissed.

References (yeah you can squint, it's supposedly in the text).

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1061920808010123 (fetch this one via sci-hub)

https://cybercat.institute/2022/05/29/what-is-categorical-cybernetics/

https://cybercat.institute/2024/08/26/bidirectional-programming-i/

https://cybercat.institute/2024/08/15/belief-propagation-clusters/

What's missing is everything about zeroth-order phase transitions, optimization, tropical geometry, processes and sub-processes, narration as processes (and thus actants/characters as resources), lacan's topology as space of the self/neurosis, debasement of an institution when for lack of a blaming criterium, reasons for designating the scapegoat are found outside of its perimeter, the scapegoat as a way to minimize expanditure of dramatic energy, the mimetic process as an selective optimization process, etc
HOWEVER. Here's the jewel that keeps me linked to these topics:
>The mimetic crisis happens when objects stop being consumed and desires stop being fulfilled

"Being the chief" is a resource. It's a status: you can steal it (a coup), but you can't duplicate it (people won't take you seriously, hence the coup). The moment this stops being the case, you'll have a multiplication of kings and a lot of costly infighting with the potential to spiral out of control.

This the knot that ties Girardian theory to logic and demonstration theory, process and resource theories and psychology (espcially lacanian).

>>24529336
>I can't synthesize it yet

Thanks god there is hip hop. The Endless Tap

Alps Cru – Just Can't Explain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21-GQfdanr8

I-I-I I know, I know, I know I can't explain

[Refrain: P. DaWicked Vocal, Shorty Live]
With a grin and in a whirlwind, the P breezes through
Holdin' it down for Alps Cru, yeah, yeah, it be none other
[together]
Time to smother and stifle all competition
Who's standin' in our way of us completin' our mission?

[Verse 1: P. DaWicked Vocal]
Every day of the year's a big hustle so let's tussle
Jump on my love muscle 'cause my verbals penetratin'
Location— of stress, you can keep it I don't need it
Son, you been depleted so peep it, no explanation
Nowhere to run, nowhere to linger, point the finger at the next man
If you can, try to withstand
My hunger's run deep, such is the way of the obsolete
Each of us compete to snap them bones like Roy Jones
Ain't no holdin' back
Disrespect with firm back slaps
That feel like thunder claps to the synapse
Maybe perhaps I be the born
Cipher master back to the born
Leave mics torn, keep it goin' to the crack of morn'
It's a night love baby, like Bobby you can't hack it
Packin' rhymes so put me in a higher tax bracket

>>24529356
>Son, you been depleted so peep it, no explanation
Girard mimetic theory is about the limits of explanation.

>More than a tangled skein, the mimetic thesis reminds me of those road maps that are so well folded and refolded on themselves that they are contained in a tiny rectangle. To use them, you have to unfold them, and then refold them. Awkward people of my kind never find the original folds, and very quickly the map tears. It is these tears that allow skeptics to think that there is not a single map in my head but fragments artificially assembled and glued back together, the ‘Girard system’ once again, just good enough to amuse the onlookers for a little while, before being discarded, in the company of the postman Cheval… If I could do only one more thing, in the time that remains to me, I would like to learn to unfold and refold my road map so as not to tear it. If I succeeded, I could then write an apology for Christianity that is accessible to people.

René Girard – When these things begin

>>24529349
>"Being the chief" is a resource

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWPSFOuPRUU

[Chorus: Manu Chao, Anouk]
I'm the
(King of the bongo, king of the bongo bong)
Hear me when I come, baby
(King of the bongo
King of the bongo bong)

[Verse 3: Manu Chao]
Nobody like to be in my place instead of me
'Cause nobody go crazy when I'm bangin' on my boogie
I'm a king without a crown hanging loose in a big town
But I'm the king of bongo baby, I'm the king of bongo bong

...

[Verse 5: Manu Chao]
Bangin' on my bongo
All that swing belongs to me
I'm so happy there's nobody
In my place instead of me
I'm a king without a crown
Hangin' loose in a big town
I'm the king of bongo, baby
I'm the king of bongo bong

Hear him when he comes

>>24529406

Who ? The Prince of Stories.

The Velvet Underground – I'm Set Free
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DuSNj5fjKs


I've been set free and I've been bound
To the memories of yesterday's clouds
I've been set free and I've been bound
And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion
I've been blinded but
You I can see
What in the world has happened to me
The prince of stories who walks right by me
And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion
I've been set free and I've been bound
Let me tell you people
what I found
I saw my head laughing
rolling on the ground
And now I'm set free
I'm set free
I'm set free to find a new illusion

>>24529336
>>24529349
Is that why you chose to call it a graph? Because it’s like a flowchart of reasoning? What else do you mean by it?

Btw this is a great post. I’ll try to address the more important points later after I get off work.

>>24529411

>The oracle, remember, is not revelation; it is the failure of a revelation. But the verification of the oracle can no longer be defined by this fail- ure. Even if it does not correspond to a "complete" revelation, with a reversal of signs, it nonetheless shows that the Oedipal subjectivity, as deeply mythified as it may be, is always oriented towards its own revelation. The mechanism that triggers this revelation is never lacking but the revelation's first stage is embryonic, a purely oracular stage that might define primitive Greek religion.

René Girard – Œdipus Unbound

>reversal (of instruments)
>always oriented towards its own revelation
>casting spells when still in his mother's womb
>primitive to Greek religion

Hear me when I come

https://www.hellenicgods.org/apollogodofimmeasurablelight

Apóllôn is the principal guardian of the Mystiría (Mysteries, Μυστήρια). This can be seen in a mythological interpretation of the Iliás (The Iliad, Ἰλιάς) where Ælǽni (Helen of Troy, Ἑλένη), meaning "basket," is the symbol of the Mysteries, and Apóllôn is defending the Trojans.


Apóllôn is the principal DEITY OF DEIFICATION, AND WHEN APÓLLÔN KILLS, in Iliás and wherever found in the myths, HE DEIFIES: always, as does his father Zefs and all the Olympians.
All the Mysteries come through Zagréus-Diónysos (Zagreus-Dionysus, Ζαγρεύς-Διόνυσος) and Apóllôn is intertwined in his mythology. In the following quotation, Apóllôn is called Dionysodótîs (Διονυσοδότης), “the one who gives Diónysos”:
ὁ γὰρ Διόνυσος, ὅτε τὸ εἴδωλον ἐνέθηκε τῶι ἐσόπτρωι, τούτωι ἐφέσπετο, καὶ οὕτως εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμερίσθη. ὁ δε Απόλλων συναγείρει τε αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνάγει καθαρτικός ὢν θεὸς καὶ τοῦ Διονύσου σωτὴρ ὡς ἀληθῶς, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο Διονυσοδότης ἀνυμνεῖται. (σχόλιον Ὀλυμπιοδώρου επὶ Φαίδωνος Πλάτωνος B ρκή p. 111, 14 William Norvin)

“For Diónysos, when he set his image into the mirror, pursued it, and in this way, was scattered everywhere. But Apóllôn (Ἀπόλλων) gathers him together and revives him, for he being a purifying God, and truly the savior of Diónysos, is thus celebrated as ‘he who gives us Diónysos’ (Διονυσοδότης).”

(trans. by the author)
I don't think we should insist on the difference between the satyre and Apollo. This flaying is an act of introspection. This whole myth describes the transition from prince of stories to Prince of Stories.

>It is this myth reduced to "fatality" which anthropologists discover everywhere. The presence, within the myth itself, of the formidable and fertile mechanism that always leads to intersubjective struggle and that can lead to demythification is no doubt peculiar to the Oedipal myth proper and to the Western world. In this privileged myth, the order of the episodes is not indifferent; it is linked to the process of unveiling – that indeed is what defines it as historical
Girard – a few paragraphs further down in When these things begin

>>24529487
This passage by Girard applies to the myth of Marsyas' flaying. By the way, the oracle behind Oedipus' accusation is

>Once the Delphic oracle launches the hunt for Laius's killer, we have a right to expect that the culprit will ultimately be identified. What kind of detective story ends with the hero fingering the wrong man? Unless we can be sure that the accused is the guilty party, we will be cheated of the katharsis so reliably delivered by modern mysteries and ancient tragedies alike. But perhaps Sophocles has concocted a mystery even more sophisti- cated than we thought. At the risk oflessening the satisfaction produced by a tidy ending, let us go back and ask whether Oedipus is really the man the oracle was talking about.

As always, mortals are responsible for their interpretation of the oracle's words

>Phrased in this way, the question is misleading because it implies that the oracle blamed a single individual for Laius's death. In fact, as Sandor Goodhart emphasizes in a seminal essay cited by Ahl, the oracle in Creon's report "speaks distinctly of a multiplicity of murderers. 'Apollo now clearly commands us to punish with [heavy] hand his murderers, whoever they may be"' (line 107).35 Creon goes on to add that the only member of Laius's party to escape "insisted [ephaske] that many brigands [leistas] way- laid him: many hands, not one man's force" (122-23).36 Indeed, the fact that the assailants were numerous was the "one thing" ofwhich the witness was "certain." The chorus and Jocasta later confirm having heard the same thing. Some critics have opined that a witness who flees in fear might lie about the number of attackers. Perhaps, but there is no suggestion to this effect in the text. Oedipus himselfaffirms that, when he is able to question the witness, the apparent discrepancy as to the number of murderers will be the key point: "if he still says the same number, I was not the killer; for one cannot be equal to many'' (843-45).

Designation, logic, optimization.

>The goal of religious thinking is exactly the same as that of technological research—namely, practical action. Whenever man is truly concerned with obtaining concrete results, whenever he is hard pressed by reality, he abandons abstract speculation and reverts to a mode of response that becomes increasingly cautious and conservative as the forces he hopes to subdue, or at least to outrun, draw ever nearer.
>[...]
>Religion, then, is far from 'useless.' It humanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor.

Violence and the Sacred

>>24529521

However I insist on the flaying of Marsyas.
From Œdipus Unbound:

>The Oedipal myth presents us successively with the reflection of desire-the illusion of the initial subjectivity-and the experience which, revealing the desire, destroys this illusion. Thus it shows us the transition from the initial subjectivity to the secondary subjectivity. The myth in the strict sense is the idea that the initial subjectivity is master of itself and master ofits relations with the Other, meaning, in the first instance, its fa- ther and mother. Everything that contradicts this dogma is presented to us, in the early episodes, as an accident or as the result of a "fatality." These early episodes are mythical stricto sensu because they mask the truth behind an anecdotal plot. Oedipus is unaware of his victim's identity, and . . . etc. Not being the product of a conscious design, this masquer- ade does not omit any element of the structure. Its extreme transparence makes it hard to see.

>In the light of Freud, and also of the novelistic experience, all the episodes of the myth can be understood as representing the progressive externalization of a relationship to Self and Other that is founded first of all upon the father. Oedipal desire and novelistic desire are one and the
same.

>We should note, however, a crucial difference between the myth and the novel. In Oedipus the King the mythical material is not restructured in the light of the denouement. Freud put it well: "Oedipus the King unfolds like a psychoanalysis." Oedipus the King is therefore not a psychoanalysis; it is not a novel either. The ending has no retroactive effect on the beginning. Oedipus at Colonus is a perpetual return backwards but the reversal of the signs is more symbolized than signified. The content of the revelation re- mains undecided.

>A first reason for this difference is obvious. The tragedy uses tradi- tional materials; the artist cannot modifY them as he pleases. The plot of Oedipus the King rests on the most "mythical" elements of the myth, the circumstances of Laius's murder, for example. The conclusion must be adapted to these time-honored givens. This means it must present itself in a form that remains partially mythical. The de-mythification, inseparable from the myth, is itself mythical. But there is more to the question of the mythical tragedy than the traditional nature of the materials used by Sophocles. The tragedy can help us better grasp the mythical element that subsists in the de-mythifYing conclusion of the classical novel.

>>24529541
>The de-mythification, inseparable from the myth, is itself mythical.

Let's loop back on
>>24529406
>I would like to learn to unfold and refold my road map so as not to tear it. If I succeeded, I could then write an apology for Christianity that is accessible ton people.

Everybody misses the transcendant aspects of Girard's perspective because it doesn't contain it.

Temperature: -273,15

The Pharcyde – Trust
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWrf1DNw5F8

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
I'd like to welcome all of you
Into the secret sessions of the sacred talisman
You are here with the three conductors of rhythm
Yes, constructors of reality through musical composition
Yes, relax and interface as we take you into the next phase

Where ya at, where ya at? They keep asking where ya been
We been preparing for two thousand and beyond, Pharcyde
What's the gripe, clown, turn that hype down
You had your chance but wasn't able to advance
Now you're stuck in a trance
All caught up in our rhythmic avalanches
Biting our sound like sandwiches
You fucked up your chances
Due to certain circumstances that you could've controlled
But had no real substance so under pressure you fold
Freak the peak of this lick, ghetto chic over fresh beats
Overexposed and cheats with verbal traction like cleats
Trying to get skeets, huh
Yup, they trying to get mine but I walk that fine line
Cause fools carry heat like sunshine <----
Damn! Pharcyde's popping, they hipping and they hopping
And it ain't no stopping, repeated shots to they noggin
Banging until they jaws is dropping, again

>>24529417
A graph is a mathematical object.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(discrete_mathematics)

Here the graph is directed (links are oriented, they are arrows) and hopefully, it is also acyclic.

Resource theories describe rules of compositions to build transformation processes such as recipes. The graph is a way to represent the position of a transformation step in this process (in time) as a precedence relationship in the graph (in space).

What we call resources are things that are either consumed or produced during those processes. The need for a formal definition arouse out of the fact that many things behave like resources surprisingly. For instance randomness: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20959924/what-is-entropy-starvation

This formal definition of a resource is where things get truly interesting, because it applies to more than just objects or data. We ourselves are resources in transformation graphs. A personal story, an adventure, or a trauma is a transformation process. An older version of you is the input; a new version is the output. That old self has been consumed by the experience, and you know it has been consumed precisely because there is no narrative arc that can take you back. The arrow only points forward.

>>24514011 (OP)
>It's like pointing at railroads and saying "now THIS is what drove modern society." Kind of? Maybe it was really important for a bit, and still has important applications? Certainly not your highest draft pick though.
such a good analogy to explain his shtick.

>>24514011 (OP)
Did you also start the daybreak thread?

>>24530159
I don't even know what that is

>>24528953
Word salad.

>>24530532
Filtered

>>24529336
>>24529349
To me, it sounds like the intent and the action will always be mismatched, because the intent will always strive to be perfect and finished forever, yet the action will always fall short of the intent and require new cycles. It seems like neurosis is built into the system unless people can find that resource that is perpetually renewed, or unless people can extirpate their desires altogether.

The ghost example just seems like an exhibit of the neurosis of a "nice guy" who gives and gives in expectation of receiving, but then never receives.

Graphs just seem like networks of causal relation. A good way to compare structures.

The chief example is probably a good one that demonstrates why some desires will always be after goods that are scarce by definition. Not everybody can be the leader, or else nobody is (or you live in the middle and you're between order and anarchy, aka organized conflict). Good refutation of communist paradise imho.

>>24531403
>yet the action will always fall short of the intent and require new cycles.

This is a case of an endless story.

>the ghost example
This is more about the stabber. The "nice guy" is the experimentalist, and he's being nice just to see how far the "savage one" will go. I got this idea from the notion of 'overkill' from anthropology.

>The term overkill usually indicates the infliction of massive injuries by far exceeding the extent necessary to kill the victim.

In other words, even in death, the opponent refuses to give in. It is the same pattern of objects and desires that fail to function as resources, fail to be consumed, and thus remain unfulfilled. Why does this happen?

Well, the "nice guy" isn't so nice. He gives in because he understands the situation perfectly, but only step-by-step as it unfolds. The assailant is no different, each preparing the other's next move like a pawl and ratchet wheel. To the nice guy, caving to the pressure is the embodiment of his own superiority, of transcending his initial, resentful instincts to cling to his goods, his wife, and his life. To the assailant, each act of violence aims at **spiritually** marking his dominion over the nice guy. However, the nice guy doesn't know any better than surrendering in a passively Kafkaesque fashion, which silently communicates his message: "Go ahead, continue. I don't care. I have ascended." It's a very fatal way to have the last word.

What happens when the nice guy gets killed? When the story supposedly meets its end? He keeps saying, "Go ahead, continue. I don't care. I have ascended," effectively guaranteeing that the story doesn't end. The myth (this very analysis) is just the way the assailant (me) deals with this unboundedness to find peace of mind and move on. It reorganizes what happened to prevent this kind of "stack overflow" and put an end to the story. Morals are perfect in the syntactic sense of the term: they accomplish by terminating. To do so, they masquerade as a conclusion, whereas in reality, they reorganize facts by silently ordering the narration from the very beginning. From A to Z, they are all about coherence and the establishment of a system by literal cut-elimination.

>>24531706
What does this tell us about mimetic theory that Girard doesn't quite say?

For semiotic animals, competition is first and foremost a competition for transcendence. This is something Girard doesn't fully embrace because he fails to stress that the skandalon is not just mimesis, but its very revelation. Herein lies his crucial failure. Girard describes the spiritualization of desire and the rise of Lacan's "objet petit a" as things that emerge from a nebulous, recursive loop. But this emergence is only necessary because Girard himself refused to adopt his proper prophetic role.

Had he truly embraced his status as a revealer—not just by anticipating the reception of his theory as a skandalon, but by enunciating that anticipation within the work itself—he could have founded history, like a prophet. In that situation, the "objet petit a" would not need to emerge recursively at all. With desire recalibrated from the outset as a desire for transcendence, the object of that desire would have been present from the very beginning.
I have more to say about how conceptual transcendence ties closely with endlessness in narration. In the meantime, this analysis I wrote might serve as a good apéritif.

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/509565585/#509571928
https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/509565585/#509576115
And the following posts.

>>24530672
You haven't Girard

>>24533103
hopelessly Girarded

>>24531730
You know you're dealing with a philosophical concept, and not a scientific functive, when its proponents are constantly forced to broaden its definition. Think of Girard making an equivalence between mimetic desire and Shakespeare's "suggested desire." This isn't a weakness; it's the signature of a concept working as intended. The goal is to maintain the concept in its maximum state of openness, to preserve its degrees of freedom.

This is the terrain of mauvaise foi, of bad faith, where the goalposts in a debate are constantly shifted to ensure one has the last word. This happens because a concept, unlike a functive, is never truly "defined" in a final sense. The dissatisfied pout that follows an inadequate, reductive definition is merely the prelude to a defense that dismisses the very terms of the attack.

And this is the real connection to narrativity. The endless story is not one that the concept tells, but one that the debate performs for a spectating audience. In this arena, we witness the attacker approach with the tools of a logician—functives, propositions, demands for logical coherence—attempting to perform a dissection. The defender’s ultimate parry is to claim the subject isn’t a body but a ghost, and therefore immune to the scalpel. They assert that the concept's life on its own plane of immanence makes the attacker’s entire line of inquiry irrelevant. The narrative, then, is the series of these failed captures. Its pleasure for the audience lies not in a final resolution—which is impossible—but in witnessing the concept’s masterful, perpetual escape into a domain where the attacker's weapons are useless.

>>24514011 (OP)
if you say so

>>24534231
Mad Vibes – Riches to Rags
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sfgm1MxqT0
>I'm writin' rhymes for the ghetto-dwellers, buildin' and sellers
>Phat concepts and steps for the storytellers
>Preparing rhymes like product on the block, mad hot
>Watch you back black or get bagged in the plot

>>24531706
>The "nice guy"
The guy in Kafka's Trial.