Search Results
7/3/2025, 12:12:50 PM
>>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.
>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.
Page 1