mimetic desires, memetic markets
to find lasting PMF, study religion
mimetic desire came from a french old guy, rené girard.
he was obsessed with why religion was invented.
his answer: religion is the original crowd control technology. the first consensus engine. every ancient society ran one, because every ancient society had the same bug.
the bug is us. he gave it a name — mimetic desire.
the problem with consensus
people don’t want things because they’re good. they want things because other people want them. desire is copy-paste.
same watch. same girl. same house.
the bible is his proof. ten commandments: nine ban actions. the tenth bans a feeling. thou shall not covet what your neighbor has.
not “don’t take.” don’t WANT.
whoever wrote that understood that theft is downstream. the covet is the source.
and mimetic desire ends in violence.
the fix (the original one)
dump it all on one guy.
the scapegoat. everyone agrees: HIM. he’s the problem. kill him or run him off, and — peace. actual peace, overnight.
it felt like a miracle, so they made the victim sacred and ran the miracle on a schedule. with a goat.
that’s religion, the social consensus machine for ending the pressure before the pressure ends you.
the past: money that replaced god
in 1982, two of girard’s students — economists aglietta & orléan — said money took over religion’s job.
instead of wanting YOUR watch, your girl, your house, we all agreed to chase one neutral thing: money.
i don’t rob you. i outearn you.
and money can hold the job because money is built like a god: real because everybody believes everybody believes. a belief held by one person is a delusion. held by everyone, it’s a religion.
my (and this publication’s) claim goes further: every economy is anchored to some form of external consensus, like attention. gold. USA.
the present: the crisis
economy replaced religion. money replaced god.
but money inherited religion’s function WITHOUT its pressure release valve.
no sabbath, no jubilee, no ending. the market runs and the currencies limp.
and pressure with no valve finds one.
watch any crash: the crowd converges on one name. do kwon. SBF. zhu su — HE’S the problem with crypto.
do kwon got fifteen years. that is accountability. it is not the same thing as settling terra’s victims.
the violence of a bad market made the punishment of villains feel like the settlement of victims.
the future: death, for the lack of a better word, is good
girard said the bible is the first story told from the POV of the victim.
the social consensus was wrong; the victim was innocent. hence the group loses its alibi; forced to confront itself and believe something better, or find a new victim.
history mostly picked a new victim, but knowledge is power!
that is christianity’s upgrade: the crowd can reach perfect consensus and still be wrong. once you know that, sacrifice can no longer pass for settlement.
the market can die. the believers don’t have to.
give the machine its endings back
money should be social, and fun. a game is only fun when the rules are upfront and agreed upon.
the old world had this figured out: a rest day every seven days. debt release every seven years. jubilee every fifty. the calendar was the technology. we kept their god and threw away their calendar.
the goal is to design markets that die and believers who don’t.
mimetic is how desire copies from person to person. memetic is how markets move money through viral wanting.
call it memenomics.