12 Things I Learned from Rene Girard: “By desiring the same thing as our neighbor, we are drawn into inevitable conflict. Mimetic desire turns into mimetic rivalry—in everything from love to war. That’s the reason for the injunction against ‘coveting your neighbor’s wife.’ Girard claims this is emblematic of how mimetic impulses destroy a community….
Tag: conflict
w꙲꙲e꙲꙲e꙲꙲k꙲꙲e꙲꙲n꙲꙲d꙲꙲ ꙲꙲l꙲꙲i꙲꙲n꙲꙲k꙲꙲s꙲꙲: the Portents of Spring; King Rex; Ritualistic Death
Comes Thermidor: “America is headed for its own Thermidorian Reaction. It’ll end up being called something else, of course, because it is a different time, place, and set of circumstances. But it feels close, doesn’t it? Everybody I know or correspond with mentions this feeling that something is going to blow in our country, and…
weekend links: winter solstice, holograms, furnace of the desert sun
Everything Everywhere All At Once: “In the seventh century in what is now Scotland but at the time was known as Northumbria, there lived a man named Cuthbert. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. He was a bishop, a hermit, and a monk, back in the time before clerical careerism when one person could indeed be all of…
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If, for Decades, an Anchor Served a Ship, Which One Day Decided to Cut its Chains and Sail Away, Can the Drowning Anchor Grow Wings? And if So, Will the Anchor Always be Burdened by the Weight of Having Been Used? “My wish for you, my friend — and all the other abandoned anchors that…
w̴e̶e̴k̶e̵n̸d̵ ̸l̶i̴n̸k̴s̶
#1: A General Theory of Collaboration: “Anyone who reads Vaclav Havel’s Power of the Powerless will be struck by Havel’s portrait of Czechoslovakia forty years ago—with its voluntary window-slogans; its endless parade of crusades; its inexorable machinery of human cancellation. Havel had the right strategy for the subjects of the total state. First, they must…