Ye Kefei | A collectivized society that deprives individuals of their desires is doomed to fail

“The self is actually composed of countless lies accumulated over a long period of time, sometimes even a lifetime of accumulation.”

“The Soviet-style world, for moral reasons, wanted to eliminate mimetic desire, and the result was the deprivation of all incentives in economic life. The Soviets optimistically believed that in a world without conflict, without social conflict, people would work happily and create benefits for the collective. Unfortunately, this did not happen.”

This point mentioned by Girard in *The Prophet of Desire* has long been proven by history. The collective system and power rent-seeking of the Soviet style have paid a very heavy price, no matter how lofty their names are. On the contrary, desire is the driving force of social development.

Girard, who had high hopes for religion, also wrote: “The sacred in the sense of primitive religion still exists in today’s life. For example, when people are overly shocked by something, by some power, the level of the sacred appears. This is a mixture of fear and reverence, which affects their behavior. You can clearly see this phenomenon in totalitarian societies. Totalitarian societies remove the sacred through violence, which is a regression. They will seriously damage independent judicial systems. They need scapegoats more than we do. Trials that force victims to publicly admit their crimes are of great significance. Their purpose is to restore the unity of the group through unanimous condemnation of the victims, which is the essence of the ‘scapegoat.'” This really hits the nail on the head of the totalitarianism’s tricks.

*The Prophet of Desire* is the first collection of interviews by the anthropologist Girard, who is known as the “Darwin of the Humanities.” His subversive perspectives on human nature, human history, and destiny have influenced writers such as Coetzee and Kundera. In the book, he discusses mimetic desire, the scapegoat mechanism, witch hunts, “9/11,” American partisan politics, the European population crisis, anorexia and body anxiety, fertility and family… The interviews lasted from 1984 to 2009, and had conceptual collisions with Heidegger, Nietzsche, Fukuyama, Freud, Derrida, Steiner, etc. Therefore, this book is not only a record and response to major contemporary events, but also a public literary and ideological discussion class.

Girard has a very profound understanding of “desire,” and in a time when human desires are increasingly difficult to satisfy, this understanding is even more meaningful. He proposed “mimetic desire” many years ago, believing that most of people’s desires in modern society are not basic needs and free will, but are constantly influenced and imitated by the desires of others. This is the case with various fashion trends, and people’s body anxiety is also based on this. Whether it is extreme anorexia or “serving beauty” behavior, it is allowing the so-called “ideal body shape” to tear apart human self-identity. In addition, the current craze for people to follow the trend and repeatedly fall for the online celebrity check-in spots is also a manifestation of mimetic desire.

In other words, the essence of consumerism is the manipulation of desire. People’s yearning for a certain lifestyle and life is based on the observation of others and the evaluation of society, that is, “mimetic desire means that our choices are not determined by the object of desire itself as we usually think, but by the mediator of desire.” This mimetic desire has both a negative side (such as the meaningless competition of consumer society) and a positive side (the promotion of the economy and society).

The bigger negative side is the creation of the scapegoat mechanism, forming a form of revenge. Girard’s scapegoat theory originates from the revenge and sacrificial rituals of primitive society. In his view, the spread of mimetic desire will trigger group violence, and the “scapegoat” becomes the victim to quell the conflict. Although with the progress of civilization, the backward ritual of sacrifice has disappeared in the civilized world, humans still have an intrinsic gene to find scapegoats. Today’s cyber violence is a scapegoat model of “all extremes in society, all things outside the system, are targets of persecution.” Similarly, the various witch hunts in history (although the book says “the beginning of the modern world, that is, when witch hunts stopped”), and today’s campus violence, are actually the logic of “groups maintaining internal order by excluding others,” and the “scapegoat” role is the outlet for the group to vent violence.

In the political arena, this mimetic unity also often appears, as the book says: “The masses were initially divided, but eventually achieved mimetic unity. In the end, the whole group spoke the same answer. The highest authority did not play a leading role, but was led by the masses who spoke in unison. Therefore, in this case, it is not political power that dominates, but the voice of the masses that replaces political power.”

For individuals, “the more you imitate, the more serious the misunderstanding, and the greater the possibility of achieving understanding. Suddenly, you will realize that the essence of your own desire is complete imitation.”

Knowing oneself is a very difficult thing, and it is also a very long thing, as the book says: “The self is actually composed of countless lies accumulated over a long period of time, sometimes even a lifetime of accumulation.” What Girard does is to help people know themselves, but understanding Girard’s help itself is a threshold.