I.

According to René Girard’s philosophy, social hierarchy is one of the mechanisms that emerged to reduce the risk of group destruction from out-of-control mimetic conflict.

Most our desires are mimetic, that is, we want what others want. This inevitably leads to violence within groups, preventing stable societies from forming and growing. The first hierarchy developed out of the sacrificial ritual, the “victimage mechanism”, which was the first and most fundamental way that early humans dealt with mimetic violence. The chosen victim (or scapegoat) gradually gained a form of transcendental status (a form of proto-monarchy) due to his/her unique and seemingly supernatural reconciliatory power to stop catastrophic mimetic conflict for the group.

The hierarchy created by the victimage mechanism separated the one from the many, and slowly expanded to include more individuals, with more tiers. Hierarchies divide people into clearly ranked sub-groups that keep mimesis in check. Mimetic desires do not (or at least have a very difficult time to) cross hierarchical boundaries, as people tend not to mimic the desires of others in different social hierarchy levels. Peasants may dream of what lords have, but they do not desire what lords desire; similarly between lords and kings. Mimetic desires and the violent conflicts they inevitably lead to still exist, but are mostly contained within each level of the hierarchy.

The sacrificial ritual also became more and more abstract and symbolic. It evolved over time, from the initial actual sacrificing of the human victim, to the later actual sacrificing of an animal analog (e.g. a lamb), eventually becoming purely ceremonial and symbolic. Social hierarchies play an important role in the increasing symbolization of the ritual. The unavoidable mimetic violence within each hierarchical level still needs to be resolved, and it is done via movements across hierarchical boundaries. When mimetic conflict within a certain social rank becomes nearly catastrophic, a victim is chosen as the scapegoat, and is “sacrificed” by being ejected, collectively by the group, to a lower social rank.

The “victimage mechanism” and its effects are still ever present, just perhaps less visible to us in the current era. For example, we have a tendency to be blind to structural, systematic problems (e.g. Immoral Mazes), and instead want to focus the blame on specific individuals. This bias is not accidental, but inescapable. Recognizing systematic problems leads to placing the blame on the group, on everyone, and down this path there is no known effective solution. So we choose to use the age-old working remedy of the scapegoat mechanism. Realizing that certain problems are systematic in nature is akin to realizing that the source of mimetic conflict is the entire group. This type of realization is something that the emergence of the scapegoat mechanism has deliberately tried to hide from our conscious awareness from the dawn of humanity, in order for its reconciliatory power to function effectively and allow the group to peacefully move on.

II.

This brings me to the modern day, with a Girardian reading of the current social and political environment. The Left’s push for equity can be seen as a form of radical flattening of the social hierarchy. The negatives of hierarchies are fairly obvious, but the fundamental reason for their existence is often missed. I had always thought that the biggest problem with radical egalitarianism is the death of meritocracy, and the degeneration of the productive powers of society. But a Girardian understands that hierarchies are not just a mechanism for the manifestation of meritocracy.

The Girardian lens shines the light on a deeper problem, perhaps the fundamental problem, one that is far worse than “mere” social stagnation. With an increasingly flattened society, we are losing a critical protective mechanism of society, and becoming increasingly exposed to the original, ultimate nemesis of humanity: mimetic violence. Without the hierarchical boundaries to limit mimetic desires, and the movements across boundaries to resolve intra-level conflict, we risk the group-level catastrophe as a result of uncontrollable, rapidly escalating mimetic violence. This is already becoming apparent in some areas of our current society. Beyond the surface-level appearance of a degeneration to tribalism, what is actually transpiring is the escalation of mimetic conflict due to the disappearance of boundaries.

III.

Perhaps this Girardian realization is the deeper reason for Peter Thiel’s support for Trump. Yes, Thiel has been very vocal on the lack of real progress in the past few decades, which I’ve taken as the source of his opposition against radical leftist ideologies. But maybe it’s more than this, more than mere contrarianism or conservatism. Maybe he sees that underneath all the noise and the deceptively comfortable yet fragile facade of modernity, forever lurks a primordial monster, a Girardian monster. Trump, despite all his flaws and incompetencies, is the representation of the idea that a forcefully undifferentiated, overly flat society does not work. Hierarchy, and more broadly, differentiation, is one of the only tools we have in the modern world to ward off the bestial, destructive monster of mimetic violence. The leftist narrative that everyone is equal is inadvertently removing that protection from us. Forget the decline of meritocracy, this is potentially an existential threat to society.

But I’m not as worried about this. It’s worth noting that although the popular modern critique of social hierarchy is seemingly directed at “the system” or “the group”, it isn’t, not really. A scapegoat is always chosen in these narratives, such “the patriarchy” or “the privileged”, leaving the “innocence” of the overall group intact. It does not manage to escape the “mimetic bubble” of ideas after all, and the “Thing Hidden Since The Foundation of The World” ultimately remains invisible to it. By being “trapped” in the mimetic bubble and unaware of the victimage mechanism, the mainstream hierarchy critique narrative actually manages to effectively use the mechanism to prevent the catastrophic collapse of the group. So I think we are safe from the Girardian monster for now. At least until a much more radical movement gains traction, like the Unabomber, one that really, truly blames the entire group, self included.