Following on from yesterday’s post, I wanted to explore something I mentioned a week or so ago in passing. Mimesis. (By strange coincidence, Luke Burgess has guest posted on Bari Weiss’ Substack on the same thing today).
As I explained yesterday, it’s our limbic system that deals with the choices we make and the things we choose to desire. Desire is all important in Mimetic theory, as advanced by Rene Girard and the likes.
The theory states that as children, we learn by mimicking. At one time, people thought that as we grow, we lose that ability. But it seems we don’t, it just becomes a lot more subtle. Instead of mimicking actions as adults, we tend to mimic other people’s desires. This is what makes advertising and social media so powerful, and in particular, the role of ‘influencers’ in recent years.
This can have positive or negative effects. On the negative side, it can sour relationships, as people perceive others desiring what they want, and if that thing is scarce (a promotion, a nice lady or fella, or limited supply of goods), competition ensues. On the positive side, where there is no perception of lack or competition, it can create the groundwork for amazing friendships and feats of creativity.
Mimesis, being about desire, all happens in the limbic system. As we saw yesterday, this doesn’t deal with language, and operates in the sphere of emotions. And so we don’t really perceive it happening to us. We just start feeling that we want or desire something because someone we like or admired expressed a desire for that thing too.
It can be quite infections too, and depending on perceptions of competition or image, can be very good or very bad. It explains why we tend to be far more productive in groups than on our own - the sum always being far greater than the parts. It also explains why we have fads and trends, why things on social media go viral, and why people all jump onto a bandwagon, often without really thinking through the logic of it.
Take, for example, climate change. The number of people I’ve heard express disbelief at intelligent, articulate people, gluing themselves to trains, gantries or pieces of artwork because they passionately believe something that, given critical thought, really isn’t as clear-cut as they think. In the same way that we suspend our critical thinking when watching a film, so people in groups of like-minded people develop a ‘hive-mind’, and critical thinking flies to the wind. And because it’s all operating on the level of emotions, there’s no arguing with them. Rational debate is fairly useless. They just have to figure it out for themselves. Eventually.
Mimesis can account for a lot of human behaviour, good and bad, but particularly bad. And when enough people all jump into a similar mindset on something (CRT, identity politics, religion, left- or right-wing thinking), things can progress from bad to worse quickly, and sooner or later it gets to a point where there seems no way out. I’ll explore this tomorrow.