It sounds like a re-telling of the Girardian mimetic theory through the frame of porn instead of Christianity? If so, and based on what you have summarized so far, it seems to be a narrower re-telling, since by nature of pornography it has a tendency to focus on only people's sexual desires rather than desires in general (of which, admittedly, sexual ones make up a large amount).
I don't know that theory; I have what you'd probably consider to be a limited education. I'll look it up (unless you want to explain it very slowly, as you would to a child).
I'm sure there are lots of other resources online that do a much better job than I can, but I'll try to summarize it a bit. Mimetic theory is a theory about desire by the French philosopher René Girard. Some key ideas/concepts are (from my knowledge and interpretations at least, which is definitely incomplete and flawed):
- All human desires are "mimetic", i.e. they arise from mimicry, are copied from others. We never want something because it is objectively valuable, or even because it meets our own subjective needs, but only because someone else wanted it before us
- As a result, any given object in the world is either not desired by anyone or desired by more than one person. This inevitably leads to rivalry, and rivalry in turn leads to violence. All violence, without exception, is fundamentally a direct (and inevitable) result of mimetic rivalry
- For most of human history, the best that could be done about this inevitable tendency towards violence was to channel the murderous rage onto a single victim, rather than have it tear society apart. A single individual on which all the violence, and hate can be placed upon, then killed, which would return the group to another period of peace (but the cycle of mimetic rivalry will happen again). This is the scapegoat mechanism
- The scapegoat mechanism probably emerged naturally as societies that could not develop it would've destroyed themselves. Historically the scapegoat mechanism initially started literally and violently (in the form of actual human sacrifices), but in the modern era happens more symbolically (in the form of exile/ostracization)
Now, it's only the mimesis part of his theory that I feel like is being re-told by TLP here. But I included the scapegoat mechanism as it is an important part that completes Girard's theory.
As for the link to Christianity. Girard himself discovered these concepts and reached these conclusions in large part through his anthropology studies, particularly into ancient tribal ceremonies, practices, and religions, most notably Christianity. Note that it's very important, for the scapegoating mechanism to work, that the people be oblivious to its actual nature, because ultimately it makes no sense and is pointless (after all the scapegoat is innocent). Girard makes the case (in his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World) that the New Testament Jesus was the first in human history to explicitly point out this scapegoat mechanism, and in fact was the archetypal (in the Jungian sense) scapegoat. In some sense Jesus was here to enlighten us of the ideas of mimetic rivalry and the way we dealt with it, the realization of which should have allowed us to dispense with the scapegoat mechanism altogether and moved on to something better.
So, if you've the energy after reading this, you should go back and pick a couple posts from his blog to see how 2022 RC would review them, and try to figure out if he changed, or you did, or the format/topic makes a difference, etc.
I might, but I do wonder how limited the appetite of my audience is overall for this kind of thing. I feel really bad for the people who subscribed off the momentum of the "Jokes" article - they had no idea this was coming, and have been unsubscribing in droves.
But in all seriousness, if it's an issue of losing revenue, maybe you could aim to write 5 articles per month, charge some number that's evenly divisible by 4, and say "If this article on topic X isn't for you, consider it your freebie." That's kind of like what Angry DM does.
Oh, it's not a money thing these were mostly free subscribers anyhow. It's more just that different people are here for different things. A lot of people joined up because of the poor-ish article, for instance - they don't like a huge, ever-present focus on conservatism, for example. And so on and so forth. I try to vary a little bit for everyone's sake.
Have they really? That's funny. (Maybe they can come back now?)
FWIW, this is the sort of thing I associate with you, because you initially did that article on, I think, Kendi and McWhorter. The joke one was a nice bonus, though. (Oh, and I still owe you about 4 clicks, but call off the hit-men, I'm good for it.)
There seems to be a genre of books that are ostensibly "about" something but seem more like excuses for rhetorical performance. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Kierkegaard's "Either / Or", and David Foster Wallace's review of a dictionary come to mind.
The Last Psychiatrist was kind of before my time, my exposure to it is almost entirely second-hand.
I guess the first point about the appeal of pornography being the unwillingness to fantasise makes some sort of sense, although I suppose you could say the same about any form of entertainment so I'm not sure if its as profound as it initially sounds (which I think is the problem with a lot of TLP's writing).
The third point just seems weird, although I suppose I see sexual desire as more akin to hunger than to anything else (more biological than intellectual), and the idea that I enjoy eating junk food in order to deprive other people of it is absurd - there is far too much of it! (I think the analogy between pornography and junk food works on multiple levels.) This may make more sense in context though, so I guess I'll have to wait for part 2.
I think a lot of what makes TLP's assertions work is he sort of spends a long time emphasizing them; he sort of says them over and over until your resistance to them wears down, and introduces the concepts in fuzzy pieces scattered all over so some of your resistance is covered by "what the hell is he even getting at" anyway.
I don't think *all* his assertions are definitely wrong, some of them I'm very sympathetic to. But I also don't think he does a very good job of convincing you of the truth of them; more on that later.
I guess what I was alluding to was a lot of the time I didn't find the insights that groundbreaking, and from my cursory reading the blog (or its readers?) seem to conflate cynicism with insight. You can definitely seem wise that way, but it's not actually that difficult or useful in my opinion.
I may just (unfairly?) find the blog's resemblance to the worst parts of my own internal monologue off-putting.
I don't think there's actually much space between how we feel about this book. The split-up post isn't doing a great job of making it clear, but followups will; I don't think this is a great book that makes great arguments.
I know nothing about this author or this book, but your review has convinced me that I definitely don't want to read it. It sounds exhausting.
Out of curiosity, does the author talk about single people at all? That seems like the most obvious case where his "you only want [romance/sex] to deprive others" claim breaks down. Sure, some single people want relationships and could probably be included in this claim, but not all of them. Some people are perfectly happy being single for years or even a lifetime.
So he's pretty male/female/single/married agnostic, for what it's worth. If you look at any individual quote, you might say "seems pretty hard on X; why not on Y?" but sooner or later he gets around to it.
As to the other question, I'd say his system doesn't really break down on that particular point. He's not saying *everyone* wants sex/romance as a necessary thing. In fact, he's saying none of them do at all; he uses the "you" clause to point universally at all humanity. To the extent they want anything, they want to deprive; that might be through romance, but it might be through anything else that takes what someone else wants, too.
The first three paragraphs… I don’t really get. Is feeling smart the main value you yourself get from reading TLP? Or do you think that’s the main reason _others_ like it is for phony feel-smart reasons, but you yourself see the deeper meaning, unlike the phonies?
(Honestly I’m just miffed, because when I discovered TLP last year, I really did think some of it was profound, and it helped me improve my life and how I treat people. I’m guessing the intent of the first few paragraphs of your post is to be self-deprecating, but… I think they’re mean)
It’s OK to just straightforwardly really like TLP!
I think feeling smart is a lot of the value a lot of people get from TLP. I wasn't being disingenuous when I said I am fond of the blog; I liked it a lot then, and I still like it a bit now.
But different people like things for different reasons; I think some of his points are more solid than others, and an awful lot of it is him saying "this is the way this is; accept it". If that was true of the blog, it's much more so of the book.
For some people, this is going to mean something like "well, that's some great food for thought; I'll look for supporting evidence by myself and make a decision". For other people (say, me in 2013) it's going to be something like "Wow; that was long, and had incredible style; it feels true". From there some people are going to check to see if it is true or realize that feeling true is not the same thing as being a supported argument. Others (me in 2013) aren't going to do that work.
I'll be going into it a little bit more in subsequent entries, but I think there's actually some good reasons someone might like the book (even if I generally find it torturous, which I do). There's certain kinds of art and art styles I'm mostly insensate to. So here (and in the next article)
I'm sort of covering what I see as his baseline arguments at 250 pages, and the next article will be more about how he expands those once I've finished the book, the more artistic side of the book, and tempering my own negativity.
It does seem rather circular, if you only want things because other people want them, then why does anyone want anything in the first place? Envy all the way down?
I think there's a subtle but clear difference between valuing something because you expect other people to value it (and therefore be willing to give you other things in exchange for it later) and wanting something solely to deprive other people of if.
It sounds like a re-telling of the Girardian mimetic theory through the frame of porn instead of Christianity? If so, and based on what you have summarized so far, it seems to be a narrower re-telling, since by nature of pornography it has a tendency to focus on only people's sexual desires rather than desires in general (of which, admittedly, sexual ones make up a large amount).
I don't know that theory; I have what you'd probably consider to be a limited education. I'll look it up (unless you want to explain it very slowly, as you would to a child).
I'm sure there are lots of other resources online that do a much better job than I can, but I'll try to summarize it a bit. Mimetic theory is a theory about desire by the French philosopher René Girard. Some key ideas/concepts are (from my knowledge and interpretations at least, which is definitely incomplete and flawed):
- All human desires are "mimetic", i.e. they arise from mimicry, are copied from others. We never want something because it is objectively valuable, or even because it meets our own subjective needs, but only because someone else wanted it before us
- As a result, any given object in the world is either not desired by anyone or desired by more than one person. This inevitably leads to rivalry, and rivalry in turn leads to violence. All violence, without exception, is fundamentally a direct (and inevitable) result of mimetic rivalry
- For most of human history, the best that could be done about this inevitable tendency towards violence was to channel the murderous rage onto a single victim, rather than have it tear society apart. A single individual on which all the violence, and hate can be placed upon, then killed, which would return the group to another period of peace (but the cycle of mimetic rivalry will happen again). This is the scapegoat mechanism
- The scapegoat mechanism probably emerged naturally as societies that could not develop it would've destroyed themselves. Historically the scapegoat mechanism initially started literally and violently (in the form of actual human sacrifices), but in the modern era happens more symbolically (in the form of exile/ostracization)
Now, it's only the mimesis part of his theory that I feel like is being re-told by TLP here. But I included the scapegoat mechanism as it is an important part that completes Girard's theory.
As for the link to Christianity. Girard himself discovered these concepts and reached these conclusions in large part through his anthropology studies, particularly into ancient tribal ceremonies, practices, and religions, most notably Christianity. Note that it's very important, for the scapegoating mechanism to work, that the people be oblivious to its actual nature, because ultimately it makes no sense and is pointless (after all the scapegoat is innocent). Girard makes the case (in his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World) that the New Testament Jesus was the first in human history to explicitly point out this scapegoat mechanism, and in fact was the archetypal (in the Jungian sense) scapegoat. In some sense Jesus was here to enlighten us of the ideas of mimetic rivalry and the way we dealt with it, the realization of which should have allowed us to dispense with the scapegoat mechanism altogether and moved on to something better.
Anyway, there's a ton more to learn, so I'll end here by linking to a piece by Alex Danco which helped me to get into this theory initially: https://alexdanco.com/2019/04/28/secrets-about-people-a-short-and-dangerous-introduction-to-rene-girard/
So, if you've the energy after reading this, you should go back and pick a couple posts from his blog to see how 2022 RC would review them, and try to figure out if he changed, or you did, or the format/topic makes a difference, etc.
I might, but I do wonder how limited the appetite of my audience is overall for this kind of thing. I feel really bad for the people who subscribed off the momentum of the "Jokes" article - they had no idea this was coming, and have been unsubscribing in droves.
But in all seriousness, if it's an issue of losing revenue, maybe you could aim to write 5 articles per month, charge some number that's evenly divisible by 4, and say "If this article on topic X isn't for you, consider it your freebie." That's kind of like what Angry DM does.
Oh, it's not a money thing these were mostly free subscribers anyhow. It's more just that different people are here for different things. A lot of people joined up because of the poor-ish article, for instance - they don't like a huge, ever-present focus on conservatism, for example. And so on and so forth. I try to vary a little bit for everyone's sake.
Have they really? That's funny. (Maybe they can come back now?)
FWIW, this is the sort of thing I associate with you, because you initially did that article on, I think, Kendi and McWhorter. The joke one was a nice bonus, though. (Oh, and I still owe you about 4 clicks, but call off the hit-men, I'm good for it.)
There seems to be a genre of books that are ostensibly "about" something but seem more like excuses for rhetorical performance. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" and Kierkegaard's "Either / Or", and David Foster Wallace's review of a dictionary come to mind.
I still hold out hope that there's something beyond that later in the book. I'll have to wait to see!
The Last Psychiatrist was kind of before my time, my exposure to it is almost entirely second-hand.
I guess the first point about the appeal of pornography being the unwillingness to fantasise makes some sort of sense, although I suppose you could say the same about any form of entertainment so I'm not sure if its as profound as it initially sounds (which I think is the problem with a lot of TLP's writing).
The third point just seems weird, although I suppose I see sexual desire as more akin to hunger than to anything else (more biological than intellectual), and the idea that I enjoy eating junk food in order to deprive other people of it is absurd - there is far too much of it! (I think the analogy between pornography and junk food works on multiple levels.) This may make more sense in context though, so I guess I'll have to wait for part 2.
I think a lot of what makes TLP's assertions work is he sort of spends a long time emphasizing them; he sort of says them over and over until your resistance to them wears down, and introduces the concepts in fuzzy pieces scattered all over so some of your resistance is covered by "what the hell is he even getting at" anyway.
I don't think *all* his assertions are definitely wrong, some of them I'm very sympathetic to. But I also don't think he does a very good job of convincing you of the truth of them; more on that later.
I guess what I was alluding to was a lot of the time I didn't find the insights that groundbreaking, and from my cursory reading the blog (or its readers?) seem to conflate cynicism with insight. You can definitely seem wise that way, but it's not actually that difficult or useful in my opinion.
I may just (unfairly?) find the blog's resemblance to the worst parts of my own internal monologue off-putting.
I don't think there's actually much space between how we feel about this book. The split-up post isn't doing a great job of making it clear, but followups will; I don't think this is a great book that makes great arguments.
I know nothing about this author or this book, but your review has convinced me that I definitely don't want to read it. It sounds exhausting.
Out of curiosity, does the author talk about single people at all? That seems like the most obvious case where his "you only want [romance/sex] to deprive others" claim breaks down. Sure, some single people want relationships and could probably be included in this claim, but not all of them. Some people are perfectly happy being single for years or even a lifetime.
So he's pretty male/female/single/married agnostic, for what it's worth. If you look at any individual quote, you might say "seems pretty hard on X; why not on Y?" but sooner or later he gets around to it.
As to the other question, I'd say his system doesn't really break down on that particular point. He's not saying *everyone* wants sex/romance as a necessary thing. In fact, he's saying none of them do at all; he uses the "you" clause to point universally at all humanity. To the extent they want anything, they want to deprive; that might be through romance, but it might be through anything else that takes what someone else wants, too.
The first three paragraphs… I don’t really get. Is feeling smart the main value you yourself get from reading TLP? Or do you think that’s the main reason _others_ like it is for phony feel-smart reasons, but you yourself see the deeper meaning, unlike the phonies?
(Honestly I’m just miffed, because when I discovered TLP last year, I really did think some of it was profound, and it helped me improve my life and how I treat people. I’m guessing the intent of the first few paragraphs of your post is to be self-deprecating, but… I think they’re mean)
It’s OK to just straightforwardly really like TLP!
I think feeling smart is a lot of the value a lot of people get from TLP. I wasn't being disingenuous when I said I am fond of the blog; I liked it a lot then, and I still like it a bit now.
But different people like things for different reasons; I think some of his points are more solid than others, and an awful lot of it is him saying "this is the way this is; accept it". If that was true of the blog, it's much more so of the book.
For some people, this is going to mean something like "well, that's some great food for thought; I'll look for supporting evidence by myself and make a decision". For other people (say, me in 2013) it's going to be something like "Wow; that was long, and had incredible style; it feels true". From there some people are going to check to see if it is true or realize that feeling true is not the same thing as being a supported argument. Others (me in 2013) aren't going to do that work.
I'll be going into it a little bit more in subsequent entries, but I think there's actually some good reasons someone might like the book (even if I generally find it torturous, which I do). There's certain kinds of art and art styles I'm mostly insensate to. So here (and in the next article)
I'm sort of covering what I see as his baseline arguments at 250 pages, and the next article will be more about how he expands those once I've finished the book, the more artistic side of the book, and tempering my own negativity.
Thanks for your response! Cheers
It does seem rather circular, if you only want things because other people want them, then why does anyone want anything in the first place? Envy all the way down?
I think there's a subtle but clear difference between valuing something because you expect other people to value it (and therefore be willing to give you other things in exchange for it later) and wanting something solely to deprive other people of if.