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Tag Archives: economic sharing

The Gifts of Generosity and Gratitude

Posted on November 20, 2018 by andrewmarrosb
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yellowTulips1Jesus’ words about the lilies of the field (Mt. 6: 25–33) are among the most quoted of his teachings for their poetic beauty but among the most disregarded for their obvious inapplicability to human life as we know it. This teaching seems to be as inapplicable as Jesus’ invitation to the rich man to give away everything he had and follow him. (Mk. 10: 21) If it is impossible to give everything we have for the Kingdom of God, then it is just as impossible to trust God to feed us like the birds of the air and clothe us like the lilies of the field. However, in reference to the rich man, Jesus said that all things are possible with God, so let us, on this day of thanksgiving, reflect further on the birds of the air.

Nature is a system that has a balance to it. Everything is built to provide for other beings. The balance is delicate enough that it can get out of kilter with events such as the plague of locusts the Prophet Joel wrote about. Nature’s balance happens by natural growth as with plants or by instinct as some animals eat plants or prey on other animals. When all is instinct, there is no room for gratitude. In the case of humans, René Girard has shown that there is a whole different system which he calls “mimetic desire.” That is, although humans strive for food out of the same need as the birds of the air, human striving goes beyond these bodily needs. Humans are wired to respond, not just to food itself, but to the desires of other people. This deep connection to the desires of others can lead to generosity and sharing, creating a system of exchange similar to the balance of nature. But mimetic desire can also lead to deadly competition where it becomes important to have more food than other people and more and more things than others. In such a scenario, the desires of others (or the imagined desires of others) drive us to desire way more than we really want or need. This is the system that undergirds the economic system of our world which is driven by acquisitiveness. This system also leads to ecological destruction way beyond what a swarm of locusts can do. If, instead of loving our neighbors, we have to have more than our neighbors, it is not possible to be grateful, because our eyes and hearts are fixed on having more. There is also no room for generosity that would generate thankfulness on the part of others. This is what it means to strive for these things “like the Gentiles.” This is life as we know it.

So insidious is competitive acquisitiveness that gift giving can become a system of power plays. This was the way “generosity” worked in the Gentile world in Jesus’ time. The rich and powerful would choose certain people to be their clients. They would provide their clients with many gifts but there were socially understood obligations imposed in the giving of these gifts. This was a system of acquisitiveness like onto our modern system. There was no room for gratitude here either.

But God, in Christ, from outside the Gentiles’s system and our modern economic system, gives much more than food and drink. Jesus entered the heart of the primary system of mimetic desire and took on the violence of this system, even to death on the cross. By rising from the dead in the spirit of forgiveness, Jesus opened up a whole new life of the Kingdom made up of generosity and gratitude. The more generosity and gratitude, the less room there is for acquisitiveness and striving for things “like the Gentiles.” There is more for everybody if we don’t always have to have more for the sake of having more. This kind of generosity and cause for gratitude isn’t a human invention, which is why, humanly, it is not possible to be carefree like the birds of the air or the lilies of the field. Jesus embodied true generosity on the cross and in his resurrection as the forgiving victim. Can we respond to this divine generosity with gratitude that unlocks generosity in our own hearts?


For more on the theme of generosity, see The Eleventh Commandment and God’s Kingdom in Two Small Coins.

For a more extended piece on thanksgiving see Giving Thanks to God.

For an introduction to René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim.

Posted in mimetic desire, René Girard, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged birds of the air, ecology, economic sharing, Generosity, Gospel of Matthew, gratitude, Lilies of the field, mimetic desire, mimetic rivalry, René Girard, thanksgiving | Leave a reply

Mimetic Scarcity (1)

Posted on December 17, 2014 by andrewmarrosb
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outsideSupper1René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire has many implications for economics but Girard himself has never explored this area except for a few passing references. Pierre Dumouchel is among the colleagues of Girard who has done this for us. In his new book The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays he fills in some gaps in Girard’s scheme by examining scarcity, the lynchpin of much liberal economic theory. The shrinkage of objects that occurs when two or more people focus on the same object while consigning all others to oblivion suggests that scarcity is created rather than a fact of nature. While filling in some gaps in Girard’s scheme, Dumouchel comes to the same conclusion via a different route, one that examines this presupposition of liberal economic theory. (Mimetic desire is briefly explained in Human See, Human Want) Dumouchel points out that the economy of early humanity shows few signs of scarcity as built into nature. Although scarcity in the sense of famines or related catastrophes could occur, usually these early societies were affluent in the sense that people had enough. This affluence occurred because the social bonding in these groups was close enough that they shared among themselves, making sure that everybody had enough to live on. Nobody was left to starve unless the whole group starved. This sounds idyllic, but Girard’s theory of collective violence at the dawn of humanity indicates there was a problem. Dumouchel helps us understand what it was. Girard’s presentation of the primal mimetic crises at the dawn of humanity gives the impression that the escalating mimetic rivalry occurs between individuals. Dumouchel suggests that the rivalry was between social groups. He suggests that when social leaders, usually patriarchs, engaged in mimetic rivalry with other social leaders they triangled “third party” people into the fray, usually with much manipulation. The very social bonds that led the members to provide for each other also bound them together against the enemy groups. This social bonding caused the mimetic tensions to escalate. The obligation to feed was also the obligation to fight.” (See Two Ways of Gathering) Girard has argued that spontaneous collective violence stopped social crises and the institutionalization of sacrificial religions perpetuated this “solution.” The Judeo-Christian tradition, however, has attenuated the power of sacrifice to hold society together. Dumouchel agrees with all this but he adds a second “solution” that unfolded more slowly, this one just as unconscious as the first. The violence of feuds between groups of people was especially hard on the third parties drawn into them as they were the ones most likely to be victims of the violence. To avoid this victimization and to tone down the violence, people started to loosen the social bonds that obligated all in the group to fight. In so loosening these bonds, the violence was much more sporadic. It still did a lot of harm but with far fewer participants, society as a whole was not engulfed in the feuding and the crises leading to the victimage mechanism occurred much less often. Unfortunately, the loosening of the social bonds that reduced the scale of violence also created scarcity. The bonds that loosened the obligation to fight also loosened the obligation to provide for others in the group. Those who could not provide for themselves were left out in the cold—literally. Third-parties were yet again victims. There is not a trace of the kind of violence that goes with lynching and other frenzied social actions. On the contrary, nothing happens. And that is the problem. It is indifference that kills. It isn’t that some people got together and made a plan to squeeze out weak people by creating scarcity. Rather, an understandable desire to reduce violence had this effect. This also demonstrates that scarcity is not built into nature although, since the material goods in the world are finite, scarcity can and does happen in nature. In the social groups that loosened their bonds connecting themselves quantity of material goods did not change. What changed was the social configuration, one that resulted in scarcity. This schema by Dumouchel is valuable for connecting the scapegoating mechanism in early societies posited by Girard and the modern style of exclusions that leave large numbers of people on the margins and outside of them. Although frenzied scapegoating actions happen, the creation of economic scarcity is the more ongoing, pressing modern problem. Dumouchel illustrates this whole process in his analysis of the land enclosures in England that culminated in the 18th century. These reflections leave many questions that I will look at in a future blog post or two. Most particularly, since Christianity is alleged to have destroyed the efficacy of sacrificial violence, where does this leave Christianity in relation to economic scarcity?

Move on to Mimetic Scarcity (2)

Posted in mimetic desire, nonviolence, peace, René Girard | Tagged collective violence, economic sharing, economics, mimetic desire, Paul Dumouchel, René Girard, sacred violence, scapegoating, scarcity in economics, social bonding | Leave a reply

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