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  1. Justin E. H. Smith's HinternetJustin E H Smith1/3/2121 min
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    Justin E. H. Smith's Hinternet
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    • deephdave
      Top reader of all timeScoutScribe
      3 years ago

      For Girard, everything is imitation. Or rather, every human action that rises above “merely” biological appetite and that is experienced as desire for a given object, in fact is not a desire for that object itself, but a desire to have the object that somebody else already has.

      What about the other element of Girard’s theory, the scapegoat mechanism? Here Thiel’s preferred instance is particularly flat-footed: “As for scapegoating,” he says, “what happened to Bill Gates during the antitrust prosecution of Microsoft is a great example of the tendency to gang up and blame one person.” If you thought antitrust cases were about maintaining a rationally regulated system of moderate free-market capitalism that encourages competition and innovation, think again: go back to Girard, with his faithful student as guide, and find the primordial origins of the Microsoft lawsuit in the Vedic sacrifice of the cosmic horse.