Mimetics vs Memetics

Those who’ve heard of Girard’s ‘Mimetic’ Theory may wonder if it’s the same thing as ‘Memetic’ Theory based on Dawkin’s work. The two are distinct but related, as Meme and Mimesis both come from the same Greek root word for ‘copying’. Both theories attempt to explain the enormous diversity in culture, that isn’t explained by genetics. They also agree that imitation is the primary driver of human culture. The major difference is in their focus, with Girard primarily concerned with who is being copied, rather than what. In Memetic Theory (with an “e”), the focus is on what is being copied, with who is being copied being largely ignored.

Girard developed his theory of Mimetic desire while moving back and forth between State University of New York at Buffalo and Johns Hopkins University teaching Literature and History, but it was his stint at Stanford, and in particular one of his famous students – billionaire investor Peter Thiel – that popularized his work amongst the Silicon Valley elite. Thiel credited Girard’s insight that “that imitation is at the root of all behaviour” as the reason he invested in Facebook – one of the greatest investments of all time – which returned 2,300x or over a billion dollars from a $500k check. Memetics comes from evolutionary biology rather than the social sciences, which explains a lot of the variation in terminology and focus. There’s no evidence so far that Richard Dawkins has made anyone a billionaire.

Mimetics says that we think we decide for ourselves what we want, but in reality we’re forming those desires based on Models of Desire: people we look to for guidance about what to want. The canonical example is when your boss orders a drink in the bar, you’ll suddenly want the same drink. Everyone who reads Girard goes through the same process. Once you start looking for it, you’ll see it everywhere. Then after seeing it everywhere, you’ll eventually admit you see it in yourself. After accepting the hard truth that your desires are not your own, you learn to do something about it. We tend to choose models who are higher status than us, at least on a dimension that we value. If too many of us value the same things and become undifferentiated, this causes a mimetic crisis, which can only be rectified with the scapegoat mechanism: assigning the blame to someone in the group.

In the initial interpretation of Memetic Theory, not enough weight was placed on who was doing the copying and where from. Borrowing from Girardian Mimetic Theory, we can more easily explain and predict Meme transmission when we understand whether anyone is modeling their behavior on the host of a Meme. Many celebrities are such effective models that they pass on Memes that otherwise would not propagate as well on their own. Similarly, following only Mimetic Theory (with an “i”) would lead you to ignore the role of the memes themselves in being passed on. Some Memes are so viral they get passed on regardless of what you think of the host. Some memes can be so powerful they convince you to choose their host as a new model. There is no grand unifying theory of Memetics and Mimetics so far, but memes and hosts share a dynamic system – you can’t understand one part in isolation.

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