You don't want things — you want what other people want

René Girard argued human desire isn't a straight line to an object but a triangle: we borrow our wants from a model we imitate, which is why rivals so often crave the exact same thing. Pushed far enough, that copying spirals into social crisis, which communities resolve by uniting against a single scapegoat, discharging the tension onto one victim so peace can return.

— René Girard, Violence and the Sacred — 1972; mimetic theory
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