A Lot Like You 9 comments

By A.G. Harmon

Mankind’s basic urge is not want, as Marx might have it, or sex, as Freud would, but desire. That is the bedrock supposition of critic Rene Girard, and the desire he speaks of is not material or sensual, but mimetic. In other words, the defining impulse that drives existence, quickening the pulse and stirring the breast, is to be just like the next guy—to have what he has, yes—but also to want what he wants.

In fact, according to Girard, I don’t want what I do because of any merit in the object of my fancy; I want what I do because it’s something that you want as well.

Among Girard’s other thought-provoking theories are the idea of the foundational murder—of scapegoating as a means of releasing societal pressure through a type of focused violence—and of sacrifice, in the Christian sense, as that which unmasks the whole mechanism.

These are bare, inadequate sketches of his thought, but will suffice for my purpose—which is to say, in my highly mannered prose: doesn’t all that seem kinda true? On some gut level, doesn’t all that sound just about right?

The truth of the business is, there’s nothing novel about our desires; they’re not even ennobled by a fleeting rarity. They don’t reside in that beautiful girl over there, or that bitchin’ Ferrari, or that executive producer’s credit on the latest Spielberg epic. Those things are purely incidental; perhaps—just perhaps—there’s something about them that sparks an initial interest—some flash, possibly.

More likely yet, they’re just the newest, and the least boring of the potentialities in view. But the larger truth is that the frenzy created about them dwarfs everything substantial or essential in the things themselves. The frenzy becomes real. It is palpable—wild—violent. It is 5:00 P.M., December 24th at Wal-mart, in the Cabbage Patch Kids/Beanie Baby/Barbie’s Ice Cream House aisle. Somebody’s gonna die.

And if that whole process is pushed further, another striking phenomenon presents itself. Contrary to the going rhetoric of the day, we don’t really want to be individuals. We want to be swarms.

I detest the word “diversity” almost as much as I do the word “community,” because it’s trite, cheap, debased by political co-op, and has lost any productive meaning. So instead, I use the word “uniqueness.” That is what we have lost, it seems—and to say so is, I hope, a just inference to be drawn from Girard’s theory.

We have lost it not only essentially—as we are stained with our original breach against the holy (all fall short—by an inch or a mile, short is short); but also aspirationally. Our goal is not to be tours de force, symphonies played by the spheres, views from the Hubble telescope moved incrementally, an inch each time—revealing something unparalleled and unrepeatable. No. Our goal is to be notebook paper.

Now, the dangerous thing is for such a point to bring about solipsism, and puerile “self-actualization.” We’re all too prone to go out and “seize” the damn day, or some other foolishness. So let there be no dying of hair pink, no inking of barb-wire around biceps, or piercing uvulas with carpenter staples. The irony of an army of non-conformists is too rich for parody, a comic blindness in the modern “rebel” worthy of Girard’s attentions.

Rather, what Girard suggests for our consideration should bring us up short—make us face the big paradox. We should ask what it is that truly runs against the grain? So to borrow one more idea from the master: how is it that sacrifice, in the end, is the only original thing? Why is it so rare that when we witness it, we often choose to ignore or explain it away?

Ulterior motives are found, and dark calumnies cooked up to attenuate the power it has. How is it that when sacrifice is accomplished, it’s somehow always fresh and peculiar? And what, most of all, is there in this supreme act that breaks the cycle of mad mimesis?

Could it be that in the cross, we are brought face to face with this unmasking? That all our efforts and strategies, all our goals, are shown at last to be what they truly are? No more than a rabid race we run each day, spinning down the sides of a funnel into a mass oblivion, robbing ourselves of the dignity that a fearfully, wonderfully-made thing can have.

We imitate what we should rebuke, and refuse the pattern that inexplicably, irreplaceably, makes all things new.