Things Hidden #9 - Philosophy

Greetings from Austin! I welcome the opportunity to bring to you the ninth post of Things Hidden! Episode #9 of the Things Hidden podcast is out now!

You can watch the YouTube by clicking the link here-

The script I wrote for Episode #9 can be found below. This episode is about Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory. Most of the episode examines the Bible and specifically Jesus Christ through the lens of Mimetic Theory.

Be well.

- Travis

We ready? Let’s do this.

Welcome to Episode 9 of Things Hidden. Things Hidden is an exploration of the intersection of Faith and six factors that surround faith - Religion; Physics; Evolution; Consciousness; Philosophy; and Technological Innovation. The purpose of Things Hidden is to bring people into a closer relationship with God, and through that process coming into a closer relationship with God myself.

Episode 1 was the intro to Things Hidden. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 covered Faith from a bunch of different perspectives. Episode 5 was about religion. 6 was about Physics. 7 was about evolution. And 8 was about consciousness.If you haven’t listened to those first eight episodes, I would strongly encourage you to do that before starting this one. We’re still at the very beginning of Things Hidden, and Episode 1 is definitely the best place to start.

Today we will be talking about Philosophy. You know, the study of fundamental questions about existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy. Although, this is certainly not the first episode that philosophical subjects have been discussed. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we’ve dipped our toes into philosophy from a bunch of different angles.

Since episode 1, we have consistently wrestled with epistemology - the study of knowledge. How is it that we can know something… anything? We’ve talked a lot about “acting as if” - the acknowledgement that we can't fully know history and we can’t fully comprehend God, but nevertheless choosing to act as if certain aspects of faith are true because it advances humanity. That in itself is a philosophy.

In episode 5 we discussed the philosophy of religion when we asked why religion persists across time and culture. Episode 6 on physics and Episode 8 on consciousness both veered into philosophy when discussing quantum mechanics and simulation theory. The nature of the relationship between the observer and the observed, between consciousness and reality. That’s philosophical stuff.

Episode 7 was about evolution and we discussed in depth moral philosophy and teleology - the study of purpose. We talked about the intertwinement of cooperation and morality from an evolutionary perspective, but also how evolution itself might be purposeful - the manner in which God develops consciousness to allow for a deeper understanding of the nature of God. I was going for a philosophical synthesis there - trying to bridge the “is-ought” gap that Hume so famously brought up centuries ago.

We discussed metaphysics a lot in episode 8 on consciousness. Metaphysics is the study of the fundamental nature of reality. In episode 8 we talked about the hard problem of consciousness and the mind body problem and the zombie problem and the binding problem. These are metaphysical topics.

And then, there’s been some consistent philosophical underpinnings that have spanned every episode. Throughout every episode, there’s been a steady “natural theology” approach - using reason and observation of the natural world to make inferences about God. We’ve done a lot of this through the first 8 episodes. And this natural theology is a type of philosophy itself. Additionally, we’ve been engaging in existential philosophy - the study of individual existence, freedom, and choice.

There’s also been, dare I say, a bit of a postmodern bend that has consistently showed up, although we never named it that. Questioning grand narratives, acknowledging the limits of human reason and comprehension, embracing uncertainty and paradox. That’s postmodern philosophy. Am I postmodern Christian? As it turns out, “postmodern Christianity” is an actual thing that people subscribe to. It doesn’t exactly fit for Things Hidden, but there’s a good amount of overlap.

Finally, there has been a consistent thread of pragmatism through the episodes. Not pragmatism in the cynical sense, but pragmatism in the philosophical sense - judging ideas by their fruits. This is foundational to my view on Christianity and Jesus Christ. When we look at Christianity's track record in promoting cooperation, agape love and reducing violence - a philosophical argument is being made about “truth” being validated through consequences. That’s a big one for me.

And so, there has indeed already been a lot of philosophy through the first eight episodes. But we kinda came at it through the side door. And that actually jives with how I’ve mostly approached philosophy in my own life, both before starting on Things Hidden three years ago and since that time. I’ve had a tendency to come at philosophy indirectly.

Philosophy is not something I was ever directly super into. I was a business major in school and I never took a philosophy class. I was really into behavioral economics in grad school, and in a way that is a sort of side door to philosophy. I’ve only read a handful of philosophy books in my life - one of those was Hero of a Thousand Faces and another was Finite and Infinite Games. Again, both of those I would consider sort of side doors into philosophy.

My Dad taught me many things growing up. But he did not push me to read Plato or Aristotle or Kant. My dad did however push me to learn the philosophy of great athletes and great coaches. In particular, the philosophy of coaching legend Bear Bryant was impactful on me. Bear Bryant’s quotes are a bit different than Plato’s. Coach Bryant said things like “You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him to a heavy load.” I loved all his quotes so much growing up, that I printed them out and taped them all over my mirror in the bathroom. Again, a bit of a side door to philosophy.

Even though Things Hidden is probably ⅓ philosophy, I never feel like I’ve been in love with philosophy. One thing that bothered me for a long time was how “philosophers” talk. I would consistently find that annoying. Just spit it out already! Ya know? Someone will ask a philosopher a question, and the philosopher will take 5 minutes prefacing a 20 second answer! Or just sidestep answering the actual question altogether and talk about something else. There’s a joke about this - How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb? Depends on how you define “change.”

And honestly for a long time I found this quite annoying about the broad area of philosophy. But the MOST annoying thing about it, is that as I spent increasingly more time studying in these areas for Things Hidden, I found myself inexorably sliding into thinking and talking EXACTLY like this. As it turns out, when you start trying to have any sort of discussion about a really deep topic, there are all sorts of presuppositions that are built in to most any point you might be trying to make. And if you don’t explain those presuppositions, the whole point is often… kinda lost.

And so I started finding myself increasingly sounding like the Jordan Peterson meme - “what do you mean belieeeve?”. So I guess maybe there actually is something to giving a 5 minute preface to a 20 second answer that is so common in philosophy content.

And there is without a doubt, a ton of philosophy content out there. Many popular Youtube channels putting out all sorts of great philosophy content. Here. Today. We are going to focus on a very thin slice of philosophy called Mimetic Theory. There is already a lot of mimetic theory content out there. Just type it in your YouTube search bar. A lot of good stuff. Great overviews. I have found that there is some, but not a lot, of content out there about Mimetic Theory’s relationship with Jesus Christ and Christianity. And as you can probably guess at this point, I happen to think that’s the most interesting and important part of the whole deal.

Mimetic Theory is a big one for me. After all, the name Things Hidden was, in part, inspired by the book Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World, written by Rene Girard, the father of mimetic theory. It’s not an overexaggeration to say my discovery of mimetic theory changed my life. It is the quintessential example of “once you see it, you can’t unsee it”. I first came across mimetic theory in an article about Peter Thiel and mimetic theory in 2016. Thiel was a student of Girard’s at Stanford and Thiel has been the most well-known proponent of mimetic theory outside of Girard himself. Thiel even credits his very early investment in Facebook to his understanding of mimetic theory.

I was riveted by the idea of mimetic theory from the moment I first read the explanation. I immediately got the feeling I was uncovering “something hidden” about the way the world works.The more I chewed on it, the more compelling I found the framework of mimetic theory to be. It really did seem to explain so much about human relationship dynamics.

To be fair, I didn’t actually read Girard’s books cover to cover. I still haven’t. I started a couple but I found them quite tough to read and comprehend. I have listened to a fair amount of his lectures and interviews - but again, they can be pretty tough to get through. So most of what I’ve learned about mimetic theory I’ve picked up from reading or listening to other proponents of it.

In the years after initially learning of Girard, I picked up more pieces here and there about mimetic theory’s relationship to Christianity, and I became increasingly enthralled with their intertwinement. Mimetic theory opened up a whole new angle to Christianity for me outside of the American Evangelicalism that I had mostly been exposed to. And for me, that angle expanded in the years that followed and eventually became a significant part of what you’ve heard here so far with Things Hidden.

So. What is Mimetic Theory? There’s some of you listening to this right now that have never heard of Mimetic Theory before I brought it up. And there are some of you that are so into Mimetic Theory, the moment you heard the name of my podcast you guessed it was probably related to Girard.

I will spare you the hour long introductory explanation and go with the ten minute introductory explanation. Rene Girard started out as a literary critic. Through his work, he began to consistently observe a pattern of interpersonal behavioral dynamics throughout literature. He examined many literary works but was especially focused on Sophocles, Euripides, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, and Proust.

The pattern he kept uncovering was this - people desire things because they see other people desiring them, and this causes rivalry and the rivalry causes conflict and the conflict causes scapegoating. There’s certainly more to it than that - but that is Mimetic Theory in a single line - people desire things because they see other people desiring them, and this causes rivalry and the rivalry causes conflict and the conflict causes scapegoating. And Girard’s view was that this tendency is actually essentially the explanation for how all of human interaction works. And crucially, Girard showed that this tendency for imitation (mimesis means imitation), is almost entirely subconscious. This tendency defines our entire species and yet we don’t even realize we’re doing it! How crazy is that?

According to Girard, we don’t actually know what we want. We learn to want by watching other people want things. You don’t ACTUALLY want to drive a Lincoln. You think you want to drive a Lincoln because Matthew Mcconaughey is in a Lincoln commercial and you want to BE Matthew Mcconaughey. Quite literally the entire concept of celebrity endorsement is just mimetic theory.

So then, when multiple people start wanting the same things, this causes “mimetic rivalry”. And the more similar we are to our rival, the more intense the rivalry becomes. It’s like, you’re not actually competing with Jeff Bezos for status. You’re competing with your coworker who is about to get that promotion. You’re competing with your neighbor who has the nicer lawn. You’re competing with your sibling that mom seems to like a little bit more. The people closest to us become our biggest rivals precisely because we're imitating each other's desires. Now take that idea and scale it up to communities. To societies. To nation states.

Girard says that behind all mimetic desire is the desire for the “fullness of being” that the model (the person being imitated) is perceived to possess. This is “keeping up with the Joneses” to a tee. And as mimetic rivalry heats up, the rivals increasingly become obsessed with each other as obstacles to the same shared object of desire. And the desire for the actual object itself starts to disappear from attention. To an outside observer, the two rivals become more and more alike. The term for this is “mimetic doubles”. And the two rivals won’t even be conscious of the shift that has occurred. They’ll insist on their individual differences and the differences of the driving factors behind their own desires. This is the perfect characterization of the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States.

Once you start looking for it, you find that this mimetic rivalry is pervasive up and down and across human existence. At the micro and the macro levels. INDIVIDUAL psychology is actually always already SOCIAL psychology. Layer upon layer upon layer of mimetic rivalry. The mimetic rivalry creates tension and the tension builds. Interpersonal or intergroup dynamics start to become unstable - whether at the level of your coworker or the level of a nation state. The threat of violence looms large and all too often that threat of violence comes to devastating fruition. That’s mimetic violence. Girard shows us that mimetic violence has been pervasive for humanity. So if this is constantly happening, how have we survived this long without utterly destroying ourselves?

Enter the scapegoat mechanism. When tensions from mimetic rivalry reach a breaking point, communities unconsciously identify an innocent party and blame that party for the tension. This blame then unites the group against the singular scapegoat. Classic mob mentality. Public opinion is swirling and then everyone suddenly agrees – THAT thing is the problem. Kill them, exile them, destroy them. And the problem will be solved. Peace will return. This action is referred to as the “founding murder”. Amazingly, the scapegoat mechanism works. It really works. This is ACTUALLY the release valve that has kept humanity moving forward in the face of tremendous mimetic rivalry.

After the scapegoat is identified and eliminated, the very same group that did the eliminating goes back and wraps a sacredness around that scapegoat, because the elimination brought peace to the community. This is what the term “sacred violence” is referring to. That sacredness, it ends up being the foundation for ancient religions. And those ancient religions were in turn the basis for modern religion. If Girard is right, then mimetic theory is the explanation for religion.

Girard says this whole scapegoating process is only effective if the group doesn’t see through it. That’s crucial to the whole thing actually working. The group needs to ACTUALLY believe the scapegoat is guilty. They have to. If the group recognized they were just murdering an innocent person to release their own internal tensions, it wouldn't bring peace. It would just be murder.

Girard puts forth compelling evidence that this process repeats throughout human history. Mimetic rivalry causes tension. That tension is released through scapegoating. Rinse and repeat. Cultures develop rituals and myths to reenact and hide this founding murder. Ritual sacrifice emerges as a controlled way to release tension before it explodes. Laws, prohibitions and taboos develop to minimize mimetic rivalry. But it's all built on this foundation of hidden violence.

Girard points out that the evidence for all this throughout human history is shrouded because “history is written by the victors” - those doing the scapegoating. But it’s even deeper than that truism - because the scapegoaters aren’t just spinning a story in their favor after the fact. They genuinely CANNOT see what they have done. Scapegoating is unconscious self deception that is required for the mechanism to actually work and dissipate tension.

The scapegoating community misunderstands its own action. And that misunderstanding is a feature, not a bug. Girard, who was French, called this “meconnaissance” - a sort of structural blindness. The community MUST believe the scapegoat was actually guilty. And that the gods DEMANDED this death. And that cosmic order was RESTORED because of it. And this view is confirmed with hindsight because the release valve ACTUALLY works. The peace that follows after the sacred violence “confirms” the scapegoat’s guilt. “Look, the plague ended after we burned the witch! She WAS causing it!"

The group conceals the scapegoat behind a screen of false divinity. A transformation of the scapegoating process has to occur before the memory of it is cemented into the collective consciousness of the group. And this transformation happens instantaneously alongside the sacred violence. The event is EXPERIENCED by the scapegoaters as a religious revelation. There is a feeling of sacred awe that is packaged up alongside the collective catharsis that occurs in sacred violence. The scapegoat seems to transform before their eyes from monster to god - from source of chaos to source of order.

That’s what myths do. They deliver the transformation. It’s why myths are often so weird and contradictory. In the myth of the founding of Rome, Romulus kills his twin brother Remus over a boundary dispute, but then becomes Rome's sacred founder. Oedipus is simultaneously the worst criminal, guilty of murder and incest, while also revered as a sacred hero. Dionysus is simultaneously the god who drives people insane and the god who brings divine joy and liberation. It’s why myths so often include destruction and rebirth. Osiris is dismembered then reconstituted. Adonis is gored by a boar and then resurrected.

That’s what religious sacrifice does. That’s what ritual does. They deliver the transformation through a process called “ritual substitution”. Think about it. After the scapegoat is eliminated through the founding murder, a time of peace emerges. But the community faces a problem - how do you get that peace back again when the next mimetic crisis inevitably hits? You can’t just wait for spontaneous mob violence - that’s too dangerous and too unpredictable.

So rituals develop as a way to preemptively discharge tensions through controlled repetition of a transformed version of the founding murder. Let me say that one more time - rituals develop as a way to preemptively discharge tensions through controlled repetition of a transformed version of the founding murder. It’s a version that’s planned, with rules and boundaries and symbolism and a substitute victim. The ritual prevents a real crisis by reenacting the resolution of a prior crisis. But the participants don’t fully understand what’s going on. They know the ritual is important. The ritual somehow maintains cosmic order, but they don’t consciously recognize it as a reenactment of the founding murder.

Ancient Greek animal sacrifice followed a precise pattern that mimicked human murder. The sacrificial animal was decorated like a human victim and paraded through town. The animal must "consent" to its death, so they'd sprinkle water on its head so it would nod up and down. The participants would share in the killing by all touching the knife or eating the meat. The ritual would even include a mock trial where the knife would be "blamed" for the murder. Think about how clear the displacement of human violence is in this process – controlled, substituted and sanctified. But still fundamentally about collective killing. Many such cases. Want a modern one? How about Burning Man. A giant symbolic wood figure is ritualistically burned while the tens of thousands of people gathered around it experience an enormous collective catharsis.

Myths and rituals don't symbolize violence. They emanate from violence. They manage it. They perpetuate it in controlled doses. Girard places real, physical violence at the center of his theory. The violence isn't symbolic or metaphorical—it's the fundamental problem that human culture EXISTS to solve (however imperfectly). The mimetic crisis leads to real violence that threatens to destroy communities. The scapegoat mechanism involves real victims who suffer real persecution. And without this process, humanity wouldn’t have survived. You channel all-against-all violence into all-against-one violence. And it allows communities to survive repeated mimetic crises. Scapegoating as an adaptive trait.

So that’s the process of mimetic theory. And Girard’s radical claim is that all of human culture emerges from this process. The sacred violence gets transformed into ritual and then the ritual gradually evolves into social institutions and those institutions make up life as we know it. And this process has been happening continuously since before recorded history. And it still happens today. Pretty nuts, huh? Trust me, the more time you chew on it, the more compelling it becomes.

One other side point I want to emphasize here before we keep going, because it’s an important one. And that point is mirror neurons. Perhaps you’ve heard of mirror neurons before. They are the group of neurons that fire equally when we execute a motor act and when we observe another individual perform the same or similar motor act. These were first discovered in 1991, so not all that long ago at all.

We know that many animals learn by watching others. We know that humans do this in a much more sophisticated manner than apes. And we know apes do this in a more sophisticated manner than other mammals. If you’ve ever been around a baby for any amount of time, you know how crucial imitation is in their development. Babies are CONSTANTLY imitating. When you think about it, our entire existence is underpinned by imitation. From the moment we come out of the womb, we learn by watching others do. And that makes the world go round.

By the time mirror neurons were discovered, Girard had been pushing mimetic theory for 20 years. Think about the magnitude of confirmation that mirror neurons provided to mimetic theory. Girard had been pounding the table for two decades trying to tell humanity why they act the way that they do. And neuroscience comes along and delivers scientific proof for the exact neurological mechanism by which mimetic desire occurs. How crazy is that?

Which brings us to the intersection of mimetic theory and Jesus Christ. This is the part that gets skipped over all too often in popular mimetic theory content. People love the bite-sized front part of mimetic theory - we desire things because we see other people desiring them. Super sexy. Super digestible. This was the insight that led Peter Thiel to be the first investor in Facebook and people eat that kind of stuff up. Then you lose some people when you start talking about the whole scapegoating thing. Because it gets more intangible. It’s harder to explain in a straightforward manner. The scapegoating that is all around us is intentionally hidden, so it’s not necessarily immediately apparent when you go looking for it. It requires looking through the surface level of things to uncover a deeper meaning, and not everyone loves doing that.

Then, by the time you get to the Jesus Christ part of mimetic theory, you’ve lost even more folks. Because a LOT of the philosopher types are atheist agnostics who don’t want to give Christ any credit at all. And then a ton of the Christian apologetics folks don’t promote mimetic theory because it disrupts status quo ideas about the point of Jesus Christ and Jesus’ relationship with God. So however many people you started out with that were interested in mimetic theory just from the one sentence tagline, you whittle down to a small portion of that by the time you get to Jesus Christ. But that is precisely where I want to focus here today.

The first point to make is that mimetic rivalry and sacred violence were already being transformed in the Hebrew scriptures long before Jesus ever came along. After all, theactual process of literal scapegoating - the projection of sins onto an actual goat and then the expulsion of that goat - is described in detail in Leviticus 16. Leviticus is two books after Genesis - so this goes way way back for the Hebrews.

From the jump, the Bible has a unique "anti-mythological" trajectory that unfolds as the Bible goes along. The Old Testament gradually exposes the innocence of victims and the violence of human communities. And then culminates in the complete revelation of this truth in Jesus Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. Let me say that a different way- mimetic theory illuminates the Hebrew Bible's gradual revelation of the innocence of victims. From Genesis through the prophets, stories increasingly side with victims against the mob, in preparation for the full revelation in Christ.

It’s not that there were no stories at all before the Hebrew scriptures that revealed the scapegoating mechanism. That’s not true. But the Hebrew scriptures and then the New Testament give the first systematic and consistent revelation of the scapegoating mechanism. These texts repeatedly and explicitly: 1) Show the innocence of the victim; 2) Reveal the mob's violence as unjust; 3) Expose the scapegoating process itself; and 4) Side with God as defending the victim.

Most famously is the comparison of the story of Cain and Abel to the story of Romulus and Remus. Both stories follow the same pattern - Two brothers in conflict. One kills the other. The survivor starts an entirely new civilization. The murder is foundational to the civilization's culture. Same for both stories. But in Romulus and Remus - the killing is justified, the victim is guilty, the violence establishes order, the killer becomes sacred and the society is built on this “justified” violence. In this myth, Romulus was right to kill. The murder isn’t a crime - it’s the birth of law and order.

The story of Cain and Abel tells the same story from a different angle. And remember, this story is in chapter 4 of Genesis. Real famous story. According to the story, Cain and Abel are the first two human sons EVER. So this story is very VERY foundational. With Cain and Abel, the killing is pure murder. The victim is innocent. The violence is exposed as evil. The killer is cursed. Yet civilization still emerges from the killer. The story in Genesis acknowledges that civilization is founded on murder but refuses to justify it. The story is told from God's perspective. Which is the victim's perspective.

Genesis 4 says: Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

After Cain murders his brother, God banishes Cain from His presence. He is exiled into the lands, and Cain is scared he will be killed in the wild. But God gives Cain a mark. The mark of Cain. God tells Cain this mark will always protect him so that no thing will enact vengeance on Cain for killing his brother. God explicitly protects the first son in human history from the very violence that he himself initiated against his own brother. It is the prohibition of murder, even the murder of a murderer, like Cain. God prevents the mimetic violence from perpetuating.

You CANNOT overstate the impact of this shift, from the way Romulus and Remus is told to the way Cain and Abel is told. I get choked up just thinking about the magnitude of the ramifications stemming from that shift. IT RADICALLY ALTERED THE COURSE OF HUMAN HISTORY.

18 chapters later in the book of Genesis, you get to Abraham and his son Isaac. Again, real famous story. God tells Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham said “ok God”. And he went to the mountaintop and built the bonfire and tied up his son Isaac and put his son in the middle of the wood and was about to stab his son with a knife and set him on fire. God came down and stopped Abraham from killing his son. God causes a ram to suddenly appear, and Abraham uses the ram for the sacrifice, in place of his son Isaac. The substitution of ritual in place of sacred violence. God told Abraham he was so proud of him for being willing to sacrifice his own son, and that Abraham was going to be blessed tremendously. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Modern readers of this story often succumb to the temptation of reading it through the psychology of modern experience - which has long ago been sensitized to the horror of child sacrifice. But that misses the whole point. HOW DO YOU THINK CHILD SACRIFICE CAME TO BE SEEN AS HORRIFIC? Abraham lived in a world where NOT being willing to sacrifice your child to your god would have been the weird choice. The power of the story isn't that Abraham was willing - the power is that God said to stop.

Just three chapters later in Genesis, we get to the story of Isaac’s two sons - Jacob and Esau. Another real famous story. Jacob, the younger son, wants Esau’s birthright. Classic mimetic rivalry. Esau gets so hungry, that Jacob convinces Esau to trade him his birthright for a bowl of soup. Esau wants soup because he’s famished - a straightforward biological desire. Jacob wants Esau’s birthright because Esau HAS IT - see what’s happening there? Then in order to get the blessing from his father, Jacob dresses up like Esau to fool his blind father into blessing him, instead of Esau. Jacob literally erases his own identity to BECOME his rival and steal the object of desire.

Years pass in the story. Jacob is prosperous but continuously suffers from mimetic conflict. And then eventually, after years of separation, Jacob has to face Esau again. But the night before their meeting, Jacob spends all night wrestling with an unknown figure, who turns out to be God Himself. This is where God gives Jacob his new name, Israel. The wrestling with God is the unwinding of mimetic desire. Jacob wrestles with two blessings: the one he wanted that he stole from Esau, and the one meant for him from God. Jacob is forced to confront the fact that his entire life has been about wanting to be someone else.

When Jacob finally meets Esau after all those years, he says, "To see your face is like seeing the face of God". After all that rivalry, all that deception, all that mimetic madness, Jacob finally sees his brother as a person, a child of God, not as a model or an obstacle. The mimetic spell is broken. The two brothers embrace. They weep. And they go their separate ways. Not because they hate each other, but because they finally don't need to BE each other anymore. They can just be brothers. Different brothers. Living different lives. No longer locked in that suffocating dance of mimetic desire.

Just a bit later on in Genesis, we get to the story of Joseph and his 10 brothers. These are Jacob’s 11 sons. Again, very famous, very early story. The story of Joseph is once again chocked full of mimetic components. The beautiful coat of many colors given to Joseph by his father encites mimetic rivalry in his brothers. The brothers come together as a singular group with contagious collective animosity. Classic mob mentality type stuff. The brothers act explicitly out of jealousy and go to kill Joseph, but decide to sell him into slavery instead. Afterwards they immediately lie and say he was eaten by a wild beast, and they plant the bloodied coat as false evidence to cover up the lie. That is collective violence against a single victim followed by a mythological cover story.

The whole story is told from the perspective of the scapegoat, and the scapegoat’s innocence is totally pure. It’s not like Cain or Jacob who did crappy things, God called them out on it, but still blessed them anyway. This time, Joseph didn’t do anything and still got scapegoated by his brothers. The brothers are haunted with guilt and troubles after selling Joseph into slavery. Many years later, once Joseph obtains immense power and his brothers are at his service, Joseph does not enact vengeance. Joseph tests his brothers to see if their hearts have been transformed, and the transformation is shown in the oldest brother’s willingness to step in and become a slave in place of the younger brother.

At the end, Joseph’s true identity is unveiled to his brothers. It is the moment where the brothers are forced to confront their past actions of scapegoating an innocent victim. Joseph forgives them and tells them “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good". It’s a reframing of the violence without justifying it.

Cain and Abel. Abraham and Issac. Jacob and Esau. Joseph and his brothers. All four stories included in the FIRST book of the Bible. All four stories loaded down with mimetic significance. All four stories presenting scapegoating and God siding with the victim.

The heavy mimetic theory undertones continue on through the Old Testament. The 10th and final commandment in Exodus 20: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor”. Doesn’t really get much more mimetically straightforward than that, does it?

In Isaiah you have the Suffering Servant passages - again, very famous. He was despised and rejected by mankind" (53:3). "He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth" (53:9). "Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God" (53:4). Mimesis to a tee.

In Isaiah 1 God tells the Hebrews to stop bringing meaningless offerings, and instead to seek justice and defend the oppressed. In Hosea 6, God tells the Hebrews - "I desire mercy, not sacrifice" - God doesn't require violence to maintain cosmic order. The Psalms are loaded with scapegoat references from the perspective of the scapegoat. Psalm 35: "False witnesses rise up; they question me on things I know nothing about". Psalm 69: "Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head". Psalm 38: "My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away". And then the Psalms present God as siding against the mob violence and with the victim of scapegoating. Psalm 18: "He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support".

Which brings us to the book of Job. Which is probably the clearest, most in-depth portrayal of the entire mimetic process in the Old Testament. Job is a deeply righteous man. Blameless in his words and actions. Satan makes a wager with God that creates tremendous and arbitrary suffering for the innocent Job. Job loses everything - his children are killed. His wealth is destroyed. His health collapses. His wife turns against him. All because of a wager between Satan and God, not anything Job did to deserve this terrible fate.

Job’s friends come to see him, at first to comfort him. But they insist that his suffering must indicate his guilt. Job’s friends tell him his children died because they sinned against God. The friends start out sympathetic with Job and then gradually unite in their accusation against Job. By the end of it, they are unanimously wishing for Job’s destruction. Job’s friends demand his confession - he must admit guilt to restore social order. But Job refuses. He has nothing to confess to. Job 27: "I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my innocence and never let go of it". Job refuses to take on the scapegoat’s traditional role against unanimous accusation. In Job 23: "If only I knew where to find him... I would state my case before him... There the upright can establish their innocence before him". Job demands a trial with God, not a sacrifice. He treats God as a judge who can recognize innocence.

In the end, Job is totally restored by God. His health, wealth and family come back twofold from what he had before. God sides with the victim and against the accusers. God never explains Job’s suffering. God never justifies the violence. God does not confirm any retribution. And this non-explanation is crucial: suffering cannot be justified through moral equations.

Job reveals every aspect of scapegoating: 1) Arbitrary selection of victim; 2) Community unanimity in accusation; 3) Religious justification of violence; 4) The victim's protests of innocence; and 5) Divine vindication of the victim. A massive reveal about the mimetic desires of human nature.

And so you can see how pervasive mimetic theory is in the Hebrew scriptures. And according to Girard, all of that is the lead up to the ultimate revealing of mimesis, scapegoating and sacred violence - the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Rene Girard was raised nominally Catholic but was essentially an agnostic until he was 35, when his research led him to a spiritual awakening back to a life of active Catholicism. He converted to Christianity while writing his first book about mimetic theory. Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Jesus's ministry systematically undermined the scapegoat mechanism. Jesus' healing of outcasts, eating with sinners, and challenging of religious authorities all represent acts of re-including those whom society has expelled. This is absolutely BEDROCK CORE to the teachings of Jesus. Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God is not just a spiritual reality but a concrete social alternative to societies organized around sacred violence. Let me say that one more time- Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God is not just a spiritual reality but a concrete social alternative to societies organized around sacred violence. The Sermon on the Mount's commands to love enemies and turn the other cheek are interpreted not as impossible ideals but as practical strategies for breaking cycles of mimetic retaliation.

The Beatitudes - “Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” You get it now, right? You see what’s going on?

Jesus's death on the cross fundamentally exposes and condemns the violent mechanisms upon which human civilization is built. The Gospels explicitly reveal what myths hide: the innocence of the victim and the complicity of the crowd. Pilate's declaration of Jesus's innocence. The injustice of Jesus’ fake “trial”. Caiaphas the high priest saying “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish”. Jesus asks God to forgive the mob because they "know not what they do". The Roman soldier’s recognition at Christ’s death that "truly this was the Son of God".

All of it serves to expose the scapegoat mechanism. And then the resurrection is God's definitive vindication of the innocent victim and the ultimate rejection of sacred violence. Unlike myths that hide the innocence of the victim, the Gospels explicitly proclaim Jesus's innocence while showing how religious and political authorities unite to cause His death.

And this next part, wide swaths of Christianity gets wrong. The resurrection is not God’s approval of the sacrifice of the blameless Jesus. The resurrection is God's vindication of the innocent victim and the complete rejection of sacred violence. This is in opposition to penal substitution atonement theory, which positions God as being complicit in the violence. God is not complicit in the murdering of Christ. The cross does not save us THROUGH sacrifice. The cross saves us FROM sacrifice. Christ's death doesn't appease an angry God or pay a cosmic debt. Christ’s death exposes and undermines the scapegoating mechanism that has organized human society since its inception. Penal substitution atonement theories inadvertently perpetuate the very sacrificial logic that Christ came to overthrow. Penal substitution positions God as complicit in the violence that the Gospel reveals as fundamentally opposed to the divine nature. This cannot be. There is too much evidence to the contrary about the nature of God.

Christianity exposes fundamental truths about human nature and social organization that remain hidden in myth and culture. It should come as no surprise that the most significant theological event in human history also ends up being the most significant anthropological event in human history. And that is what we find with Jesus Christ. Mimetic theory doesn’t reduce the Gospels to anthropology. Mimetic theory reveals the anthropological truth OF the Gospels.

For Girard, the death and resurrection of Christ is the culmination of the entire Holy Bible’s diagnosis of, and prescription for, mimetic rivalry. But arguably, the spot where this full unveiling is most clearly illuminated comes from the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus. Peter is Jesus’ chief disciple. The main dude. At the Last Supper, the night before Jesus is crucified, Jesus tells Peter that before the rooster crows, Peter will deny knowing him three times. Peter vehemently denies this, saying he will go to the death for Jesus. Later on that same night, Jesus and some of his disciples, including Peter, go to pray in the garden of Gethsemane. This is when Jesus is arrested by the Roman soldiers. Peter chops one of the soldier’s ears off. Jesus rebukes this violent act by Peter and heals the soldier’s ear. Jesus tells Peter that those who live by the sword die by the sword. And Jesus is arrested and taken away.

A short while later, Peter is gathered around a fire in a courtyard. A servant girl there accuses Peter of being a disciple of Jesus. Peter denies it. Then a second servant girl says the same thing and Peter denies it again. Then a group of people standing around the fire tell Peter he must be with Jesus of Galilee, because he talks like a Galilean. Peter curses and swears he doesn’t know Jesus. At that moment, the rooster crows. Matthew 26:75 says “Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly”.

All four gospels include this story, with some variation in the details. Only the gospel of John includes an explicit resolution to this story. After Jesus is resurrected, He appears to Peter. He asks Peter three times - “do you love me?” And three times Peter says yes. And each time, Peter says yes, the resurrected Jesus tells Peter “feed my sheep”.

At this point, you’re 45 minutes into an episode about mimetic theory. And if you can’t see the mimetic theory in this story about Peter, I dunno what to tell you. When the mob comes to arrest Jesus, Peter tries to fight injustice with violence. Jesus REBUKES this action. PETER CUTS THE ROMAN SOLDIERS EAR OFF AND JESUS PUTS HIS EAR BACK ON. Jesus shows us that even when facing death, you cannot retaliate against mimetic violence.

Shortly thereafter, Jesus has succumbed to the mimetic madness of the mob. The mob is dead set on killing the innocent Jesus. The strength of the mob mentality is utterly overwhelming. Peter - Jesus’ main disciple - the guy that Jesus says the church will be built on top of - cannot withstand the onslaught of the mimetic madness of the mob. He is begging the mob to let him be a part of it. Peter is DISGUSTED that he “sounds like” a guy from Galilee, where Jesus is from. Peter is scratching and clawing with every fiber of his being for the mob to accept him as one of their own in opposition to his Lord Jesus. THAT’S HOW POWERFUL MIMETIC DESIRE IS.

And then. The rooster crows. And boom. Peter snaps out of it. Snaps out of the HYPNOSIS of mimetic desire, scapegoating, and the mimetic madness of the mob. And he weeps. He weeps when he realizes the subconscious urge that overtook his conscious love for his Lord Jesus.

The point would be proven if the story ended there. But in the gospel of John, the story doesn’t end there. There is a reinstatement of Peter by the resurrected Jesus. A forgiveness made possible by the resurrection. Again, it doesn’t matter whether it literally happened or not. I don’t know if it literally happened. That’s not the point. The story is realer than true and it’s truer than real.

The point is that the resurrected Christ provides forgiveness and reconciliation for Peter. And Jesus tells Peter - feed my sheep. Don’t sacrifice the sheep! Don’t burn the sheep at the alter to appease God! God isn’t calling you to sacrifice the sheep! God is calling you to feed the sheep! Don’t take life! Give life! Be an agent of LIFE, not of death! And even when you mess up and make mistakes, which we all inevitably will. Even when we get swept up in the mimetic desire and act out mob mentality instead of love. God forgives you. And God loves you. And God is there. Resurrected from His death that we all collectively caused through our mimetic rivalry tendencies. God transcends mimetic desire. And He invites us all to do the same, with His help.

OK. There’s a couple points I want to wrap up with here. The first is that not all mimesis is bad. I want to make sure you don’t leave with that impression. Imitation makes the world go round. Take a moment and reflect on your own life. Who were you exposed to at an early age that you wanted to emulate? Was it a parent? An older sibling? Michael Jordan? Think about a boss you had early on in your career that showed you the ropes. Think about a family you knew that seemed to have everything going their way. A huge part of why humanity has made it as far as we have is because we developed complex neurological capabilities to imitate what we see. We can observe and we can imitate. This is hugely beneficial. It’s just that it comes with its own unique set of side effects that must be dealt with. That is what mimetic theory describes.

The second point is that Christians sometimes very obviously lose track of the role that Jesus Christ plays in extinguishing mimetic rivalry. Christians are not immune to this primal urge. No one is. So if the Bible reveals the scapegoat mechanism, why has Christianity historically continued to act violently?

Because the revelation is so radical that even Christians have difficulty fully accepting it. The history of Christian violence is a failure to fully embrace the Gospel's mimetic revelation. It speaks to how powerful this urge is in all of us. And how deeply hidden it is in our subconscious. You end up with well-intentioned Christians reverting back to scapegoating, and doing it IN CHRIST’S NAME. What a profound irony given that Christ's death exposed scapegoating. We are all called to push back against this mimetic tendency. And we will inevitably fail at times. Just like Peter. But we pick ourselves up and brush ourselves off. And ask for forgiveness and receive that forgiveness. And remind ourselves that we don’t have to be beholden to our mimetic desires. The death and resurrection of Christ shows us that there is a better way.

And the last point I want to make is this. The Gospel calls Christians to recognize and resist scapegoating wherever possible. The purpose of understanding mimetic theory is not just to understand why the world is the way it is, but to understand why YOU are the way YOU are. Why I am the way I am. Mimesis can be a wonderful thing. We learn from imitation and that has produced so much human flourishing. Our mirror neurons are truly one of our greatest strengths. But we have to be aware of our blind spots. Mimetic rivalry is a blind spot that we all have. It is a worthwhile thing for you to actively push back against it when you feel it creeping up. That’s good for you and good for the world.

At the end of the day, mimetic theory is a strongly relational view of humanity. And Christianity is the most relationally-focused of all major world religions. So those two parallel one another in that regard. You could make a very strong argument that if mimetic theory accurately characterizes the nature of interhuman relationships, then Christianity is best suited to address the chaos that mimetic theory describes. IF YOU THINK MIMETIC THEORY IS ACCURATE, YOU CAN’T NOT THINK CHRISTIANITY IS IMPORTANT. Maybe someone is listening to this right now thinking “I think mimetic theory is accurate but I don’t think Christianity is worthwhile.” With all due respect, you’re not looking hard enough. Seriously. Look at Mimetic Theory harder and then look at Christianity harder. God will show Himself to you there. I’m sure of it.

Ok. That’s it. We covered a lot here. Mimetic theory is a huge one for me and my personal faith framework. It is not a particularly bite-sized concept. Before I started writing for this episode, I had spent probably 50 hours on mimetic theory. You’d think that would be enough time to properly grasp the concept. But I still found myself uncovering more as I was digging deeper in preparation for this episode. Mimetic theory is simultaneously simplistic and yet incredibly complex. But there are deep truths there. I am certain of it.