theanimal wrote:
@Dragline- In your readings on mimeticism, what do they say about overcoming it? If we are living conscious lives, we don't necessarily want to fall prey to mimicking the desires and habits of the average person who is obese, financially insecure etc. What can we do besides having a strong will and without socially isolating ourselves?
Well, policing your social environment goes a long ways! Stick around here, kid, you might learn something.
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
I wrote elsewhere: "Most of the adherents of the frugality counterculture make it a point to try not to desire the objects of desire of others. Yet many often reveal that this is sometimes difficult. A number of the posts in the social groups are queries to the group as to how to avoid desires and how to balance them with other goals of financial independence, travel or other future plans. The counter-culture rallies around stories of self-discipline and realization of goals.
True, it is the case that some frugality adherents engage in competitive one-upsmanship, as in any groups of like-minded individuals, and they do copy each other willingly and swap tricks of the trade freely and often."
Just becoming conscious of it is most of the battle. I've come to just assume that ALL of my desires beyond food, water, sex, sleep, etc. are mimetic in nature and copied from another source, and therefore essentially an illusion. So I have to prove to myself that they are not, or that they are valid for some other reason, for them to be legitimate. Generally, the more unusual a desire is, the more trust I have that it is likely my own.
That author I quoted above had some other worthwhile thoughts to share in the conclusion of that book, which I finally just finished. He says:
"Human beings look at the world in a subjective way that is shaped by mimetic desire, which is an illusion. . . . This hallucinatory psychosis can indeed literally make you see objects that don’t exist, or, much more often, make you see objects in a distorted light, make you think the moon is made of green cheese, or, like Don Quixote, that an old inn in front of which two prostitutes are chatting is in fact a chateau graced by two noble ladies exchanging immortal remarks. Seeing reality as it really is thus requires an effort, but it’s a necessity if we want to solve problems and leave illusion behind.
As I have often emphasized, I think that the opposite of madness is not mental health. The opposite of madness is wisdom. And wisdom is the long transformative— that is to say initiatory— process by which each of us can gradually recognize the mimetic mechanisms of which one is the plaything, overcome the mimetic rivalries of which one is the prisoner, and avoid even the most scandalizing and staggering mimetic obstacles, so as to move toward a situation of calm, harmony, and peace inside oneself and between oneself and others.
I think that attaining wisdom, the type of wisdom that I am talking about, is the objective of Socrates, Buddha, Christ, Krishnamurti, the Dalai Lama, and all the great sages. What I am seeking to contribute is a scientific framework that makes it possible to orient oneself along this initiatory path and that offers the therapist constant feedback about what he is doing, and enables him or her to follow along with the gradual harmonization of the three brain functions all the way until— if possible— their final harmony.
Certain techniques or teachings call especially upon the first brain, like those of Socrates or Krishnamurti. Others are based primarily on a mastery or pacification of the second brain, like those of Christ (“ Love one another”), Milton Erickson, J. H. Schulz (founder of “autogenic training,” a relaxation technique), Gurdjieff, and Buddha. I have the feeling that awareness of mimetic mechanisms and of the primordial and automatic action of the mimetic brain as well as its workings is cruelly lacking in the methodology that has to be put in place in order to arrive at wisdom. For the great sages, whose teaching bears essentially on the first or second brain, consider (without saying so) that the third, which they do not mention, could be influenced by the other two sufficiently to attain wisdom.
It is clear that few people have been able to take full advantage of the teachings of these great sages, and I think that their number can be significantly increased thanks to scientific awareness of the existence and workings of the third brain as well as of its dialectical and constant interaction with the other two. Simply stating the goal to be achieved and the innumerable failures of all the teachings offered by the great sages shows us how difficult the undertaking is. This echoes Christ’s words: “Many are called but few are chosen.” This also echoes the fact that the dead ends each of us can wander into are innumerable, while there is but one path that leads to wisdom. It is thus with the greatest modesty— the greatest patience, the greatest benevolence, the greatest indulgence— that the therapist, now conscious of the global reality of the psychic apparatus, must go in search of each patient on the dead-end path where he or she has lost the way, to attempt to guide the patient by means of every initiatory process at his disposal, addressing now the first, now the second, and now the third brain according to which target seems best to him."
Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Mimetic Brain (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture) (pp. 188-189). Michigan State University Press. Kindle Edition.
I also thought this comparison between Voltaire's view and Rousseau's view was helpful since they are generally familiar, and he hits upon the point I have made before that the inner life (and perhaps all life) is like a garden to be tended constantly, not an building or monument to be constructed.
"At the end of Candide, Voltaire highlights the mimetic mechanism on two occasions. First by showing the effect of taboo on the reinforcement of desire: “At the bottom of his heart, Candide had no wish to marry Cunégonde, but the baron’s insolence made him determined to go forward with the marriage.” This echoes the reply of Lacan’s patient “Aimée” to her family’s objections to her marriage: “If I don’t take him,” she says of her fiancé, “someone else will.”
Then Candide encounters an elderly Turkish gentleman who declares that he pays no attention to public affairs and lives by selling the fruit he grows in his garden. “‘ You must have a vast and magnificent estate,’ Candide said to the Turk. ‘I only have about twenty-five acres,’ the Turk replied. ‘I cultivate it with my children. Work keeps three evils at bay: boredom, vice, and want.’” Candide goes back to his farm, and there he “reflects profoundly” on what the Turk said about work and its positive effects. He finally tells his companions, Pangloss and Martin: “That fine old man seems to have secured himself a better fate than that of the six kings with whom we had the honor to dine.”
From a mimetic point of view, Rousseau, as we saw earlier, senses the danger of mimetic rivalry and makes the object responsible for it: in his view it’s private property, that is to say the object that is appropriated for oneself, that brings about rivalry and thus social disorder and unhappiness. What he doesn’t see is that it is not private property that must be abolished but rivalry. It’s not property that creates rivalry but the comparison between that property and what one has oneself, which is smaller or perhaps nonexistent.
Voltaire, on the other hand, understands two things: first, to cultivate one’s garden is to refrain from comparing it to other gardens, which may be bigger or smaller; second, working in one’s garden is the remedy for sadness, envy, jealousy, and as it happens for basic needs, too. The work that Voltaire speaks about is the same work that I spoke about in my book Psychopolitics. The Turk who cultivates his garden doesn’t have a “job” and doesn’t keep track of his hours. His work in the garden is one and the same as his life. It would be ridiculous for him to think that leaving half his garden unplanted after working thirty-five hours was a guaranteed social right. The day that human beings think of work— not just work on external objects but also work on themselves— as being the very essence of their lives, they will no longer keep track of the hours they devote to this task, for the simple reason that the hours not devoted to it will in some sense be hours of nonlife.
In reality, working on oneself means working on the interdividual rapport, that is to say on one’s relationships with others."
Oughourlian, Jean-Michel. The Mimetic Brain (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture) (pp. 191-192). Michigan State University Press. Kindle Edition.