Rene Girard
Desire is "the spirit that directs ..... toward the goal on which .... intention is fixed. .... It can even be said to constitute the person, for "If desire were not mimetic we would not be open to what is human or what is divine." The idea that we desire autonomously is romantic myth. Mimesis - the imitaion of another's desire is neither a conscious process nor a mere behavioral copying. The unconscioius nature of mimesis is designed to relieve anxiety and promote security though an inflated sense of autonomy. This desire is misdirected and causes us to conform to an alien image, the image of another person.
Mimetic desire works in the following way:
An agent sense a lack and does not know what will supply it. He directs the aimless desire to an admirable other (model/mediator) to see waht might remedy the lack without compromising a sense of authonomy. The agent, too, begins to desire that object. The element that triggers the agent's desire, is not the object itself, but the prestige or value conferred on it by the model. He identifies with and is attracted to the model. The agent's will is not coerced; it is seduced.
As facination with the other increases, the other gradually moves from being a model to being an obstacle to the acqusition of the object. Eventually the object is forgotten and the agent passionately desires to displace the model. The model becomes a rival.
IN a relationship of conflict we are locked in a struggle for dominance, or we resort to violence. Girard and the gospels refer to this experience as a stumbling block, scandal, or offense. As the efforts to dominate escalate, and as the number of conflicts within a community increases, relief from the tension is sougth. This is a key moment in the drama. the enemies make an accusatory gesture toward another person who is outside of the conflict and upon whom the hostility is transferred. .... Any kind of difference (good or bad) is dangerous when a mob is looking for a scapegoat. This proces is called the generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism (GMSM). The victim is sacrificed, i.e. murdered or expeled. The result of this event is that a great peace comes over the feuding parties. The feuding parties, who are now molded into a community, unconciously replace their dangerous "war of all against all" (Hobbes) with a safer and less violent "war of all against one" (Girard). This paradox of scapegoat as culprit and as peacmaker is the result of a double transference. The violently formed community transfers its hostiliteis onto the scapegoat and then its reverence. Girard notes that the Hebrew Scriptures reveal God as being on the side of the oppressed and the unjustly accused.
Girard does not consider all mimetic desire to be envy, but all envy is mimetic desire. He notes that it begins with two eyes glancing in the same direction. It is "love by another's eye." "Envy covets the superior being that neither that someone nor something alone, but the conjunction of the two, seems to possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to the lack of being that puts the envious to shame. That is why envy is the hardest sin to acknowledge.
No one wants to admit a sense of lack or to acknowledge weak emotions like fear and self-pity. To do so would involve the confusing admission that we hate someone to whom we are attracted!
Girard goes on to say that by truly facing our envy and hostility, we undermine their effectiveness.
Pride, for Girard, is described as "a deceptive divinity" ... misdirected desire to be detrimental to our spiritual journey. Carnal love (mimetic desire) - the love of the heart - cannot be denied or rejected, but must be accepted and redirected to the sensible and carnal love of Christ's humanity. Mimetic desire is the starting point of the spiritual journey.
Girard notes that the ewill to dominate is unconscious.
The Cross is the center of Girard's theory. It is when faced with the Cross - literal or metaphysical - that the critical decision for forgiveness and nonretribution is made. This decision is made deep in the heart where pride lurks. This purification of the heart is the core of Christian conversion.
Perceived equality and nearness increases opportunities for rivalry. This rivalry is less likely if the other is regarded as being of higher status or as beng outside of one's sphere of reltions.
God is loved through the neighbor.
The story of Christianity is told from the perspective of the victim.
Our "I" is formed by our relationality with that which masterus us, be it God or the sinful order. We have the sense that we are not enough and that there is something we must procure, correct, or conform to , in order to become "enough." that thing we will serve. What competes us depends on what we are: mimetic creatures made in the image of God. Humility as intellignece of the victim, restores that image.
When acquistive and conflictual mimesis are carred to their conclusion, the result is the scapegoating of an innocent victim and the attainment of communal - false - peace. The object of monastic life is true peace, which is received by pacific mimesis of the victim, Jesus Christ. This mimesis requires self-sacrifice rather than the sacrifice of others.
IN a relationship of conflict we are locked in a struggle for dominance, or we resort to violence. Girard and the gospels refer to this experience as a stumbling block, scandal, or offense. As the efforts to dominate escalate, and as the number of conflicts within a community increases, relief from the tension is sougth. This is a key moment in the drama. the enemies make an accusatory gesture toward another person who is outside of the conflict and upon whom the hostility is transferred. .... Any kind of difference (good or bad) is dangerous when a mob is looking for a scapegoat. This proces is called the generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism (GMSM). The victim is sacrificed, i.e. murdered or expeled. The result of this event is that a great peace comes over the feuding parties. The feuding parties, who are now molded into a community, unconciously replace their dangerous "war of all against all" (Hobbes) with a safer and less violent "war of all against one" (Girard). This paradox of scapegoat as culprit and as peacmaker is the result of a double transference. The violently formed community transfers its hostiliteis onto the scapegoat and then its reverence. Girard notes that the Hebrew Scriptures reveal God as being on the side of the oppressed and the unjustly accused.
Girard does not consider all mimetic desire to be envy, but all envy is mimetic desire. He notes that it begins with two eyes glancing in the same direction. It is "love by another's eye." "Envy covets the superior being that neither that someone nor something alone, but the conjunction of the two, seems to possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to the lack of being that puts the envious to shame. That is why envy is the hardest sin to acknowledge.
No one wants to admit a sense of lack or to acknowledge weak emotions like fear and self-pity. To do so would involve the confusing admission that we hate someone to whom we are attracted!
Girard goes on to say that by truly facing our envy and hostility, we undermine their effectiveness.
Pride, for Girard, is described as "a deceptive divinity" ... misdirected desire to be detrimental to our spiritual journey. Carnal love (mimetic desire) - the love of the heart - cannot be denied or rejected, but must be accepted and redirected to the sensible and carnal love of Christ's humanity. Mimetic desire is the starting point of the spiritual journey.
Girard notes that the ewill to dominate is unconscious.
The Cross is the center of Girard's theory. It is when faced with the Cross - literal or metaphysical - that the critical decision for forgiveness and nonretribution is made. This decision is made deep in the heart where pride lurks. This purification of the heart is the core of Christian conversion.
Perceived equality and nearness increases opportunities for rivalry. This rivalry is less likely if the other is regarded as being of higher status or as beng outside of one's sphere of reltions.
God is loved through the neighbor.
The story of Christianity is told from the perspective of the victim.
Our "I" is formed by our relationality with that which masterus us, be it God or the sinful order. We have the sense that we are not enough and that there is something we must procure, correct, or conform to , in order to become "enough." that thing we will serve. What competes us depends on what we are: mimetic creatures made in the image of God. Humility as intellignece of the victim, restores that image.
When acquistive and conflictual mimesis are carred to their conclusion, the result is the scapegoating of an innocent victim and the attainment of communal - false - peace. The object of monastic life is true peace, which is received by pacific mimesis of the victim, Jesus Christ. This mimesis requires self-sacrifice rather than the sacrifice of others.
Bernard
We have been given desire, a yearning for completeness, a longing for our true identity vis-a-vis someone else. He describes the experience of desire: "Every rational being naturally desires always what satisfies more its mind and will. It is never satisfied with something which lacks the qualiteis it thinks it should have." This yearning is the result of bing made in the image and likeness of God. At the heart of his teaching is the notion that God made us to desire him. this is how love returns to its source.
Sin corrupts the three powers of the soul. The intellect, made to remember the truth of our creatureliness, is corrupted by pride; vainglory infects our concupiscible appetite, and envy exploits our capacity for anger. Pride, vainglory, and envy diminish our capacity to give free conscent to the true, enduring good. they leave us vulnerable to offense.
Bernard describles the human condition as having three phases: formation, deformation, and reformation. .... Our first nature is likenss to God consists in three elements: simplicity (by virtue of which we love one thing), immortality ( by virtue of which the one thing, like the soul, is eternal), and free will (by virtue of which we can choose the object of our love. .... the most basic way by which the soul recovers its lost likeness is teh imitation of the ordering of love exemplified by Christ.
Envy is the feeling of offense at the perceived superiority of another person. It is distinguished from jealousy, which is distress at the possibility of another person getting one's possession.
Bernard defines envy as "worry about possible failure, and the fear of being surpassed ... fear of a rival." He identifies it with a drive for power .... "Let no one look with envious eyes upon the goods of anotehr. For this is, as best one can, to inject toxin into someone and to somehow kill him." He also describes envy as curiositas, the first step of pride. He portrays the wandering of the eyes and the constant monitoring of the conduct of others rahter than one's own. Envious wandering of the eyes relaxes the guard of the heart.
Humility makes us content to be receivers and directs desire to its proper object.
There are two sources of offense that spur dominance: God and neighbor.
Pride, for Bernard, is a passionate desire for our own superiority. .... The will to dominate is the will never to be devastated; one cannot follow Christ with that intent.
The oprincipal source of dominance between human beings is mimetic rivarly.
On the Steps of Humility and Pride (the first four steps that show contempt for the brethern): curiosity, the ever-wandering eye of envy; light-mindedness and empty laughter, both of which discount the value of others and of the monastic way of life; and boasting. These last three behaviors are characteristic of secular culture's false transcendence of "following the crowd" or acting for the approval of others.
What is called for is a renunciation of our will to self-assertion. In short, we have to quit playing God. To renounce self-will is to shift one's attention from self to the other, as to make charitable or other-centered behavior easier and domination unnecessary.
A good model does not necessarily mean a good imitation. Bernard offers two models of imitating God. One is the descending and ascending Christ; the other is Lucifer, "the Envious One," a personification of arrogance. Those who are not offended by arrogance will imitate it. ... the lure of self-exaltation can be so attractive as to easily provoke others to seek their own self-exaltation. The essential difference between these two models of divinity is that one involves receptivity and the other acquisitiveness.
Renouncing domination leaves one defenseless before experiences of offense and insult and feelings of inadequacy and resentment. Such renunciation is an abrupt beginning for this program of recovery of the image and likeness.
Christ is the model of trust and obedience.
To suffer means to let be; instead of attempting to gain the upper hand; it means submitting to negative experience as part of God's plan for oneself and others. This is the mark of one who is following Christ. Here we submit to a process we cannot control, rather than pray to be exempted from it. What we are addressing is the fallen human condition, not merely a series of problems to be solved.
When Cain refused to submit to God, murdered Abel out of envy, and thus began civilization, the problem of domination spread to all humans.
Bernard ... pride is the consequence of comparision with others. Comparison creates the setting for conflictual mimesis and all that follows from it. Bernard is counseling us to accept our created condition without comparisons.
Pride ingnites envy.
The opposite of offense is faith, but such faith can only be reached through the possibility of offense. Genuine surrender means allowing oneself to be drawn more deeply into what is most threatening. Such surrender is difficult, given that the whole motive for becoming an adult was to avoid vlunerability.
To face one's contingency and to live as one who is totall dependent on God is a deep admission of the truth that prepares the monastic to continue the journey out of love. this transformation is not accomplished, it is suffered.
Sin corrupts the three powers of the soul. The intellect, made to remember the truth of our creatureliness, is corrupted by pride; vainglory infects our concupiscible appetite, and envy exploits our capacity for anger. Pride, vainglory, and envy diminish our capacity to give free conscent to the true, enduring good. they leave us vulnerable to offense.
Bernard describles the human condition as having three phases: formation, deformation, and reformation. .... Our first nature is likenss to God consists in three elements: simplicity (by virtue of which we love one thing), immortality ( by virtue of which the one thing, like the soul, is eternal), and free will (by virtue of which we can choose the object of our love. .... the most basic way by which the soul recovers its lost likeness is teh imitation of the ordering of love exemplified by Christ.
Envy is the feeling of offense at the perceived superiority of another person. It is distinguished from jealousy, which is distress at the possibility of another person getting one's possession.
Bernard defines envy as "worry about possible failure, and the fear of being surpassed ... fear of a rival." He identifies it with a drive for power .... "Let no one look with envious eyes upon the goods of anotehr. For this is, as best one can, to inject toxin into someone and to somehow kill him." He also describes envy as curiositas, the first step of pride. He portrays the wandering of the eyes and the constant monitoring of the conduct of others rahter than one's own. Envious wandering of the eyes relaxes the guard of the heart.
Humility makes us content to be receivers and directs desire to its proper object.
There are two sources of offense that spur dominance: God and neighbor.
Pride, for Bernard, is a passionate desire for our own superiority. .... The will to dominate is the will never to be devastated; one cannot follow Christ with that intent.
The oprincipal source of dominance between human beings is mimetic rivarly.
On the Steps of Humility and Pride (the first four steps that show contempt for the brethern): curiosity, the ever-wandering eye of envy; light-mindedness and empty laughter, both of which discount the value of others and of the monastic way of life; and boasting. These last three behaviors are characteristic of secular culture's false transcendence of "following the crowd" or acting for the approval of others.
What is called for is a renunciation of our will to self-assertion. In short, we have to quit playing God. To renounce self-will is to shift one's attention from self to the other, as to make charitable or other-centered behavior easier and domination unnecessary.
A good model does not necessarily mean a good imitation. Bernard offers two models of imitating God. One is the descending and ascending Christ; the other is Lucifer, "the Envious One," a personification of arrogance. Those who are not offended by arrogance will imitate it. ... the lure of self-exaltation can be so attractive as to easily provoke others to seek their own self-exaltation. The essential difference between these two models of divinity is that one involves receptivity and the other acquisitiveness.
Renouncing domination leaves one defenseless before experiences of offense and insult and feelings of inadequacy and resentment. Such renunciation is an abrupt beginning for this program of recovery of the image and likeness.
Christ is the model of trust and obedience.
To suffer means to let be; instead of attempting to gain the upper hand; it means submitting to negative experience as part of God's plan for oneself and others. This is the mark of one who is following Christ. Here we submit to a process we cannot control, rather than pray to be exempted from it. What we are addressing is the fallen human condition, not merely a series of problems to be solved.
When Cain refused to submit to God, murdered Abel out of envy, and thus began civilization, the problem of domination spread to all humans.
Bernard ... pride is the consequence of comparision with others. Comparison creates the setting for conflictual mimesis and all that follows from it. Bernard is counseling us to accept our created condition without comparisons.
Pride ingnites envy.
The opposite of offense is faith, but such faith can only be reached through the possibility of offense. Genuine surrender means allowing oneself to be drawn more deeply into what is most threatening. Such surrender is difficult, given that the whole motive for becoming an adult was to avoid vlunerability.
To face one's contingency and to live as one who is totall dependent on God is a deep admission of the truth that prepares the monastic to continue the journey out of love. this transformation is not accomplished, it is suffered.
"You would certainly desire, as far as in you lies, that the opinion of others about you, should correspond with what you know about yourself. This self-disclosure, though, is to be regulated by love; it must not offend. Concern about reputation is a craving for glory."
Those who receive their sense of self-worth from the imitation of Christ and thereby from the Father will discount the opinion of peers.
The pride of acquisitive desire has been broken by the experience of the Cross. One can be comfortable as a receiver.
The link between humility and love is empathy. In the steps of descent we encounter our limitations, we experience forgiveness and we are then able to see the truth of others.
"We look for truth in ourselves when we judge ourselves, in our neighbors when we have empathy with their sufferings, in itself when we contemplate it with a clean heart.
A ransom is an act of freeing done by one already free. LIke the child whom Jesus offered us as a model, the monastic is free to be vulnerable, free to receive without deserving, free to consent to imitate those who imitate the self-giving victim, Jesus Christ.
Jonah Wharff, OCSO, Bernard of Clairvaux and Rene Girard on Desire and Envy, CSR, Volume 42/2, 2007
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