Beneath the Veil of Strange Verses by Jeremiah L. Alberg 2013 2A

How would the idea of “mimesis” apply to our evolved Lebenswelt of constrained complexity, marked by selection pressures of intergroup competition?

What advantage would there be for each person to desire the same thing (that someone else desires) and to unconsciously deny that the other person – somehow – inspired the desire?

I cannot see an advantage, except for one circumstance.

What if that “thing” was an “object that was the most important object in the group”?

What if that object was so important that each person – by ‘himself’ (but in mimetic desire) – was open to sacrificing ‘himself’ for this object?

What if each person would seek opportunities to engage in some life and death struggle centered on the object?

If so, then any person in the group could be a hero, even in death, especially if ‘his’ death ended a horrible passage and allowed others to continue to live, that is, to keep the object alive.

To keep the object alive was to keep the group alive.  To keep the object alive was to allow your parents, your children, your cousins, your brothers and sisters, to live.