Girard Digest 12: Contagion

As desires and violence are transmitted from person to person, they can gradually spread across an entire culture. The parallel to contagious disease is an apt one: some desires take a great deal of work and ideal conditions to pass on, others sweep through a population like wildfire. Twenty years ago hardly anyone outside of California had met a vegan, and it was a scandal when a celebrity was outed as gay. On the other hand, you would definitely have heard of the macarena and probably done it a few times. Twenty years on, the general public's attitudes towards sustainability and homosexuality have changed tremendously ... and we're doing the macarena again, apparently.

There are plenty of examples of social contagion through history, from the adoption of Roman culture by the colonised Brits, to the dancing plagues of the Middle Ages, to the California Gold Rush. The invention of mass media, broadcast media, and especially the Internet, have sped up the rate at which imitation can spread, to the point where something can 'go viral' far faster and more effectively than any actual virus can. But they are not responsible for the phenomenon in itself; rather, they take advantage of, and amplify, an existing tendency in human nature.

As imitations get passed around, some are more powerful than others, and, being more attractive, eliminate the competition. This sees a gradual re-alignment of desires and rivalries until all of society organises its antipathy in one direction, which is what we will talk about next.

Girard Digest 13: Alignment