“...Peace on earth and so forth; everything is going to be fine. But the next minute, you know, Herod is killing all the babies in Bethlehem.” — René Girard, CBC

“By definition, we know only the scapegoats of others. We don't have any ourselves. That's why we love to talk about scapegoats. We live in a society where everybody talks about scapegoats and no one has any.” — René Girard, a talk given in Sonoma in 1991

“[Individuals] borrow their desires from the Other in a movement which is so fundamental and primitive that they completely confuse it with the will to be Oneself.” — René Girard, ‘Deceit, Desire, and the Novel,’ ch. 1

In this banal experience, as in many others, we catch a glimpse of one of the greatest truths of life, even if we do not quite grasp it. That truth is this: we are imitating machines. We generally enjoy a thing if the people and culture around us lead us to expect that we should. We always aspire to be like those around us whom we deem superior in intellect, beauty, wealth, taste, etc. So, if we suspect that something might interest them, we desire it and partake in it as a sort of ‘sacrament’, as Girard would say, that brings us closer to our idols. If we expect an action or a work of art to be criticised by the people we adore, we criticise it; we anticipate the desires and opinions of our favourites and act accordingly, often before they do, in order to create the implacable illusion that our judgement originates with us. We are secretly pleased when their choices affirm our judgement and, if it isn't too late, change our minds when they don't. Ideally, we would like to hide our imitation, and how scrupulous it is, not only from others but especially from ourselves. This is, of course, Shakespearean, Dostoevskian, and Proustian, Girard tells me. The more we idolise others, the more elevated their opinions become in our eyes, and the more those opinions seem objective or to originate from our own subjective processes. A film is great if we and everyone else like it, but it is much better if we liked it before hearing anyone else's opinion. In a public place like the cinema or at a concert, imitation is conveniently hidden in plain sight. The essence of ‘the atmosphere’ is an emergent collective entrancement that transcends the physical environment even as it exists alongside it. It is comparable to a primitive form of collective entrancement, such as that surrounding Salome's dancing, which helped create the conditions in which individual reservations were muted and John the Baptist's death went uncontested. Such is the power of the crowd. On the verge of digressing here... We walk away thinking, ‘This was the greatest film ever’ or ‘This was the greatest concert ever’, perhaps not only thanks to others' opinions but especially because... well, the opportunity to supposedly ‘make up our own minds’—in the presence of a multitude of models who wouldn't know they were our models—is bound to feel like robbing a bank blind in broad daylight! Image shared by @Thepasttimew