I want what you want, because I know what you want, and because I know that, what you want, is what I want.

Delineated in this tortured statement is the “object that brings everyone into relation”.  We all want the same object, an object that cannot be practically named (with a referential way of talking) because it is not a thing.

What is the advantage?  If the object survives, we survive.

What niche does this represent?

What label will suffice?  Consider the amazing adaptations of our biological world.  The wings of birds.  The teeth of the shark. They are wonders.

So we are wondrously adapted.  This is our niche.

Mimesis^constrained, the coordination of souls willing to sacrifice themselves for the “object that brings all into relation”, labels the adaptation.

What is the nature of “I want …”?

It seems to me that the original attitude for an evolving mammal would have been: I want that thing for me.

Or maybe, in a social group: I want that thing for me, despite what you want.

Intergroup competition might have changed that to: I know that you want it, but I want it too, for myself, not because I know that you want it.

More intergroup selection pressure might bring the individual to: I will abstain from taking the things that another has and will defend my things from anyone else trying to take them.

These modifications reduced intragroup conflict. They did not advance intragroup solidarity in the face of intergroup competition.

What would advance intragroup solidarity in the face of intergroup competition?

How about this: I want what you want, because I know what you want, and because I know that, what you want, is what I want.

This would increase intragroup solidarity.

Evolutionary biologists understand that adaptation increases reproductive success.

An adaptation that increased intragroup conflict, in the milieu of intergroup competition, would require a correspondingly large adaptive advantage for the individual or for the group itself.

What would be the advantage of infantile mimetic rivalry, of “me wanting the same thing as you, because you wanted it, as if I came up with the idea myself”?

I find it hard to imagine an adaptive advantage.

I don’t know whether what I am about to write is true.  But it seems to me, from reading what Girard’s admirers, such as Alberg, have written, Professor Girard saw through the eyes of that parent, and concluded that, in human evolution, the “tearing the world apart” of infantile mimetic rivalry had to be mitigated.  In order to survive, groups had to evolve some cultural mechanism for short-circuiting the escalating violence.  That mechanism was scapegoating.

And weirdly, Girard was correct in his diagnosis, because in our realm, the realm of unconstrained complexity (and the realm of all writing, I must add) we are like infants without parents.  We do not have immediate experiential access to the “object that brings us into relation”; that is, “the object that we compete to sacrifice for”.  So we fight – like those children – over what we imagine that “thing” to be.

Revelation was necessary.  Girard was correct in his conclusion that Christianity (emerging from Judaism and Greek Philosophy) provides a unique antidote to scapegoating because it encourages us to recognize the phenomenon.

But even more weirdly, Girard never contemplated the possibility that mimetic rivalry could have been adaptive in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Girard saw through the eyes of the Parent.  But now, his insight is bound to pass from the Parent into the Laboratory, because, within the cultural physiology of the scapegoat beats the heart of a once adaptive algorithm, the sacrificial lamb, who dies according to “Your Will, not mine”.

Perhaps, an even more potent antidote to scapegoating is the very thing that gives it life.

Because my musings can be confusing, even to me, I sink back to ground level.

When a parent sees two children in the sandbox fighting over the same toy, each child desiring the same thing that the other desires, one can hardly see how this selfish behavior has any adaptive advantage. This type of desire will tear the band or the village apart.

So the parent separates them, taking the thing away, and tells them to get along, little realizing that her behavior provides a clue to the tykes that there is another “thing”, or maybe not even a “thing”, perhaps, an “object”, that allows them to both fight and get along.

This is their earliest introduction to “an object that brings them into relation”.

Alberg’s tentative answer seems to be that petrifying symbolic orders are scandalized by life-giving symbolic orders.

Petrifying symbolic orders do not want you to see some sort of re-animated corpse occupying the space where Nothing – I mean, their proposed “object” – should be.  It is scandalous.  It is a problem to be solved.

Also, he suggests that, in order to see “how the petrifying symbolic order achieves closure”, read the text with the eyes of a sinner, that is, through the lens of forgiveness, to see “what has been excluded”.  See through the scandal.  See past the solution.

Alberg discovered that, for both Nietzsche and Rousseau, “the cornerstone that the builder rejected” was, weirdly, “the exclusion that allowed the building to be erected”.  Both symbolic orders would crumble if their rejected cornerstone had … um … never been there.

At the same time, both symbolic orders demanded that this resurrected nobody vacate the premises that He created. After all, where else should they put the aesthetic dictates of Tragedy or the organizational mandates of Rational Man?

How scandalous is that? How brilliant a solution?

When people, despite Dante’s warning (Do not mimic me.), imitate Dante, they do by desiring the same “object”, Christ, the “victim that brings everyone into relation”.

Their imitation should blind them to petrifying literary medusas such as Nietzsche and Rousseau, but it doesn’t.  In our world of unconstrained complexity, one cannot easily tell whether a symbolic order is formative or deformative, that is, whether it will inspire you to become “what your (and everyone else’s) heart desires” or turn your heart to stone.

Alberg’s book is an attempt to find a way to tell.

In contrast, for mimesis^constrained, closure could never be achieved, because our ancestors talked in a fusion of icons, indexes and symbols. Language was both referential and symbolic.

Just as Dante pointed to a symbolic order that was beyond himself, our ancestors oriented to a world beyond themselves.  They had to be open to whatever was thrown at them.  The object was always the same, but never fixed, never petrifying.  The object was relational, personal, burning with fire yet never consumed.

As a result, there was no thing to be scandalized about.  There was no problem to be fixed.  Except of course, until civilization sent their envoys.

For mimesis^{unconstrained}, the styles of symbolic closure differ, but the effect is the same.  Desire for the object is rewarded with status. Others desire to imitate you.  Failure to desire the object is rewarded with ridicule and disgust.

Those who do not desire the “object” are anathema.  Either they are “out of touch” (like, incapable of appreciating theoretical aesthetics or tragic drama) or “ignorant” (like, incapable of appreciating the utility of Utilitarianism).

As a result, everything contrary is either a scandal or a problem that has to be solved.  It is like sculpting in stone.  A form is hidden beneath the surface of Society.  A hammer and chisel is required to get it out.

Allow me to contemplate the effects of passing to our own times from the timeless realm of evolutionary history, to unconstrained complexity from constrained complexity, to our comedic and unreasonable conundrum from biological adaptation, to mimesis^{unconstrained} from mimesis^constrained.

When individuals today mimic (the desires of) Nietzsche, playing the role of Zarathustra, the ultimate “golden calf” (a Socratic Dionysian visionary exclusively worthy of imitation), they (competitively) pursue the opportunity to gain the status of “the one who sacrifices for the ‘object’ that we all relate to”.  In doing so, they heroically parody the more ancient than “ancient” adaptive aspiration, characterizing our distant ancestors, to sacrifice everything for the sake of the “object that brings us into relation”.

We may call the resulting social construction, in all its manifestations, “modern art”.

When people today mimic (the desires of) Rousseau, playing the role of the theoretical man, the social scientist who is well aware of the ridiculousness of sacrifice, they (competitively) pursue the opportunity to gain the status of “the one who sacrifices for the ‘object’ that we all relate to”. They also strive to diminish the status of others engaging in the same pursuits (but in a different symbolic order).  Their pro-object is “the voice of reason” and their anti-object is “the voice of superstition”.

We may call the resulting social construction, in all its manifestations, “modern bureaucracy”.