The Gospel, Discipleship and the Transformation of Our Desires (Part 2 /3)

Author: Stef Miles

The Science of Shared Desire

Interestingly, decades after Girard first proposed his theory of mimetic desire, discoveries in neuroscience have provided some fascinating insights into just how relational human beings really are.

In the 1990s, Italian researchers studying macaque monkeys made an unexpected discovery. While observing activity in individual neurons in a monkey’s brain, they noticed something remarkable. The same neurons that fired when a monkey reached out and picked up a piece of fruit also fired when that monkey simply watched another monkey perform the same action.

The observing monkey’s brain was, in some sense, participating in the action it witnessed. These became known as mirror neurons.

What was particularly fascinating was that these neurons did not simply respond to physical movement. They appeared to respond to the intention behind the movement. The brain did not wait until the fruit had actually been picked up. It responded as the intention to reach and grasp became apparent.

Now, mirror neurons do not provide a complete scientific explanation of mimetic desire, and the relationship between them and complex human behaviour continues to be explored. But they do offer a fascinating glimpse into something Girard recognised: we are profoundly relational creatures.

We are not isolated individuals observing the world from a distance. We are continually interpreting and responding to the intentions, emotions and actions of others. We do not simply observe another person wanting something. We can begin to participate in their desire, to see the world, in some small way, through their eyes.

Our desires are formed in connection with others.

When Desire Becomes Rivalry

The problem, then, is not imitation itself.

Imitation is part of what makes us human. We learn language through imitation. We learn skills through imitation. We even learn how to love through imitation.

The question is not whether we imitate. The question is: Who are we imitating, and what desires are being formed within us? Because desire can move in two very different directions.

When shaped by love, generosity and abundance, desire can lead us into communion with others. But when shaped by fear, insecurity and scarcity, desire can quickly become rivalry. Girard’s insight is that the person who first showed us what to desire can eventually become the very person we perceive as standing in our way. What began as admiration becomes resentment. What began as imitation becomes competition.

Andrew Marr offers a wonderfully simple illustration of this dynamic in Moving and Resting in God’s Desire. He describes a child’s birthday party that his friend attended where the house was filled with hundreds of balloons. The children happily played with them, enjoying the abundance around them. Then suddenly one child picked up a balloon and declared:

“This balloon is mine!”

Immediately everything changed. The other children abandoned the balloons they had previously been enjoying and began competing and fighting for that one particular balloon. There was nothing different about it. Hundreds of virtually identical balloons surrounded them. It became desirable because another child desired it.

The balloon itself was not really the source of the conflict. The conflict emerged because separate desires had converged around the same object, transforming something ordinary into something worth fighting over. This is the pattern Girard sees running throughout human life.

We compete for recognition, status, influence, success and belonging. The objects change, but the underlying dynamic remains remarkably similar. Another person appears to possess something we lack, and our desire becomes entangled with comparison and competition.

Rivalry, Scapegoating and the Human Story

Girard believed this dynamic does not simply remain between individuals. As rivalries multiply within communities, tension and conflict grow. And when that conflict reaches a crisis point, communities begin looking for some way to restore peace.

This is where Girard identifies one of the most powerful and tragic patterns in human history: the scapegoating mechanism. When groups experience fear, instability and division, they often transfer their hostility onto a particular individual or group. Suddenly, they are the problem.

“If only this person were removed, everything would be okay again.”

Throughout history, communities have repeatedly found ways of creating unity through exclusion. A minority group, a political opponent, a stranger, an outsider, or simply someone labelled as a threat becomes the one who carries the blame for the problems of the whole.

And strangely, it works.

At least for a while.

The community experiences a new sense of unity because everyone has finally agreed about something: who the enemy is. But the peace achieved is a false peace. It has been purchased through violence against another.

Girard argues that this same mechanism is at work in the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus enters a world already shaped by rivalry, fear and exclusion. Religious leaders, political authorities and crowds who were otherwise divided find a strange unity through their opposition to him. Jesus becomes the victim onto whom humanity projects its hostility. The one who apparently needs to be removed so that peace can return. Yet Jesus does something completely unexpected.

He refuses to participate in the cycle. He does not retaliate against his enemies. He does not seek another victim onto whom the blame can be placed. Instead, he takes the place of the rejected and excluded one, entering into the very pattern of human violence in order to expose it and transform it from within.

In becoming the innocent and forgiving victim, Jesus reveals the deception at the heart of the scapegoating mechanism. The one humanity rejects is the very one through whom God reveals himself.

The cross and resurrection expose the violence hidden beneath humanity’s attempts to create peace. But they also reveal something else: the radically different nature of God’s love.

A love that does not overcome enemies by destroying them, but by forgiving them. And in doing so, Jesus opens up a new way of being human. A life no longer governed by rivalry, fear and exclusion, but formed by self-giving, nonviolent love.

End or Part 2…