If You are Competing, You Already Lost | Girard’s Mimetic Rivalry Explained

This lecture completes the psychological picture of René Girard’s mimetic theory by exploring mimetic rivalry (internal mediation) and the negative phase of mimesis, then frames the entire system as a theodicy—an exhaustive account of the origins of evil. The core argument is that human desire is fundamentally social and imitative, not rational or utility-driven, and that this makes conflict, resentment, and social pathologies unavoidable features of human life rather than correctable flaws.

• The problem with modern theories of human nature

  • The dominant model, homo economicus, assumes people are rational utility-maximizers, but Girard argues we are actually driven by pride, envy, rivalry, and the desire for prestige and social belonging.
  • When political structures are built on a false understanding of human nature, they are designed for people who don’t exist, leading to systemic dysfunction.
  • Reason is weak; most human motivation is spirited and social, not rational.

• Foundational concepts from the previous lecture

  • Mimesis: the core human tendency to imitate others, making us social creatures.
  • Mimetic desire: desire borrowed from others, always with two components:
    • Physical desire: desire for the experience or utility of an object.
    • Metaphysical desire (desire to be): desire for the fullness of being that a model seems to possess—to be real, persistent, self-sufficient.
  • Mediation: the process of desiring what a model desires, striving to acquire the same objects in hopes of acquiring the same being.
  • Metaphysical desire is malleable, powerful, deceitful, ungovernable by reason, and is the root of all sin—it leads us on endless unsatisfying pursuits.

• External vs. internal mediation

  • External mediation is unidirectional: a distant model (e.g., Michael Jordan) mediates the subject’s desires, but the subject does not mediate the model’s desires in return.
    • Distance (spatial-temporal or social) prevents convergence and competition.
    • Social distance includes class, caste, gender roles, guilds—anything that makes people feel essentially different, blocking the contagion of desire.
  • Internal mediation is bidirectional: two socially close people mediate each other’s desires, each becoming both model and subject, competing over the same objects.
    • As history reduces distance (through communication technology, social mobility, egalitarian ideals), internal mediation becomes more common and desire more contagious.
    • Girard views the slogan of “connecting the world” (e.g., Facebook) as terrifying rather than celebratory, because it removes barriers to mimetic contagion.
  • Mimetic rivalry is essentially synonymous with internal mediation for the purposes of this lecture: a relationship where equals compete over the same objects and reciprocally inflame each other’s desires.

• How mimetic rivalry inflames metaphysical desire

  • Reciprocal amplification: each rival copies and strengthens the other’s desire ad infinitum, like a contagious disease that mutates and intensifies as it passes back and forth.
    • This explains why tight friend groups develop peculiar, externally indecipherable status symbols (specific brands, ways of speaking, stores).
  • Competition produces shame: losing creates a greater sense of deficient being, which intensifies the desire to exist in great measure.
    • Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech illustrates this: even after six championships, he spoke with resentment about the teammate who took his varsity spot as a freshman.
    • Groucho Marx’s quip (“I’d never want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member”) exemplifies how rejection increases desire by diminishing one’s sense of being while elevating the model’s.
  • Social competition even without zero-sum rivalry: even in positive-sum domains (investing, academic publishing, social media followers, company promotions), the success of a similar person threatens one’s self-conception.
    • Aristotle: “We fear our friends will become gods.”
    • The world of utility may be positive-sum, but the world of spirit, being, and social recognition is not—attention and status are inherently exclusionary.
    • This explains why the most bitter conflicts occur between those who are most similar: master and apprentice, warring twins, colleagues in the same field.

• Resentment as a new psychological force

  • Resentment is reserved for those who are both the instigator of desire and the relentless guardian forbidding its fulfillment.
  • It is ambivalent: containing admiration alongside hatred.
  • The logic of desire shifts from “I want what the model has” to “I want to steal it from the model and diminish his being in retributive vengeance.”
  • Rivals attribute malicious intent to each other, often wrongly, and blame them disproportionately for unrelated problems.
  • Resentment provides the psychological motivation to hurt others for the sake of hurting them, even at self-cost—it is the force behind vengeance.

• Historical example: the transition from Homeric to Socratic Greece (from anthropologist David Graeber)

  • As social mobility increased (through slavery and coinage), the distance between aristocrats and citizenry decreased, turning external mediation into internal mediation.
  • Aristocrats’ reaction: they began engaging in commerce (imitating the nouveau riche) while simultaneously resenting them, leading to a revaluation of values—money was devalued, honor was elevated as a differentiator.
  • Citizens’ reaction: they simultaneously tried to ban aristocratic practices (like pederasty) while secretly imitating them—the same ambivalent logic of admiration plus resentment.
  • Both sides exhibited the same form: imitation driven by closeness, combined with resentment that justified sabotage.
  • A modern parallel: Hong Kong’s ambivalent attitude toward mainland China—resentment combined with desire for mainland wealth.

• Doubles (warring twins)

  • As rivals become more entangled, they become more similar—a phenomenon Girard calls the creation of doubles.
  • Rivals believe they are radically different, but from an outside perspective they are indistinguishable.
  • The Meiji Restoration of Japan: Japan explicitly rejected the West but had to imitate it (constitution, science, technology, even colonization) to resist it, becoming more similar and ultimately clashing in World War II.
  • Fighting creates proximity because rivals are forced to adopt similar tactics.

• False differences

  • Rivals cannot perceive their similarity, so they cling to false differences—tiny, inconsequential distinctions that they treat as the core of their identity to justify their hatred.
    • A Japanese nationalist might say: “We serve an enlightened emperor; the West is ruled by charlatans.”
    • A scholar might dismiss a rival over trivial methodological disagreements.
  • Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC appear radically different to insiders but are objectively nearly identical in format to outsiders.
  • We systematically repress the ways we are like our enemies because admitting similarity would undermine the justification for resentment.

• American Psycho as a parable of mimetic rivalry

  • The boardroom business card scene encapsulates all key features:
    • The bankers are indistinguishable (same titles, same cards, same appearance).
    • They compete over trivial status markers (business card fonts: “bone with Silian Rail,” “eggshell with Romalian type,” “raised lettering, pale nimbus white”).
    • The cards are objectively identical but perceived as radically different.
    • The competition inflames metaphysical desire to the point of violence (Bateman eventually kills Paul Allen).
  • Similarity leads to competition, competition produces more similarity, and false differences justify violence.

• The negative phase of mimesis

  • Mimesis doesn’t only draw us toward those we admire; it also pushes us away from those we perceive as having a deficiency of being.
  • We distance ourselves from objects, aesthetics, and values associated with those we consider lesser or evil.
    • Italian futurism was rejected after WWII not because it was ugly but because it was associated with fascism/Nazism.
    • A college progressive who claimed to care about distributive justice was actually motivated by resentment of wealthier peers—he later became an investment banker.
  • The negative phase is the inverse of the positive phase: surface rejection of a rival’s values combined with secret admiration.
  • Bateman affirms his rivals’ values while resenting them; the progressive rejects his peers’ values while secretly desiring what they have.

• The romantic lie and conformity to contrarianism

  • The romantic lie: the belief that we have an authentic core self buried under social constraints, and that breaking free from the group equals authenticity.
  • Girard argues that breaking free from a group can be just as socially determined as conforming to it—difference is not the same as autonomy.
    • The college progressive believed he formed his views independently because he was the only progressive among conservative peers, but his views were entirely shaped by resentment of those peers.
  • Modern culture fetishizes difference: the rebel, the disruptor, the starving artist—but often this is just conformity to contrarianism.
    • Marlon Brando’s character in The Wild One when asked “What are you rebelling against?” answers “What do you got?”—he stands for nothing, simply opposing whatever is presented.
  • Man is a social creature through and through: our values, political orientations, aesthetic tastes, and philosophical positions are deeply and often unconsciously shaped by others, whether we move toward or away from them.

• Girard’s psychology as a challenge to modern social theory

  • If we are never truly independent, what does it mean to protect individual freedom?
  • Are personal decisions (aesthetic preferences, sexual orientation, gender identity, music tastes) really self-expression, or should they be examined for their mimetic effects on society?
  • How do we legitimize democratic consensus when people vote based on tribal social forces rather than rational self-interest or the common good?
  • The social world Girard describes is one where groups can only be reconciled through violence, worldly peace is built on lies, truth brings war, and the expansion of justice and equality begets apocalypse.

• Necessary psychological pathologies

  • Girard treats what are commonly considered abnormalities as necessary occurrences on a continuum with normal psychology—we are all to some degree affected.
  • Fetishization: attributing surplus value to objects beyond their intrinsic worth because of the models who mediate our desires (e.g., Kanye West’s $100 white t-shirt). Insofar as we experience metaphysical desire, we are fetishizing creatures.
  • Alienation: externalizing our most important qualities (reality, persistence, self-sufficiency) onto objects we chase, thereby becoming alienated from those qualities within ourselves. Desire is a contract to be unhappy until you get what you want.
  • Bipolarity: oscillating between mania (when close to the desired object) and despair (when far from it). The early stages of romance exemplify this—euphoria when the other responds, despair when they don’t.
  • Masochism (broadly conceived): confusing the difficult with the good.
    • Metaphysical desire can never be satisfied by any object, so only difficult-to-obtain objects maintain their allure (prestige is intimately connected to difficulty).
    • Rivalry correlates the intensity of competition with the value of the object, forming an association between trials and value.
    • This can lead to exclusively desiring unavailable partners—and Girard thinks we are on a continuum with such people.

• Necessary social pathologies

  • Oppression: Girard’s commentary on eating disorders illustrates that the most “liberated” people can be the most enslaved to others’ opinions.
    • The modern bulimic eats for herself but vomits for others watching her waistline—radical freedom is synonymous with radical enslavement.
    • Explicit prohibitions (caste, gender roles) can serve the legitimate function of limiting objects that incite competition.
    • Once liberated from explicit prohibitions, a deeper form of oppression takes over through mimetic competition—coercion disguised as liberty.
    • Parents who prohibit teenagers’ social media use are practicing a lesser oppression to prevent a greater one (the mimetic frenzy of social comparison).
    • Oppression will always plague society, either explicitly through prohibitions or subtly through mimetic competition.
  • Inequality: as real inequality decreases (through the removal of caste, gender norms), the subjective experience of inequity increases.
    • Tocqueville’s principle: “When inequality is the general law of society, the most blatant inequalities escape notice. When everything is virtually on a level, the slightest variations cause distress. The desire for equality becomes more insatiable as equality extends to all.”
    • We must choose between real inequality (differences in essence) and psychological inequality (the suffocating subjective experience of comparison as people become more similar).

• Girard’s theodicy: an explanation of the origin of all evil

  • A theodicy has four components: (1) explains the origin of evil, (2) reveals the shape of the good, (3) reconciles us with the world, (4) tells us how to feel and what to do about evil.
  • Hegel’s theodicy: evil is a deviation from already-good institutions; the actual is rational and the rational is actual; we are at the end of history; the proper response is conservative institutional reform.
  • Rousseau’s theodicy: human nature is not inherently corrupt but is corrupted by poorly designed institutions; the good is not yet actualized but is possible; the proper response is hope and progressive experimentation with new social forms.
  • Girard’s theodicy: evil stems from metaphysical desire, which is essential to human nature, not accidental to social organization.
    • No social redesign can eliminate these pathologies—they are unavoidable conditions of human life.
    • The shape of the good: there is a natural limit to how good our world can be.
    • Reconciliation: not Hegelian affirmation (the world is good) or Rousseauian hope (the world could be good), but tranquility (the world is irrevocably evil, and that’s just the way it is).
    • This frees us from the exhausting obligation to constantly improve the world and legitimizes a tranquil retreat to attend to one’s own garden.
    • Girard himself was described as peaceful, tranquil, contented, and saintly.
    • “Nothing teaches moderation like the theory of original sin… The belief in man’s natural goodness always leads the hunt for scapegoats.” Rousseau’s own descent into paranoia exemplifies the danger of excessive optimism about possibility.
    • Girard is optimistic in actuality because he is pessimistic in possibility; Rousseau is pessimistic in actuality because he is optimistic in possibility.

• Practical consequences: a critique of critique

  • Most political disagreements today are not about normative interpretations (whether something is good or bad) but about expectations of what is possible.
  • Girard’s theodicy defangs critical theories (Marxism, critical theory generally) that aim to describe injustice and believe that description alone engenders emancipation.
    • If pathologies are inevitable, merely describing them does not provide a sufficient impetus for change.
    • Marx identified real pathologies of capitalism (fetishization, alienation, oppression, inequality) but mistook the channel for the root cause—these pathologies are features of human nature, not of capitalism specifically.
    • The Soviet Union demonstrated this: fetishization was redirected to charismatic leaders, alienation worsened under central planning, oppression came from party committees, inequity reemerged as party hoarding.
  • Any form of critical utopianism is doomed: private property, political liberties, the free love movement, the internet, cryptocurrencies—all will be corrupted by human nature given enough time.
  • This does not preclude all progress, but it changes the conversation: instead of pointing out pathologies and demanding revolution, we should ask how pathologies are being channeled, who is being harmed, how to limit their inflammation, and what tradeoffs change will involve.
  • Girard provides a powerful critique of critique: a limit on the forcefulness of critical projects that want revolution at the first glimpse of discomfort.
  • “Philosophers have tried too hard to change the world. The point is to interpret.”