What is the role of culture when it comes to mimetic desire?
Culture has a dual role, and the two roles seem to contradict each another. (Girard calls this the “double bind.”) First, culture is based on mimetic desire and, thus, culture has a strong influence over our desires: It informs us as to what we are to desire. Today, for example, the media plays a major role in letting us know what we ought to desire. The second role of culture is to tell us not to imitate the desires of others. That is, culture understands that imitative desire causes rivalry and conflict. After informing people what they should desire, the culture creates safeguards to protect against out-of-control mimetic desire that can cause dangerous conflict. Without these safeguards, the rivalry that stems from mimetic desire would lead us to perform acts of chaotic violence against one another. So the second role of culture is to create roles, rules, prohibitions and institutions to protect against violent and chaotic rivalry. One such institution common to all cultures is the
