So glad you’re digging into this! I’m interested. My first touch point comes when I think of the ways I resist copying (in overt ways, and when I’m aware of it), and then how happy I was when gifted a pair of large gold-rimmed ray-bans, given an “excuse” to look “really cool” without outright choosing ...is it more ridiculous to resist or to feel so good in them? Hmm. But aside from this, I’m really interested in the religious piece!
This is a very interesting topic and I'm curious to see how you'll develop it into a discussion about religion. I have echopraxia, which is kind of like a tic where I involuntarily copy other people's body language without realizing it. Oftentimes people don't notice or care, but I have gotten called out for it socially a few times by people who think I am intentionally mocking them. Similarly my husband has echolalia, which means he involuntarily copies people's dialects/accents. Some people find it annoying, but it makes him gifted at picking up new languages very quickly and helped him when he move away from his home country. Both these things are explained evolutionarily by situations where cooperation or sameness is needed to survive -- like your jaguar example. However, the part you mention about social rivalry is interesting because I don't encounter social rivalry as frequently as I did when I was younger, when more of my female friends were single and competing for attention from men. I think the other major area where people compete for social status is when it is economic and their business or job promotion is dependent on social status. It's interesting that being the same or being different can aid our survival depending on the context. Great post, looking forward to the subsequent ones!
Hey, Rebekah I am looking forward to your next instalment. Presumably you come to the Scapegoat Mechanism. I work with whistleblowers in South Africa, as a social worker providing pschosocial support, and Rene Girard is helping me understand why they get mercilessly scapegoated for disrupting a systemic culture of corruption. I have found Luke Burgis book "Wanting" very helpful, for his distinction between "immanent" and "transcendent" desire. I think it is a more helpful distinction than "physical" and "meta-physical" desire, but that is maybe because of my bias toward theological explanations. Immanence and transcendence are not binary opposites. Or should I say with humility that I don't believe they are. I think Nicholas of Cusa's notions of "coindentia oppositorum" - the coincidence of opposites - applies. "A thing and its opposite can both be true at the same time. The individual and the general, the temporal and the eternal, the embodied and the disembodied present simultaneously". Which, in terms of my Christian/Catholic faith leaves me with the extremely uncomfortable invitation to keep walking my way into trouble with the powers that be, who have trapped themselves precisely by in a monistic fusion of immanence and transcendence (physical and metaphysical) desire. Seems to me that the fork in the road is either the road to Calvary or the road to Armageddon. Many of my whistleblower clients have chosen the road to Calvary, wishing there was another option. Seems to me that Rene Girard didn't think there was. Not exactly a recipe for building a popular social movement hey. Hope you can help us work things out.
So glad you’re digging into this! I’m interested. My first touch point comes when I think of the ways I resist copying (in overt ways, and when I’m aware of it), and then how happy I was when gifted a pair of large gold-rimmed ray-bans, given an “excuse” to look “really cool” without outright choosing ...is it more ridiculous to resist or to feel so good in them? Hmm. But aside from this, I’m really interested in the religious piece!
This is a very interesting topic and I'm curious to see how you'll develop it into a discussion about religion. I have echopraxia, which is kind of like a tic where I involuntarily copy other people's body language without realizing it. Oftentimes people don't notice or care, but I have gotten called out for it socially a few times by people who think I am intentionally mocking them. Similarly my husband has echolalia, which means he involuntarily copies people's dialects/accents. Some people find it annoying, but it makes him gifted at picking up new languages very quickly and helped him when he move away from his home country. Both these things are explained evolutionarily by situations where cooperation or sameness is needed to survive -- like your jaguar example. However, the part you mention about social rivalry is interesting because I don't encounter social rivalry as frequently as I did when I was younger, when more of my female friends were single and competing for attention from men. I think the other major area where people compete for social status is when it is economic and their business or job promotion is dependent on social status. It's interesting that being the same or being different can aid our survival depending on the context. Great post, looking forward to the subsequent ones!
Hey, Rebekah I am looking forward to your next instalment. Presumably you come to the Scapegoat Mechanism. I work with whistleblowers in South Africa, as a social worker providing pschosocial support, and Rene Girard is helping me understand why they get mercilessly scapegoated for disrupting a systemic culture of corruption. I have found Luke Burgis book "Wanting" very helpful, for his distinction between "immanent" and "transcendent" desire. I think it is a more helpful distinction than "physical" and "meta-physical" desire, but that is maybe because of my bias toward theological explanations. Immanence and transcendence are not binary opposites. Or should I say with humility that I don't believe they are. I think Nicholas of Cusa's notions of "coindentia oppositorum" - the coincidence of opposites - applies. "A thing and its opposite can both be true at the same time. The individual and the general, the temporal and the eternal, the embodied and the disembodied present simultaneously". Which, in terms of my Christian/Catholic faith leaves me with the extremely uncomfortable invitation to keep walking my way into trouble with the powers that be, who have trapped themselves precisely by in a monistic fusion of immanence and transcendence (physical and metaphysical) desire. Seems to me that the fork in the road is either the road to Calvary or the road to Armageddon. Many of my whistleblower clients have chosen the road to Calvary, wishing there was another option. Seems to me that Rene Girard didn't think there was. Not exactly a recipe for building a popular social movement hey. Hope you can help us work things out.