Foundations 6 Mimesis, Change, and Relationships

Mimesis, Change, and Relationships

Experiential Knowledge and Empirical Evidence Underpinning Nurturing Hope

Mimesis-Understanding Relationships

We are all ‘persons in relationship’. Nurturing Hope draws heavily on work pioneered by the late Rene Girard, of Stanford University, and his work on the primary importance of relationships for being human. The concept of mimesis, or imitation, is Girard’s foundational reality for being human. ‘Mimesis’ describes the reality of who we are as human beings. We exist in relationships. We react to and are being shaped by one another in millions of conscious and unconscious ways.

• For better or for worse, we exist and have our being in relationships with one another and the world as a whole.

• Human beings change and grow through learning in relationships, in both positive and negative ways.

• Mimesis—this process of interaction, learning and meeting with each other—comes before consciousness., even if we are never aware of it.

• We do not escape relationships but find our way into relationships which are marked either by rivalry or by freedom.

Life is lived ‘in mimesis’ with the rest of reality. For Girard, this includes the ‘mimesis of desire4.’ What we desire is shaped in relationships with one another and with the world surrounding us. Our desires do not arise spontaneously from within us. They come from the relationships between us. When we come into different relationships, we are changed, as are our desires. Mimesis is more akin to gravity or magnetism than ideas or conscious thought. Mimetic desire happens even before we are conscious of it, mostly as an unconscious imitation of what another desires. This is clearly observable when a child wants a toy only after another child is playing with it.

Mimetic relationships are experienced in BOTH our positive pull towards one another (as a model) and our negative push away from one another (as a rejection and in rivalry). Mimesis sets us up to be both models for, and rivals with, one another. Friendship and learning, as well as rivalry and conflict, are therefore all shaped in mimesis. We are mimetic, even if we try to resist it.

As friends and colleagues we can model trust, openness and freedom between each other that underpins growth, imagination and creativity. At other times even friends or colleagues can also become rivals as we are more and more fascinated with having what our friends have. Our friends and colleagues can be drawn mimetically into this rivalry as rival coalitions form.

Mimetic attraction explains how something that begins as a personal battle can escalate into a battle of ‘all against all’, or “all against one”, threatening the cohesion and peace of an entire community. Just because it is mimetic, however, we blame other people when this happens. No one takes responsibility for their actions: responsibility always lies with the other.

Those in conflict usually stress how different they are from one another. Girard turns this idea, that we fight with those who we are most different from, on its head. For him, violence escalates between people who are becoming more alike: or to put it the other way – we become more alike, not more different, as we become rivals.

For those observing the conflict, from outside, the more we are rivals, the more we become like our rivals—even though, to us on the inside, we are convinced we are opposites and different.

When mimetic contagion escalates it destroys all the differences between us as we become more and more ‘undifferentiated’. In the end, escalating rivalry leads only to crisis.

Escalating Rivalry generates the Unanimity of Scapegoating

One way of resolving the tension of escalating rivalry between us is to find an external “different other”— whether a group or a person—on which to pin the blame for the difficulties between us. United in the face of a shared target, the scapegoat, we can forget our rivalry. Girard’s insight is that this scapegoat is, at the very least, no more guilty than anyone else. We former rivals become convinced that the scapegoat really is to blame for the conflict between us, even if the scapegoat is totally innocent. Even worse, we who turned on the scapegoat come to believe that we are the innocent ones!

A real scapegoat is all alone against the accusation of everyone else. When we can see the scapegoating, it is not working fully! The scapegoating solution to rivalry only works efficiently when we all agree on the ‘guilt of the scapegoat’. The isolated scapegoat is unable to retaliate because they are alone. Unable to respond in the rivalry, everyone is convinced that this targeted “other” is the right one.

Paradoxically, the evidence, or ‘proof’, of the scapegoat’s ‘guilt’ is found in ‘the peace’ that now miraculously comes for everyone else - to the new group, community or culture that results from the unanimity expressed against the scapegoat and the inability of the group to admit to its violence. With the expulsion of the scapegoat, peace returns to the community—we are no longer rivals. Problematically, it is also at this point that rivalry begins to return. Scapegoating has relieved the pressure at the expense

of a victim, but the impression that it has solved our issues of rivalry and of violence is a mistake. It is a quick fix that still lives with the desires at the root of our conflict. Until now, our participation in scapegoating has so often been hidden from view. Mimetic theory, however, unveils and unmasks how our social peace has its roots in scapegoating as a way to deal with our own violence and allows us to see that as the cause, if we dare. For those of us who remain in the community, the ‘guilt’ of the scapegoat is understood as ‘simply’ true. ‘They’ must be responsible because the rest of us were at peace when we blamed them. No one needs to accept any further responsibility for their actions, or for the violence in the community. Girard, supported now by considerable anthropological evidence6, concluded that this ‘scapegoat mechanism’ was critical to the origins of human culture, enabling rivalling people to live together. Girard hypothesised another way in which this tendency is mitigated. He argued that culture, and our rules and practices for living together, emerged after the threat of violence, and even violence itself, was controlled by focusing on a shared object, a scapegoat. For Girard, cultures are ways of living that are generated to prevent rivalry escalating The dirty secret is that cultures are also rooted in the violence that arises from rivalry. When our cultural rules break down, we default to rivalry and violence. In the midst of the rising anxiety, we seek to make another the scapegoat, often without remorse, rather than recognise and accept responsibility for our contribution to the situation. What do we mean by hope, in the midst of escalating rivalry? Hope is more than optimism. It is not determined by events. Hope is something we carry in our bodies, our very being, when we have known the deep experience of a truly human place of peace and acceptance. No matter what happens, if this experience remains alive with us—no matter how dimly— and we can remain ‘in mimesis’ with its reality in our lives, can be the basis for a future that transcends5 the drive to win in the moment and in our immediate conflicts. People who carry this kind of hope with them are vital for the possibility of new ways forward and new life for everyone else. Hope, like fear, is mimetic. For some of us, this hope may be the result of a deep experience in the past that carries us through the storms of everyday life. For others, it is more like a vision, a possibility for which we are looking which keeps us afloat even if things are not going well. For the Nurturing Hope team, hope ‘happens’ or ‘appears’ when we meet with others in ways in which we experience that:

• We really have a place.

• We belong not as rivals but as friends, making choices about our lives because of this experience.

These materials are about making space for hope. The hallmarks of these types of experiences are:

• We stop blaming others.

• We take real decisions and accept responsibility.

• We forgive and accept forgiveness from one another.

• We find ways to serve each other rather than simply looking after ourselves.

Through our inherited cultural habits, we are all rooted in the knowledge that we could be the victim, the scapegoat. So we always seek to blame somebody else, to make ‘them’ responsible for all the bad things. However deeply hidden, this knowledge is evidence that our peace as a group has often been built at the expense of someone else. This knowledge reveals that we, too, belong to that violence, and will use violence if it is in our interests. As we look for someone else to blame for our crisis, we are revealed to be participants in the same process of scapegoating. We can never rest in our ‘goodness’; we are all ‘hypocrites’ part of the problem and part of the solution.

The way to freedom

Culture was the answer human beings found to deal with the threat of violence destroying all. Paradoxically, at the heart of culture is a reliance on violence directed at the scapegoat to resolve a problem and to prevent unlimited violence escalating. Culture then limited rivalry by giving ‘sacred status’ to cultural differences. As it becomes clear that this was rooted in violence, some people rebel, while others turn back to the old traditions, but now with even more violence. The result is only escalation and chaos. Culture always remains vulnerable to our mimetic rivalry. Once we know that culture is violent, the only way out is to find a way that does not escalate the violence further, That means finding a way to identify, acknowledge, and take responsibility for our rivalry and the violence it generates. We have seen this happen across the globe, and increasingly domestically. Faced with the choice of resorting to violent order or sinking into escalating rivalry, finding another way is essential. The choice is to remain within our rivalries, seeking to defeat our enemies, or to find ways in which we recognise our participation in violence, make changes and find ways of being together in which everyone has a place. Part of this journey of discovery is recognising that we carry the legacy of our past fights and conflicts. We are temporally mimetic with them, learning deeply how to both scapegoat and to deny it! At the same time, we have had, still have, possibilities to experience real freedom. As human beings we have our being in relationships with others and with the reality around us. Our relationships are fundamental to our being. We are always persons ‘in relationship’ - never entirely alone. Relationships make people even before people make relationships. The quality of our lives is shaped by the quality of the relationships that we have, and with whom these relationships are lived. In the language of Girard, we are ‘spatially mimetic’ – in mimesis with everything and everyone around us. At times of escalating rivalry, we find the possibility of freedom when we experience, and come into mimesis with relationships where there is openness and trust. These experiences dissolve or cut us off completely from patterns of rivalry. Sometimes we have learned these things from being with others in the past, mostly without knowing it. At other times, they are experiences

in new contemporary relationships that allow the possibility of change. Human life is mimetic, interactive and contagious.- both the joyful and the sad. Real change means that our relationships change. Fixing rivalries by winning only commits us to more rivalry. In fact it seems to teach us that rivalry ‘works’ while always making us insecure that we will lose in the future. As the computer learned in the 1983 movie, War Games, winning in a world of mutually-assured nuclear destruction is the same as losing. Hope is contagious, just as desire is. Our concepts of peace, freedom and justice must be made real in relationships. Hope makes its appearance in the midst of relationships where there is real generosity, and everyone has a place of honour. Hope is the ground in which such sustainable relationships can grow and have implications for the whole of our lives together, relationally and structurally. Our only choice is to find ways out of rivalry. That means that, at last, we take responsibility for ourselves and our actions and something new comes into the world. The term ‘reconciliation’ describes this ‘something new’. Into a world of hostility comes the miracle of recognition and service to one another. At its deepest, it is the lived experience that hostile enmity can be overcome. This is only possible when we leave our rivalry behind in new, often unexpected, relationships which allow us to change the patterns of enmity and hostility, into which we have locked ourselves, in our rivalry. In a world where violence is so close, reconciliation is no longer an option but a requirement if we are to find a just future together.

What Nurtures Mimesis with Trust and Provides Evidence of Hope

Trust and Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness and trust are the soil of new growth. For trust to become possible, we must first become trustworthy. Being with people who are trustworthy creates the possibility of gathering in safety. In these times, we have the possibility of new relationships between people who—even though they come from different and conflicted experiences—can find, in trust, a way of living with one another, relying on each other and free from the need to rival.

In mimesis with trustworthiness, people who have previously been opposed or violent towards each other can begin to see each other differently. In finding ways to ‘walk with’ one another, where there is neither rivalry nor threat, we may see, and even agree a plan for a shared future. Trustworthiness and trust are catalysts of new, and often unimagined, possibilities.

Places for meeting and engaging: Hospitality and sanctuary

To experience trust also means to be safe. The dynamics of culture, described earlier, mean that we need ‘safe spaces’ to take risks and generate hope. A safe space is a relationship where we can trust in the midst of the chaos of rivalry. When we experience them, we can find space that even protects us when we return to the rivalry. Without experience of safe space living in us, our hope can easily get lost in the chaos arising from mimesis with fear, distrust, rivalry, and, in some cases, deep hatred.

Places where we find hope are characterised by an experience of hospitality and welcome. Such characteristics make change between people possible. Such places are spaces in which we are encouraged to listen to others and tell about ourselves.

Exposing our vulnerabilities and weaknesses bring us closer to one another. They can be shared and healed because we know that they will not lead to our destruction. Spaces for such radical hospitality are like oases in the desert. Without them, it is impossible to survive.

There are many possibilities for creating spaces in which we experience hospitality and meet together in a different way that nurtures hope such as:

• Regular events of remembrance or acknowledgement

• Times of celebration

• Times of prayer for, or thinking about, others

• Sitting together in silence

• Going on a walk together

• Gathering and living together overnight or over a weekend

In our experience, intentionally setting aside times and places where we can go back to trustworthiness and trust with one another have importance beyond the event. They create ripples of possibilities that mimetically travel in and through us, creating widening circles of possibilities.

Acknowledging injury: Forgiving and being forgiven; being responsible and taking responsibilityxi

Recognising the truth about violence and our responsibilities for it, means that we have to face and acknowledge its costs for others and destroys our pretension of being ‘good people’. It makes us vulnerable. We are no longer able to command the stage and demand change from others, without being willing to change ourselves. So often we answer an accusation about our own complicity in the violence with an accusation about the complicity of others. “People so staunch and true, they’re fixated Shining with self-regard like polished stones. And their whole life spent admiring themselves For their own long-suffering. Licking their wounds And flashing them around like decorations. I hate it, I always hated it, and I am a part of it myself. ” Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes

My violence must be weighed against your violence before I will take responsibility for it. We again go back into rivalry as we try to avoid the truth, and the fear of our vulnerability. Too quickly, the dead and injured are forgotten in the rush to defend ourselves. We have only one possibility for freeing ourselves from this cycle and achieving a new justice—to move from a world of blame to a world of responsibility. This requires that we meet in an atmosphere where it is possible to acknowledge, in weakness, our complicity and to be held as we take steps into the future without ourselves being scapegoated or scapegoating others. Forgiveness gives us possibility. Without it, every one of us finds ourselves hiding the truth of violence. We deceive both ourselves and others. We rationalise the hurt we have done others. Furthermore, we are certain that our past acts of injustice prevent us from having a future together. Forgiveness frees us. When we are unable to forgive, we stay in mimesis with the terrible things that were done to us, unable to move beyond their impact in our lives. Forgiving others and being forgiven is neither a law nor a lie but a miraculous experience on which we all depend for a future. Being forgiven and forgiving opens up the possibility for us to be truly responsible and response-able. Because we are now again in relationship, we can finally begin to face our complicity with violence and the destruction of others and seek to do differently.

Change in Relationships

The Human Condition Is Fundamentally Relational

Relationships are foundational for the life, personality and experience of each one of us. Each of us was conceived through a relationship. Our parents or our carers were important in shaping us as we are, including their anxieties, rivalries and freedoms. The quality of our past and present relationships with others influences us deeply. Who we are today— and what we are open to do from today onward—is shaped by the relationships we have had up to this moment. We are all unique, yet our dependence on our relationships is something we have in common with each other. We live in relationships. Everything we have, the good and the bad, comes from relationships and we change when our relationships change. When relationships where we have felt demeaned or disempowered dominate our lives we can feel angry or depressed. We need other relationships where we are acknowledged, understood and included, in order to find freedom from these traps.

We ‘came into mimesis’ with our many models of relationships historically and we are, at this present moment, in a mimetic relationship. In the times when we feel at ease, we draw on those historical relationships in which we have been accepted and experienced freedom from fear, often without realizing it. Relationships where we have had our place continue to nourish us, and give us the potential to accept others, to show compassion, to understand, to be patient, and even to forgive and start again. When we become anxious about the future we are again in mimesis with historic relationships. Perhaps we picked up anxiety in our families or had traumatic experiences in the past which come back to us? It is almost a certainty that each of us has had some relationships—often deep in our past—characterised by unease, betrayal, and perhaps even threat. When in the present moment we become upset, much of our turmoil has to do with the return of these past relationships. Most of the times the experience and feelings associated with these damaging relationships are buried and hidden from us. But an event in the present can bring them rushing back, even if their origin is a mystery to us. We are easily drawn back into damaging patterns and repeating circles of argument, hurt, regret or anger. Our lives are lived in, and shaped by, our relationships. This never changes. What changes is ‘what?’ or ‘which?’ relationships. The quality of our relationships is everything. If we are looking for change, change has to happen in our relationships as well. It is important that each one of us reflects on our past relationships and finds our voice. Mimesis is mostly not a conscious choice. We are often mimetic with others or with situations before we consciously know about it. As children, we ‘simply react’. Even if we do eventually become conscious of it, we still often find ourselves reacting before thinking. If we are fortunate, we may begin to recognise patterns in our reactions. We may find ways to avoid what triggers them. We may learn techniques which help us cope when we feel overwhelmed or threatened. Or we may enter a new situation in which the threats of the past have simply disappeared. However, if we wish to really end mimesis with the damaging experiences in our past, we need ways to make and live in new relationships where we meet each other free from rivalry or judgement. When we are genuinely interested in hearing about each other’s reality, new relationships can interrupt, contradict and even end established harmful patterns. These relationships—where the traumas of the past are no longer present—open up new possibilities for us and can free us from ‘mimetic capture’ by the damaging patterns that have continually held us back. They enable us to find new ways forward, beyond violence, fear, bitterness, and anger. “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies. ” Attributed to Nelson Mandela

In a very real way, we have to become a traitor to our past in order to be an ally of our shared future. Relationships in which we are accepted and valued live on in us in a positive manner. The sites of hope are relationships in which we experience that each of us gives the other ‘a real place’. We do not have to fight for our place. The initial change and possibility that these relationships bring can also be the basis for change in our lives from this moment on. Our lives are experienced in, and shaped by, our relationships—both for good and ill. The question is always, “which relationship is the defining influence”? Girard’s insight is that depression, fear, and anger reflect our rivalrous relationships, past and present. Building hope requires us to focus less on ‘our enemies’ and more on creating spaces where we come into different relationships with each other. In these spaces, trust can become a reality again and have a chance to regrow and spread. Hope is born out of an experience in the present which gives us confidence in the future. To nurture hope and live well together therefore requires that together we:

• Make places where trust in relationships gives rise to creativity, openness, and a new understanding of our common good.

• Consider together the potential for change and finding ways to act that make it a reality.

• Become attentive to one another, the suffering of others, the damage to the environment, and the ways in which we participate in power games at the cost of othersxii.

• Cut and end relationships in which we and others suffer at one another’s hands

Many of the relationships and structures of which we are a part are characterised by power games. If we are losing, which is an ever present danger, the only alternative seems to be to fight to win. However we cannot achieve living in a human way by becoming more inhuman together. In a world where we are thrown together, it is increasingly urgent that we find a way to be together that nurtures hope. At their best, reflective learning practices can be transformational. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested that we need experiences between us where we hear the ‘intimacy of our honest differences’. When we acknowledge and take on personal responsibility, express regret and say we are sorry, and give priority to our relationships with others, regardless of their beliefs and positions, we have such experiences.

We know from our experience in Northern Ireland, that in societies where conflict rages we have our ‘good reasons’ to distrust different others, “‘they are simply bad people, out to get us.” It is also our experience that this is not true. Change began when we found a way to each other, recognising each other and beginning to take practical steps together. Meeting each other in this way is the essential soil for living in open societies. Now, perhaps more than ever, we need to take steps to make interconnections between people, often from different backgrounds and always with very different viewsxiv. Where there are no relationships of trust, there is only rivalry. Our survival requires us to find ways to live together and give each other a place. In our experience we have come to understand what reconciliation means. When we have been part of communities where people who were once estranged or opposed become open to meeting together in a different spirit, new and creative possibilities emerge. People who previously found no common space, began to take steps together.

Relationships that Model Freedom

Relationships shape who we are and who we will become. They give us our reality. Human beings shaped by relationships where there was trust have models that multiply freedom for others as well. The truthfulness, openness, acceptance and even forgiveness we can experience in trustful relationships can become realities that others also experience. We can become mimetic with these relationships of trust and grow together through them. Each of us matters when we are in relationships. Just like fear and hatred, trusting and open relationships are gifts each of us can give to others. They are reciprocal in character and a counterbalance to the human tendency towards rivalry, desire, and the possibility of escalation into violence. Now we live in a time when placing blame on others no longer works efficiently, able to be denied. The process of scapegoating is too visible. We cannot hide from our accountability and as a result mutual recrimination and polarisation escalate. Our only way to address the cycle of rivalry is to find a new way to be together where rivalry is set aside, and we can speak together in a new manner. We have found that there is ‘wonder’ and ‘awe’ when we explore sensitive themes together in a context where rivalry is set aside, and we talk about the things which matter to us in a clear way. Hope is the experience that human actions and reactions can open ways to freedom as well as conflict, address issues of justice and injustice, and shape our contribution to the future. Beliefs are not static. They develop through experiences.

The concept of ‘agency’, where each person can act as well as respond is important. In Girard’s thinking action and response are interconnected. Making space to nurture relationships which are free of competition, polarisation, and conflict gives us the possibility of responding differently when we find ourselves facing injustice, violence, and threat. Instead of simply reacting, we have the chance to act differently out of mimesis with our experiences of spaces of hope and trusted relationships with our ‘other’. We have the possibility to be responsible people, to act or respond thoughtfully in the face of our urge to react. Hope is a muscle that strengthens with use. As others experience the hope we carry with us there is the possibility of hope spreading throughout our society. We affirm each other and promote hope when we:

• develop relationships shaped in trust and openness rather than rivalry, demeaning behaviours, and conflict.

• find ways past enmities which have shaped our behaviours.

• move confidently into experiences with different others.

If you have ever been or still are in love! Of course, relationships matter! If you have ever given birth or been present at the birth of your child. Of course, relationships matter! If you have ever stood at the burial of a loved one and been at peace in yourself for all that passed between you or been choked with grief or overcome with regrets at what was never shared between you or what was never healed. Of course, relationships matter! If you have ever felt the elation and comfort of being valued by friends at difficult points in life. Of course, relationships matter! If you have ever been hurt and know how that hurt gnaws at you and the people associated with that hurt when you meet them, avoid them or think of them. Of course, relationships matter!