Political Atheism

Rob Henderson links to an article by Luke Burgis about Rene Girard, Culture War as Imitation Game. As the article suggests, I am hearing more and more about Girard and his idea of Mimetic Desire, the almost-automatic influence that others have on us to want the same things that we see them wanting. I know nothing about Burgis other than that he wrote a book about Girard and seems to have already lived an interesting life.  His site has numerous links to people I never heard of who seem to be thinking interesting things, and Burgis writes well.  His book, Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life looks interesting, but I haven't read it.

Girard also identified mimetic rivalry, the desire to separate oneself from our competitors for status by standing in opposition to them. 

A recent Pew survey shows that majorities of both Republicans and Democrats consider negative sentiments about the other political party to be a “major reason” for their own affiliation.

I have commented on this before, and significantly, I believe that every reference I have made has been about how liberals were doing this*, disparaging conservative core groups not because of their ideas (though that is always the disguise), but simply because they are the main competitors for power and status in this culture. When polls are taken issue by issue, agreement and disagreement between liberals and conservatives are all over the map.  There are trends, they are not entirely random, but when the originator of the quote or the idea or the program is withheld from the man on the street, he can switch sides from his supposed affiliation immediately.  If you are told Obama said something, rather than Boris Johnson or Elon Musk or Ronald Reagan, you will respond to it positively or negatively on the basis of Barack's name more than on the content of the quote. This is demonstrated repeatedly, and both sides use it to club the other at times.

We love to hate, it seems. Which is why even though Girard had political and cultural opinions, he mistrusted the bringers of those messages, who could reinvent themselves at will. In 2015, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump had very similar platforms: reduce immigration and tax the ultra-rich hard. They both moved from those, and maybe moved far. I think mimetic rivalry, belonging to groups that want to be separate from other groups, explains this far better than any supposed intellectual conversion that either experienced. This is the "political atheism" that Girard is referring to, using atheism in its more figurative sense of "disbelief" than related in any way to theistic beliefs. 

I increasingly trend that way myself. The electioneering I see has almost nothing to do with what is actually happening in terms of dozens of issues that affect us. It is almost as if elections are a competition about random subjects, with the winners getting to reward their friends and punish their rivals, while the world goes on like a giant oceangoing ship, turning and moving according to other weathers and forces.

This does not mean (quoting Burgis here) that we should become more extreme Republicans or Democrats. Political atheism means that we should become more detached from the stalemate frameworks and salvific promises each party makes, and willing to combine the best ideas no matter who offers them. Perhaps the clearest sign that we’re making progress will be when more policy proposals sincerely surprise us. As it stands now, political positions are as predictable as the sunrise.

We may be a long way off from a serious, third political party rising to power, but that is not the goal — in fact, it may just lead to a mimetic political ménage à trois. The problem is not structural, but spiritual.

“More and more, it seems to me,” Girard wrote, “modern individualism assumes the form of a desperate denial of the fact that, through mimetic desire, each of us seeks to impose his will upon his fellow man, whom he professes to love but more often despises.”

*I may be being harsh on myself. I do try and force myself to be evenhanded and find counterexamples from my own sides of conflicts, even when I do so grumbling, with a bad grace. I have certainly at least complained about that subset of Trump supporters who seem to like him only because he angers liberals so much.