What is to be done with the modern malaise can only be considered once we understand the common thread running through it. Our aim throughout the newsletter series was to uncover that thread. And if we step back and look at everything we wrote, there are indeed recurring themes. Some readers may even say that there is quite a lot of repetition.
The vantage point from which the many-headed beast of modern malaise was viewed was René Girard’s mimetic theory. It was the sword used to try to get to the heart of it. In the process, we uncovered ideas that are beyond mimetic theory and some that may strike the reader as rather common sense. Thus, we have talked about mimetic desire as fundamental to our species, how that desire leads to violence, the suppression of violence with violent sacred, the abolition of the violent sacred, and the consequent abolition of boundaries, unhinging desires and leading to obsession with rivals, deterioration in mental health, and finally the dissolution of …