In his Poetics, Aristotle thus spoke of man:
One difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures.
Girard explains the mechanism of desire from this property of man. Desires stem from a lack of something. This lack provokes suffering, and its fulfilment, satisfaction. However, desires are not bipartite (desiring and desired) but tripartite (desiring, desired to be, desired to have). The desired objects are a proxy for what man would like to be, consciously or not.
Mimetic spirals cause violent crises, for they can only be solved by the destruction of the desired object or the adversary. The law of the talion first referenced in the Code of Hammurabi, is an attempt to prevent mimetic spirals.
Whenever a man tries to accrue capital of any nature, he may deliberately transmit his desire to other men, leading to conflict. As long as mimetic crises were not solved by social technology, civilisation was impossible.
The existence of our civilisation shows the necessity of an originary scene, in which the object of desire (source of ills) also prevented the desiring men from destruction, becoming the source of peace (cure of ills). We call such an object a scapegoat.
The scapegoat must be simultaneously part of the group (to be responsible for its ills) but also different enough from the members (so that they do not recognise themselves in the scapegoat).
Kings are scapegoats who kept on for an indefinite time. Zulu kings received a mandate from the gods. It was expressed in their health. The first signs of age showed the departure of the gods, after which the king was killed. When Europeans first opened trade, Zulus were not arbitrarily interested in trinkets. Further study show they were especially looking into hair dye.
Social technologies targeting mimetic desire are usually variations of the scapegoat. The Greek theatre represented the originary murder without any drop of blood. In others parts of the world, such as Mesoamerica, the scapegoat evolved into a full-blown industry. Religions are an institutionalisation of the scapegoat.
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