Michael: Kevin, all our lives we're told to 'be authentic,' to 'find our own desires.' What if that's the biggest lie we tell ourselves? Kevin: Whoa, okay. That's a heavy start. You're saying my desire for a morning coffee isn't even mine? Michael: Maybe the coffee is. But almost everything else? According to our book today, it's all borrowed. And that simple act of borrowing desire is the secret, violent engine of all human history. Kevin: That is a massive claim. What book could possibly argue that? Michael: We're diving into one of the most ambitious and controversial books of the 20th century: Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World by the French academic René Girard. Kevin: Girard... I've heard the name. He's one of those thinkers people either treat like a prophet or dismiss entirely, right? Very polarizing. Michael: Exactly. And this book is his magnum opus. It's not a typical book; it's actually a series of dialogues with two psychiatrists, where he lays out a single theory that he claims explains... well, everything. The origin of culture, religion, myth, and even our own psychological hang-ups. Kevin: A theory of everything, born from a conversation with two shrinks. I'm intrigued. Where does he even begin? Michael: It all starts with a very simple, but world-changing, observation about imitation.

Michael: Girard starts with Aristotle's idea that humans are the most imitative of all animals. But he takes it a step further. He says we don't just imitate actions, we imitate desire. He calls this 'mimetic desire'. Kevin: Okay, break that down. What does that look like? Michael: Picture two kids in a room full of toys. One kid ignores them all, but as soon as she picks up a red truck, the other kid suddenly needs that red truck. The desire wasn't for the truck itself; it was sparked by imitating the first kid's desire. Kevin: Right, for kids, I get it. I see that with my nephews all the time. But for adults? Isn't that a bit simplistic? My ambitions feel like my own. Michael: Do they? Think about the job you want, the neighborhood you want to live in, even the person you're attracted to. Girard would argue that we learn to desire these things by seeing them desired by others—our friends, our colleagues, our cultural heroes. These people are our 'models'. The problem is, the moment we desire the same thing, the model instantly becomes a rival. Kevin: The model becomes a rival. So the person I look up to for their great taste in cars becomes my competitor the second I decide I want the same car. Michael: Precisely. And when this happens across a whole society, when everyone is imitating everyone else's desires, we all become rivals for the same scarce goods—status, wealth, power. We become indistinguishable 'doubles' of each other. Girard uses this incredible poetic image from Robinson Jeffers, describing humanity as being caught in a 'net of desire,' all writhing like a net full of fish, straining against each other. This is what he calls a 'mimetic crisis'. Kevin: That sounds terrifying. A war of all against all, fueled by pure envy. How does any society survive that? It seems like we should have torn ourselves apart thousands of years ago. Michael: We almost did. And this is where Girard's most shocking idea comes in. He argues that early human groups found a spontaneous, unconscious solution. At the peak of the crisis, when the violence is at its most intense and no one can tell friend from foe, the mob's fury magically and unanimously converges on a single, arbitrary individual. Kevin: A scapegoat. Michael: Exactly. It could be anyone—someone with a limp, a foreigner, someone who just stood out. The group collectively decides this person is the source of all their problems. They unite in killing or expelling this victim. And in the aftermath of this collective murder, a miraculous peace descends. The war of all against all is over. Kevin: Wow. So the victim is chosen almost at random? And killing them... works? That's the foundation of culture? Michael: That's the argument. The community, in their relief, doesn't see their own violence. They see the victim as a monstrous being who caused the crisis, but also as a divine being who brought them peace by dying. This 'founding murder' and the 'sacred' victim become the origin of everything: prohibitions are created to prevent the kind of mimetic behavior that led to the crisis, and rituals are created to re-enact the founding murder in a controlled way, like with animal sacrifice, to periodically release tension and reaffirm the peace. Kevin: That is... dark. And profound. The idea that our most sacred institutions are built on a forgotten act of mob violence. It's a huge claim. Michael: It is. And this is where Girard makes his most audacious leap. He argues that for thousands of years, all of human culture, especially our myths, has been dedicated to hiding this founding murder. All except for one textual tradition.

Kevin: Okay, I have a feeling I know where this is going. You're saying the Bible is different. Michael: Radically different. Girard says that if you look at almost any founding myth, it's always a story told from the perspective of the persecutors. It justifies the violence. His go-to example is the founding of Rome. Kevin: Romulus and Remus. Michael: Right. The story goes that Romulus kills his twin brother Remus. Why? Because Remus mockingly jumped over the sacred boundary wall Romulus was building for his new city. The myth sides with Romulus. It says the murder, while tragic, was necessary to establish the sacred order of Rome. Remus was a transgressor who got what he deserved. Kevin: The story justifies the founding violence. It makes the murderer the hero. Michael: Exactly. Now, contrast that with the first murder in the Bible: Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel. Why? Not because Abel broke a sacred law, but out of pure mimetic jealousy because God favored Abel's sacrifice. And what does the text say? It says Cain is a murderer. God condemns him. The narrative takes the side of the victim, Abel. It exposes the violence as a crime. Kevin: Huh. I've never thought of it that way. One story is a cover-up, the other is an exposé. Romulus is a founder; Cain is a criminal. That's a huge difference in perspective. Michael: It's a world of difference. And for Girard, this is the thread that runs through the entire Bible. It's a slow, painful, multi-thousand-year process of unmasking the scapegoat mechanism. From the story of Joseph and his brothers, where the text makes it clear Joseph is an innocent victim of his brothers' collective jealousy, to the prophets who rail against the crowd's persecution of the innocent. Kevin: So the Bible is essentially a long "whodunit" where the culprit is... us. The mob. Michael: And the final chapter of that whodunit is the Gospels. Girard's reading of the Crucifixion is absolutely radical. He argues that Christ's death is not a sacrifice that God demanded to appease his own anger. That's a 'sacrificial reading' that falls back into the old mythical pattern. Kevin: Okay, so what is it then? Michael: It's the founding murder happening one last time, in the full light of history, but with a victim who is perfectly innocent and fully aware of the mechanism. The Gospels tell the story from the victim's perspective, showing how the crowd, the authorities, everyone, gets caught up in the mimetic contagion and converges on Jesus. The Cross doesn't appease a violent God; it exposes the violence of humanity. It reveals the scapegoat mechanism, once and for all. Kevin: So the message isn't 'God needs a sacrifice,' it's 'Look at what you people do. You create victims to solve your own problems.' That completely flips the script on 2,000 years of theology. I can see why he's so polarizing. Michael: It's the core of his argument. He believes the Gospels contain a truth about human nature so profound that we've spent two millennia trying to misunderstand it, because facing it is too uncomfortable. And this mechanism doesn't just operate on a societal level. Girard argues it's the key to our individual psychology, and that modern psychology, especially Freud, completely missed it.

Kevin: Alright, bring it on. How does this grand theory of culture and religion connect to my own anxieties? You're going to tell me the Oedipus complex is wrong, aren't you? Michael: Girard would say it's not just wrong, it's a myth that gets the story backward. For Freud, the family triangle is the archetype: the child has an innate, 'original' desire for the mother and therefore sees the father as a rival. Kevin: Right. The classic story. Michael: But for Girard, there's no such thing as an 'original' desire. The child desires the mother precisely because he imitates the father. The father is the first and most powerful model of desire. The rivalry isn't the result of the desire; the desire is the result of the model-turned-rival. The family isn't the origin of triangular desire; it's just the first place we experience it. Kevin: Let me see if I've got this. It's not about wanting to sleep with your mom. It's about wanting what your most powerful role model—who happens to be your dad—wants. The object is secondary to the rivalry. Michael: You've got it. And this dynamic plays out everywhere. Girard uses Dostoevsky's novella The Eternal Husband as a perfect example. The main character is a husband who, after his wife dies, becomes obsessively attached to her former lover. He doesn't want to kill him; he wants to be near him, to have him validate his new choices. He is completely possessed by his rival. That, for Girard, is the real human story, not some ancient Greek myth about a dysfunctional royal family. Kevin: That makes a lot more sense, honestly. It feels more applicable to real-life jealousy and obsession. What about other Freudian ideas, like narcissism? Michael: Girard's take on narcissism is brilliant. He argues that what we call narcissism isn't really self-love. It's a highly sophisticated mimetic strategy. The 'narcissist' only appears to be self-sufficient. They project an aura of inaccessibility and self-containment, which makes them an irresistible model for others' mimetic desire. We are drawn to them because they seem to possess a 'being' that we lack. Kevin: So the coquette who seems totally uninterested is actually playing a game to make everyone else want her. Michael: Exactly. And Proust, Girard's other favorite novelist, captured this perfectly. There's a famous scene where the narrator sees a 'little band' of girls on the beach. They seem like this self-contained, perfect, indifferent unit, and he becomes obsessed with them. He desires their desire for each other. He doesn't love himself; he's a master of pretending to be self-sufficient to attract the desire of others. For Girard, Proust was a far better psychologist than Freud because he understood this inter-relational game. Kevin: So all these things—jealousy, masochism, narcissism—are just different flavors of the same mimetic dance. We're all just mirrors reflecting each other's desires, and sometimes the mirrors crack. Michael: That's a perfect way to put it. We become 'doubles' of our rivals, trapped in a feedback loop, and that's where our psychological suffering comes from.

Michael: So what we have is a single, powerful mechanism—mimetic desire leading to a scapegoat—that scales from the foundation of civilization, to the structure of our myths, to the very heart of our personal anxieties and relationships. Kevin: It's a pretty bleak view of humanity, that we're just these copying machines caught in cycles of violence. But it's also strangely hopeful. If we can see the mechanism, maybe we can escape it. Michael: That's exactly Girard's point. He argues that this knowledge isn't just an academic theory; it's a historical revelation. For most of history, the scapegoat mechanism worked because it was unconscious. We didn't know we were murdering an innocent victim; we truly believed they were guilty. Kevin: But now we know. Or, at least, we're starting to. Michael: Right. And Girard says the Gospels, by revealing the mechanism and the innocence of the victim, started a process that can't be stopped. It's why we have a growing concern for victims today. But it also creates a new danger. When we know the scapegoat is innocent, the mechanism no longer brings peace. The violence doesn't resolve; it just escalates. Kevin: Which sounds a lot like our modern world. Michael: It does. And that's the final, stark choice Girard leaves us with. The revelation of the scapegoat mechanism gives us a choice for the first time. We can either continue the cycle of rivalry and scapegoating—which in a world with nuclear weapons is a recipe for apocalypse—or we can choose to imitate the one model, Christ, who points a way out of the cycle entirely through radical forgiveness and non-violence. The knowledge itself is the beginning of the cure. Kevin: It really makes you look at every conflict, from a Twitter pile-on to international relations, and ask: who is the model, who is the rival, and who is being set up as the scapegoat? It changes how you see everything. Michael: A question worth asking. This is Aibrary, signing off.