Towards a General Theory of Conspiracy

by **starroute** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:05 pm

There have been some fascinating articles appearing over the last few weeks that taken together amount to a major paradigm shift in our understanding of human nature and human history. Most striking is this one, from a recent Scientific American: <blockquote>Quote:<hr><a href="http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000C1E5D-B9BA-1422-B9BA83414B7F0103">www.sciam.com/print_versi...414B7F0103</a> Why Are Some Animals So Smart? The unusual behavior of orangutans in a Sumatran swamp suggests a surprising answer ... My own explanation [for the origin of intelligence], which is not incompatible with these other forces, puts the emphasis on social learning. In humans, intelligence develops over time. A child learns primarily from the guidance of patient adults. Without strong social--that is, cultural--inputs, even a potential wunderkind will end up a bungling bumpkin as an adult. We now have evidence that this process of social learning also applies to great apes, and I will argue that, by and large, the animals that are intelligent are the ones that are cultural: they learn from one another innovative solutions to ecological or social problems. In short, I suggest that culture promotes intelligence. ... Acquisition of the most cognitively demanding inventions, such as the tool uses found only at Suaq, probably requires face time with proficient individuals, as well as several cycles of observation and practice. The surprising implication of this need is that even though infants learn virtually all their skills from their mothers, a population will be able to perpetuate particular innovations only if tolerant role models other than the mother are around; if mom is not particularly skillful, knowledgeable experts will be close at hand, and a youngster will still be able to learn the fancy techniques that apparently do not come automatically. Thus, the more connected a social network, the more likely it is that the group will retain any skill that is invented, so that in the end tolerant populations support a greater number of such behaviors. ... Our analyses of orangutans suggest that not only does culture--social learning of special skills--promote intelligence, it favors the evolution of greater and greater intelligence in a population over time. Different species vary greatly in the mechanisms that enable them to learn from others, but formal experiments confirm the strong impression one gets from observing great apes in the wild: they are capable of learning by watching what others do. Thus, when a wild orangutan, or an African great ape for that matter, pulls off a cognitively complex behavior, it has acquired the ability through a mix of observational learning and individual practice, much as a human child has garnered his or her skills. And when an orangutan in Suaq has acquired more of these tricks than its less fortunate cousins elsewhere, it has done so because it had greater opportunities for social learning throughout its life. In brief, social learning may bootstrap an animal's intellectual performance onto a higher plane.<hr></blockquote> In short, what this article indicates is that the essential factor in being human is to swap information and abilities around as widely and thoroughly as possible. This is not only what makes us human, it is also what continues to make us more human over time. As another recent article suggests, modern humans may have even displaced the Neanderthals because of their greater ability to network fruitfully: <blockquote>Quote:<hr><a href="http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=546482006">news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=546482006</a> Until now, the leading theory of why the Neanderthals disappeared has been that a lack of intelligence meant they were less efficient hunters. But a team of US archaeologists believe they met their evolutionary end because of a failure to maintain social links with other groups, unlike modern humans, who travelled widely, making the friends who would help them during hard times. Working in the Caucasus region of modern-day Georgia, the scientists discovered evidence of highly skilled hunting behaviour by the Neanderthals that required an understanding of yearly animal migration patterns and the planning of traps to catch them. But they also found there was a crucial difference between Neanderthals and homo sapiens. The Neanderthals tended to be anti-social, staying in small hunter-gatherer groups, while the sapiens were "routinely" travelling distances of 60 miles and meeting other groups. This meant that if an area became hunted out or a more powerful rival took over, the Neanderthals had no-one to turn to while the modern humans did. Neanderthals seem to have had little interest in their appearance, compared to modern humans, a sign that group identity was not something they considered to be important. "We have no indication that Neanderthals really paid much attention to who other people were and they didn't try to signal to other people who they were," Dr Adler said. "Modern humans were obsessed with this. They were spending a lot of time and energy on how they looked. They cared more about how they looked and were more style conscious." <hr></blockquote> Although this article emphasizes the ability to look to the neighbors for help in hard times, putting it together with the orangutan piece suggests that the more essential factor may have been the ability to routinely network with the people down the road, which would have been useful in good times as well as bad. For example, modern human toolkits evolved rapidly, even in the Old Stone Age, while Neanderthals were apparently content to keep making their tools to an identical pattern for tens of thousands of years at a time. What I get from these two articles is a strong sense that the human species has never been any different than it is today in the age of the Internet. We have always swapped the good stuff around as quickly and enthusiastically as possible -- new tools, new fashions, new ideas, new ways of understanding the world around us. And as we do this, not only do we all become better off, but we also become more human. Of course, not every kind of knowledge can be shared without restrictions. Certain forms of learning demand a pre-existing talent, a dedication to mastering a highly specialized discipline, or a developed sense of responsibility. That is why you have sub-systems of teachers and students among artists, scientists, or shamans. This is perfectly reasonable, and the general trend has been for knowledge that is considered esoteric at one time (like, say, writing or arithmetic) to become generalized to the larger public at a later point. However, there's also a more serious fly in the ointment, and that has to do with the question of altruism raised by the Neanderthal study. Another recent study which has been widely reported in the news (see, for example, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060303205611.htm),">www.sciencedaily.com/rele...5611.htm),</a> suggests that children as young as eighteen months will spontaneously try to help a researcher doing a complex task in their presence, even without being asked or thanked. As anybody who's ever had their car break down in a parking lot knows, human beings have a strong instinct to help out even perfect strangers in trouble. However, altruism has its limits. The same little kids who will incessantly ask you, "Can I help? Can I help?" will also fight each other like demons over who gets the largest slice of cake. It seems that altruism comes off best when the person performing it has little or nothing to lose and the prospect of entertainment or self-esteem to gain. We humans are far better at sharing ideas than at sharing physical resources, particularly ones that are in limited supply. This, by the way, may explain why the "intellectual property" business sits so badly with many people. By perversely redefining ideas as resources, it flies in the face of all our natural instincts and our sense of how to interact with others and engage in fruitful problem-solving. However, this question of altruism or its lack can help us see what "conspiracy" really means in human affairs. A conspiracy involves a group of people who deliberately disrupt the normal flow of information for personal benefit. At times, conspiracy may go no further than, say, insider trading. But very often, conspiracy involves deeper crimes. A group of people will cheat, steal, or kill and then conspire to cover up the evidence. Or they will attempt to monopolize accurate information for themselves while feeding false information to others. In one sense, conspiracy is as much a part of human nature as sharing. Any system of interactions will offer at least short-term advantages to those who figure out to game the system. That is why conspiracies have existed at all times and places and at every level of human society. But in another sense, conspiracy is profoundly anti-human. It seeks individual gain over the welfare of the larger community, it seeks short-term advantage over long-term evolutionary advance, it seeks to break the system of interactions from which we all benefit rather than to improve it. And even the conspirators have to be aware of this. That may be why conspiracies so often taken the form of secret societies or religious cults. As I suggested above, a closed systems of teachers and students imposing limits on certain forms of esoteric knowledge can be entirely benign if it is not bent on personal gain and ultimately enhances the larger social network rather than stealing from it. But any sort of closed system can easily decay into a self-justifying monopoly -- and that same model can also be borrowed by those who never had any form of genuine higher knowledge to offer but who merely want a convenient format for keeping secrets and salving their own guilty consciences.

by **blanc** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:42 pm

also the anti-altruistic behaviour identified with cult members depends for its survival on embedding itself in the altruism of non-members. (the altruistic suckers who continue to succour them, providing the infrastructure of society they need, as much as anyone, to survive) the more complex the society, the easier it is for non-altruistic behaviour to be hidden. is it a normal facet of human behaviour, or a cancer which could potentially destroy humanity?

by **Dreams End** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 12:57 pm

Really interesting. Besides being outstanding propaganda for Linux and the entire open source software movement (ahem) it also suggests a corrolary: Humans who conspire to withhold aid/knowledge/resources from the larger community will create mythology and ideology which justifies this behavior on the grounds that the rest of the community is not worthy or capable of receiving such aid and knowledge. therefore, their own urge to "help their neighbor" can remain satisfied as they simply limit the concept of "neighbor" to the worthy. This doesn't just happen in conspiracies, of course, but also openly as we have "nations" and ethnic groups, etc. Jesus, of course, understood this well with his parable of the "good Samaritan". At the time, the Hebrews and Samaritans were actually very much at odd, despite being very similar. If I recall, the differences in dialect were so subtle that there's as story about how someone had to get someone else to say a certain word so they could determine if he were Samaritan or not (don't remember what story that was.) So, the idea of the "good Samaritan" is actually more radical than we often hear it spun. It suggests that we are to specifically include those who our social system specifically pressures us to EXCLUDE as "neighbor." It's radical in the sense that power structures usually depend on this exclusivity to remain in power. In order to deflect attention from themselves, they must create myths and ideologies that show that they are part of the community but some other group is not...therefore that group should be excluded. I thought you were actually going to go somewhere else with this. In a book I just finished which I'll post more about later, the writer suggests that mainstream historians are now actually considering the role of "conspiracy" within historical scholarship. Mostly, what he means is that they take seriously the role of individual and small groups of actors on historical processes as opposed to merely "systemic" or "structural" forces. Not radical on the RI board, but kind of a change in scholarly terms. By the way, the book is a new look at the witch trials, trying to tease out the actual elements of folk religion which may have underlay some of the trials. But more on that sometime later. The point he was making is that certain elements of the "hysteria" were actually fomented deliberately through forged letters (a Spanish king making a "pact" with Jews to poison Christians, for example...clearly a forgery as the same letter in the same hand was also found claiming to be from a different person.) This hysteria had wide ranging effects...deliberately induced. However, once the process got underway, naturally it assumed a life of its own. Anyway, interesting post.

by **Sepka** » Sun Apr 30, 2006 1:40 pm

What a fascinating hypothesis! I'd argue that the Intellectual Property business is seen as a scam not exactly because it defines knowledge as a resource, but rather because it prevents people from using knowledge once they possess it. For all of prior human history, when you learned something, you owned that knowledge and could use it for your benefit. Telling people that they can't take advantage of what they know is not only counterintuitive, but may actually be contrary to evolved hardwired behaviour. Over the long term, I don't think IP laws have any more chance of success than do laws against sex or drugs or insider trading. You can't legislate human nature. Knowledge *can* be a resource when you have information that's not available to everyone. That drives 'conspiracy', in the generalized sense. Some knowledge is worthless if known by all (e.g., that which drives insider trading) but quite valuable if exclusive to a small group. Conspiratorial behaviour protects the value of that knowledge. I'd argue that people instinctively realize that a common function of conspiracies and secret societies is to protect valuable knowledge. Religions and fraternal orders quite often openly use this instinctive behaviour as a recruiting tool, holding forth the promise of secret information that's available only to the insider. This more often than not turns out to be a ripoff, as people also realize. Groups with truly valuable knowledge can generally afford to be quite selective in their membership. -Sepka the Space Weasel

by **Qutb** » Mon May 01, 2006 8:46 am

Excellent posts that have given me much to think about.

by **nomo** » Mon May 01, 2006 6:55 pm

Anyone here familiar with the work of René Girard? I read his books more than 20 years ago and it blew me away. It's fascinating that over time, his hypothesis still holds ground, and science is backing it up. Here's an introduction (translated from the French and a little jarring at times -- it's remarkable that so few good resources exist on his work on the Web. I suggest picking up the actual books. "Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World" is a good starting point. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804722153/ref=pd_lpo_k2a_1_img/103-7827265-4137434?%5Fencoding=UTF8">www.amazon.com/gp/product...oding=UTF8</a> ) <hr /> <a href="http://www.cottet.org/girard/index.en.htm">www.cottet.org/girard/index.en.htm</a> What do we know about the human desire? The dominant opinion as well in the human sciences as for the common sense, is that we fixe our desire on an object in a completely autonomous way. This approach would imply the fact that each object has a value susceptible to polarize this desire. If we are not too demanding, it is indeed the feeling which our daily experience gives to us. The desire that I have for this woman, this ambition to have some success in my profession or this new car which I intend to buy seem to proceed from my free choice. The linear vision of the desire has for it all its simplicity. However, it obliges to a certain number of mental contortions when we try to explain also simply phenomena totally linked to the desire, like the envy or the jealousy. After reflexion (but we admit rarely this fact), we envy first the one who possesses the object (this last one having finally a minor importance). And, in certain cases, we would feel more satisfaction in the fact than the Other does not possess the object, rather than to have it ourselves. Publicity, this hymn to the possession of objects, gives us to desire, not a product in its objective qualities but some people, Others, who desire this product or who seem gratified with its possession (1). By analyzing the novelistic masterpieces (Cervantes, Stendhal, Proust and Dostoïevski), René Girard reveals a different mechanism for the human desire. This one would not fix itself in an autonomous way according to a linear path between the subject and an object, but by imitation of the desire of an Other, according to a triangular plan : subject - model - object. Don Quixotte indicates clearly that he dedicates his life to the imitation of Amadis de Gaule, such as the knight with the Sad Face imagines that he would be. The Eternal Husband can desire his future wife only through the desire, aroused by him, of his first wife's lover, whom he will be able to imitate. And Mr. de Rênal wishes to take Julien Sorel as tutor only because he is convinced that Valenod, the other important personality of Verrières, is ready to do it. The Girard's hypothesis rests on the existence of a third element, mediator of the desire, who is the Other. That is only because the man I took as a model is desiring or is in possession of an object (conceived in a broad meaning as any thing with which the other seems gratified and which is lacking to me...) that I begin to desire this one. The object has some value only because it is desired by another. One could think that the introduction of this third "summit" into the equation of the desire is a purely theoretical and arbitrary further complexity on behalf of René Girard. Especially since the presence of this Other involves a questioning of this individualism placed in the heart of the modernity, which shows the human being like a free and autonomous entity and which finds its literary blossoming in the type of romantic hero. In MRVR, Girard reveals only the presence of the Other in the heart of the novelistic genius. It is the omnipresence of the Other in the desire which makes the greatness of Stendhal or of Dostoïevski against the romantic lie of a divine or superhuman hero, at any rate autosufficient, who would illustrate the linear path of the desire. The presence of the Other is always a simplification - or rather a clarification - of the situations. The romantic lie which is denounced by René Girard is only the attempt to erase or to dissimulate the model in the plan of the desire... The subject is desiring, but he does not know what. In his errance, he is going to cross the road of a human being equipped with something which is lacking to him and which seems to give to this one a plenitude that he does not have. This apparent plenitude, so near and so distant, completely will fascinate him. The famished desire of the subject always seems to ask the same question to the model: " What have you more than me ? " (to appear so happy, to have a so beautiful wife, to be the favorite of the management, etc.). To fix his admiring attention on a model, it is already to recognize or to attribute to him a prestige that the subject does not have, what means noticing his own insufficiency to be. It is obviously not a really comfortable position but the man who admires and who, more, envies the Other one, is initially somebody who scorns himself intensely. This is impossible to admit so, if the model is so perfect, it is certainly because he has in his possession something of which subject is at the moment deprived: material object, attitude, status, etc. Variations are infinite for an always identical result: what differentiates him of the Other one proves, with the eyes of the desire for the subject, the success and the prestige that he attributes to him. The desire that the subject has for the object is nothing else but the desire he has for the prestige that he attributes to the one who possesses the object (or who gets ready to desire the object at the same time as him). Thus is instituted the mediation of the model and the first metamorphosis of the object. For example, a car is more than this steel carcass to move from a place to another one, otherwise any model could be appropriate ; it is the instrument which would allow to be, following the example of his model, a Don Juan, a senior manager, a gang leader, etc. What is aimed by the desire is not of course the ownership of the object "car" but what he believes that this ownership will give to him, as for the Other, in terms of feminine conquests or social identification. As René Girard specifies it, the subject will always ignore this anteriority of the model, because it would be at the same moment to reveal his insufficiency, his inferiority, the fact that his desire is not spontaneous but is imitated. Then, it will be easy for him to denounce the presence of the Other, mediator of his desire, as recovering from the only envy of this last one. The model is not saved more than the subject. He also try to fix his desire and he waits until one indicates something desirable to him. It is indeed that the subject of our triangle makes. From this point of view, he is well also an Other. We already know that it is not the object that sees now the model, but an object transfigured by the desire of the subject, which gives it a completely unexpected " value ". The model has no passive role in this triangle. He is not satisfied to await a manifestation of the subject. On the contrary, he makes everything to create that one. As an object for which nobody would compete for it would have no interest, no value able to fix his own desire, everything urges him to expose towards the others his good fortune - which become advantage in term of being only if it is recognized as such by these same others. To be consolidated, the desire of the model needs to feel the other desires. It thus tends always itself to arouse competition, i.e. to cause the emergence of a rival that it will up then to supplant. The in love one praising the qualities of her boyfriend to her friends tries so much to assert, vanity or pride, the superiority of her happiness that to confirm her own desire. The best answer would be that her friends, envious of this happiness, all together begin to desire the aforementioned friend, with the exception of other pretenders. This would make only confirm the lover in her shaky certainty which she holds the good one. The object is not anymore the boyfriend - undoubtedly very banal - of Miss X, but he becomes gradually the almost unique boy quarreled by all, i.e. an illusion arising from rival desires. Outside of this rivalry, i.e. at a place of observation not contaminated by this illusion, all will ask the question: " But what do they find him? ". The infernal circularity of the mimetic desire is now in place. No recrudescence of the desire of the model for the object will escape to the subject, which will see there the confirmation of its importance and which will redouble efforts to have it. Each one thus, subject or model, contributed to the emergence of the other as a rival. The desire never stops to the only observation of the differences: it wants to become the so fascinating Other, and so to reduce all what distinguishes itself from its model, because everything in this last one says to the subject : do like me.  "The desire according to the Other is always the desire to be the Other. There is only single metaphysical desire but the particular desires which concretize this primordial desire vary ad infinitum. " (MRVR p.101) It is naturally what does Don Quixotte with Amadis de Gaule: to become a perfect knight, it is enough to imitate the acts of a perfect knight. It is also what will do, for example, all little children in their learning of social behaviours, cleanliness or language. By imitating their parents or teachers, and this with a fearsome precision, they make like the adults, better, they become adults. In these two cases, there is not a real interference between the spheres of intentions and actions of the subject and the model; Rene Girard will speak then about external mediation. Quixotte can indeed imitate completely what he thinks of being the behavior of his hero, what separates one of the other remains invariant in spite of the exploits of the knight. The model Amadis does not indicate anything in particular and the failures of Quixotte do not lead to any consequence since he can easily pass to other thing. In the same way the young children imitate with more close their teachers, one even encourages them there, but inside a educationnal frame which maintains a certain distance between subject and model, prohibiting confusion. If many little girls want to become schoolmistress, it is later, and all is in this "later". The estrangement between the subject and the model which characterizes the external mediation is not a simple question of physical or temporal distance, but is also due to the nature of the differences separating, originally, one and the other.  "Although the geographical estrangement can constitute a factor of it, the distance between the mediator and the subject is initially spiritual. D.Q. and Sancho are always close physically but the social and intellectual distance which separates them remains unsuperable." (MRVR, page 22).  However, unless evolve in the void which is one of the romantic illusions, the desire inevitably will come into contact with other desires. It will do it more easily and quickly if those are near, i.e. are interested in the same objects. Thus, nothing separates Mr. de Rênal and Valenod, which clashes both to dominate the social life of Verrières and which are thus very attentive to what is and what does the other : Julien Sorel is not the possible tutor to the one or the other one. He is whose will allow his employer to obtain an advantage in this prestige rivalry. This proximity of desires and the rivalry which it involves is going to characterize what Girard will name at first the internal mediation and which will become afterward the mimetic desire. The Master who encourages his student to acquire his knowledge, the Occidental capitalism which looked with benevolence (even with condescension) the efforts of the Nipponese economy to copy its products are in the same situation as our be in love seen previously. The veneration of the subject is initially used to confirm this difference, this superiority. The adoration of the subject feeds itself with this pride which makes the model so desirable : the student intends at least equalling the Master, the Nipponese economy to make as well as the Occidental economy. The more the subject imitates the model and the less what separates them becomes perceptible, difference(s) being properly absorbed by the first. Let us look at how Jean-Marc Reiser had illustrated, in 1971, the relationship between rich and poor (We live in a formidable age - Editions Albin Michel) : <img src="http://www.cottet.org/girard/images/0a1.gif"/> etc. I cannot reproduce the totality of the page here, but it is rather interesting to linger on the representation which Reiser gives of the model, in this case the "rich". As you can notice, at a certain moment, this one is so irritated by the imitative behaviour of the subject (the "poor") that the go on holiday will become completely secondary. If he is incited to travel around the world initially once, then two, then four, it is not for visit it any more but only he wants to have the last word on the "poor", who persists in doing like him. <img src="http://www.cottet.org/girard/images/reiser1.gif"/> The glance of the last character, who is the one that "loops" the circle of this rivalry, is now turned towards his imitator. In the following image, this one will be presented in a way nearly identical to the model and looking at, him also, in the direction where his rival is supposed to be. The two fundamental elements of the mimetic hypothesis are indeed there : the differences between model and subject were abolished, the object of the circularity of the behaviors totally faded to leave place to the only rivalry between them. To reintroduce difference in the relation model-subject is not sufficient. Any "attempt to escape " could last only a time, because what would make the model would be immediatly imitated by the subject. When the student has same knowledge as the Master, there is naturally either no more student or master, but two people having the same knowledge : the initial hierarchy which allowed to place both in the world, one compared to the other in their relation, is abolished. The model feels the danger that this confusion can present for him, this indifferentiation which would become the worst of the situations. Especially since always exists the risk that the student overtakes the Master and that the original is regarded soon as the copy. But the more the mimetic rivals are close and try to be different and the more they end up resembling each other. The question of the loss of the differences is central in the Girard's hypothesis. All the aspects of the human cultures are founded on the permanent creation of differences which allow to place each one and all things. The archetypal sentence "The man is the only animal who knows that he will die " is a very good illustration, which marks out instantaneously the mankind. Our need for comprehension and for organization of the world is realized thanks to this permanent creation of differences, in which we see the incomparable wealth/variety of the humanity. In fact, we live and think in a system essentially differentialist. A certain positive thought moreover considers that the sense could arise only from a situation of imbalance between two terms and this urges us always to look what separates to understand. In front of the identical one, we immediately try to distinguish. For proof our attitude in front of twins: most of the time, we try to find at least a characteristic in one or the other one, which would allow us to know who is who. The mimetic desire leads to abolish these differences, therefore to make confused all the preexistent reference marks. If nothing of what distinguished me from my neighbor exists any more, who am I really ? The model has a radical way to hold back the distance with the subject: to prohibit the possession of the object to his desire. To the message do like me which irradiated from model adds a completely opposite one: do not do like me. Suddenly, the model is transformed into obstacle and combines two contradictory terms: he is at the same time the one who is adored (since he shows to the subject what is desirable) and the one who is hated (since, as rival, he prohibits the possession of it).  "Le sujet éprouve donc pour son modèle un sentiment déchirant formé par l'union de deux contraires qui sont la vénération la plus soumise et la rancune la plus intense. C'est là le sentiment que nous appelons haine. Seul l'être qui nous empêche de satisfaire un désir qu'il nous a lui-même suggéré est vraiment objet de haine. Celui qui hait se hait d'abord lui-même en raison de l'admiration secrète que recèle sa haine. Afin de cacher aux autres, et de se cacher à lui-même, cette admiration éperdue, il ne veut plus voir qu'un obstacle dans son médiateur. Le rôle secondaire de ce médiateur passe donc au premier plan et dissimule le rôle primordial de modèle religieusement imité." (MRVR p.24) It is in Dostoïevski that René Girard finds the most succeeded expression of this situation, because there is no more object and the model is whoever. When he writes the letter to his tourmentor, the man in the underground passes instantaneously from the most violent hatred to the most servile love, permanently oscillating between the two poles arising from his desire to be the one who humiliated him. René Girard's major theoretical contribution is to have extracted the truth of this circularity from the novelistic : it is because he is a model that the Other is a rival, but it is also because he is a rival that he is a model. René Girard refuses to exclude both terms in two different fields of the reality and which would reserve this double contradictory requirement (that Gregory Bateson named the double bind) to the only duly labeled schizophrenes(1). These two states engendred by the mimetic desire coexist and the subject oscillates permanently between them. For the subject, if the model refuses the object to him, it is quite simply that he does not deserve it (thus returning him to his initial inferiority, his unworthiness). Never the subject wants to see a rival in his model (and never this one will admit that he is in rivalry with the subject) but the obstacle that he proposes to him now fixes the efforts of his desire to conquer it. The more the object is forbidden, the more its value and that of the mediator increases and thus more its conquest becomes essential.  "Obstacles and contempt redouble the desire because they confirm the superiority of the mediator". (MRVR p.204) In the famous chapter about Sadism and Masochism (I will write soon an annex to this approach) in MRVR, René Girard shows that this permanent search for the inaccessible object - and thus of the defeat or the victory of the rival always renewed - characterizes these two types of behaviors. Because we should not forget a thing: when one or the other catches the object of the rivalry, he can only be disappointed. " It was only that?.. ", the illusion passed and the desire must still go towards a new object, more reticent to its possession. The nearby they are, the more the rivals are similar. As Girard reminds it, " the mimetic triangle is isosceles ", model and subject occupying in turn the role of the mediator. What we have just described concerning the subject affects also the model. The hatred which rises from this conflict is carrying a violence which waits only its turn to be reciprocal.

Towards a General Theory of Conspiracy

Towards a General Theory of Conspiracy

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