Mimetic Desire: Why Every System Eventually Finds a Scapegoat
From Bitcoin to AI to online discourse, our systems reflect something deeper—and more dangerous—about human desire.
Imitation. Conflict. Revelation.
The Pattern Beneath the Systems
Over the past few days, I’ve been writing about very different domains:
Bitcoin and the future of generosity
The moral limits of prediction markets
Tools, AI, and responsibility
At first glance, these are separate conversations.
But the more I sit with them, the more I’m convinced they are all expressions of the same underlying problem.
Not a technical problem.
Not even primarily a political one.
A human one.
René Girard called it mimetic desire—the idea that we learn what to want by watching others.
And once we begin imitating one another, we inevitably begin to rival one another.
And when rivalry escalates, something else emerges:
We look for someone to blame.
Girard’s Warning
“No culture exists within which everyone does not feel ‘different’ from others… There exists in every individual a tendency to think of himself not only as different from others but as extremely different…”
— The Scapegoat, Chapter 2
What we often call individuality is not the absence of imitation.
It is imitation—layered with comparison, rivalry, and the need to distinguish ourselves.
Today this dynamic is no longer subtle.
It is accelerated, amplified, and made visible.
Why Every System Drifts Toward Scapegoating
No matter how well-designed a system is, it eventually runs into the same pressure:
Competing desires
Conflicting incentives
Rising tension
And at some point, pressure builds—and something has to give.
Historically, that release has taken a familiar form—what René Girard called the “scapegoat mechanism”:
A person, a group, or even an idea is made to carry the weight of the disorder.
If we remove this—things will begin to make sense again.
This is not ancient history. It is a pattern we are still inside.
Bitcoin, AI, and Markets Through This Lens
This is where things begin to connect.
Bitcoin
Bitcoin promises a system less dependent on trust and manipulation.
But even here, narratives emerge:
“Bitcoin fixes everything”
“Bitcoin is dead”
These are not just analytical claims.
They are mimetic signals—ways of aligning with a tribe, a future, a worldview.
And when reality resists the narrative, the instinct is familiar:
Find the cause.
Name the failure.
Assign the blame.
Prediction Markets
In theory, prediction markets help us discover truth.
In practice, they can amplify shared narratives—especially when people begin imitating not just beliefs, but confidence.
Truth shifts from:
What is real?
to:
What do people like me believe is real?
And when outcomes diverge, the same pattern returns.
AI and Tools
AI doesn’t just scale intelligence.
It scales imitation.
It accelerates the process by which we learn what to desire— and whom to oppose.
Outrage spreads faster. Identities harden more quickly.
Narratives converge with greater force.
And as they do, rivalry intensifies.
Polarization deepens.
And the search for a scapegoat becomes almost inevitable.
The crowd forms faster. And the victim is identified faster.
AI does not create rivalry— but it compresses the time it takes for it to emerge.
Three Places to Pause
If Girard is right, then one of the most important disciplines today is learning when to pause.
Especially when a narrative feels:
urgent
obvious
morally clear
Those are often the moments when the scapegoat mechanism is already at work.
1. Conflict Narratives
When complex geopolitical realities are reduced to:
“This side is the problem.”
We should pause.
Not because there is no evil.
But because conflict is almost always more complex than the story we are being invited to adopt.
2. “Bitcoin is Dead”
Extreme declarations—on either side—often reveal imitation more than insight.
They spread because they:
resolve uncertainty
signal belonging
simplify reality
But truth rarely travels at the speed of a slogan.
A simple (and somewhat hilarious) example is Bitcoin Is Dead—a site that tracks every time Bitcoin has been declared “dead.”
The list is long.
And growing.
Bitcoin has been declared dead hundreds of times—often with great confidence.
3. “All Truths Are the Same”
This may be the deepest tension.
On one side:
all beliefs are flattened
On the other:
truth becomes a weapon
Both can become mimetic.
Both can lead to rivalry.
So the temptation is to step back—to stop making claims altogether, and become relativistic.
But Christianity makes a different claim.
Not just that truth exists—but that truth is revealed not through power, but through a victim.
The one the crowd unites against. The one made to carry what others cannot resolve.
The one who, in being exposed as innocent, reveals the crowd.
In the Gospels, that victim has a name: Jesus
The Christian Disruption
Girard’s most profound insight was not just anthropological.
It was theological.
“The modern Western world has forgotten the revelation in favor of its by-products… Believing itself a liberator, it discovers its role as persecutor.”
— The Scapegoat, Chapter 15
The Gospel does something radically different from every other system.
It exposes the scapegoat mechanism.
In most human stories:
the crowd is right
the victim is guilty
In the Gospel:
the crowd is unified—and wrong
the victim is innocent
The Cross is not just about forgiveness.
It is a revelation:
we are capable of condemning the innocent, and calling it justice
we are capable of finding unity in their condemnation, and calling it peace — until the next fracture.
The Gospels do not offer another way to win.
They expose the cycle—and invite us to step out of it.
A Limit to Every System
If that is true, then no system—no matter how advanced—can save us from ourselves.
Not Bitcoin.
Not AI.
Not markets.
They can help.
They can restrain.
They can reveal.
But they cannot transform desire.
A Personal Note on What Actually Changes Us
After we were forced to leave a place we had deeply invested in, there was a lot we had to process.
Not just logistics—but grief. Loss. Disorientation.
We ended up attending a week-long retreat.
It was a surprising place.
Not because it solved anything externally—but because of what happened internally.
People told their stories. And more importantly, they were heard.
Not analyzed.
Not corrected.
Not reduced.
Heard.
As Curt Thompson writes in Anatomy of the Soul:
“When a person tells his story and is truly heard and understood, he undergoes actual changes in his brain circuitry… a greater sense of emotional and relational connection, decreased anxiety, and greater awareness of and compassion for others’ suffering.”
That week didn’t eliminate the loss.
But it did something else.
It softened the instinct to:
withdraw
harden
or quietly look for something—or someone—to blame
And in its place, something else began to grow:
Connection.
Understanding.
And eventually—generosity.
This might sound unrelated to systems, markets, or technology.
But it isn’t.
Because before generosity can shape systems, it has to be formed in people.
A Different Way Forward
The Christian answer is not withdrawal.
And it is not domination.
It is transformed desire—
a life shaped not by imitation of the crowd,
but by imitation of Christ.
When you read the Gospels, you find that Jesus Christ does not participate in the mimetic cycle.
He does not return accusation for accusation.
He does not answer violence with violence.
He does not secure peace by casting someone else out.
He steps into the place of the scapegoat— and refuses to pass it on.
And in doing so, He reveals a different way of being human.
Ending Where We Should Begin
And where that pattern takes root, something else begins to emerge.
Not immediately.
Not easily.
But over time, a different way of relating to others begins to take shape.
Because when we no longer need someone to blame, we are no longer bound by rivalry.
And when rivalry loosens its grip, something else becomes possible.
What begins to take its place is not neutrality, but generosity.
A generosity that is not just financial.
But:
generosity in judgment
generosity in attention
generosity in truth-telling
generosity toward those we are tempted to reduce
In a world shaped by imitation, this is disruptive.
It refuses rivalry.
It refuses to build identity through opposition.
It refuses to restore peace by sacrificing others.
And that makes it difficult.
Because it asks something more of us than most systems ever will.
Not just better ideas.
Not just better structures.
But different desires.
The question is not whether we will have systems powerful enough to shape the world.
It is whether we will become the kind of people who no longer need a scapegoat.
Further reading:
Great insight to ponder.