mimetic-desire

"Grey's Anatomy" illustrates Peter Thiel's Christian philosophy

Nicholas Carlson · 03/03/08 03:20PM

Facebook investor Peter Thiel plans to pay someone who adheres to a "specific strain of Christian philosophy" $100,000 to $200,000 a year to give away his money. A tipster tell us that the strain is Stanford professor Rene Girard's. Girard's big idea is something he calls mimetic desire, which posits that the only reason I want a Wii so bad is because everybody else wants a Wii so bad. This is called the triangulation of desire. Girard has a 52-minute clip on the Web in which he explains how the theory relates to Christianity. Or, there's this clip from Grey's Anatomy, which YouTube user nefariouscarrot claims illustrates mimetic desire.