This is René Girard’s theory that often without being completely conscious of it we tend to mimic the desires of another person who seems to have greater ‘being’ or ‘status’ or ‘celebrity’. As we cannot ‘be’ that ‘model’ we are potentially in conflict with him or her, because we envy this model – desiring to possess whatever it is that seems to make the model superior to ourselves. This is the origin of rivalry, the conflicting ‘twins’ who recur in legend and in history. For Girard this is the true origin of all conflict, as recorded in, for example, the legends of Cain and Abel and Romulus and Remus, as well as the ‘Cold War’ of ‘superpowers’ after World War II – and the resentment of US supremacy that led to Russia’s invasions of Ukrainian territory from 2014.

Views: 11